BY TODD GARBARINI

Having been a film fanatic my entire life I was thrilled when, in June 1982, a new magazine burst onto the scene and quickly caught my attention. Devoted exclusively to new and upcoming motion picture releases, Coming Attractions cost $2.50 per issue and was published on a bi-monthly basis. It didn’t last long, unfortunately, but I recall that a bit of an uproar occurred over the cover of the March/April 1983 issue which featured a half-naked Valerie Kaprisky in a promo for the Breathless remake. Seriously, back in the day who complained about a beautiful naked woman on a magazine cover??

In one of the earlier issues, there was an article published about an upcoming horror film entitled Trick or Treats starring David Carradine. I don’t recall the film ever opening in my area and wondered whatever happened to it until I saw it on the shelf as a VHS rental a few years later in a local video store. Trick or Treats is not to be confused with the 1986 Dino De Laurentiis film Trick or Treat, directed by Charles Martin Smith, or the 2007 Michael Dougherty-directed vignette film Trick r Treat. It’s a strange concoction that cannot seem to make up its mind as to what it wants to be. My guess is that it’s attempting to be serious but fails miserably at it. It’s a mixture of horror and absurdist elements that almost play like a Saturday Night Live sketch.

Filmed mostly in Neil Young’s house that his then-girlfriend, actress Carrie Snodgress, lived in at the time on South Irving Boulevard in Los Angeles, CA, the film opens in 1978 and Malcolm O'Keefe (Peter Jason) just wants to read the morning paper, but his wife Joan (Carrie Snodgress) has other plans. Out of nowhere, she has two burly men fight to get Malcolm into a strait jacket while affording no explanation. Their antics are humorous and silly, and we have no idea why it’s even happening. Apparently, he’s being carted off to a mental institution where he stays until 1982 and plans his escape. None of this is even remotely believable as it raises too many questions – is he really insane? How did his wife arrange this? Why would anyone go along with it? Do the doctors know? As he’s planning his escape, Joan is now with Richard (David Carradine, the star of the film, who has less than ten minutes of screen time) and has an eight-year-old son, Christopher (is he Malcolm’s son or Richard’s son from a previous marriage? None of this is explained). Christopher (Christopher O’Keefe) is a practical jokester, an aspiring magician and aficionado of Harry Houdini. Joan and Richard decide to head to Vegas for a Halloween party and call their babysitter, Linda (Jacqueline Giroux), requesting her services to watch him and dole out candy to trick or treaters. Linda is an actress and is torn between seeing her boyfriend Bret (Steve Railsback) in his acting debut in Othello (I swear, I’m not making this up) or making the extra money. She chooses the latter despite Bret’s insistence on her presence at the play. The boyfriend doth protest too much. Richard tries to put the moves on Linda but is stopped by Joan. Despite this, they leave for the Playground of the World, and this gives Christopher all the time he needs to torture Linda by playing jokes on her that she continually falls for: sticking his head into a fake guillotine (remember this for the ending!), using a buzzer while shaking hands, pretending to cut off his finger and even feigning drowning in the family swimming pool. After so many instances of this, one must wonder how dim-witted Linda really is.

Things get really ridiculous when Malcolm escapes by donning a nurse’s outfit – and everyone he meets treats him as though he’s female. He’s a guy with a guy’s face and a guy’s voice! He makes his way back to the house and hides in the attic. Another subplot featuring two additional young women working on a film that Linda appears in comes out of nowhere. One of the women, Andrea (the late Jillian Kesner), goes to the house and spends a lot of time looking around very slowly just to pad out the running time until the final showdown with Malcolm…

If you’re looking for a serious horror film, this one’s going to be a disappointment. The credits even list Orson Welles as a “magical consultant”. I can definitely see the influence of Citizen Kane (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958) on this flick. Yikes! Mr. Welles put his “magical consulting” to better use two years later in the pilot episode of NBC-TV’s short-lived Scene of the Crime series which aired on Sunday, September 30, 1984. In the second story of the pilot, called “The Babysitter” and penned by Jeffrey Boam, the title character is left in charge of a prepubescent girl whom she antagonizes while the girl’s parents go out for the night. The girl gets her revenge in a very cool ending by making a wish to a magician topper that appeared on her birthday cake. That episode was better than this film. Mr. Welles should have put his full “magical” powers to work and made Trick or Treats disappear. The film would have worked better as an episode of Tales from the Darkside, which ran from September 1984 to July 1988 in syndication, and without the camp. Christopher constantly annoying Linda gets tiresome, though I give the film props for the scene wherein Christopher sorts through his LP record collection which consist of the soundtracks to Maniac (1980), The Howling (1981), and the BBC Sound Effects No. 13 - Death & Horror album from 1977 that my friend and I used to play in the early 1980s.

