A double dose of the devil from the year of my birth

The first movies I've rewatched in ages whose release year didn't start with "201" were actually released in the year I was born.

On Saturday night, I had planned to actually watch a different movie from the year of my birth and then a movie from the 1990s, but I had to adapt on the fly and ended up with quite the spontaneous double feature.

Jesus Christ Superstar from my own collection was supposed to be that movie from the year of my birth, 1973. But we've been having problems with our DVD player lately and it just wouldn't play. I got the little red Ghostbusters symbol when I pushed the play button on the face of the player. The ability to remotely control this device from its native remote control, a different smart remote control or an app on my phone is part of its myriad problems and has long since gone by the wayside.

So I had to pivot to what ended up being another movie from 1973, The Wicker Man. This was only a coincidence, as the way I found it was not thinking "What's another good movie from 1973?" but rather looking at the stack of movies I just borrowed from the library on Friday. (Incidentally, one of my favorite moments from the new viewing year is when you go to the library and load up on titles without worrying about whether they help you form some kind of list or not.) The Wicker Man was actually the only movie in that group that I had already seen -- once, about four years ago -- so it helped scratch the itch of rewatching something rather than watching something new. That it would keep the groovy vibes of 1973, which I had intended to produce via Jesus Christ Superstar, was an added bonus.

You might have expected me to run into a similar wall as I had with JCS, since both were DVDs, but my player would play this one. Who knows. Maybe the issue was that JCS originated in the U.S. while this one was an Australian DVD, but it shouldn't matter since our player is region-free. Anyway.

The second movie was going to be The Cable Guy, just because. But once I'd gotten to the end of The Wicker Man, I tried JCS again to see if the successful playing of The Wicker Man had somehow resolved the player's stubbornness about JCS. It had not. But having made this attempt, I realized it would be nice to keep going with the early 1970s vibe I was working on, and having to pivot again from JCS allowed me to keep the horror vibe going as well.

I'm not sure if it was the release year itself that was more responsible for the pivot I chose, or the fact that I've been trying to get this movie on my viewing schedule for the first time in two decades, but I ended up finding The Exorcist streaming on Netflix, remembering correctly that I'd seen it there. It was kind of a shame not to watch this in October, as I did the last time I saw it (Halloween of 1999, in the theater no less), but I didn't want to wait another nine months to watch it when I could watch it right now.

It may not be totally accurate to call these both "devil movies," as the paganism of the citizens of Summerisle sets itself up in opposition to Christianity in a way that does not specifically align itself with the devil. An outsider might (and does) characterize them as devil worshippers, but they would not see themselves that way. But they were definitely both 1973 horrors, which made me realize what a great year for horror that was. There may not be any other examples (I'd have to look), but I reckon truly chilling horror movies that endure for decades don't come along very often. You're lucky to get one per year let alone two.

I also noted that the films would make a great double feature for Ari Aster to show anyone who wanted to understand his influences. The impact of The Wicker Man on Midsommar is obvious to the point of hitting you between the eyes, and this viewing was particularly instructive for me in light of seeing the latter film twice within the past six months. You wouldn't call Midsommar a remake of The Wicker Man, but it has enough elements in common that The Wicker Man is certainly the first film you'd name if you were trying to find a film most similar to Midsommar. It warrants no additional examination here.

The influence of The Exorcist on Hereditary might not be quite as evident, but it's plain as day as soon as you unpack it. Both films deal with the incursion of the devil into an innocent host, and this innocent host is actually a young girl (a 12-year-old girl?) in both instances. (Nope, Charlie is 13 in Hereditary -- totally different.) Hereditary's Gabrielle Byrne even looks a bit like Jason Miller's Father Karras, plus Toni Colette and Ellen Burstyn both give tour-de-force performances of grief.

