Working on a longer blog post about something else entirely, but I wanted to show you this little 2 and a half minute video I found on Youtube. It’s amazing some of the beautiful little things you can run across there, if you’re patient enough to wade through the oceans of garbage. As I find them I’ll try to remember to post them here, if they’re available.
It’s a moving, bittersweet video containing Yann Tiersen’s music from Amelie, depicting a scant few moments in a life. Enjoy, but bring a hankie.
Consider the first act of Predator–an elite commando squad lands in the jungle and takes out a badass drug operation. Maybe not the most original set up, but it introduced you to these guys as they really are: supercompetent badasses who operate as a unit, and who literally laugh in the face of danger. This is the Schwarzeneggar of Commando, of the Terminator, of Conan. He wakes up to a big breakfast of explosions and fistfights, and sprinkles gratuitous violence into his coffee.
I haven’t seen the new Predator movie. I want to, and I might see it in the theater and I hope that it’s good, but today’s post is more about the Predator franchise in general, and what it means to me.
Here is a pic of the exact same poster I had on my wall when I was 13.
I want to believe some little boy out there had one of My Little Pony. Because we would be bestest friends EVAR.
Bitchin, eh?
In 5th grade, I had a few male friends who accepted and appreciated my status as tomboy.
In 6th grade, the game changed.
My middle school was pretty crappy one, as schools went. Most of the kids were biding their time until they could drop out, and there were always stories on Monday morning about what illicit behavior people got up to over the weekend, especially stories about older brothers or sisters in gangs. I was one of few white kids, and what’s worse I was in regular classes because of my orchestra class. Yes, I played violin. I was just that cool.
I tried to make friends. But the one nut I couldn’t crack was the Comic Book Kids. They were a group of kids who hung around at lunch talking comics, all attempting to recreate the drawings or make up their own characters. Because I could draw I would sit with them and just listen to their talk, but if I said anything I was immediately shut down for my lack of knowledge. Only one kid would talk to me, a kid named Jose who at age 13 made the work of Todd McFarlane look like the scrawlings of a palsy victim. He was a genius: his work had depth, he had an advanced knowledge of musculature, form, and he even knew how to block out a drawing before he started. Best of all, he was my friend and he’d actually talk to me about my drawings.
But he also started telling me about a movie one day, an incredibly awesome movie that he’d snuck into the theater with his brother to see: a movie called Predator.
I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d seen about .4 seconds of it, while I was walking through the living room and my parents were watching it, and I’d hurried to my room because they were watching a ‘grown-up’ movie. Or maybe I did tell him. However it happened, I wound up watching it one weekend, and absolutely fell in love.
When the second one came out in theaters I knew my parents wouldn’t let me go see it, so when I went up to visit my Aunt over the summer I totally rented that shit. It wasn’t quite as good as the first one–even at 13 I realized they had just amped everything up, and to see it now is to contain barely-restrained laughter at the profanity, the violence, everything. It’s so ludicrously over the top for an action movie it approached parody, even in the early 90’s.
I freaking love the first Predator, the second is like an alcoholic uncle I enjoy spending time with but ultimately wish I could save in some way, and the AVP movies are like cousins who should have been aborted in the womb and ruin every family gathering with their existence.
The first AVP was a decent effort, despite its PG-13 rating. I won’t lie, as a nerdy teenager it was my secret dream that a Predator would land and we would totally be BFF. He would teach me how to hunt and crush my enemies, and I would teach him how to play ‘Happy Birthday’ on the violin. It would have been a perfect life. So the whole woman working with a predator against the aliens was kind of neat.
AVP2 reminded me of an experience in real life I’d like to share. I went to the dentist after skipping cleanings for few years, and learned something interesting: once you hit your late twenties, your gums recede away from the roots of your teeth, exposing more sensitive nerves. This explains why going regularly for cleanings is important–becuse when shit builts up at the base, on the roots, scraping it off with a metal hook is incredibly painful. I almost blacked out the last time, and I have been a dental regular since. I remember my hands kept drifting up towards the woman’s arm and she had to push them back down, and it was NOT OF MY DOING. My body was rejecting the whole procedure and I wanted it to stop, but also knew it had to be done.
