BY TODD GARBARINI

By all accounts, Jennie Logan (Lindsay Wagner) has it all – beauty, intelligence, a loving husband (Alan Feinstein) named Michael, and a good friend in whom she confides (Constance McCashin). While they do not have children, Jennie and Michael seem to be unperturbed by the lack of tiny bare feet on the hardwood floors – there is plenty of time for all of that. Or is there? Looks can be deceiving and it is not long before we discover that this seemingly “perfect couple” have their own demons to wrestle with.

Guided on a tour of the sprawling Victorian manse prior to their eventual purchase by a matter-of-fact realtor (Pat Corley) who off-handedly remarks that the unfinished attic is unworthy of even the most cursory glance, Jennie feels drawn to it, though she cannot fathom why. Following their purchase and move-in, Jennie ventures into the attic and encounters a dress that is nearly 100 years-old (shades of John Hancock’s 1971 film Let’s Scare Jessica to Death). Trying it on, it fits her perfectly, as though fashioned just for her.

All is not well in the household, however. Michael tries to get close to Jennie but she quickly withdraws, plagued by Michael’s betrayal and infidelity with one of his students. Jennie’s willingness but inability to get past it puts a crimp in their marriage. She feels that sex for Michael is like taking a shower or going out for a jog, but despite his protests to the contrary he practically ignores her while watching a sports game on television, despite her wearing the old dress that makes her appear more fetching. The dress is the catalyst, a trigger for Jennie to see and experience a complete and alternate reality that occurred 80 years prior that consists of an artist named David (Marc Singer) who grieves the loss of his love, Pamela. After mistaking Jennie for Pamela, David spends time getting to know Jennie while brushing off the affections of another woman, Elizabeth Warrington (a nearly unrecognizable Linda Gray). David’s affections turn towards Jennie, and she becomes fulfilled by him. The question then becomes does Jennie really see and participate in this reality or is it all just in her head, a projection for a life and a love that she once had, or thought she had with Michael and lost, but still longs for? Much of the film reminds me of the Harlequin romances my grandmother and aunt had stacked in their basements.

The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan is the title of this 1979 made-for-television movie that is based on the 1978 novel Second Chance by David L. Williams. I am probably in the minority here, but Jennie Logan is an above-average outing with an intriguing story about love, longing and the perpetual life question of the road not taken, though contemporary audiences will no doubt find it trite and saccharine. As someone who grew up in the 1970s, I enjoy even the most basic of television movies as they were a lot more innocent back then in a time before the 1000-plus cable stations offered us game shows, talk shows with despicable guests, crime dramas, politics, and the rest of it. The world was slower and not so crazy. Some of these television films worked (Steven Spielberg’s 1971 film Duel) and many of them did not (Corey Allen’s 1985 outing Beverly Hills Cowgirl Blues). The innocence of these films is one of the reasons why television movies were not regarded very highly when they were made, and certainly not today. For me, less was more and although most audiences and reviewers look upon the average television movie with disdain, I have always had an affection for them that holds forth now.

Lindsay Wagner and Alan Feinstein (who reminds me of Daniel Hugh Kelly as the cuckolded husband in Lewis Teague’s 1983 film Cujo) give decent television movie-of-the-week performances as the couple besieged by turmoil. Jennie visits a psychiatrist (Joan Darling) to get a handle on her issues, leading the doctor to believe that this is all mental, a diagnosis Michael concurs with, though Jennie believes otherwise. A trip to a local library and discussions with librarian Mrs. Bates (Irene Tedrow, who bears a resemblance to Fay Compton, the actress who played Mrs. Sannerson in Robert Wise’s 1963 thriller The Haunting) puts Jennie into contact with information that she hopes will alter the course of David’s life so that she can be with him. Her discussion with an elderly bedridden invalid is shocking in how frightening the woman’s face is – think of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (1963).