Trick or Treats debuted on DVD in November 2013 and has now been released in high definition on Blu-ray by Code Red (probably the same transfer, though this time it’s more colorful and clearer due to the high definition afforded in the Blu-ray format) with the same audio commentary which runs the entire length of the film and contains five people: Jackie Giroux, Peter Jason, Chris Graver and Cameraman R. Michael Stringer, moderated by Sean Graver. The big problem with the commentary is the audio quality – it’s poorly miked and begins with no introductions at all. It’s also too low. I loved listening to it, but at times I didn’t even know who was speaking. Commentaries as an extra are something that I love on any disc, but if it sounds as though the people who are speaking are on the other side of the room…hey, great title for an Orson Welles movie!

There is an audio interview with actor Steve Railsback that adds little value to the package.

There is something called “Katarina’s Bucketlist” mode wherein the hostess talks about the cast and does an Elvira, Mistress of the Dark-inspired schtick.

There are no trailers, interestingly.

The bottom line: I love a campy horror film, but if you’re going to be silly, make sure that you market it that way. Don’t sell it as something in the same vein (no pun intended, naturally) as John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). Otherwise, you might feel like Charlie Brown did on Halloween…you go out for candy, but all you end up with is a rock.

BY TODD GARBARINI

Send-ups of classic horror films are nothing new. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello starred in the granddaddy of horror comedies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, in 1948 after the original working script The Brain of Frankenstein had its title changed. They later took on the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Boris Karloff himself. Mel Brooks danced his way into the cinema history books by making his own comic version of the fabled Mary Shelley classic of a deranged scientist fabricating a man made from body parts and even had the guts to shoot the film in black and white on the original soundstages that James Whale used just over forty years earlier: Young Frankenstein (1974) was the result. The lesser-known Texas-lensed Student Bodies (1981) from Woody Allen collaborator Mickey Rose did an admirable job of poking fun at the slasher movie subgenre that plagued American movie theaters through most of the early to mid-1980’s and is still humorous today, even after the Scary Movie franchise.

I was introduced to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark in September 1982 in Fangoria Magazine (issue #22) from their “Horror-Host Series” by Dan Farren. Having begun as a horror hostess in September 1981 on Southern California’s KHJ-TV’s Movie Macabre weekend show, Elvira (in reality red-haired actress Cassandra Peterson) slowly made her way into syndicated television markets and became a huge sensation, turning verbally ragging on silly horror and science fiction B movies into an art form. The schtick-laden show ran 137 episodes over five years. Well-endowed with impossible-to-not-see cleavage, a huge mane of dark hair and deep red lipstick, Elvira eventually starred in her own film, the 1988 outing Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. While many other Elvira outings occurred in the form of short films and TV-movies, Ms. Petersen reprised her role in Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2002), a loving parody of the Vincent Price/Edgar Allan Poe/Roger Corman thrillers of the 1960’s that she and the filmmakers saw in their youth.

It is the year 1851 and the setting is the Romanian Carpathian Mountains. Elvira and her maid Zou Zou (Mary Jo Smith) are forced out of their room by an innkeeper who does his best Jack Torrance impression from The Shining to rid the premises of these freeloaders. On their way to a can-can show they are due to perform in Paris, they encounter Dr. Bradley Bradley (Scott Atkinson) – no relation to Humbert Humbert – who invites them into his coach to stay the night at Castle Hellsubus. Upon arrival, they meet Lady Emma Hellsubus (Mary Scheer), Count Vladimere Hellsubus (Richard O’Brien) and Lady Roxana (Heather Hopper), Lady Emma and Count Vladimere’s daughter. It turns out that Elvira bears more than a striking resemblance to Count Vladimere Hellsubus’s deceased wife, Elura (not to be confused with the capromorelin oral solution indicated for the management of weight loss in cats with chronic kidney disease of the same name. Whew!)

While investigating the castle, Elvira stumbles into the room of Adrian (Gabi Andronache in a role originally intended for Fabio who declined), a deliberately poorly dubbed hunk with mismatched lips and dialog in a direct nod to Italian horror films. Elvira gives the folks an example of her can-can show and later Count Vladimere thinks Elura is alive after seeing her in the hallway and blames it on a hallucination.

There are several laugh out-loud moments, one involving an empty knight suit, a throw-away line about the Village People, a visual zoom a la Jaws (1975), and other modern-day film references. Even the Academy Awards aren’t off-limits. The ageless Ms. Peterson is endearing in her Elvira get-up and obviously the title is a comic play on her famous, always-on-display assets. This is a film played for laughs and it is amusing and fun. The real stars, however, are the beautiful and opulent sets fashioned by the Romanian crew modeled primarily after The Pit and The Pendulum (1961) and The Haunted Palace (1963). I was even reminded of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s The House That Screamed (1969). The beautiful lighting is also reminiscent of cinematographer Luciano Tovoli’s colorful work on Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) and Romano Albani’s lighting schemes in Suspiria’s follow-up, Inferno (1980).

Elvira does a fun song number and Richard O’Brien at times looks like Reggie Nalder as Mr. Barlow in Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot (1979).

Elvira’s Haunted Hills was originally released on DVD in October 2002 and again in October 2011 in a “Specially Enhanced Edition”. The bonus features are all ported over from the previous DVD incarnations:

The Blu-ray consists of a restoration from a 4K scan of the original camera negative and it looks stunning in 1080p. The original DVDs did not grasp the image so well and were often murky and dark. This transfer is bright, colorful and clear and the sets look amazing.