AVP2 was kind of like that. An experience that had once been familiar, even somewhat pleasant when I was younger, became an exercise in nightmare once I was an adult. I think I just demand too much–after all, the first Predator has a lot going for it for a ‘dumb action movie.’
Consider the first act of Predator–an elite commando squad lands in the jungle and takes out a badass drug operation. Maybe not the most original set up, but it introduced you to these guys as they really are: supercompetent badasses who operate as a unit, and who literally laugh in the face of danger. This is the Schwarzeneggar of Commando, of the Terminator, of Conan. He wakes up to a big breakfast of explosions and fistfights, and sprinkles gratuitous violence into his coffee.
In the second act, when Shit Gets Weird, you see something that seems incredible: these men, these men torn from the thigh of Zeus and who came from On High to Beat Ass, are . . . frightened.
Now, I am certainly not making the claim that the acting in Predator was unfairly snubbed when it came Oscar-Time. Lord no. But, when these men, these ridiculously overmuscled, walking testosterone doses of men act frightened, it feels earned. It feels like they have every goddamn right to be afraid–for one thing, they’re battling their worst enemy, a hunter stronger, faster, and more technologically advanced than they, who is doing this FOR FUN, and for another, they have been lied to by their government. This was a time in movies when that wasn’t taken for granted, when it wasn’t happening in every film that came out, so it doesn’t feel cheapened by oversaturation.
For another, you couldn’t have asked for better casting. You’ve got the big, muscular guys like Arnold, Carl Weathers (!!), Sonny Landham, and Bill Duke, who may lack bulk but makes up for it with one of the best death scenes in an action movie EVAR. Jesus, I almost forgot Jesse Ventura–there’s so much beefcake I FORGOT ONE. The concepts, like the biceps, are just too big.
Not Pictured: Estrogen
Then there are the littler guys, whose names escape me but who were awesome in their own right, with the jokes and the drama and whatnot.
My point with all this is that any Predator movie has some big goddamn shoes to fill.
It seems like in any pitch meeting for a Predator movie Jack Donaghy from 30Rock ought to pop in an ask ‘Are you ready to put on your Daddy’s shoes yet, boy?’ and any answer except ‘Yes sir, I wore them today, Sir’ will be met with bitter failure. So even though I don’t mean to, I have some pretty high expectations for any Predator movie.
AVP2 was such a bitter, bitter disappointment to me, and while I don’t read every Predator comic that comes out (I know their species name starts with Y, but damned if I can remember it and I’m not looking it up) I do love the franchise and the world it inhabits. I don’t get why the movies are so lacking in quality lately, either; it’s not like the Predator is an actor who isn’t aging well and can’t do the stunts because of his bad back. IT’S A COSTUME. It requires a different actor each time! Although I do like the idea of a broken-down Predator with a potbelly and a 2k a day coke habit begging some studio exec for one more shot, one more bite at the apple. ‘Come on, Jimmy, you know I’m good for it, you know I can bring it! I’ll get clean, I’ll learn my lines, I’ll train with the same guy who brought Stallone back!’ George Burns was right, show business is hideous bitch-goddess.
That said, the Predator itself is only the co-star of the movie. If the real stars of the movie don’t represent the humans and bring at least a little pathos to the table, then what the hell’s the point of rooting for them? Why did they bother in the first place?
Yes, we CAN all get long in the face of a hideous anthrophagic alien species! Why is this not on a poster in a classroom RIGHT NOW?
That's just damned good poster design right there.
The next entry in our 80’s Vampire movie Spectacular is My Best Friend is a Vampire, starring a pre-Dead Poets Robert Sean Leonard, Rene Auberjonois and David Warner. Although it came out after Fright Night, I saw it before FN because Best Friend is rated PG and I believe FN was R. Best Friend is also a little more campy and fun than FN, which made it great sleepover viewing.
Best Friend is about teenager Jeremy, who is nursing a crush on a band geek (who is somehow inexplicably able to blow him off with the same snottiness as if she were Queen of the Cheerleaders) and just trying to survive high school. One day, as he’s going about his job delivering groceries he encounters Nora, the kind of 80’s hot girl that pops up in these movies like high-tops–sultry, alluring, and for some reason interested in sweaty, inexperienced teenage boys. She turns him into a vampire, and wacky hijinks ensue as he tries to figure out exactly WTF is going on. Moments after Jeremy’s deed is done, David Warner enters the scene as psycho vampire killer Leopold, who kills Nora and chases Jeremy from the house.
