NEAR DARK Movie Review

NEAR DARK (1987)

Caleb is just your average midwest town boy, who cares for his family, and likes to ride horses. But after an evening of hanging out with Mae, a shy young woman he meets while at the bar, he is indoctrinated against his will into Mae's "family", a dirty nomadic band of vampires. Caleb tries multiple times to escape the nightmare from which he can't wake up, and begins to feel a new, but very natural instinct within himself, to feed on human blood. Eventually, Caleb escapes into the darkness, but is swiftly followed by his vengeful co-blooddrinkers. He knows he must make a stand, alone, or his family may be the next to fall victim to the ravenous neck-biters.

This is one of the crown jewels in the overlooked list of 80s horror, that due to poor advertising and a genre-defying storyline, fell to the side to make room for unending franchise sequels and generic slasher rip-offs. Here, the vampire mythos is turned completely on its head, and remains to this day a unique entry in the genre. In NEAR DARK these "nightwalkers" do not call themselves vampires (the word itself is never even mentioned in the film), are not aristocratic, do not have fangs or fly, and more-so do not even enjoy being what they are. These are "cursed" souls doomed to live forever, and have taken a nasty turn to violence and cruel humor to pass their evenings.

Director and writer Kathryn Bigelow, who would go on to create the nigh-perfect STRANGE DAYS and most recently THE HURT LOCKER, brings a modern blend of horror, western symbolism and mythology to the screen, shrouding it in shadows, blue-washed light, and crimson red. Even with her limited behind-the-camera experience at the time, Bigelow is able to pull off just the right angles, framing and pacing that keeps the film exciting and moving along. The writing is a little over-the-top at times, but in the quieter and subtle conversations, lies more character development and back story than most films can hope to accomplish in their 100-minute running times.

Much like a pop-punk song right out of the 80s, NEAR DARK has a tremendously enjoyable flux between chaotic and noisy choruses, and soft and melodic verses. Bigelow cuts her teeth on just about every action style, which she would later incorporate into her following productions. Between a holed-up hotel shootout with some inventive ideas that would later be seen in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, car and foot chases, and tense one-on-one stand-offs including a western-style showdown between a vampire and a semi-truck, there is a little something for everyone.

Adrian Pasder takes on the role of Caleb, and does a decent job portraying a newly-turned vampire, as does Jenny Wright as the shy and sweet Mae. The real fun though, is watching Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton and Jennette Goldstein, fresh off their stint on James Cameron's ALIENS. All three of them relish in their vampire roles, and the friendship the actors created on ALIENS shines through in their characters' friendship here. You can almost sense the rich bonds between them. Henriksen's Jesse Hooker is the leader, and his longevity as a creature has brought about a wisdom that can only be cultivated from centuries of living. Paxton's Severin is a loose cannon, who still languishes in his power over humans. Goldstein's Diamondback is a cunning thinker, and something of a den mother within the group. And while the scenario may be somewhat far-fetched, each of them portray their characters with total sincerity.

Although failing at the box office, NEAR DARK has gone on to collect a dedicated following through the years in the home video and DVD circuit. It is one of the more unique releases from the 80s, and through some impressive practical special effects work on a low-end budget it has aged quite gracefully, and has avoided being trapped in the constriction that is known as "80s horror". Sadly, as with many films that have enough of a cult following to make the name marketable but not well-known enough to leave it be, a remake is being planned. No word has been set as to how faithful the adaptation will be, or who is attached, but it is coming. Hunt down a copy of the now out-of-print Anchor Bay released 2-disc DVD set that gives the film the justice it is due.

DUST DEVIL (1992) Movie Review

DUST DEVIL (1992)

In the barren desert wastelands of South Africa roams an ancient, shape-shifting demon that is bound by human form, who searches for the souls of those that have given up on life. With these souls, the Dust Devil, as he has become known in storytelling and mythology, will be able to return to spirit form. After his latest victim, the Dust Devil sets back out on the road. He is picked up as a hitchhiker by Wendy, a woman who has just left her husband and is now traveling toward the sea as she tries to rediscover herself. As the two continue on their road trip through the hellish nothingness, the Dust Devil waits patiently for Wendy to finally give up on life, and to steal her soul away.

Meanwhile, police officer Ben Mukurob is on the trail of the Dust Devil, who he believes to be nothing more than a brutal serial killer. However, as the clues are dissected, they point to black magic and mysticism. Mukurob is highly skeptical of this, and turns to his friend Joe for help. Joe gives him the complete story of the Dust Devil, who he believes is in their midst, over several meetings. Once convinced that the supernatural may be at work, Mukurob sets out into the desert to hunt down his prey, unaware that his target is not one easily caught, nor can he be stopped like any mere mortal. Eventually, he catches up to the Dust Devil and Wendy, in an abandoned town that is slowly being swallowed up by the desert. It is here that the three will finally face off, and here that only one will walk away.

