We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
TAPS (1981)
You often hear military school referenced as a threat of punishment. Parents telling their kids (like in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) to straighten up their act or they’ll be sent to military school. But in 1979, Devery Freeman wrote a novel called Father Sky that was about military school cadets who love their school so much that they revolt and take control of the school when they hear it’s in danger of being shut down. I haven’t read that novel, but I have seen the 1981 film adaptation Taps – and it makes for quite an engrossing, tense viewing experience.
Directed by Harold Becker from a screenplay crafted by Darryl Ponicsan, Robert Mark Kamen, and James Lineberger, Taps is set at a fictional school called the Bunker Hill Military Academy but was actually filmed at the legendary Valley Forge Military Academy and College. Timothy Hutton stars as Brian Moreland, a kid who is dedicated to his school to a baffling degree and is fascinated with the head of the school, George C. Scott as Brigadier General Harlan Bache. When Brian is invited into Bache’s quarters to have dinner and be promoted to Cadet Major, he tells his friends about listening to Bache’s old war stories and “toasting honor” like it was the greatest experience of his life. With one year at school wrapping up, Moreland is looking forward to the next school year, being Cadet Major and leading the young Cadets through a great time. Then everything comes crashing down. Bache informs the Cadets that there is only one year left for Bunker Hill. The school is closing down and the property is being sold off to real estate developers. At first, there’s hope that Bache will be able to get the board of trustees to reverse their decision. But then the aging Bache, not the invincible and infallible superman Moreland believes him to be, makes a terrible mistake that costs a young man his life and ensures Bunker Hill’s days are over.
And that’s when Moreland proves to be an idiot. After Bache has been escorted off the grounds – first to be taken to jail, but then to a hospital because he has a heart attack – Moreland leads his fellow Cadets, some of whom are very young, in a revolt. They arm themselves, take over the school, and somehow they think this is going to get people to change their minds and let the school stay open. Not realizing they’re just proving that the choice to close down was the right decision. And not realizing that they’re putting their own lives in danger, with the authorities waiting right outside the gates. At first the local police are in charge of the situation. But then the National Guard comes rolling in, represented by Ronny Cox as Colonel Kerby.
Of course, not everyone is as fully dedicated to the cause as Moreland is. There are defections, and Moreland’s friend Cadet Captain Alex Dwyer (Sean Penn) starts to have some serious misgivings about what they’re doing. But then there’s Cadet Captain David Shawn (Tom Cruise, in his second screen appearance), who may be even more gung ho than Moreland.
Taps is a great movie that’s packed with terrific performances. The way the story plays out is fascinating. Sometimes it’s shocking, sometimes it’s infuriating, but it’s always engaging.
SALEM’S LOT (2004)
Back in 1975, author Stephen King brought us the vampire novel Salem’s Lot, which was inspired by the thought “What if Dracula came to modern day Maine?” The vampire that kicks off a breakout of bloodsuckers in the titular Maine town wasn’t actually Dracula himself... but close enough. Four years later, director Tobe Hooper and writer Paul Monash turned Salem’s Lot into a two-part (three hours total) mini-series that didn’t stick exactly to the book, especially in the portrayal of the lead vampire as a feral Nosferatu rather than a Dracula type, but it was a good version of the story and made for a very creepy viewing experience. Twenty-five years later, director Mikael Salomon and writer Peter Filardi teamed up for another two-part, three hour mini-series adaptation of Salem’s Lot... And the 2004 take on the material didn’t turn out to be nearly as good as the 1979 version.
My thinking would be that the reason to make a second mini-series adaptation would be to stick even closer to King’s writing. And in some ways, Salem’s Lot ‘04 is closer to the book than the ‘79 version. The story begins with two mysterious men moving into the town, opening an antique store, and buying a house on a hill that overlooks the town below. The Marsten house. A place that has been empty since a murder-suicide took place there long ago. One of the men is Richard Straker, played by Donald Sutherland. This odd fellow can always be found in the antique store. His business partner Kurt Barlow is rarely seen... but when we do see him, this vampiric character is played by Rutger Hauer and presented much like he was in the book. As far as I’m concerned, the more accurate portrayal of Barlow is the only element that made Salem’s Lot ‘04 worth making, because everything around that more accurate portrayal is severely lacking.