The late writer and director Frank De Felitta is no stranger to supernatural material. He directed The Stately Ghosts of England for NBC (1965) and the beloved Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981). He also wrote the novels and screenplays for Audrey Rose (1977) and The Entity (1982). Here, he adapts material from another author. While portions of the film take place in 1899, Marc Singer’s beefcake stature looks out-of-place as though he is anticipating the arrival of Fabio, but it should please women and fans of The Beastmaster (1982), the film he is best known for.

Composer Glenn Paxton provides a lush and romantic score to complement the onscreen action.

Jennie Logan premiered on the CBS network on Halloween night in 1979 and has been released on Blu-ray from Australia-based Via Vision Entertainment through their Imprint label, the fine company responsible for the recent Scarface (1932) and Breakdown (1997) Blu-rays. Here, they offer up a region-free, pristine transfer with a wonderfully entertaining commentary by critic Kevin Lyons who speaks eloquently and knowledgeably about the film. He gives us some interesting on-set anecdotes about the making of the film, such as modifications made to the set as Ms. Wagner was unable to reach the handle to the attic; a history of the house in which the film was shot; director De Felitta making The Stately Ghosts of England, only to discover that the reels were blank after being developed and having to plead with the ghosts in the location where they were filming not to mess with the production!

There is a nice twist at the end of the film, and if you have ever lost a love in the fashion that Michael loses Jennie, it will have an impact on you.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

I originally saw the Brian De Palma/Al Pacino version of Scarface (1983) on laserdisc in 1994 and again in a 20^th anniversary theatrical screening in New York, but not since. Recently, I decided to have revisit it on Netflix and was amazed that I recalled very little of it. The constant use of profanity and the intensity of some of the violent set pieces, in particular the notorious chainsaw scene, are tamer than the language and the most violent moments of HBO’s The Sopranos (1999 – 2007) and Showtime’s Brotherhood (2006 – 2008). However, in 1983 Universal Pictures was prompted to release the film with the following caveat in the newspaper ads when the film was released in December: “CAUTION – Scarface is an intense film both in its use of language and depiction of violence. We suggest mature audiences.” While one might think this was a publicity stunt with the objective to get as many people to see the film as possible, it could very well have instead been a compromise to having the film released without the dreaded X rating. Director De Palma was no stranger to sparring with the then Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its president, Richard Heffner. Previously, Mr. De Palma’s 1980 film Dressed to Kill needed to be altered to avoid an X and he went back and forth with the MPAA on the violence and overt sexual nature of the film until it was releasable. It is interesting to note that the X rating, generally associated with explicit sexual content as opposed to violence, was also given to John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy when it was released in May 1969 (later changed to an R rating), Stanley Kubrick’s masterful A Clockwork Orange in December 1971 (also later changed to an R rating following the removal of several seconds of footage), and most famously, to Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris in February 1973 (recently changed to NC-17). Tango garnered critical acclaim from New Yorker reviewer Pauline Kael and, arguably because of the promise of sex scenes with the then 45-year-old Marlon Brando, did boffo box office. These are the cinema’s most notable examples, with Cowboy winning the Best Picture Oscar and Clockwork being nominated but losing to William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971) for that top prize. In the end, Scarface received an R rating and grossed several million dollars shy of its $23.5M budget but, like so many films of that period, cleaned up later on from ancillary sources such as home video and cable television airings. It has become one of the most famous and beloved motion pictures in recent memory, adding Al Pacino’s famous line about saying hello to his little friend to the American lexicon, right up there with Roy Scheider’s quip about needing a bigger boat in Jaws (1975).