"The dreams came first. The dark man, his face hidden, his hat pulled low, his coat gathered around him, standing alone in the wasteland," director and writer Richard Stanley states on the origin of the Dust Devil character. When Stanley finally caught his dream on celluloid, his realization was very much like watching a dream. His camera slowly creeps through dust, wind and shimmering heat as it follows the main character, who although is trapped in a physical form, still has some control over the elements. There are no visible effects that affect the weather, only the natural chaos of southern Africa's climate that is filmed and edited to appear as if under control.

The storytelling writing of Stanley, although minimal, is sharply done, and more importantly, intelligent. This is a movie that lays down rules of the "universe" this film takes place in within the conversations of Mukurob and Joe, and great attention is paid to staying true to those rules to the finaly conclusion. Much of the film is told through imagery. DUST DEVIL is a very visual movie, in that you must read what you are seeing. Not everything is given to the viewer through exposition, and must be discovered and interpreted through sight. There are no filler scenes to pad out the running time, each scene and more specifically each shot, is designed with an artist's eye to keep the plot and ideas moving and evolving. You could even go so far as to define the camera as an omnipresent character, watching everything play out.

Robert Burke, who fills the shoes of the Dust Devil, filters his character's actions and expressions through the mysterious stranger template created by Clint Eastwood in his many westerns, particularly the more ghastly versions seen in HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and PALE RIDER. His outfit, a full-length duster coat and wide brimmed hat, doesn't hurt in making these associations more concrete. He does avoid coming off as a Clint-wannabe, and builds up through the film a very unique character that is both strangely compassionate and menacing at the same time. He has but one goal to obtain, and is willing and patient enough to wait an eternity to accomplish it.

This review is based upon a viewing of DUSTDEVIL: THE FINAL CUT, which has just been released on DVD by Subversive Cinema. Richard Stanley worked personally with the staff of Subversive Cinema to over see the completion of his film, and this cut represents the true feeling, direction and story that Stanley wanted to achieve. Upon its initial release back in 1992, it was severely cut and edited (almost all of the supernatural plot points were removed) by Miramax who had obtained distribution rights for the United States. Now, it will finally be widely available for the arthouse horror crowd to discover it for the first time. And for those that thought you have seen DUST DEVIL, prepare to finally see the real film.

DJANGO (1966) Movie Review

DJANGO (1966)

When Django, a lone gunslinger who drags a coffin behind him, rescues a woman from being attacked by bandits, he sets himself up at odds with the merciless desperados. After the encounter, he wanders into a desolate, dirty, and muddy town that can only be describe as physically looking like Hell on earth. He soon discovers that the bandits he previously encountered also have the town under their thumb, and Django acts in the only way he can - with a gravely-voiced wit and violence. The townspeople, in a strange turn of events, try to stop Django from saving them, but his mind has been made up, and even if it means killing every bandit and allowing innocents to die in the crossfire, he will accomplish his goal.

In the wake of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, the European movie market became a monster with an insatiable appetite for spaghetti westerns. Production companies were spitting out rip-offs of Sergio Leone's work as fast as they could get the film negatives processed. Then, a director named Sergio Corbucci set off to Spain with a young actor named Franco Nero who would play the title character, and brought back to his homeland of Italy a spaghetti western that would completely change the expectations of the sub-genre.

At its heart, DJANGO is nothing more than another rip-off of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (and thus a remake/rip-off of Kurosawa's YOJIMBO), as a lone wanderer happens into a corrupted town, through trickery and bloodshed kills the oppressors, and then wanders off again. However, what makes DJANGO stand out is its much darker tone, a gritty style that is as much a product of the film stock as it is the actual sets and characters, and the shocking graphic violence for the time. Innocents are brutally gunned down, a hapless ear is sliced off, and in a grueling sequence Django's hands are trampled and crushed by horses.

Franco Nero, whose performance would create an iconic character symbolic of spaghetti westerns, may just be rehashing the stoic and squinting Man With No Name previously brought to the screen by Clint Eastwood, but there is something about the way he does rehash it that makes him a more "dangerous" character. While the Man With No Name may have tried to act hard, he was a hero and just at heart. Here, Django's vision of good deeds, heroics, and bravado are twisted and skewed, and even cowardly. Perhaps it is these elements that caught the public's eye, and caused what can only be described as an insane amount of unofficial sequels featuring the character of Django (none actually played by Franco Nero) and even more spaghetti westerns being rechristened with the Django moniker depending on where they would be exported, even if Django wasn't even in the movie! Nero would make one official sequel, 1987's DJANGO STRIKES AGAIN, which also starred Donald Pleasence.