There is an introduction by Elvira, Mistress of The Dark which is comical and runs 4:40.

There is an audio commentary with Cassandra Peterson, Mary Scheer, Mary Jo Smith and Scott Atkinson, and Director Sam Irvin who all have terrific fun commenting on the action and memories of filming on a shoestring.

Transylvania or Bust Featurette – this cutely-titled High Definition piece from 2011 runs just over 28 minutes and includes Mary Jo Smith, Mary Scheer, Scott Atkinson and others discussing their experiences not just making the film, but the misadventures entailed in getting to the locations, which were more scary than what ends up in onscreen!

The Making of Elvira’s Haunted Hills is Standard Definition, runs 22 minutes and features interviews with much of the cast and crew, but best of all it contains behind-the-scenes footage shot during principal photography.

Elvira in Romania Featurette – this is a cute Standard Definition interview with a Romanian television crew and Elvira and runs about 46 minutes. There are also test shots and Elvira mingling with locals.

Interview with Co-Star Richard O’Brien runs 6:08 and is an onscreen interview that was shot during filming.

Trailers – two trailers for Elvira’s Haunted Hills

Outtakes – this runs 54 seconds and my only complaint is I would have liked to have seen more of it.

Photo Gallery

Newly commissioned cover artwork

Highly recommended for Elvira completists.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

During the years that I spent in elementary school, watching movies on television was an exciting prospect. Considering that for me there was no other way to see films other than theatrically, viewing movies on television was something that I looked forward to regardless of the film being shown. In 1979, my best friend at the time was one of only a handful of people I knew who had cable television, in his case HBO. He told me about a great many films that I was not even aware of: Don Coscarelli’s Kenny & Company (1976), Frank Simon’s The Chicken Chronicles (1977), Sidney J. Furie’s The Boys in Company C (1978), and Enzo G. Castellari’s The Inglorious Bastards (1978). I always hoped that some of these films would make their way to television. Some did, some did not. His recollection and explanation to me of what he saw in these films made me regard him as quite the raconteur. These films seemed to make a big impression on him and listening to his enthusiasm for them made a big impression on me.

The Inglorious Bastards also made an impression on film director Quentin Tarantino, who worked at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, CA for a number of years while in his twenties during the VHS and Beta home video viewing boom. He saw the film on television several times while living in Los Angeles and later the film, to my surprise, was released on home video under the titles of Deadly Mission and, unbelievably, G.I. Bro. He was hired by the video store’s owner as he was already a scholar of cinema and could discuss and recommend movies to the paying customers. His enthusiasm for this film led him to adopt the title to his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, a two-and-a-half-hour World War II film that he spent at least six years thinking about and writing. It’s his sixth film as a director and he is still in command of his powers.

Inglourious Basterds, a brilliantly entertaining revisionist view of how we wish the war in Europe ended, is separated into five chapters. Chapter One, subtitled “Once Upon a Time in Nazi-occupied France”, is one of the most intense sequences that I have ever seen in a film. At just over 20 minutes, it is a lesson in bravura filmmaking. In 1941, a farmer, Perrier La Padite (Denis Menochet), is cutting wood and his wife is hanging up the family clothing when her mood changes – she hears the distant sound of a motorcycle. She knows that it can only be Germans. As the family prepares for the inevitable interrogation, we know from their body language that something is amiss. Although several German soldiers arrive only one of them, Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, in an Oscar-winning performance), approaches. He is complimentary and ingratiating towards Perrier and plays a verbal game with him to ascertain if his family is hiding Jews, an assumption that he already knows to be true. How the director handles this scene cinematically illustrates why he is one of cinema’s best filmmakers. The tension that he builds and the measured sentences that Landa uses to get the information that he wants is first-rate dialog. When the massacre of the hidden Jews in the floorboards occurs, one girl, Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), survives and runs off under Landa’s laughter and admiration.

Chapter Two, “The Inglourious Basterds”, takes place in 1944 and concerns Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, and his name is a play on actor Aldo Ray, who appeared in many war films) who oversees a group of men who capture and scalp Nazis. Sergeant Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), aka “The Bear Jew”, is part of this group designed to turn the tables and instill fear in the Germans. This sequence is a joy to watch as it gives the Nazis a taste of their own medicine.

In Chapter Three, “A German Night in Paris”, we are reacquainted with Shosanna under the assumed name of Emmanuelle Mimieux. She now owns a cinema and is harassed by Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) who is smitten with her and, like other Germans, won’t take no for an answer. Later, Zoller attempts to interest Mimieux and is again rebuffed. At a restaurant gathering with Joseph Goebbels, Mimieux is strong-armed to permit a Nazi propaganda film, Nation’s Pride, to be shown with all head Nazis in attendance including, amazingly, Adolf Hitler. Sure enough, Landa comes into the picture, and Mimieux does her best to answer his persistent questions about her theatre, trying to gauge if Landa knows her real identity. This sequence, like Chapter One, is extraordinary as the dialog is constantly masking what is going on beneath the surface, and the audience is never sure what might happen next. Unpredictability is just one of Mr. Tarantino’s many talents.