Enter Rene Auberjonois as Modoc, a super-smooth vampire with a bitching BMW and a cup overflowething with awesome. He’s shown up to help show young Jeremy the ropes and keep him out of trouble. It’s kind of nice if you think about it–sure, it ensures the survival of the vampire species, but it’s also kind of nice to think of an older, experienced vampire out and about, on the prowl for some claret, and suddenly slamming on the brakes and declaring ‘My NOOB-sense is tingling!’ Then making up a care package of pig’s blood, sunglasses and arty hats.
While Fright Night approached the gay thing obliquely, coding so hard you’d think it was 1990 and the film a LINUX enthusiast, Best Friend hits it head on–Jeremy’s parents observe him hanging around with an older, ‘European’ fellow, driving the fellow’s car with its suggestive ‘NITEMAN’ vanity plate, partying all night and sleeping through the day, and react accordingly for an 80’s parent: they begin reading books on how to talk to their gay son. The entire thing becomes a secondary-story joke, as Jeremy goes about his vampiric adventures battling the vampire killers his parents are often in the background trying to come to terms with the fact that their son probably won’t be producing grandchildren.
There are other literal gay winks, as well: Jeremy, in the throes of bloodlust, visits an all-night butcher and requests a pint of pig’s blood. When the butcher presents it, he winks at the young man and asks if it’s ‘his first time.’ I have no idea what this could be a double-entendre for, but the direct meaning is that the butcher knows all about vampires and is amused by this awkward young man.
Best Friend was also one of the first vampire movies I’d seen that posited that being a vampire wasn’t all that bad: sure, it’s a lifestyle change, but there’s a LOT of good stuff that goes into it. The eternity thing is tempered when Modoc tells Jeremy that for every decade he will age only a year, so there’s still the ‘you get to watch your loved ones grow old and die’ thing, but the rest of the package is awfully alluring. Plus its all a moot point since Jeremy can’t be changed back, unlike in other films where killing the head vampire cures all the ones he’s changed.
There’s a lot to like about Best Friend. Sure, the jokes are sometimes groan-worthy and its fashion hasn’t aged well, but at its heart it’s a story about accepting and even celebrating who you are, even if that is different from the norm. Even now, that’s an awfully positive message: how many films about gay men and women today have to explore their feelings rather than just accept that they are gay? When will we see a mainstream horror or action movie with a gay protagonist that isn’t an allegory or that offers some explanation for the character’s orientation?
Jeremy may hang around with vampires in the future, but he’ll still have time for his human friends. Cheesy? God yes, but cheese makes everything better, even salads.
Fright Night is a hoot. There’s something damned sexy about it even after all these years, after Buffy, Angel, Gary Oldman, the Anne Rice years, and Let the Right One In (I am NOT a Twilight fan) it’s fun to see vampires being scary and evil again, instead of pretty and conflicted.
Someday the internet will be 3D, and this will be so much awesomer
Who doesn’t love the simplicity of 80’s vampire movies? With Fright Night 1 and My Best Friend is a Vampire available on Instant Watch, I decided to do a couple posts about this most joyous and fun of horror movies, 80’s Vampire movies. If only The Lost Boys, Fright Night 2, Vamp, or any of the others were on it, then we’d be cooking with canola.
Fright Night combined some of the best parts of the vampire genre with all the fun of the 80s– ludicrous outfits, unsubtle synth scores that practically screamed ‘FUCK YEAH VAMPIRES!!’, teenage angst, oblivious parents and authority figures– and dusted everything with a light tinge of homoeroticism.
To wit: Charlie Brewster is a young man frustrated with his girlfriend’s fear of Going All the Way. Remember when teenagers used to be afraid of that? I do, because I was one. And they still are, but films and TV would have you believe that every shy girl has either blown half the drama club or she’s saving herself for the magical day with her angsty vampire boyfriend finally is able to commit and murder her. Ahh, young love.
