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.
Aliens, killer babies, and dances.
ALIEN³ (1992)
There were seven years between the release of director Ridley Scott’s Alien and the James Cameron-directed follow-up Aliens because years went by with studio executives being hesitant to make another Alien movie and the producers having to sue the studio to get their cut of the first movie’s profits. Six years passed between Aliens and the Alien 3 not due to lack of interest or financial disputes, but due to creative disagreements. Alien 3 got trapped in development hell while script after script was written and rejected. Ten different screenwriters worked on the project over the years. There were drafts where Aliens survivors Hicks, Newt, and Bishop took the lead while franchise heroine Ripley was sidelined. There were drafts where there were no returning characters. Stories took place on space stations (one which had a replica of an American town on board), in a prison, on a wooden planet run by monks who are averse to technology. Most of the scripts messed with the alien life cycle, worked a virus into the mix, or had genetically altered xenomorphs. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master director Renny Harlin was hired to direct, but moved on to make Die Hard 2. Vincent Ward, who directed The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, was hired to direct, but dropped out when his vision started to become compromised.
The finished film combined elements from Vincent Ward’s “wooden planet run by monks” idea with an uncredited David Twohy’s prison space station idea, with David Giler, Walter Hill, and Larry Ferguson receiving credit on the screenplay that wove them together. First-time feature director David Fincher, known then for his impressive music videos, was hired to take the helm... then he had a hell of a time working with the studio and dealing with the fact that the script was never truly finished. The movie ran over-schedule and over-budget. Fincher felt the producers didn’t trust him and he hates the finished product – and so did a lot of viewers. Built around the idea that Sigourney Weaver would only return if her character Ripley was killed off, Alien 3 is a bleak and nihilistic movie that did not go over well when it was first released, although it has gained a cult following over the years. I clearly remember the distaste audiences had for this movie when it was released in May of ‘92, especially since I saw it during its theatrical run. I was 8, and it was not a pleasant viewing experience, so I knew what critics and movie-goers were talking about when they trashed the movie for various reasons: the decision to kill off Ripley’s fellow Aliens survivors, the setting and new characters, the hopelessness, the flashy camera moves.
The story picks up immediately after the happy ending of Aliens and takes any sense of happiness away. There was a facehugger on board the ship Ripley, Hicks, Newt, and Bishop rode off in. While they’re in hypersleep, the alien wreaks havoc on board and causes the ship to crash on the planet Fiorina "Fury" 161, which is both a mineral ore refinery and a correctional facility for antisocial male prisoners. Ripley’s love interest Hicks and surrogate daughter Newt are both killed. Bishop only has half a body and barely functions when there’s an attempt made to power him up. Ripley wakes up to find that the people she cared about are dead and now she’s surrounded by convicted rapists and murderers... and soon, there’s a xenomorph running around in the facility as well. There’s a theatrical cut of this movie and an assembly cut that’s 30 minutes longer, and depending on which cut you watch, the xenomorph was either birthed from a dog (theatrical) or an ox (assembly cut). The filmmakers ditched earlier ideas of messing with the alien life cycle or genetics, but the fact that this xenomorph was birthed from an animal rather than a human does make it a bit different than previous xenos. For one thing, it’s faster.
This being a prison without guards, there are no weapons available for the people to fight this alien with, but they work with what they’ve got, coming up with a plan to lure the alien into the foundry's molding facility and pour molten lead on it. There’s a ticking clock element to the story, as not only is the xenomorph steadily whittling down the prison population, but the unscrupulous company Weyland-Yutani is on their way to pick up Ripley – and hopefully the alien, as they want to experiment on it and turn the xenomorphs into weapons. Another ticking clock: Ripley realizes an alien Queen is gestating inside her, and it’s only a matter of time before it comes bursting out of her chest. If a Queen gets loose, that means more eggs, more facehuggers, more chestbursters, more xenomorphs...
I didn’t hate Alien 3 as much as others did when I saw it, but like I said, I never found watching this movie to be a pleasant experience. It’s dark and dour; a real downer to watch. It’s a shame that Hicks and Newt were killed off, retroactively adding a sad edge to the ending of Aliens (if you acknowledge Alien 3 as a follow-up). There aren’t many good characters present in the prison with Ripley, so it’s difficult to latch on to anyone in this movie or care about what’s going to happen to them. Charles S. Dutton and Charles Dance do manage to make their characters stand out as positives. Otherwise, all we have is a depressed Ripley counting down the seconds to her death, hoping she’ll be able to take the alien(s) down with her. So watching the movie can be a slog, but I do feel that it has its artistic merits. Fincher did what he could with the material and the collaborators he had to work with and showed that he would be able to make much better movies when given the chance.
THE UNBORN (1991)
There’s a sub-genre in horror that deals with pregnancy and the fears that come with having a baby, with two of the best examples being Rosemary’s Baby and It’s Alive. Directed by Rodman Flender, who would go on to make Leprechaun 2 and Idle Hands, from a screenplay by future Terminator 3 writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris (under a shared fake name), The Unborn is basically a mixture of some of the most effective elements of Rosemary’s Baby and It’s Alive, those elements just weren’t quite as effective this time around.
Brooke Adams and Jeff Hayenga star as Virginia and Brad Marshall, a couple that has been trying to get pregnant for about five years. Virginia has malformed fallopian tubes and scarred uterine tissue, and has had to endure two miscarriages. She has been told that the idea of giving birth to her own child is a hopeless one. If she wants to have a child, she’ll need to adopt... But she and Brad won’t give up on the dream of having their own biological offspring, so they take a friendly recommendation of visiting the office of Dr. Richard Meyerling (James Karen) and decide to go on a fertilization journey with him. Soon enough, Virginia is pregnant and things seem to be going well... except for the ugly rash on her skin, her newfound urge to claw and bite, and the fact that she’s irritable all the time.
