Todd Garbarini
Entries from May 2015
BY TODD GARBARINI
Director
Robert Mandel's F/X is one of the
most entertaining and compulsively watchable thrillers of 1986. I originally
caught up with it on VHS and, while I was impressed with the film, the ending I
found to be both hokey and frustrating, mostly due to the completely
out-of-place 1982 song “Just an Illusion†by Imagination that plays over the
end credits. I felt that it undermined all that preceded it. However, like William Friedkin's To Live and Die in LA (1985) and David
Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986), F/X is a film that would only grow on me
after subsequent repeated viewings. I learned to forgive the inclusion of this
song as the final minutes should really be viewed as a visual pun on the film’s
overall theme, which begs the question “What is real and what is fiction?â€
F/X, which was released on Friday, February 7, 1986, is also
sometimes known as Murder by Illusion. It gives us Rollie Tyler (played expertly by
Bryan Brown) as a master special-effects movie wizard who is approached by a
group of people who claim to be from the Justice Department and have a unique
offer for him. They want him to stage a fake assassination of Nicholas De Franco
(Jerry Orbach), a reputed mobster who is about to testify against his friends
just before entering the Witness Relocation Program. Naturally, they want to
give the impression that De Franco is dead before the real-life mobsters can
get to him first as a contract has been put out on his life. Rollie, whose
apartment is adorned with posters of Zombie
(1979) and Fade to Black (1980) and effects
prosthetics made for movies, is initially very hesitant, and when he refuses
their offer he is told that they will now go back to his biggest competitor to
do the job. He then asks them to give him 24 hours to think about it, and the
carrot at the end of the proverbial stick proves to be a very strong catalyst.
After setting up mobster De Franco, the fake assassination, which is similar to Michael Corleone’s hit on Virgil Sollazzo and Captain McCluskey, goes off
without a hitch (the notion of the Witness Protection Program, as it is known
today, is now common thanks to Goodfellas
(1990) and The Sopranos (1999-2007),
but back then it was virtually unheard of). Unfortunately for Rollie, the truth
about what he has just done is about to be revealed to him when he is suddenly
thrust into an unbelievable chain of events that he himself, despite his
stature in an industry that prides itself on make-believe, probably never could
have imagined.
While
the film may not seem very original nearly 30 years later, it still holds up
remarkably well for the material. One of the things that truly bolsters this
film from its intended origins (a low-budget made-for-TV movie) is the casting.
Bryan Brown is terrific as the special-effects man and Diane Venora, an actress
who is seen far too little these days, is equally likable as his
actress/girlfriend. Mason Adams, best known to American audiences in his role
as the managing editor in TV’s Lou Grant,
shines as the mastermind behind De Franco’s exodus from society. The real
fireworks begin however, with the introduction of Leo McCarthy (the phenomenal
Brian Dennehy), a police lieutenant who, along with his partner Mickey (Joe
Grifasi), is assigned to the case. The banter between Leo and Mickey takes on a
Mutt and Jeff dynamic as they try to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Czechoslovakian cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek, who sadly passed away in March
of 2015, does a beautiful job lensing F/X,
taking what quite possibly could have been just an average “B†thriller and
elevating it to a highly cinematic “A†feature. Also on board is the late veteran character actor Trey Wilson from Raising Arizona (1987) and Miss Firecracker (1989). Roscoe Orman, who played Gordon on Sesame Street, appears here in the only
role that I have seen him in outside of that beloved children’s show.
F/X was filmed during the summer of 1985 and is a bit jarring
to watch now due to the complete and total absence of cell phones, computer
equipment that looks like it stems from the Stone Age and all of the Titanic-sized
American vehicles on the road. One scene shows a car plow through a series of
posters advertising Rambo: First Blood
Part II, which drives home (no pun intended of course) the make-believe
nature of moviemaking with its tongue-in-cheek in-joke and is also a nice nod
to Brian Dennehy, who fought Rambo in that series’ first film. I cannot say enough about Bill Conti’s score
which is a fully realized work, complete with an orchestra, the sort that you
don’t really see much of in movies nowadays, and it fits this movie like a
glove. From the film’s opening over the
Orion Pictures logo to the love theme to the cat-and-mouse chase through
Central Park to the spectacular car chase through Manhattan, this score can
easily be enjoyed on its own merits.