But the thing that really interests me is the way the physicality of devil possession in The Exorcist influenced countless future horror filmmakers, Aster in particular. Regan McNeill is of course famous for the way her head can spin all the way around and the way her body can contort -- not only the writing of "help me" in her stomach and the way her body folds up at 90 degree angles to the bed, but, in a director's cut that I did not see on Saturday, the way she crawls down the stairs, crab-like, her stomach pointing toward the ceiling. That same sensibility appears in Hereditary when [a character] (might as well not spoil it) is seen clinging to the underside of the attic door, repeatedly banging his/her head against the door in a rapid motion no human being could produce.

I've probably taken up enough of your time but I'll end with a few assorted observations from my viewings of these two films.

- Brit Ekland's seductive Wicker Man nude dance remains a terrific moment of 1970s glory, as does the use of the song "Corn Rigs." In fact, I wondered as I was watching whether this movie was nearly as good when it came out as it is now. Its ability to capture a specific place and time is one of its charms, and in 1973, it would have just been a contemporary movie.

- I love the moment when Edward Woodward's character is searching houses for the missing Rowan Morrison, and what appears to be the body of a young girl falls out of a wardrobe. She seems perfectly corpse-like when she hits the ground. But then she kind of rolls her eye up toward him and grins, to indicate it's all been a joke. It's a neat acting trick and it's creepy as hell.

- The strength of Woodward's religious fervor at the end is something to behold, especially when contrasted with the similar level of fervor displayed by Lord Summerisle and his followers. It's an interesting potential bit of commentary by Robin Hardy. Who is the real wacko here?

- I'm not sure if this was the first use of animal masks in a horror movie -- probably not -- but it's incredibly chilling.

- I love the final shot of The Wicker Man, as the camera travels past the burning head of the wicker man to the setting sun, which goes behind the clouds in the time it takes for the credits to roll. That could not have been easy to pull off.

- I love the Northern Iraq prelude in The Exorcist. It doesn't at first seem like it has anything to do with the rest of the movie, but it sets the tone, which is particularly interesting as it all occurs in the daylight.

- I can't believe that Max Von Sydow, who is still around at 90 years old, was playing old in a movie that came out 46 years ago. He was only 44 in this movie and yet he has to take pills to control some kind of palsy in his hands. Also, the other priests in Washington openly wonder if he is too old to perform an exorcism. Now granted, they used makeup to make him look older, but there's no way Von Sydow looks two years younger than I am now. Maybe I'm baby-faced but it was a bit shocking to consider. It made me think of how young Ian McDiarmid actually was when he played old as the emperor in Return of the Jedi, a fact I feel like I discuss on a regular basis because I'm just so impressed by it. Which is funny because Von Sydow also appears in a Star Wars movie, very briefly, playing old when he was actually old in The Force Awakens. When you consider that The Wicker Man's Christopher Lee also has an extensive Star Wars history from the prequel trilogy, that is quite the set of coincidences indeed.

- I still think possibly the single most disturbing moment is when Regan comes downstairs during her mother's party and looks blankly at the guests, saying "You're going to die out there" and urinating on the floor. I'm getting goosebumps just typing it.

- I continue to remain impressed at how raw they allow things to get in terms of Regan's language and actions, as she drops a bunch of f-bombs and appears to stab herself in her own vagina with a crucifix. This was not your father's horror movie.

- I love the editing in this film, as William Friedkin (or really, his editors, Evan Lottman and Norman Gray) have no trouble smash-cutting out of a seemingly important moment and into the next scene. I refer specifically to Father Karras sitting with the other priest in the diner (I believe it is) and saying "I've lost my faith." Most films would allow a moment for the other priest to react and try to convince him that this is too rash of a stance. Instead, by cutting immediately to the next scene, it leaves no doubt about the fact that this is a true statement and he really means it. Which makes his steady recovery of his faith over the course of the rest of the narrative all the more powerful to behold.

Okay, fast forward again to present day, and onward.