Brewster and his young lady are making out one night when some activity at the abandoned house next door distracts him from the activity almost going on in his pants, and he ruins the mood by watching two mysterious men carry a coffin into the basement next door. Enter Jerry Dandridge, played by smooth motherfucker Chris Sarandon (best known as Prince Humperdinck from The Princess Bride, and as the speaking voice of Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas) and his ‘live-in carpenter,’ Billy, acting all suspicious in the mist and rocking some of the bossest Members-Only jackets since Scott Baio was in charge.
Until recently, I wasn’t able to put my finger on why I thought of Fright Night as ‘The Vampire Movie with All the Latent Homoeroticism’. Well, I’ve figured it out.
Roddy MacDowell is the first reason–an actor whose sexuality was long speculated upon and has still yet to have been confirmed. For some reason, he threw up the first rainbow flag, despite the fact that his character is NEVER alluded to as gay. He does have the confirmed bachelor thing going on, but it could also be that he is a failed actor too neurotic to have a relationship. Or the budget didn’t allow for him to have a wife–but his apartment, with all its relics of the horror movies he’d acted in, seems like the old man version of the nerdy teenager’s den festooned with posters and props.
The second is the complex interaction between Brewster and Dandridge. Brewster’s father is absent, so Dandridge could be filling that role as Charlie’s mother expresses an interest in the handsome fellow but speculates that with her luck, he’s probably gay. Dandridge comes across less as gay than as an ultimate Pansexual Alpha– women stream into his house (and are drained of blood) and men respond to his easygoing charm. Also, his live-in ‘carpenter’ is always on hand to protect him or toss him ‘fruit.’ This last is no euphemism, Dandridge is CONSTANTLY snacking on apples, peaches, all kinds of fruits. So, there’s that lack of subtlety. Sarandon plays Dandridge as incredibly affable and charismatic–he doesnt’ quite have perfect movie-star looks, but he’s good-looking and oozing with charm. He doesn’t exactly light up a room, but if you saw him hanging out in the corner of a bar you’d probably notice him, think he was out of your league, and when he ambled over and struck up a conversation you’d think ‘Oh wow! He’s talking to ME!’ He’s just that guy.
To be honest though, there are moments when he looks little amused or bored by the goings-on; in the big moment where he is about to seduce Amy, he crosses the room to her with the same look I get on my face when I’m approaching my shitty old lawn mower on a really hot day. But this look of ‘been there, done that four billion times’ is tempered by their actual make out scene, in which she is frightened and shy, and he gentle and assured. It’s one of the hotter scenes of its kind in memory, and not much in recent years is as provocative.
Another P-Flag moment is when Charlie’s friend Evil Ed is turned into a vampire by Dandridge. Ed is cowering in an alley, terrified and weeping as the vampire stands before him, and Jerry, as kind and affable as always, reaches out to Ed and tells him that he won’t have to be afraid anymore, that no one will ever beat him up again, that Jerry will look after him. Ed’s character is definitely the stereotypical horror nerd, with more knowledge of how to kill vampires than have a normal social interaction with his friends, but the promise of being the one with the power, and of being accepted, is too much for him and he takes Dandridge’s hand. The mentor/mentee relationship is not subtle either, and open to wide interpretation. Nowadays a person can build their confidence about their sexuality by interacting online with other people and create a support network, but in the 80’s coming out was a whole different banana. It was scary and confusing and not helped by the media painting gay men as potential kiddie-fiddlers and rapists, or the specter of AIDS–and it could be very, very lonely.
Also, the actor who played Evil Ed went on to act in several gay porn films, so perhaps that subconsciously informed my urge to go rainbow hunting where there were no rainbows, so to speak.
Anyhoodle, for me, much of Charlie’s struggle against the vampire is about his refusal to accept his own problems with sexuality; he whines in the beginning of the movie that he and Amy (Amanda Bearse, doing her best to be both prude and vamp and doing pretty well despite the orange hair) have been going together a year and still haven’t had sex, yet when she declares that she is ready he’s too busy peeping at the neighbors to take her up on it, and she storms out. Clearly, he’s not emotionally ready for sex, and when Dandridge begins seducing a chick in view of Charlie, the latter is only too ready to bust out the binoculars again. He might just be excited at the chance to watch, but perhaps he’s also excited to find out just how to get down at all.