The
transfer of this film on Blu-ray is a considerable improvement over the
original VHS tape which was murky and plagued by issues related to the
inclusion of the Macrovision anti-copying code. The multiple laser disc releases and DVD releases were not much better,
but Kino Lorber has done an admirable job of releasing the film this time
around. There is some film gain apparent
in the darker scenes, but nothing terribly distracting. The extras on the Blu-ray consist of an
interview with director Robert Mandel (14:00) wherein he discusses the pleasure
he had in making the film and how he didn’t feel qualified to helm the job due
to his lack of experience directing thrillers or action films, though producer
Dodi Fayed, who died in 1997 in the car crash that killed Princess Diana, felt
otherwise. On the basis of Mr. Mandel’s
1983 drama Independence
Day,
which to this day has yet to be released by the Warner Archive, he was hired to
make the characters human and real. The
director comes across as affable and appreciative of those who contributed to
making the film.
The Making of F/X is a featurette that also runs 14
minutes in length and was shot during the film’s production, presumably to drum
up interest at the 1985 San Diego Comic Con , as actor Brown addresses the
camera and makes reference to a “conventionâ€. Behind-the-scenes documentaries and fan conventions abound today, but 30
years ago there was very little information outside of Fangoria magazine that could illustrate how special make-up effects
were actually accomplished. Carl
Fullerton, the special makeup supervisor who now has over 70 film credits to
his name, provides his expertise to convince the audience of Rollie’s
role. John Stears, who won Oscars for
his work on Thunderball (1965) and Star Wars (1977), talks about the four
instances that he himself was approached by reputed mobsters to do what Rollie
does in the film. Apparently, these were
four offers that he did refuse (sorry, couldn’t resist). Terry Rawlings, a veteran of some of Ridley
Scott’s best work, is also on board as the editor and keeps the film moving
along at a brisk pace with great match shots and visual and aural segues.
Rounding
out the extras are theatrical trailers for F/X
and the sequel from 1991, F/X 2
which, to me, looks like a Hollywood production, and is a film that I have not
yet seen.
Diane
Venora utters a prophetic line at the beginning of the film: “Nobody cares
about making movies about people anymore. All they care about are special
effects.†That seems to be true of
movies more now than ever before.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
By
Todd Garbarini
I
have loved movies pretty much all my life. One of the most integral aspects in
my overall enjoyment of a film is my impression of it through the film's
advertising campaign, usually through the coming attractions trailer but mostly
through the advertising artwork, primarily the movie poster. Growing up in the 1970s,
I had no way of knowing anything about a film other than what was written about
it in Time or Newsweek or newspapers. The movie poster art, referred to as key
art in the industry, was really all I had to go on in terms of getting a feel
for what the movie would be like. Each week I would eagerly await Friday’s
newspaper as it showcased the advertising artwork of the new releases just
coming out in a much more overt fashion that it did from Monday to Thursday. In
those days, the advertising artwork was just that: it was artwork, designed, conceived and actually painted by an artist. This appears to be something that has gone by
the wayside as a result of the new tools that are available to studios, such as
computers and software programs like Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator, which
make it very easy for just about anyone to slap together homogenized key art
for DVD and Blu-ray covers. This new
type of advertising art appears to have been sapped of the most important
ingredient: originality.
The
first two movies that I ever owned on home video were Star Wars (1977) and Poltergeist
(1982). I bought these on the long defunct Capacitance Electronic Disc system (CED)
which was designed and manufactured by RCA and sold from 1981 to 1986. The
artwork to these two films in particular made an enormous impression on me as
the oversized, LP-like format lent itself perfectly to the display of these
images. Some of my all-time favorite movies, which I first saw between 1983 and
1984, sported some of the most beautiful artwork I've ever seen: Phantasm (1979), Deadly Blessing (1981), Scanners
(1981)…just about anything horror-film related. With CED, you felt like you actually owned
the movie and that it was yours. It was tangible and you could hold it and
look at it.
The
first video cassette that I ever rented was Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), which I watched on Independence
Day in 1985, because it was not available on CED. I had seen the film
theatrically upon its initial release, but there was something about being able
to watch it on video that was enormously appealing to me. From that point on,
the artwork that I saw on the cover of VHS cassettes, in particular horror
movies, left me salivating in the video store aisles. After getting my driver’s
license, my friends and I made innumerable trips to local and independently
owned video stores to both rent movies and gaze at and admire the cover artwork
of all the boxes on display. This was my generation's equivalent of going to
the local drive-in and, just like the local drive-in, the independent video
store, in the year 2015, is nearly extinct.
