November 1, 2008
You know, I can't recall exactly how I stumbled onto this film, as in 2003 I was hardly filled with horror knowledge, so Stuart Gordon's name was not likely to ring bells (though I suppose it might have done so). I'm pretty sure it was an issue of Fangoria (usually the way...), b...( read more)ut a quick googling and a random grab at my shelf of them failed to jog my memory, and I'm not flipping through every issue I own page by page for this (sorry, I know that'd be dedication, but I think it'd be dedication no one cares about--TO something no one cares about, at that), so let's guess that's it and move on. I've seen a handful of Stuart Gordon films (Re-Animator, of course, Dagon, this, both Masters of Horror episodes, Fortress, Robot Jox, Space Truckers...) and for many of them (or at least 3, the last 3 named, for the record) certainly had no idea whose film I was watching and what that meant. The non-horror (though usually still horrific, or at least gross) films were the ones I'd have never have pegged him for after finding out who he was, but were also the ones I enjoyed straight out of the box. All of his horror (with the possible exception of "The Black Cat") has taken a second viewing for me to see where Gordon was going.
Sean Crawley (Chris L. McKenna) is a regular working class stiff (for time-specific reasons, I am going to avoid the term "Joe" for a regular person) who is painting the inside of a house so unprofessionally that even I can tell it's unprofessional. While working on said house, a man shows up at the door and says he is indeed the electrician, then introduces himself as "Duke" Wayne (George Wendt--yes, Norm). He takes some interest in Sean's attitude and asks how he gets jobs--apparently just taking what comes. Duke then takes down his phone number to call him later, and brings him to meet Ray Matthews (Daniel Baldwin), the two of them using a golf course to suggest to Sean that he should follow a man who is poking his nose in places Ray does not like. Sean agrees pretty readily to this, and begins to follow Eric Gatley (Ron Livingston) around, seeing him meet with a TV news reporter leads Ray to suggest an alternate job for Sean, who has taken a distant interest in Eric's wife Susan (Kari Wuhrer). When plans (as always) go awry, Ray decides that dealing with Sean is going to be a little more complex than he expects and he brings in Beckett (Vernon Wells) and Carl (Lionel Mark Smith) under the "tutelage" of Duke.
When I first watched this movie, much like my response to Re-Animator's first viewing, I was a bit put off. My memory of both is that they come off like an uncongealed mass of fat, if you'll pardon the bizarre and unpleasant metaphor. Weak performances with appropriately gross-looking and pseudo-realistic yet somehow cheap and fake-looking gore, plots that sort of come together but are kind of weak as well and a general viewing experience that simply doesn't add up. It seems that, for me at least, viewing Gordon films twice must be a necessity. On a second viewing, perhaps also with the addition of familiarity with not only the plot but now Daniel Baldwin (who was, of course, Beau Felton on the excellent series Homicide: Life on the Streets), I got something entirely different out of it. It is still a very strange and unusual movie, still one that I'm not going to jump up and recommend to just anyone, but more because of the film's oddities than because of any failures--which it seemed to have very few of this time through.
I think a major problem the first time was how unpleasant the film is. McKenna is very good at establishing Sean as what can only be termed a loser. He isn't particularly smart (though he isn't an idiot, he's not too far off from it) and so finds himself being used and in deeper than he thinks--but only finds these things after being informed of them. Duke asks Sean early on about any "stupid fantasies" he has, and Sean suggests being a secret agent. Duke says "...not that stupid," but effectively assigns Sean to be just that--and we see, subtly, just how ridiculous a proposition this would be for a regular person in the real world. Gordon treats this story in general like reality. The violence is unpleasant and clumsy. Rarely does a single attack kill anyone, usually leaving them bruised and battered, or even just delirious. No one in the film is a professional killer, and it shows--making it difficult to watch at first. But knowing the second time around that things would be like that, I could look more closely at the increasingly horror-centered "Norm Peterson" (who also appeared in John Landis' Masters of Horror episode "Family"), the characteristically sleazy Daniel Baldwin (though obviously more sleazy as an antagonist than as a mostly decent but problematic detective), the now visibly excellent McKenna (reminds me of first seeing Ryan Gosling in The Believer in some ways, actually) and Kari Wuhrer landing a very good performance at a very difficult character. Despite being able to look closer, my brain still failed to put together the name "Vernon Wells" and memory. Wells, of course, was Wez--in Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior for you American folk older than me, or for boring people who ignore the superior original film). I was sure I knew the name, and thought Lionel Mark Smith looked familiar so I assumed it was his--Smith appears in many cameos in television shows it seems, thus my vague memory--and didn't think about the Aussie stomping about.
The most difficult thing for people in general is tied to the unpleasantness of the film, it seems. There is not a hero, and Sean is not really even an anti-hero if we take into account all of his actions. Gordon does manage to keep us rooting for him, but possibly feeling kind of dirty for doing so. That, I feel, is what Gordon brought to the table with this film. Anti-heroes have been played with for ages, and are nothing new (not to knock anti-heroes--I love 'em), but a protagonist who does something unspeakably hideous (which Gordon does make unspeakably hideous) yet still holds some of our sympathy, enough to hope for the best for him? That's something new. And then to take that existing tension and move it into the disturbingly awkward "good life" Sean wanders into eventually, where we sort of want him to be happy but are disgusted by the situation it's happening in? Brilliant. The film isn't a magnum opus or ultimate masterpiece, mind you, but it's truly fascinating and holds up even better after the second time, when your brain (or at least mine--perhaps others are more prepared) has had a shift in paradigm that will accept such an unusual "hero" set-up.
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