Dandridge sets his sights on Amy because she bears a resemblance to some chick he knew in the past, and this is a story point that the film could have done without. I think it would have been much more interesting without that, if Amy had gone with him because she was tired of Charlie’s immaturity and wanted something with a little more grown-up styling. Dandridge is confident, mature (probably hundreds of years old), and experienced–everything Charlie isn’t. And since Jerry is out to screw Charlie for drawing attention to his vampiric nature in the first place, Amy is a natural target. So another friend betrays Charlie in favor of a stronger, more assured leader.
One of the more interesting points in the film is when Dandridge puts a huge amount of trust in Peter Vincent, MacDowell’s aged fake vampire killer. The friends conspire to prove to Charlie that Dandridge is not a vampire, and in order to do this have him drink ‘holy water’ in front of them. Dandridge does it, and if you think about it it’s a strangely trusting moment on his part–after all, he could just kill the three of them and go back to nailing prostitutes and hanging out with his houseboy. Why does he want their trust so badly? Does he really see feeble, paranoid and immature Charlie as a threat? Is it more important to him to be liked than to be feared?
Fright Night is a hoot. There’s something damned sexy about it even after all these years, after Buffy, Angel, Gary Oldman, the Anne Rice years, and Let the Right One In (I am NOT a Twilight fan). It’s fun to see vampires being scary and evil again, instead of pretty and conflicted. Half the reason they’re sexy to begin with IS that they are scary, that they offer something truly evil and selfish rather than just mediocre and whiny.
If a person can view the first 12 minutes of Up without feeling anything, without feeling at least a smidgen of the pain of Carl and Ellie’s ups and downs and ultimately Carl’s heartbreak over losing her, that person is probably a great candidate for forced sterilization.
I am cheered by this image. Aren't you?
Up! is a movie that is impossible to hate. It’s also a movie that is impossible to be apathetic about.
If a person can view the first 12 minutes of Up without feeling anything, without feeling at least a smidgen of the pain of Carl and Ellie’s ups and downs and ultimately Carl’s heartbreak over losing her, that person is probably a great candidate for forced sterilization.
Not that I think reproduction is a privilege rather than an inalienable right, but rather what child would want to grow up in such a joyless and apathetic environment? Even the most misanthropic bastard will be sniffling by the time Ellie and Carl are sitting in the doctor’s office, finding out they can’t have children.
That said, UP! is strange for being ostensibly a children’s movie. The sort of wacky children’s stuff doesn’t begin until almost a half-hour in, and there was talk at the time of its release how Disney was not heavily pushing the merchandise like they did for other Pixar films. Which is sort of understandable, if disappointing. I’m a huge fan of ‘children’s’ movies that entertain on multiple levels (ask anyone who knows me about my ‘Babe’ fixation) and so Up! couldn’t have been more perfect if Thor had descended from on high in his goat-driven chariot and handed the movie to me gift-wrapped. It’s a strange, meandering journey with a little old man as the protagonist, and it was a huge gamble as to whether children would enjoy it or not.
By and large, I think they did. Certainly in the theater I was in the children laughed when appropriate, were quiet during the somber portions, shouted in excitement during the scary parts, and did ask questions during the introductory vignette but that’s something to be expected in a crowded theater of a children’s movie. To be honest I kind of like that sort of thing in children’s movies, since I have none of my own and I enjoy peoplewatching. I also think that entertainment which causes discussion, no matter what level, only adds to the enjoyment. I don’t want to hear long discussion in the theater, but I do like to hear a parent explain something rather than just ignore or shush their child. The most popular entertainment of the last decade arguably has been entertainment that evokes discussion–HBO and Showtime series, LOST, or movies where people leave the theater talking about what happened.
Up! and its story of an old man, a young boy, another old man and his army of electronically-enhanced dogs and a giant bird with incredibly festive plumage has something for everyone–is it the perfect movie? Far from it–there are long moments of inaction, lots of dialogue, and a great deal of character-based conflict. It is after all a character piece about an antisocial old man coming to terms with the loss of his best friend, and attempting to carry out the last wish of the only person he ever really cared about. Then there’s Russell, a small round boy of Asian descent going to heroic lengths for the chance that his absentee father will pay him little attention–his mildly irritating presence provides one of the big plot complicators for Carl as he goes about fulfilling Ellie’s last wish.
Pixar has yet to make a disappointing film. I hope a day never comes where I leave the theater after a Pixar film feeling unfulfilled.