A
long overdue and beautifully illustrated new coffee table book, appropriately
titled VHS Video Cover Art, is now
available from Schiffer Publishing. Compiled
by Tom “The Dude Designs†Hodge, it showcases nearly 300 pages worth of VHS
sleeve artwork from movies made in the 1980s and 1990s. The covers are derived
from the British VHS releases of these films and are broken into six genres: action,
comedy, horror, kids, sci-fi, and thriller. Being an admirer of these types of films, which are both cult movies and
forgettable flops (of the “so bad it’s good!†variety), what is truly amazing
to me is the number of films presented that I personally still have never even
heard of. A lot of the titles included have artwork that is very different from
the American VHS releases. Case in point: Searchers
of the Voodoo Mountain (1985), which is better known in the States as Warriors of the Apocalypse. Like a lot
of the schlock movie posters of films of the 1950s and 1960s, these colorful
cover art were sometimes better than the actual movie they were designed to
advertise. Fifty years ago, a movie poster was drawn up and the film was made
on the basis of the title and the poster. I’m sure the same held true for some of these VHS titles as the
availability of home video created a perfect opportunity for studios to make
movies that were released directly to VHS, completely bypassing cinemas
altogether.
Continue reading "BOOK REVIEW: "VHS VIDEO COVER ART" BY THOMAS HODGE"
By
Todd Garbarini
“The
dark corners of the human mind are the deepest dark, I believe, of anything in
the universe,†once said author, playwright, producer, and director Arch Oboler
in describing his infamous radio plays of the 1930s and 1940s which aired on
NBC under the title of Lights Out! It
is no secret that some of the world's most well-known artists, everyone from
author Edgar Allan Poe to film director Dario Argento, have channeled
nightmarish experiences from their childhood and woven them into the very
fabric of their stories and films. The late great surrealist Swiss artist Hans
Rudolf Giger, known internationally as H.R. Giger, also sublimated his fears
and frustrations into startling and often horrific imagery that coupled man
with machinery as he explored the triptych of existence: birth, life, and death.
Audiences are taken behind the scenes of this master painter in the elegiac
final days of his life in the new film Dark
Star: H.R. Giger’s World, directed by Belinda Sallin, which opens May 15,
2015 in selected cities. Although a documentary, Passagen, was made about his work in 1972 by Fredi
M. Murer, Dark Star showcases interviews with the people closest to
this man who shunned the limelight and preferred to paint on his own
terms.
Härr
Giger passed away just after filming finished. The film does an expert job of taking us through his life as he imparts
interesting anecdotes, such as showing us a skull that his father gave him as a
boy, which frightened him until he found a way to overcome his fear. This skull indubitably played a huge roll in
his life and work. He meets with friends
and family who are lucky enough to spend their time with him. Much of the dialog is spoken in Swiss German
and subtitles are provided.
Dark Star opens with placid and calm shots of the
artist’s house in Zürich, Switzerland. The camera pans around the grounds and above
the abode and the trees until it zeros in on the front door and, in a maneuver eerily
reminiscent of Dorothy Gale’s journey from black and white into Technicolor,
the door opens to reveal this dark world of surrealistic paintings. These
unbelievable images, which exist in the form of finished paintings as well as
macabre sculptures, date back to the 1960’s. Like most artists, images and emotions fueled Härr Giger’s work, and he
had his own method of painting which incorporated air brushing while listening
to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Not
surprisingly, childhood experiences factored greatly as a catalyst for his
disturbing imagery. A trip to the
Raetian Museum in Chur, Switzerland as a young lad was particularly frightening
when he saw a mummy for the first time.
His
tumultuous relationship with actress and model Li Tobler, whom he was with from
1966 until 1975, figures prominently in many of the works that populate his Necronomicon books. Härr Giger, enfeebled and walking with a
cautious gait, speaks eloquently about the loss of Frau Tobler who shot herself
at age 27 after suffering for years from severe depression.
Following
this tragedy, Härr Giger’s work caught the attention of film director Ridley
Scott, who was in the midst of pre-production on 20th Century Fox’s Alien (1979), who was by his own
admission bowled over by the creations he saw in Necronomicon. These images
provided the basis for the titular monster, and it was this blockbuster science
fiction film franchise that catapulted an unassuming Giger to superstardom and
into the public consciousness for all-time. The set design is known for its heavy emphasis on sexual imagery. His then-wife, Mia Bonzanigo, was there to
see him win the Oscar for Alien.
Härr
Giger’s widow, Carmen Maria Giger, expatiates on her late husband’s sense of
perception and his masterful melding of human anatomy and machines. By his own admission, one of his paintings
came about due to a trip he had on LSD.
Despite
his fragile state, Härr Giger still managed to make it to public appearances
when museums mounted exhibitions of his work, such as the Lentos Art Museum in
Austria. The droves of fans who flocked
to see him came from all sorts of backgrounds, and many of them possessed
tattoos of his artwork that covered their arms, legs, and backs.
The
film leaves the viewer with an interesting overview of an artist who succeeded
in what he set out to do, and was complacent in himself and his work.
|
|