Most of the residents of Salem’s Lot in King’s book were not particularly good or likeable people, and this mini-series makes them even more unpleasant to be around. Filardi rewrote their interactions, and I can’t say I found their interactions to be as good as what King wrote. He also made modern day (as of 2004) updates to the back story of lead character Ben Mears, an author played by Rob Lowe, and this seemed to be unnecessary. Then he completely botched the ending.
As in the source material, a plague of vampirism sweeps across Salem’s Lot, and soon it comes down to Mears, local doctor Jimmy Cody (Robert Mammone), Mears’ potential love interest Susan Norton (Samantha Mathis), horror fan Mark Petrie (Dan Byrd), schoolteacher Matt Burke (Andre Braugher), and troubled priest Father Callahan (James Cromwell) to try to stop them. And it’s a relief when they set out to deal with the vampires in the second half of the show, because that first half is difficult to sit through.
I’m a fan of several of the actors in this mini-series, and they do well with the material they were given to work with. The problem is, a lot of that material just wasn’t very good or interesting. That’s why – despite how good Sutherland and Hauer are as Straker and Barlow – I rarely attempt to watch this version of Salem’s Lot. I’ve given it a few chances, and it has never quite worked for me. There are some decent moments with the vampires, but overall I find it to be extremely dull. So I stick with Tobe Hooper’s Nosferatu twist.
PACIFIC HEIGHTS (1990)
I have memories of catching glimpses of the thriller Pacific Heights on cable when I was a kid, probably around 7 years old. I remember that I found it to be rather disturbing, especially since the film’s villain is played by Michael Keaton – the guy I knew from Mr. Mom and Batman at that time. This was not the sort of character I was used to seeing Keaton play, and it troubled me. I spent decades thinking I had actually seen Pacific Heights in full, but clearly that’s not the case, because the version of the movie I had in my mind had a very different story than the actual film.
The film gets its title from a neighborhood in San Francisco where Drake Goodman (Matthew Modine) and his girlfriend Patty Palmer (Melanie Griffith) purchase a large home where they’ll live on the top floor and rent out two apartments on the first floor. One of those apartments is taken by a couple that turns out to be ideal tenants. Then Keaton shows up as Carter Hayes, who turns out to be a total nightmare of a person. Although he presents himself as being very wealthy and promises to pay the first six months of rent in advance, he manages to move into the apartment before he pays Drake and Patty a single cent. He shuts himself in the apartment and changes the locks so the home’s owners can’t get in. The sounds of hammering and drilling are always coming from the other side of the locked door. Hayes releases cockroaches into the building. Rent is never paid. And yet whenever the authorities get involved, they side with Hayes because he has taken possession of the apartment. “If he’s in, he has rights.” The only possibility of being able to extract him would involve a costly court case. It doesn’t help that Drake conducts himself like a total moron and even, at one point, assaults Hayes in front of the house. Which doesn’t go over well with the police.
It takes the more sensible Patty to finally figure out what’s going on with Hayes, and as part of her investigation she learns a bit about his family history. And that’s where my confusion came in. Somehow my 7 year old self became convinced that Hayes was tormenting Drake and Patty because they were living in his childhood home and he was trying to force them out and get it back. I must have filled in the gaps myself while just seeing random moments of Pacific Heights here and there, because that’s not at all the plot of the movie.
Directed by John Schlesinger and scripted by Daniel Pyne, Pacific Heights is a solid thriller that will have you wondering what’s up with Michael Keaton and shaking your head at Matthew Modine. If you haven’t seen it yet at any point in the last thirty-plus years (or if you saw it as a kid and got the story all scrambled up), seek it out.
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