Chapter Four, “Operation Kino”, is similar to Chapters One and Three in that much is going on, however the probability of things going very badly is always imminent. A mixture of undercover agents and Germans ends the scene in a bloodbath that sets the stage for the film’s finale.

Chapter Five, “Revenge of the Giant Face”, is an extraordinary ending to the Nazi’s evil and their ultimate comeuppance as the cinema is packed with Hitler, Goebbels, Heydrich and many of the architects of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. The Giant Face alluded to belongs to Shosanna who, along with her lover and theater co-worker Marcel, carry out the plan to kill the Nazis by locking the escape routes and igniting a pile of combustible nitrate film stock located behind the screen. The cinema comes crashing down in a conflagration that causes deaths of the Nazis. The Basterds get their machine gun kicks by shooting as many enemies as possible. The ending is surprising, but ultimately satisfying.

Mr. Tarantino burst onto the film scene in 1992 with his debut film Reservoir Dogs. I saw it in New York, and I knew that I was in the hands of a truly gifted storyteller. His follow-up, Pulp Fiction, took the 1994 Cannes Film Festival by storm and won the Palme D’Or, and he snagged an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (and again in 2013 for Django Unchained). His subsequent films have not disappointed, and the dialog is often just a vehicle for something more tension-filled or sinister. Other times, it’s completely innocuous. The back-and-forth storytelling, jumping ahead at times, makes the action at hand that much more interesting. Inglourious Basterds is a linear narrative and despite there being a myriad of characters, the three major ones are Raine, Landa, and Dreyfus/Mimieux and the film pretty much revolves around them and their motives: Raine wants to kill Nazis, Landa wants to be evil, and Dreyfus/Mimieux wants to be invisible. His salute to war movies and cinema in general is everywhere – just setting a good portion of the action in a theatre is a labor of love. Eli Roth’s character is named Antonio Margheriti, named after the late filmmaker from Italy. So, the references are everywhere. At 2½ hours, the film is fascinating and flies by. He even throws in the obligatory “Wilhelm Scream” for good measure.

The film is now available in a new Universal 2-disc release which comes with a standard 1080p Blu-ray, a 4K Ultra High Definition Blu-ray, and a digital copy. If you have a 4K player and 4K TV, that is the one to go for as the picture is glorious, no pun intended. The extras are plentiful, though I would have loved a commentary track, and they include:

Extended & Alternate Scenes (HD, 11:31) – This section has three scenes: Lunch with Goebbels, extended version in one take; La Louisiane Card Game, extended version, and Nation’s Pride Begins, alternate version.

Roundtable Discussion with Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt and Film Critic Elvis Mitchell (HD, 30:45) – This is a funny and informative interview, with the surprising revelation that Brad Pitt received the script and shot the film six weeks later.

The New York Times Talks (HD, 1:08:07) – This is a just-shy-of 70-minute dialog between the director and New York Times Magazine Editor-at-Large Lynn Hirschberg. As usual, the director is enthusiastic about all-things cinema and speaks with a great deal of energy about the film and his desire to make films without regard to the morality of his characters.

Nation’s Pride: Full Feature (HD, 6:10) – This is the film that the Nazi’s watch in the cinema, and The Making of Nation’s Pride (HD, 4:00) is self-explanatory. It’s very cool to see Bo Svenson appear in Nation’s Pride since he was in the 1978 version of The Inglorious Bastards. It would have been great if a restored version of that film had been included as well!

The Original Inglorious Bastards (HD, 7:38) – This is a look at the director of the original film, Enzo G. Castellari, and his cameo in the Tarantino film.

A Conversation with Rod Taylor (HD, 6:43) and Rod Taylor On Victoria Bitter (HD, 3:19) – The late actor Rod Taylor, whom many will recall from the The Time Machine (1960) and The Birds (1963), is virtually unrecognizable in these mini interviews. He talks about the director’s enthusiasm for film, and a funny story about Victoria Bitter, the Australian beer.

Quentin Tarantino’s Camera Angel (HD, 2:41) – This is a humorous collection of slate shots and the funny on-set comments in between takes.

Hi Sallys (HD, 2:09) – This is a bittersweet piece as it pays homage to Mr. Tarantino’s longtime editor, Sally Menke, who tragically passed away at the age of 56 in 2010 due to dehydration while hiking in hot weather conditions.

Film Poster Gallery Tour with Elvis Mitchell (HD, 10:59) – This is very interesting as Mr. Mitchell talks about the history and meaning behind the beautiful posters that can been seen in the cinema in the film.

Inglorious Basterds Poster Gallery (HD)

Trailers (HD, 7:34) – Teaser, Domestic, International, and Japanese trailers for the film.