Corbucci, who also wrote the story and screenplay, brings several crucial, genre defining sequences to the screen in DJANGO, which have been stolen, reused countless times since. Those include the sequence in which Django faces off against the entire group of bandits armed with a machine gun, a heartwrenching sequence featuring quicksand, and the all-important final shoot-out, where Django coaxes the bandit leader into a graveyard. This scene in particular is symbolic of where Django feels most comfortable, and his acceptance of death as both an ally and enemy. This downbeat embrace of death is also an element that would make DJANGO stand out against its cookie-cutter competition.

In America, save for the die-hard and dedicated fans, spaghetti westerns basically begin with and end with Sergio Leone's output. And agreeably, for the casual fan this is enough as Leone's work morphed the sub-genre to what we know it and remember it as today, and has unequivocally defined it major themes, character arcs and storylines. For the adventurous and curious western fan though, DJANGO is an excellent place to start diving into the rich and abundant amount of films that were churned out in the heyday of the spaghetti western.

EL TOPO (1970) Movie Review

EL TOPO (1970)

In the desolate and barren desert wastelands, roams El Topo, a wild gunslinger, clad exclusively in black, and assisted by his seven-year-old and completely nude boy apprentice. When he comes into a village being ravaged by a ruthless and savage group of bandits, El Topo instinctively saves the village, and meets Mara. For saving her, Mara throws herself to El Topo. El Topo leaves the boy with the villages remaining monks, and heads off with Mara. Mara tells El Topo that the only way she will love him, is if he finds the four master gunfighters in the desert and defeats them.

Though no easy task, El Topo eventually finds the four gunfighters, but in the end is betrayed by Mara and left for dead. When El Topo finally awakens back to consciousness, he finds that untold years have passed, and that he is in the care of a deformed and inbred horde that is forced to live inside a mountain. The only way out is through a tiny hole at the very top of the mountain. El Topo sets out to create a surface level tunnel, so that all of the clan may leave and live in the nearby town, unaware that this is the worst decision he will ever make.

Forget THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, this is the original, the unbeatable, and the pinnacle of the "midnight movie" Thrust upon the United States and the world when John Lennon and Yoko Ono saw Alejandro Jodorwsky's underground film and persuaded a friend to distribute it worldwide, EL TOPO took audiences unaware, became a jewel in the crown of film critics, and soon became a must-see in the early seventies.

EL TOPO is a hallucinogenic western that is difficult to follow, challenging to decipher, and filled with cryptic symbols and spiritual overtones that will have the movie mulling in afterthought long after the credits have rolled. However, the film does have a clue to help interpret El Topo's journey, which is found in the powerful and simple narrative opening - "The mole [which translates to el topo in Spanish] digs tunnels under the earth, looking for the sun. Sometimes he gets to the surface. When he sees the sun, he is blinded." Jodorowsky, who also wrote the screenplay and stars as El Topo, uses this short speech as an allegory over and over again, sometimes via metaphor and sometimes literal, thorough out the movie. It is the constant the keeps the film's themes going, and with it the rest of the clues to understanding will fall into place.

Jodorowsky's tale is that of a spiritual journey, of a man who is in search of something to make his life feel complete. As such, religious symbols and mystical elements play an important part of the film. Most of the film centers around Christian fixtures - including the cross, monks, mass, prayer, and divine faith. The film is divided into chapters named after books of the Bible, and El Topo is even crucified in a most unique way at one point. However, it is never quite clarified that El Topo is in fact searching for the Christian God, as the film also works in The All Seeing Eye (an eye inside a triangle, similar to the one a dollar bill), the element of fire, and meditation.

EL TOPO truly takes full advantage of film as a visual medium. Jodorowsky fills the screen with wild scenes of bloodshed and death, sex that is hedonistic, violent, sensual and taboo, visually arresting characters, the most memorable being an armless man with a legless man strapped to his back holding a gun. He sets out to shock with imagery that is designed to trigger an emotional response in all but the most soulless viewers. Jodorowsky also casts a spell over the entire film with his camerawork and editing, as he blurs reality to the point that what is on screen could very well be reality, a character's imagination, a vision of the future, or an aid to define the theme of the current sequence.

As mentioned before, EL TOPO is a very difficult piece of cinema to watch, but do not succumb to frustration so easily. Part of the wonderment of the film is its ability to mean multiple things as once, and to be seen by people in different ways depending on what they bring into the movie as a viewer. In that sense, the viewer goes on very much the same journey that El Topo does. And what you take out of the viewing may very well be a reminder and definition of just who you are. To that end, EL TOPO is more like a motion painting rather than a motion picture, and a piece of artwork that is worthy of the utmost respect.