The folly of remaking something unique

I'm away for the weekend and supposed to be taking a small break from blogging, but the wifi is strong where I'm staying, and I've got a moment alone with my computer and my morning coffee on a balcony, so ... instinct took over.

Last night at this resort where we're staying near Phillip Island (about 120 k from Melbourne), I finally got started on some personal viewing at around 11 p.m., so I sought out the shortest thing I'd brought with me -- which happened to be the original 1973 version of The Wicker Man, borrowed from the library. It clocked in at a brisk 84 minutes, so it was easily the winner.

Having seen the Nicolas Cage/Neil Labute remake almost exactly eight years ago -- to honor the 366th day of 2008, February 29th, with something notably awful -- I'd always harbored a curiosity about the original, and whether the seeds for what went so wrong in the Cage/Labute version were visible there.

They were, but not in the ways I had expected.

It wasn't that the original was so deliciously campy and that Labute had either deliberately or accidentally brought the same tone to his remake. Rather, what was wrong was the decision to remake it in the first place.

I was riveted by this odd movie, directed by a guy I'd never heard of named Robin Hardy. I'd never heard of him because he didn't make another movie for 13 years after The Wicker Man, and then it was 25 more years before his next (and most recent) directorial effort ... though he's still going at age 86, and has a project on wikipedia whose release date is listed as TBA.

Well, if I'd been a film industry person who'd seen The Wicker Man in 1973 (which would have been tricky as I was being born that year), I would have given Hardy his next job right away. It's strange and mysterious and discomfiting, while also being kitschy in just the right ways -- and while also sort of being a musical.

A musical? Yes, there are about five different songs in this movie, sung by the actors. They're front-loaded, as that kind of thing drops away in the second half, but they are honest-to-goodness songs, some sung diagetically, some sung as apparent commentaries on the action. Some are gloriously cheeky early 70s flower children songs, and some are gloriously cheeky early 70s flower children songs with a sinister undertone. All work perfectly in terms of orienting us in the film's time period and all make the action a bit more chilling than it would be on its own.

The action? It's like the plot of Labute's remake in many ways, if I remember correctly, which is certainly to be expected. But so different from it in key ways.

One difference that I found unaccountable, and even more damning of Labute's project once I know about it, is that Labute chose to make the central pagan group (religious sect? cult?) into an entirely distaff affair. This key choice to have it an organization composed entirely of women is simply not present in Hardy's film. There are certainly powerful women who appear here, but no more centrally then some powerful men, notably Christopher Lee as the group's leader (called Lord Summerisle, named after the very beautiful Scottish isle on which this movie was shot). There's also one chilling scene where a female teacher is instructing a class of entirely girls on the phallic symbolism of the maypole, a scene that was recreated in the remake (as I was reminded by watching an awesome five-minute "best (worst?) moments of The Wicker Man" video on youtube). There's definitely something provocative about the fact that they are all female in that class. But Hardy's movie does not go on to suggest that the women have a dominant position in this society, and that makes Labute's choice to extrapolate that reading all the more problematic ... especially when their ungodly sacrificial tendencies are so feral, so unambiguously evil. This also majorly complicates the gender dynamics in any scene where Cage is forced to punch one of them out (this happens multiple times) and even, in one case, fell one with a karate kick. These scenes are simultaneously comical, which gets at exactly the moral complexity of what goes wrong in Labute's film, which certainly invites charges of misogyny when taken in comparison to the original.

The other thing that humorously weighs Labute down is his decision to fixate on bees. Some of the moments of greatest humor from that five-minute youtube video involve Cage's reaction to having a mesh chamber that resembles a fencing helmet placed over his head, and having bees poured into that helmet, which attack Cage's face and inspire some of his most outrageous acting. (Though I'll be damned if I remember that actually appearing in the film version -- I wonder if it was a deleted scene.) Labute incorporates bee imagery into some other allegedly disturbing images he includes in his film. That's not in the original either. Although this pagan group wants to make a sacrifice to return its harvest to its former glory, it's a harvest of produce, particularly apples. Maybe Labute just thought Hardy would have made his movie about bees if it were possible to create digital bees in 1973.