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Los Angeles

BY TODD GARBARINI

Director William Friedkin’s The French Connection, which won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing at the 1972 Academy Awards ceremony, celebrates its 50^th Anniversary today as it opened in New York City on Thursday, October 7, 1971. On Saturday, October 7, 1961, exactly ten years earlier to the day, both New York Detective First Grade Edward Egan and his partner, then Detective Second Grade Salvatore Grosso, unwittingly stumbled upon what is described in author Robin Moore’s 1969 account of the case as one that would “obsess them night and day for the next four-and-a-half months and would not end for a year-and-a-half.”

New York

Gene Hackman portrayed Mr. Egan and Roy Scheider co-starred as Mr. Grosso, referring to each other by the sobriquets “Popeye” and “Cloudy”, respectively. Acclaimed by critics and audiences alike for its gritty realism, its cat-and-mouse chase between Popeye and the mastermind behind the imported heroin (played by Fernando Rey), the film is best-known for its gripping and inexorable chase between a 1971 Pontiac LeMans and a subway train.

The film later opened in Los Angeles on November 3^rd in Los Angeles and on November 17^th in Central Jersey.

New Jersey

Issue #50 of Cinema Retro features this writer’s interviews with William Friedkin, actor Tony Lo Bianco, and former New York Police Detective Randy Jurgensen who worked on the actual case. Copies are available at CinemaRetro.com.

BY TODD GARBARINI

Film director Jonathan Mostow began his career in film shortly after graduating college in the mid-1980’s as a television writer and director for segments on Fright Show in 1985, Beverly Hills Body Snatchers in 1989, and the TV-movie Flight of Black Angel in 1991. While working as the executive producer of the Michael Douglas suspenser The Game (1997), Mr. Mostow was also looking to adapt Stephen King’s short story “Trucks” into a film. Although it had already been shot in late 1985 by Mr. King (in a directing capacity) as Maximum Overdrive (1986), there was interest to do another film version of it – until all involved were told that they could not use Stephen King’s name with the project. This proved to be fortuitous as most of the locations had not only been scouted but also secured for filming, although there was no film to be shot. Mr. Mostow took the locations and fashioned a story about a couple driving across the country to start a new life when unexpectedly their life takes a huge wrong turn. The result is Breakdown, a nail-biting suspense thriller that is Mr. Mostow’s feature film debut as a director, which is now available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment. I spoke with Mr. Mostow recently about the film and the new Blu-ray.

Todd Garbarini: Thank you for having gotten Breakdown made. I can safely say that this is the most intense motion picture that I have ever seen. I initially did not want to see it based on the theatrical trailer because it looked “run-of-the-mill”, however I found myself at the Glendale 9 Drive-In in June 1997 while in Arizona on business, and Breakdown was the only title, aside from Jim Carrey’s Liar, Liar, that appealed to me. I love Kurt Russell and the film completely blew me away. I was not prepared for the movie at all, and I don't know how you made it the way you did, but I'm grateful because I think it's extraordinary. It's a film that possesses a level of emotional tension that I have rarely, if ever, experienced in a feature film and it also has one of the best movie scores I’ve ever heard. Would it be fair to say that Steven Spielberg's Duel was an influence on the film?

Jonathan Mostow: I'm sure that it was. First off, thank you for the super kind words. I'm going to guess that since you saw this at a drive-in, you heard the audio from inside a car? 

TG: No, actually I was sitting on the hood of the car, and the movie was so full of tension and suspense that I honestly thought that my sweaty palms would pull the paint off the car! The audio was actually very, very good. The drive-in no longer had those small, tinny speakers. The audio instead was pumped through the FM radio band, and there were many cars all around me that were doing that. I didn't even have to listen through my Ford Taurus station wagon rental car (laughs), and I heard all the music and dialogue perfectly.

JM: Oh that’s good, because I'm really a stickler about good sound.

TG: I am, too.

JM: I want to cringe when I hear about drive-ins because I thought it probably would have sounded terrible! I want to address something that you said earlier when we began speaking, and that's how you pretty much didn't want to see Breakdown as a result of the trailer. I will never forget when I was a young filmmaker at the time because it was my first studio film and we had just had a test screening that had gone really well. The way that it works is that they have a test screening and afterwards they ask questions of the audience. So, the whole audience was still inside the theater, filling out the questionnaire, and in the lobby a group of the senior executives from the studio were milling around and asking each other how they were going to market the movie. I happened to overhear them, and they sort of intimated that this would be a good movie for the drive-in crowd, so-to-speak. Especially in the South, they felt that the South would somehow like it more. Since I was a young filmmaker at the time, I didn't feel that it was really my place to walk up to the top people of the studio and tell them their business, but I really wanted to tell them that this is not the crowd that this film was designed for. I saw the film as really a nightmare for yuppies. This is a nightmare for the metrosexual, educated, polo-shirt wearing, white collar middle-aged Everyman. That's who this is a nightmare for and that's who you should be selling this to. The marketing campaign, in a way, I believe sent a different message to the audience than what I was intending about the film and the result was what you said earlier about not wanting to see it initially, and how the film ultimately surprised you and you came to like the film a lot more than you initially thought you would.

TG: I must admit, that doesn’t happen to me often.