It is interesting to note that the very existence of Scarface began with the original film of the same name made roughly fifty years prior to it and served as the blueprint for Mr. Pacino’s interpretation of Cuban arrival Antonio Montana and his rise to fame in the cocaine-laden backdrop of Miami, FL. Directed by Howard Hawks between September 1930 and March 1931 and written by playwright Ben Hecht, Scarface (1932), then billed as Scarface, the Shame of a Nation, opened at the Rialto Theatre in New York City on Thursday, May 19, 1932 and, like the remake, also suffered its own share of controversy for violence and sexuality, though not due to the same intensity as the remake. Coming on the heels of Mervyn Leroy’s Little Caesar with Edward G. Robinson and William A. Wellman’s The Public Enemy, both from 1931, Scarface is widely considered to be the start of cinema’s depiction of and fascination with gangsters and crime dramas. We are in 1920s Chicago in the time of Al Capone (upon whose life the film is loosely based) and gangland wars between the city’s North Side and South Side. The film begins with a single take that runs just over three minutes in a setup that sets the tone. This must have been deemed very suspenseful at the time and, while not nearly as intricate as the three-minute mobile crane shot that opens Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1957) or the three-minute Panaglide shot that starts John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), it manages to build tension for an audience not used to seeing such cinematic techniques at the time.

The story gets underway with “Big” Louis Costillo (Harry J. Vegar), the most successful crime boss on the city’s South Side, talking and laughing with members of his crew at a restaurant when heads to a phone booth. In the shadows, still in the same opening take, Antonio “Tony” Camonte (Paul Muni), Costillo’s own hired muscle, appears in silhouette and kills him in a murder contracted with him by John “Johnny” Lovo (Osgood Perkins), his new boss. This being the era of Prohibition, the main source of income is not cocaine but beer to be delivered to speakeasies. A police officer heads to a barbershop the next day and brings Tony in for questioning, determined to finger him for Costillo’s murder. A lawyer pulls some strings and gets Tony out of it, but the police want to catch him in the act of a crime, and they are more determined than ever. As it stands Johnny, Tony’s new boss, now controls the South Side, with Tony and the reticent Rinaldo (George Raft in a menacing performance) at his side. Rinaldo reminds me of Al Neri, Michael Corleone’s reticent henchman in The Godfather films, played icily by the late Richard Bright.

The North Side is run by a man named O’Hara and Tony’s thirst for power begins to swell. Johnny warns him not to mess with business associates on the North Side because, in the words of Tony Soprano, “it attracts negative attention” and potential violence. Tony also has his eye on Poppy (Karen Morley), Johnny’s girlfriend, who initially shrugs Tony off, but warms up to him later when his flirtations increase as he becomes more intrigued by her. In his apartment, he shows her the sight of an electric billboard across the way advertising Cook’s Tours beneath the slogan “The World is Yours,” taken to excessive extremes in the De Palma remake.

BY TODD GARBARINI

I love Joe Dante. He has directed some hugely entertaining films and is an aficionado of the same genres I adore. Additionally, like most film directors, he is highly versed in cinemaspeak. My introduction to his work came in 1983 when I bought his werewolf classic The Howling (1981) sight-unseen on RCA’s now extinct CED system and immediately took to it. That failed stylus-based videodisc format was severely limited to only several thousand titles, so I had to rely on VHS to catch up with his Hollywood Boulevard (1976), Piranha (1978), and Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) in the mid-80’s following theatrical viewings of Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1983 and Gremlins in 1984. For some reason, his July 12, 1985-released outing Explorers, which concerns the escapades of three young boys making their way through the battlefield of junior high school, escaped my list of “must see” films during that summer and I was only vaguely aware of it through a high school friend who took to it. Looking back at the film’s opening weekend, it was rushed into theaters almost ten days after Robert Zemeckis’s already phenomenally successful Back to the Future and was also pitted against the Live-Aid concert which was seen by nearly 2 billion people on television. Plus, I was four months away from obtaining my driver’s license, so I still had to embarrassingly prod my parents for trips to the theater which was some 10 miles away.