Another thing I found particularly striking about the original is that Edward Woodward's police detective is a man of strong Christian faith, which sets him up in opposition to the pagans (and makes him an ideal candidate for sacrifice in their view). That may have been present in Labute's film as well (eight years and more than two thousand films has a way of clouding the memory), but it didn't register much to me at the time, or if it did it was also in that realm of the unintentionally comical that suffuses the whole movie. Woodward seems like a true believer, which lends extra conviction to everything and makes the contrast all the more powerful.

In a way, it was a stroke of cinematic good taste for someone to have seen a film like Hardy's The Wicker Man and imagined that its eerie goodness should be brought to a modern audience. But especially with the film's indispensable flower child quality, it isn't really translatable to 2006 without losing a good portion of the mood that gives it its power. Also, it should have been perfectly evident to this person of good taste that this is a singular movie, one that maybe never should have existed in the first place, and certainly shouldn't exist twice. The same good taste that served them in recognizing the greatness of Hardy's movie abandoned them in informing their judgment about a possible remake.

As I am trying to be a bit more measured in my praise of films in terms of their star ratings, I gave The Wicker Man four stars on Letterboxd, though I toyed with that additional half star. It's a treat for anyone who likes those niche horrors that seemed to have jumped out of the 1970s and escaped our universe altogether. That sense of being untethered from what we know and have seen before is absolutely a good thing.

And absolutely something they never could have captured in a remake.

Though I probably shouldn't close this piece without acknowledging that Labute did give us something completely out there, in the sense that his Wicker Man has become something of a modern classic in terms of movies that are so bad they're good. I shouldn't close this piece without acknowledging that there's some value in having done that -- in fact, great value. I'm glad I live in a world where this awful version of The Wicker Man exists, a version we can all laugh about together.

And without that awful version, I might never have discovered the chilling original.

Leap Day Schlocktacularfest

Is two times enough for a tradition?

When we watched The Wicker Man four years ago, I happened to notice that it was on February 29th. I thought that this day, which only comes along once every four years, demanded a special movie, and The Wicker Man certainly qualified.

If you haven't seen The Wicker Man, well, I invite you to keep it that way. Unless you're like me and have a perverse desire to endure utter crap for 100 minutes. If you merely want to know what makes The Wicker Man so crappy, I invite you to check out this instead:



There! Now you know why it was so special.

So in the last few weeks, when I knew that February 29th was approaching, I wondered what movie might be worthy enough to carry on the torch of Leap Day craptacularity that began with The Wicker Man in 2008. It would have to be something epically bad to truly be eligible to recognize the rarity of a February 29th.

Enter Howard the Duck.

Howard the Duck has been on our Netflix instant queue for over a year, and I'd say a half-dozen times I was on the verge of starting to watch it. But each of those times, it was late at night, and I needed something that was more like an hour and twenty minutes, rather than an hour fifty-one.

I had to try to sneak it in late at night, because my wife wanted no part of it. For good reason -- no person who values their time should.

Fortunately, I do not value my time.

So when my wife told me a couple days ago that she was going out to a free seminar for web producers on Wednesday night, I quickly realized that Wednesday was February 29th, and I quickly realized that Howard the Duck's time had finally come.

Over the 25 years since it hit theaters, I've had plenty of time to wonder how bad it could truly be. The rumors were that its quality was legendarily bad, but don't go rush right out and see it -- it's the bad kind of bad, not the good kind of bad. Aside from the few moving images I saw of it in commercials advertising its release, though, I didn't know precisely what was so bad about it.

Well, now I know.