JM: I have heard that reaction from so many people, and Kurt (Russell) heard that from so many people. The question was, “Why didn't you think you would enjoy it?”, and the answer was, “The way that it was originally sold was that the ad campaign set up certain expectations that were not the expectations that I would have set up had I been designing the ad campaign.” I have to say that the studio (Paramount) did a fantastic job with this brand-new Blu-ray transfer. It looks gorgeous. For so many years, people have been asking me why they couldn't find this movie on Blu-ray.

TG: Yes, I was one of those…

JM: And I would have to explain to them that it wasn't available on Blu-ray. I was thrilled when the studio got in touch with me last year and they told me that they were going to do this movie right, that they would do a whole new transfer. I went in and sort of supervised it and signed off on what they did. I was just thrilled with it. Now, to answer your question about Duel, I'm a little older than you, and I grew up watching TV movies. Duel was originally a made-for-TV movie, and it did receive a theatrical release later on. But there were lots of these TV movies at the time, where a couple is driving somewhere, they're pulled over for a speeding ticket, or there is a corrupt cop who ends up imprisoning them and embezzling them for money, or the wife disappears, etc.

TG: Yes, Dying Room Only with Dabney Coleman and Cloris Leachman was one of the more famous films of that ilk.

JM: Right, and all these horrible things happen. I don't even remember the names of most of these movies, but I'm thinking of an aggregate of that, plus the types of themes that you would see in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, they were all kind of rattling around in my brain. So, when I had an idea for this, even though this is a quote-unquote “original idea”, and arguably no ideas are original because everything's been pretty much done in cinema, because we are all creatures of the culture that we grew up in, I thought it should be a road movie.

TG: The climax of the film looked like a real nightmare to shoot. Did it take a long time to shoot that?

JM: Yeah, we actually spent a couple of weeks on that. That was one of the few things that we shot that was in the Los Angeles area. The rest of the film was shot in Utah, Nevada, and all over the place.

TG: I couldn't help but notice that Gabby Petito, the woman who tragically disappeared and who has been in the news with her fiancé Brian Laundrie,were stopped by police just outside of the entrance to Arches National Park, which is in Moab, Utah. This location is featured prominently at the film's start, particularly the general store where Jeffrey Taylor has words with the pickup truck’s driver played by M.C. Gainey.

JM: We shot everything for real in this movie. Nowadays, if you're going to shoot a car chase, most of it is digital. I have always been a believer in the idea that even though you can do things digitally, and back then the digital technology was still sort of in its infancy, it was kind of cost-prohibitive, too – to make something visceral, you should really go out of the way and do it for real. The only thing that was truly digital was in certain cases during the climax when the Peterbilt cab is going over the bridge and dangling, that was a real truck. But naturally, it was suspended by construction cranes and we had to digitally remove all of them, the wiring holding up the cab, etc. If you scratch beneath the surface, of any movie, what you have is a director who's basically a child playing with a big electric train set.  It's never easy of course, but it was also super fun.

TG: I became a fan of Basil Poledouris after I heard his magnificent score to John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian which I saw it when it opened in May 1982. Was he your first choice to score this phone?

JM: Well, Basil had been suggested to me and we had ended up bringing in a composer I had worked with previously, Richard Marvin, and he did some of the music as well, and the net result of what we ended up with was a score that neither one of them would have done on their own. In a lot of cases, where we recorded a big score with a large orchestra, I went up just taking out the orchestra completely and leaving in just a kind of percussion track or something. Scoring the movie itself was an unusual process and everybody was happy with it at the end. However, the initial issue that I was having with Basil’s score was that he was capturing the emotion but not capturing enough of the suspense. That being said, I don't believe that it was a score that anybody would have devised on the outside.

TG: I think that the score works perfectly. Especially towards the climax, the end of the film, you have Jeffrey struggling to get to his wife, and the intercutting between Jeffrey and the kidnappers, that whole sequence is just incredible. The tension that you built during that sequence was magnificent.

JM: Well, you should appreciate this story. One night, we were working very late in Basil’s studio which was in Venice (California). This was a very dangerous area back then. It was about two in the morning, and he tells me that he has to go down the street and get some cigarettes. He asked me if I wanted anything from the corner store. On the one hand I told him no thank you, but on the other hand, in my head, I'm thinking, “Are you crazy?! You're going to go to a corner store at two in the morning?” I wouldn't walk out in that neighborhood at two in the morning even if I had armed escorts. It was at that moment that I realized that Basil had no personal fear. He was the sort of the opposite of me. I’m a fairly anxious person and that's how I was throughout most of the making of this movie, dealing with my own anxiety. What I realized at that moment was that Basil was connecting with the sadness. Kurt's character, Jeffrey Taylor, had this feeling of having lost his wife and didn’t know where she was or even how to find her. He was also facing potentially losing his wife forever. Basil was capturing that beautifully, but the problem was I wasn't feeling the anxiety. So that's why I brought in Richard so he could just nail the anxiety that I really needed for the movie. In the end, the score ended up being what I really needed, which was a hybrid between the sadness and the anxiety. That's why I think the score worked so well for the film. If these composers had done the scores on their own, I don't think that they would have achieved the effect that I was looking for. It just had to be a partnership.