Filmed between October 1984 and February 1985, Explorers is most notable for being the feature film debuts of Ethan Hawke and the late River Phoenix, both of whom were 14 when the film was shot. Mr. Hawke landed the role while accompanying a friend to the audition and had no previous acting experience. Mr. Phoenix had already garnered a significant amount of television credits to his name by the time filming began. Filling out the triumvirate is Jason Presson, who appeared in Christopher Cain’s 1984 film The Stone Boy opposite Robert Duvall and Glenn Close.

We have all have had dreams of flying. A recurring dream of mine from childhood consists of me flying on the top of a tree over the street I grew up on and coming crashing down on to the pavement, awakening immediately afterwards. In Explorers, Ben (Ethan Hawke) is a teenage science fiction aficionado who gravitates to films of previous decades, such as War of the Worlds (1953) and This Island Earth (1955). This rang true for me as my father gave me a copy of the June 1978 issue of Star Encounters magazine when I was ten which featured films from this era and was my introduction to them. Ben also dreams of flying – in the clouds, and over a city that looks a lot like a circuit board, the schematic of which he draws upon wakening. He shows these sketches to his friend Wolfgang (River Phoenix) who is studious, nerdy and comes from an eccentric family. Wolfgang does not have time for frivolities such as teenage crushes, something that plagues Ben with his infatuation with Lori (the late Amanda Petersen). Darren (Jason Presson) is disillusioned. His parents are divorced, and his father has a girlfriend whom his dad argues with. He befriends Ben and Wolfgang as an escape, but they share similar interests.

Using Ben’s scribblings as a guide, Wolfgang builds a microchip that can create a huge bubble that encompasses a large space while moving at incredibly fast speeds. They take it upon themselves to build their own flying saucer out of an old Tilt-A-Whirl ride, which they christen “Thunder Road” based on the name of the song by The Boss. More of Ben’s dreams result in answers to limiting issues, such as finding a way to produce an unlimited amount of oxygen on the ship in order to leave Earth’s orbit, which they succeed in doing and end up captured by a huge ship manned by aliens whose understanding of Earth is based on television reruns. While this notion may have seemed interesting and original on paper by the screenwriter, it eventually wears a bit thin in an overly rambunctious episode that lasts longer than it should. Needless to say, the boys make their way back to Earth and, well, you’ll just have to see for yourself as to how their adventure ends.

When I watched the special edition of The Howling on laserdisc in 1996, I vaguely recalled Joe Dante mentioning that he had had a three-hour cut of Explorers, but that it went missing, or it was stolen, etc. I often wonder how that version would have fared in comparison. Watching Explorers now is bittersweet as it contains performances by several people who tragically left this world much too soon. Building on the special effects used to atmospheric effect in Walt Disney’s Tron (1982), Explorers does an admirable job of pushing the effects a little further. It is definitely an ‘80’s film and that is something that cannot be faked. Rob Bottin, the genius behind the effects for John Carpenter’s The Thing, created the aliens in this film, with Robert Picardo of The Howling donning the makeup and costumes.

A new special edition of the film is available on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory and it includes the home video & theatrical cuts of the film, the differences of which were imperceptible to me but probably stand out to die-hard fans more familiar with it.

A Science Fiction Fairy Tale: The Story of Explorers is a piece that runs about 65 minutes and features new interviews with those involved with the production of the film. Screenwriter Eric Luke explains having been given a copy of “Worlds of If” magazine as a child ended up whetting his appetite, and he later worked at Los Angeles’s A Change of Hobbit Bookstore which catered to science fiction aficionados. Darlene Chan, the Junior Executive in charge of production, really loved the script and how innocent it was. David Kirkpatrick, who was the Senior Executive in charge of production of the film, reminisces on how the script made him feel like a child again. Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One, echoes those sentiments. Ethan Hawke describes how the film got him his start in acting.

Explorers was a far more ambitious film in conception than it ended up being in execution. Numerous public screenings with negative feedback unfortunately resulted in much of the original material ending up on the proverbial cutting room floor as the studio rushed it into theaters far too quickly.

Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary By Joe Dante – Further character beats enhanced in footage gleaned from a Betamax-quality workprint found buried in the director’s garage reveals a far more interesting dynamic than what is alluded to in the final film, truncated at Paramount’s request due to an unreasonable running time. This segment runs about 34 minutes and includes the Amanda Peterson birthday party scene; a dinner scene with Ethan Hawke and his parents; a wordless scene wherein Mary Kay Place finds the February 1982 issue of Playboy in her son’s room; more of the alien ad-libs; a cute reference to Poltergeist (1982); and many more. It can be viewed with on-set audio or alternatively with director Dante’s comments. It would have been nice if the entire feature contained a commentary – it’s absence is puzzling.

Interview with Cinematographer John Hora – at just under four minutes, this is a discussion of the challenges that the production ran into while shooting a film with minors during the Fall. Dick Miller, who passed away in January 2019, comes in at the end, which only made me want to see more.

Interview with Editor Tina Hirsch – this piece runs over six minutes with the film’s editor and really makes me want to see the full cut of the film!

The theatrical trailer is also included.

While watching the film now I cannot help but be reminded of the Netflix series Stranger Things which takes place beginning in November 1983, and the wonderful camaraderie among the youngsters on the show. Explorers, despite being the unfortunate mess that it is, is a reminder of our childhood friendships and how things truly seemed possible, no matter how farfetched they seemed.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

Some of the best literary achievements and their respective motion picture counterparts had their genesis in real-life. Robert Bloch made the grave-robber and necrophiliac Ed Gein into the motel manager Norman Bates in Psycho (1960); William Peter Blatty took the ostensibly possessed boy in Cottage City, MD and gave him the identity of Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist (1973); and Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek breathed celluloid life into Kit and Holly respectively in Badlands (1973), based upon Waste Land: The Savage Odyssey of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate. Smooth Talk, Joyce Chopra’s brilliant 1985 film adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s equally excellent 1966 short story “Where Have You Been, Where Are You Going?", is no exception. While it may seem odd to begin this review of what is on the surface, and for all intents and purposes, a story of a teen-age girl’s sexual awakening, with an overview of horror films, it must be said that Mrs. Oates based her tale loosely on the exploits of Charles Howard Schmid, Jr., aka “The Pied Piper of Tucson,” a loner and petty thief who seduced young high school girls and was responsible for murdering at least three of them between 1964 and 1965.

While the denouement is nowhere near as dark as its real-life roots, Smooth Talk, the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1986, is a deceptive film in that it is marketed in what appears to be a coming-of-age film, but it is not in the traditional sense. At 91 minutes, Smooth Talk is a nearly perfect film, unlike any other film I have ever seen. Its independent status and minimal theatrical run have precluded it from deservedly finding a much wider audience, even today, though it should be required viewing as both an example of fine independent filmmaking and as a cautionary tale for overly-trusting young women, especially in the modern age of social media and the #MeToo movement.