As the months go by, it becomes clear that Meyerling’s practices are having a negative effect. A genius 2-year-old who was the result of Meyerling’s fertility treatments turns out to be a little psycho. Virginia is warned that she should stop taking the pills the doctor prescribes. She discovers that the music he provided has subliminal messages recorded underneath it. One Meyerling-treated pregnant woman goes into a violent rage and murders her partner. Another grabs a knife and stabs her own baby bump repeatedly. Once Virginia is sure that things aren’t going to turn out well if she has this baby, she has to resort to having a back alley abortion. But that just paves the way for more troubles.
The Unborn is a nasty movie that deals with delicate subject matter, but doesn’t let that stop it from being as messed up as possible. Flender and the writers took every opportunity to make the viewer squirm or feel sickened and disturbed. It’s not a great movie, but it is troubling... and it offers you the chance to see a really goofy-looking killer baby toward the end.
LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972)
From my adolescent years through my 20s, I was on a quest to watch as many notable films from the decades before my birth in the early 1980s as possible, while also endeavoring to keep up with the latest releases. I did pretty well in that quest, especially since I had nothing else to do with my time – and, of course, one of the movies I saw at one point during those years was Last Tango in Paris (I rented the DVD from Netflix in April of 2001, when I was 17), because not only was it directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, who is considered to be one of the greatest directors in Italian cinema history, but also because it stirred up a lot of controversy when it was released, earning an X rating in the United States at the time (but that didn’t stop it from becoming one of the biggest hits of 1973 in the U.S.). It has stirred up more controversy over the years, as star Maria Schneider revealed that she was traumatized by working on the film, particularly the scene where her character is anally raped by Marlon Brando’s character, who uses butter as a lubricant. It’s a scene Schneider, who was only 19 years old at the time, said was sprung on her at the last second, and it’s understandable that it would have a negative impact on her. It also became the most famous and talked-about scene in the movie
Even when it was raking in the cash, Last Tango in Paris had a reputation for being a sleazy, repugnant movie – and that’s exactly how it comes off now, more than fifty years after it was released, playing like a twisted male fantasy. Brando, in his late 40s at the time, plays Paul, an American man who has taken a trip to Paris while mourning the suicide death of his wife. When he goes to check out an apartment, a lovely young local girl (Schneider’s character Jeanne) also happens to be there to take a look at the place. The guy is depressed and disheveled, has almost thirty years on her, and barely says a word to her. There’s no reason for her to find him appealing in the slightest. Plus, she’s already engaged to someone else. And yet, when Paul randomly makes a move on her just a minute or two after they walked into this place separately, she immediately wraps her arms and legs around him and starts passionately kissing him. They have sex up against the wall... and agree to continue meeting up in this apartment to have anonymous, casual sex with each other. Strictly anonymous, because Paul insists that they not tell each other their names or share any personal info. Because, of course, why wouldn’t she want to have sex with this slobby old sad sack stranger all the time? The only thing that exists between them is what happens within the walls of that apartment. Including, yes, eventually, a butter-lubed rape.
Brando turns in a solid performance as his always unlikable and eventually despicable character, while Schneider is quite charming as the girl who is making a mistake by hanging around with this guy, and their acting is really the only reason to watch the movie, which is many a series of unpleasant moments and scenes where Paul gives Jeanne a variety of reasons to be upset. The ending is just another bummer that will leave you wondering why you bothered to watch the movie at all.
I watched Last Tango in Paris once in 2001 and never really felt the need to watch it again. Now that I have revisited it 23 years later, I’ll be just fine if I never take in a third viewing.
LAST FOXTROT IN BURBANK (1973)
If you want to get the gist of Last Tango in Paris while only spending 56 minutes on it instead of 130, you could watch the parody Last Foxtrot in Burbank, which puts a comedic twist on most of the major moments in Tango without inflicting trauma on the lead actress. Writers Bill Haggard, Frank Ray Perilli, and Sam Vaughn must have gone to catch Tango on the big screen multiple times in order to get such a grasp on the scenes of the movie quickly enough to get the parody into production while the original film was still having its theatrical run... Of course, the fact that Foxtrot is less than half the length indicates that they only retained less than half of the scenes.
Last Foxtrot in Burbank tells the same story as Last Tango in Paris, but in a goofy, nonsensical way. Michael Pataki does his best Marlon Brando impression while playing the lead role of Paul, while Sherry Denton takes over for Maria Schneider as Jeanne. They hang out in an apartment a lot; Denton always naked, Pataki almost always wearing an overcoat, even for his bottomless scene in a bathtub. Paul mourns his wife, who committed suicide. He has sex with Jeanne. He treats her like dirt. You know, just like we saw in the other movie.
This was the feature directorial debut of future Full Moon founder Charles Band, who badly wanted to direct a horror movie, but was instead convinced to direct a comedy. The movie was so poorly received when it was screened that Band tried to destroy all copies and wipe it out of existence... but one survived, and now it’s out there in the world. It doesn’t really work at all, but it exists.
Even though Band was always focused on the number of movies he would be able to make – when he was making films in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, his goal was to make 200 movies by the year 2000 – he never counted Last Foxtrot in Burbank. This is film zero on his filmography, which has since reached the 400 movie mark.
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