TG: Do you have an all-time favorite movie?

JM: No, because it varies. There are movies that you love tremendously when you are young, and I'm sure that you have probably experienced this yourself, and then you look at them maybe 15 or 20 years later and they just don't hold up for you anymore. I remember watching Barbra Streisand getting a Lifetime Achievement Award, and she said something that has always stuck with me. She said that it was great to get these awards, it's great to be recognized for your work, but the real test is if 30 years from now, which of these films will stand up? Which of these films will still work? And that's what's amazing to me when I go back and I look at certain films that were made, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, and they hold up, that's always, to me, the miracle. Some films hold up and some films simply don't.

TG: I agree. In 1979, I saw two films that I loved very much: Moonraker and The Black Hole. Both films have really wonderful film scores by the late great John Barry. But the former is James Bond in outer space and the latter was really beautiful to look at, but had very little in the way of action. I really loved both films when I first saw them, but watching them many years later, I found the former to be puerile and insipid and the latter to be plodding and boring. And it killed me that I felt that way. One film from that era that stands the test of time for me is George Miller's The Road Warrior which was, is, and I think always will be, the best action film that I've ever seen. I never tire of that film. There are some problems with it, when they overcrank or undercrank the action and it just looks like a Mack Sennett comedy for a few seconds, I don't agree with that, they should have left it alone. The Shining is another one. That film terrified me when I first saw it and it's still the most beautiful horror film that I've ever seen. What are some of the other films that you've seen that have influenced your career?

JM: When I was a child, my father took me to see Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. We saw it at this old repertory movie theater near where we lived, and this film plays a little bit like sort of a light comedy. But to an eight-year-old kid like me, I found the film to be totally gripping. The idea in that film is that this woman suddenly disappears 10 minutes into the movie. And the audience is wondering where the hell did she go? I believe that that notion stayed in my subconscious all these years and in a way, Breakdown was my way of exercising that out of my subconscious. So, Breakdown is the film that kind of launched my career. Even though that is one of Hitchcock's lesser works, for me personally, it had a great influence. That's also a hard question to answer, because truthfully, I didn't see a great many movies growing up. By the time I had gotten to college, I don't believe I had seen more than 15 or 20 movies.

TG: What films did you initially not like, then you watched them again later on and had a different experience and ended up really liking them?

JM: I have to be honest, there are very few films that I've seen multiple times. Once I've seen a film, that's it. I've seen it. I remember seeing an interview one time with a filmmaker, and it came out in the interview that once he was done with the film he never sees it again. And I hadn't directed any movie prior to seeing that interview. And I remember thinking how crazy that was! I thought to myself if I'd directed a movie, I would watch it every week! Sure enough, I found that once I finished the film, I've never gone back to watch it again. Ever! Breakdown, of course, is the exception because I watched it with Kurt Russell while we did the commentary for it. You see it more than once when you're traveling around the world, doing press screenings and that sort of thing. But psychologically for me, I'm just done. And I move on. I have seen Goodfellas a few times. That's one that comes to mind. Other movies that I've seen before, I might catch a few scenes of it here or there on television. But I generally don't watch it again all the way through. I tend to not be a big repeat viewer. 

In closing, I just really appreciate that Paramount is releasing this movie on Blu-ray with our commentary track and all the extras. There are some really interesting interviews on it. We're actually including the alternate opening to the film on this disc. This is something that has never been shown to the public before.

TG: For me, that is worth the price of admission alone. Thank you very much for speaking with me, it’s been a pleasure.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

In Jonathan Mostow’s Breakdown (1997), Jeffrey and Amy Taylor (Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan) seem like a normal and nice middle-aged couple moving from New England to San Diego to hopefully start a new life from a past we are not privy to, though it’s one fraught with financial issues. On the way, Jeffrey nearly sideswipes a dirty brown Ford F150 while reaching for his thermos and suffers invective from the driver (M.C. Gainey). A minor confrontation ensues later when both men refuel at the same gas station. Words are exchanged. Upon leaving, the Taylor’s new Grand Cherokee soon malfunctions, and they are temporarily stranded as the F150 blows past them. Fortunately, an 18-wheeler soon stops to help. The truck’s driver, Red Barr (the fine character actor J.T. Walsh in his penultimate screen performance), gives Amy a ride to Belle’s Diner to call for help – except that she never makes it.