If there were one word I could use to describe Howard the Duck, it would be "wrong-headed." (If you'll allow the hyphen in making it one word.) For how much the movie seems like it probably cost -- it boasts a few visual effects and makeup effects that would have been state-of-the-art at the time -- there was so little thought put into whether it would appeal to anybody.

The movie is basically about a duck living in a world very much like our own, except instead of monkeys being the progenitors of the planet's dominant species, ducks are. (This stolen almost verbatim from the movie's most clear-headed passage.) They've evolved to about exactly the spot that humans on Earth had evolved by the mid-1980s -- the posters on the wall of Howard's shabby apartment say Breeders of the Lost Stork and Splashdance, with ducks filling the iconic poses that Harrison Ford and Jennifer Beals made famous on Earth. Very soon after we meet Howard, however, he is sucked through a wormhole into another dimension as a voiceover explains that in the universe, all possible realities exist. Naturally, the reality Howard now finds himself in has a striking similarity to his own -- the people even speak the same language as he does. Only, this is the mean streets of Cleveland on planet Earth, not the very similar looking place he came from.

What follows is a series of misadventures involving Howard, a daffy rock star played by Lea Thompson, a daffy lab assistant played by Tim Robbins, and a daffy scientist played by Jeffrey Jones. In fact, the only character who really isn't all that daffy is the duck. He talks and acts kind of like an acerbic Jewish accountant, one who is generally pretty horny. The mission is ostensibly to return Howard to his own dimension using the same scientific equipment that brought him here, but in the process of that, Jones' character's body is taken over by that of a dark overlord who is trying to bring more dark overlords down to Earth. It's up to Howard to save the Earth. Naturally, he and Thompson's character also fall in love along the way.

This description may sound pretty bad, but it's the details of this movie that really make it so odd. For starters, I thought it was very strange that this movie received a PG rating, especially since the PG-13 rating had already been introduced into the rating system. In fact, this movie has numerous moments that would never fly in a PG movie today, and might not even make it into a PG-13 movie. For example, there are two instances of duck tits. That's right, duck tits. Naked tits on ducks -- one a photograph in a magazine (called Playduck, natch), one on a live topless duck in a bathtub. In fact, I wanted to call this post "Duck tits and other disasters." Hmm, maybe that would have been more attention-grabbing.

Just a select few more moments that pushed the PG rating:

- Inexplicably, while looking through Howard's wallet, Thompson's character finds a condom in it. Not only are we invited to think of sex in general, we are invited to think of duck sex.
- When Howard gets a job in Cleveland through an employment agency, it's at some kind of erotic pleasure palace where half-naked customers are going at each other and constantly running off into private rooms.
- The movie lingers on a scene of Thompson wearing only pink lingerie. She almost takes her top off and appears on the verge of having sex with Howard.
- Howard is always talking about how he's going to kill somebody.
- There are several scenes of semi-intense violence, including a brawl in and alley and a brawl in a bar where Howard smashes a bottle of liquor over someone's head. During this scene he also uses an ice pick to threaten a punk with ripping out his earring.
- The monster Jones transforms into is too scary for today's PG, and is just unpleasant in general.
- When the monster shoots rays at people, they convulse in a seizure. One person even disappears, presumably to his death.

It was stuff like this that caused them to invent the PG-13 rating in the first place. Yet I suspect they thought kids would be one of the biggest audiences for this movie. If you've watched this movie, you know how absurd that conclusion was.

Really, this movie is for no one. It's odd and disjointed and unfunny and poorly acted.

I can't say that I had a bad time watching it, but I did start to fall asleep at the end.

There are probably plenty of other things I could tell you about Howard the Duck, but let's just leave it at that. I've suffered enough watching it, and you've suffered enough reading about it. Besides, if you're like me and do want to subject yourself to Howard the Duck, you'll want a couple surprises still to discover yourself.

Now that I've got this tradition going, I can't wait for Sunday, February 29th, 2016.

I've got nearly four years to figure out the next worthy entrant into this series.