Following backstory and exposition that was only alluded to in Mrs. Oates’s story, Smooth Talk, released on Friday, February 28, 1986 at the long-gone 68^th Street Playhouse (I miss that theater!!) in New York with a PBS showing as part of American Playhouse nearly a year later, is a remarkably faithful film adaptation that follows the story nearly to the letter. The film gives us Connie Wyatt, a typical fifteen-year-old girl in a terrible hurry to grow up and experience life. She lives in the world of the relative but would prefer to live in the world of the absolute: one bereft of a nagging mother (Mary Kay Place), an insouciant father (Levon Helm), and her older sister June (Elizabeth Berridge) who castigates her for transgressions. She envisions one instead full of sweet and beautiful boys to woo and sing to her. Her summertime vacation household is one of boredom and antagonism, restlessness, and constant comparison to other kids. She is a stranger at the dinner table, marginalized and spoken of in the third person as though she were absent. Her character changes and comes to life, however, during frequent multiple-hour sojourns to the beach and the shopping mall (Santa Rosa Plaza and Coddingtown Mall) with younger friends Laura (Margaret Welsh) and Jill (Sarah Inglis) in tow to the tunes of James Taylor or Franke & The Knockouts on her boom box. In the mall bathroom, the homely triumvirate don mascara and lipstick and emerge looking much older, dressing to impress. Connie metamorphizes from a gawky girl into a temptress. They yearn after a group of attractive young men with “nice buns” and poke fun at nerds and generally act older than they really are. Their first encounter with more than they bargained for is with two muscled-up bad dudes who lecherously offer them booze and drugs, with the presumption of sexual interludes to follow. They nervously rush away from the men’s clutches; on their way home, they stop at an outdoor hamburger restaurant bustling with older kids. An older man in a shiny golden convertible pulls into the lot, and his presence goes unnoticed by Connie, but not by the audience. In the days to follow, Connie and Laura score dates with boys their own age, although Connie’s catch wants more than she is willing to give when he takes her to a deserted parking lot – never a good sign – but she manages to extricate herself from his lust and gets a verbal admonishment from her mother and older sister the following morning for potentially “getting into trouble”.

When Connie’s family goes to visit relatives, she decides to exercise some rebellion, opting to remain home instead. She turns on several radios throughout the house to the same station to hear music anywhere she goes. It is at this point where the film begins to follow Mrs. Oates’s story almost completely, as the film takes a 180-degree turn into uncharted territory with the arrival of the mysterious man in the convertible. He introduces himself as Arnold Friend, and professes his desire to be Connie’s friend, which is repugnant in and of itself as he is most definitely not 15 years-old, but much older, at least twice that age. Bemused, Connie is escorted to his car, a 1960s-something Pontiac LeMans GTO, which has his name printed in cursive writing on the driver’s door, and his license plate bears the name AFRIEND. Next to his name are printed the numbers 33, 19, and 17, the summation of which is synonymous with a particular sexual act, though its significance is completely lost on Connie (it could also refer to the ages of the three females killed by the real-life Pied Piper of Tucson). His last bit of the tour is showing Connie the left rear fender, smashed in by a “crazy woman driver”, as he points out.

What begins at this point is a slow and deliberate seduction of Connie, like the serpent tempting Eve into eating the shiny apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, except here the serpent is using a shiny convertible for enticement (note the apple grove in the backyard). Initially flirty, Connie’s demeanor changes when Arnold behaves as though they already know each other, and he mentions facts about her family and friends that only someone intimately familiar with her would know. Arnold’s intentions as a sexual predator are nefarious and despicable. He almost talks to her in code, and everything points to a double meaning. Removing the “r” from his name yields “an old fiend”; Santa Rosa becomes Satan Rosa; and his arched eyebrows are devilish.

When Arnold tells Connie that they are meant to be together, Connie says, “You’re crazy, no one talks like that.” And she is right – but she does not trust her instincts enough and goes along with him in an effort to rid him from her family’s home at 2074 Pleasant Hill Road (in Sebastopol, CA, though the film is set in Petaluma where George Lucas shot his own adolescent masterpiece American Graffiti in the summer of 1972). It costs her her innocence in the film, and her life in the short story.

The film is most notable for being the breakout performance of Laura Dern, who was seventeen when filming commenced in September 1984, a full year prior to playing the virginal Sandy in David Lynch’s controversial Blue Velvet (1986). Ms. Dern should have received an Oscar nomination for this role as her performance is a revelation. She also was growing up and her sense of being “unaware” is what drives her natural reactions. Connie is almost a slightly older and less wild version of Amy Sims, the out-of-control teenager Ms. Dern portrayed in the 1980 episode of Insight called “Who Loves Amy Tonight?”

Martin Rosen, the director of Watership Down (1978), The Plague Dogs (1982) and the little-seen Stacking (1987) with Megan Follows, produced the film.