If you recall Steven Spielberg’s 1971 television film Duel, Dennis Weaver portrayed David Mann, an Everyman traveling to a sales account when his life suddenly changes after passing a huge oil truck. Incensed by this perceived breach of road etiquette, the truck driver chases and taunts Mann throughout the rest of the film. Duel is arguably the granddaddy of road rage movies, making riveting cinema out of a cat-and-mouse game that holds the audience’s attention the entire time. Likewise, Breakdown holds the equivalent mantle as it pertains to missing persons thrillers. As a horror film fan of forty years, there is little that I have seen that gets under my skin, George Sluizer’s icy 1988 Dutch/French character study Spoorloos, known in the States as The Vanishing, being a notable exception. Mr. Russell and Mr. Walsh have shared the screen multiples times together, specifically in Robert Towne’s Tequila Sunrise (1989), Ron Howard’s Backdraft (1991), and Stuart Baird’s Executive Decision (1994). Here they pair up again in a frightening game that begins when, following unsuccessful attempts to glean info from the patrons and owner of Belle’s Diner (a terrific turn by character actor Jack McGee), Jeffrey catches sight of Red’s truck and pulls him over to the side of the road. Jeffrey’s interrogation of Red regarding his wife’s whereabouts is met by a perplexing display of gaslighting when Red claims he doesn’t even know what Jeff is talking about. For a moment, we feel that perhaps this is even Red’s twin and that there has been a complete mix-up. Following a search of Red’s vehicle aided by a passing sheriff (Rex Linn), Jeffrey is, like Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) as described by Cliff Robertson in the 1973 documentary on Mr. Hitchcock, “a man alone – innocent, defenseless…” He realizes that it’s up to him to find Amy – and he has no idea who to trust or even where to begin. What follows is the most intense nail-biting thriller I’ve ever seen. I don’t want to oversell the film, but I will anyway. Jeffrey moves mountains to locate his wife and when he does, the tension and anxiety could not be more powerful. One thing I noticed: Red has white wings in his hair like the Paulie Walnuts character on The Sopranos.

The ending of Breakdown has been shrugged off by some critics as being unworthy of what comes before, and even “ludicrous”. I must respectfully disagree. By the end of the film, what we are looking for is a massive payoff, and I believe that we get it in spades. The “ludicrous” ending is, instead, tension-filled and satisfying. Detractors never seem to offer an alternative. I am personally thankful to Dino DeLaurentiis for making a go of it and letting Jonathan Mostow direct this film. Everyone has to start somewhere, and this directorial debut is remarkable.

In the days of VHS and laserdisc prior to large-screen televisions, Breakdown is a film that I owned on the latter format in a letterboxed edition. In 1998, the film suffered the indignity of a rather lackluster transfer on DVD when it was window-boxed and lacked 16 x 9 anamorphic enhancement, rendering the DVD nearly unwatchable. The new Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment is part of “Paramount Presents” which is described as a line of Blu-ray releases for collectors and fans showcasing movies that have generally not made it to Blu-ray before. Breakdown is number 26 in the list of titles of films showcased on Blu-ray in these new special editions. The new transfer is a revelation.

In addition to the new transfer, the Blu-ray contains the following extras:

A feature-length audio commentary with the director and Kurt Russell. If you have ever heard any of the previous commentaries that Mr. Russell has been involved with, specifically with director John Carpenter on Escape from New York (1981) and The Thing (1982), you know that he is one of the most entertaining people to listen to. He also has a phenomenal laugh and chuckles through most of the film, even making fun of Jeffrey! Hilarious. They speak about Dino DeLaurentiis; having gotten cinematographer Doug Milsom who worked on four films with Stanley Kubrick; Mr. Russell imitating Dennis Weaver in Duel (“You can’t catch me on the grade!”); the director discussing how he wrote a role for Morgan Freeman as a character whose wife was kidnapped and teams up with Jeffrey, the idea later wisely written out of the script; Roger Ebert criticized the bank scene, but the commentary states that they were rushed to get it done on the location but I think it works just fine. Overall, a truly fun and entertaining listen and easily the best extra.

Newly commissioned alternative artwork.

The musical score is isolated on one of the audio tracks, a great feature that I wish more companies would provide.

Filmmaker Focus - Jonathan Mostow (10:45) – This piece is a spotlight on the director that highlights much of what was said during the commentary.

Victory is Hers: Kathleen Quinlan on Breakdown (4:22) – I was so happy to see Kathleen Quinlan included in this edition and she discusses some of her experiences making the film.

A Brilliant Partnership: Martha De Laurentiis on Breakdown (8:18) – This is a piece dedicated to one of the producers of the film. Mrs. De Laurentiis worked with her late husband, Dino, on the film and this is a look at their partnership.

Alternate Opening with optional Jonathan Mostow commentary (11:00) – Along with the film’s commentary, this is a very cool piece to see, as its inclusion changes the whole mood of the film. The credits run slowly over the opening and the sequence establishes Jeffrey as all-thumbs – lightyears removed from the Snake Plissken Mr. Russell played fifteen years earlier. It was the correct decision to remove this footage, though I feel badly for the other actors in the scene to have been excised from such a terrific film!

Rounding out the extras are trailers for Breakdown, Kiss the Girls, and Hard Rain.

There are two Blu-rays of this film available, one from the Australian company Via Vision’s Imprint line and the Paramount Presents disc. Both Blu-rays are worth owning for die-hard fans of the film as they each contain completely different extras, but if you have to choose just one, I recommend the Paramount disc as it contains the director/actor commentary and the excised alternate opening.

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Click here to order the Via Vision Imprint disc from Amazon.com