Census Bloodbath: Fashion Victim

Year: 1980

Director: Brian De Palma

Cast: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes 

MPAA Rating: R

The slasher genre in 1980 was full of belated riffs on Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal slashterpiece Psycho, from the sleazy motel settings of Silent Scream and The Unseen to the All-American killers of Fade to Black and Schizoid. Hell, Don’t Go in the House is literally about a mother-obsessed killer who takes orders from her corpse and murders women in his secluded home. But if you want to see a Hitch rip-off done right, look no further than his premier acolyte Brian De Palma.

De Palma’s 1980 feature Dressed to Kill almost doesn’t count as a slasher movie. The body count is anemic, and if the investigation into a single murder qualified a film as a slasher, we’d be stuck reviewing hundreds of crappy whodunits and nobody wants that. But Dressed to Kill is so eagerly, flamboyantly translating Psycho for the modern era that there’s no way it could be excluded. If you haven’t seen Psycho, tread no further, because the spoilers are instant and abundant.

Anthony Perkins was an alien the whole time!

From the first-act murder of the apparent main character to the transvestite villain to the Dr. Explain-o character who arrives at the end to dump a heaping pile of exposition for the slower members of the audience, Dressed to Kill doesn’t just pay homage to Hitchcock’s film. It mugs it, beats it to a pulp, and rummages through the pockets of its broken, bleeding form, feverishly searching for another fix of suspense. It’s tarted up with certain, more 80’s-oriented details, blood, and nudity, but it’s a bald-faced, brazen act of copycatting.

When frustrated housewife Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) is slashed to death by an enraged transvestite, the only witness and prime suspect is high-end escort Liz Blake (Nancy Allen). In order to clear her name, Liz teams up with Kate’s son Peter (Keith Gordon) to solve the murder. They start by investigating the records of her therapist Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine), who ahs been receiving threatening phone calls from a transsexual ex-patient of his but has hidden this fact from the police.

He’s the doctor Kate deserves, but not the one she needs right now.

Fortunately, one good thing Dressed to Kill has going for it is that of the very few contemporary directors with the chops to remix Hitchcock, De Palma is one of the best. He brings enough of his own personality and aesthetic to the table that it frequently doesn't feel like a trite imitation, which is really something of a miracle.

De Palma’s chilly, precise style is more or less the defining feature of Dressed to Kill, a film that’s intrinsically about surfaces and how they reflect and refract reality. The fractured identity of the killer is represented by the use of deliberately placed mirrors in the corners of shots, giving us a distorted second angle of the character in the frame. On top of that, we get a bunch of gooey cinematic gloss that glides right off the screen, from the director’s signature split-screen effect (which he only utilizes once, though frequently some element in a single frame like a wall or a doorway will also act as an in-shot splitting device) to an elegantly-timed series of smash cuts.

Dressed to Kill finds a cinematic master at the top of his game, so much so that you almost don’t notice the tawdry, shallow nature of the plot. I really don’t want to launch into a political diatribe and I won’t, except to say that the transsexual antagonist is a blatant case of vilifying the Other that lacks the relative sensitivity and/or lampshading that makes it slightly easier to swallow a film like Silence of the Lambs. But even beyond that, Nancy Allen is a protagonist with very little agency, being yanked through a plot that could have easily gone on without her. A plot which also ends ten minutes too late, going all-in on a tacky shock gag that lessens the film’s impact and drains every last drop of energy the film has accumulated.

But Nancy Allen gets naked, so apparently this scene’s presence is justified.

Dressed to Kill certainly boasts its share of suspense, especially in the central setpiece of Kate’s murder in an elevator. The deliberate pacing and gorgeous cinematography are reminiscent of the best of the Italian giallo, and this approach works wonders once more in a scene set in the flickering, claustrophobic interior of a subway train.

Occasionally, this pacing will hit a snag and drag on a bit too long, like in the part-stalking, part-seduction sequence set in a museum (this scene is also littered with completely inscrutable, unmotivated actions that dilute whatever emotion its attempting to convey), but for the most part Dressed to Kill is a tightly-wound thriller working with clockwork precision.

It’s far from a perfect film, and I’m not tempted to retroactively add it to my Best of 1980 list, but it is nonetheless a movie without peer in its station within the rise of the slasher. This kind of glamorous, upscale approach to the subgenre would become quite common in the early 90’s (Sleeping with the Enemy, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct), but at the time the idea of a slasher rising from the gutter of grindhouse cheapies was a far-off dream.

Dressed to Kill is a contradiction: ahead of its time and tragically retrograde, classy and tactless, a cheap rip-off and an aesthetic triumph. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s definitely unique, and that’s always worth something,

Killer: Bobbi [(Michael Caine)]

Final Girl: Liz (Nancy Allen)

Best Kill: It’s not like there’s really a choice here, but the elevator slashing is quite gorgeous.

Sign of the Times: Kate’s conquest has a newfangled digital clock that’s s elaborate it looks like a nuclear device.

Scariest Moment: Liz is chased through the subway by a gang, leading her right into the arms of the killer.

Weirdest Moment: Kate tries to convince her son that the general Napoleon invented the baked good napoleon.

Champion Dialogue: “You’ve got a lot better motivation than I do: your ass.”

Body Count: 2

1. Kate Miller is slashed to death with a straight razor.
2. Nurse is choked to death.

TL;DR: Dressed to Kill is a beautiful piece of filmmaking, but the plot is a downright shambles with a tasteless core.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1075

At Least The House Was Terrific

Year: 1987

Director: Joseph Sargent

Cast: Lorraine Gary, Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles 

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A scant four years after the previous entry, Jaws: The Revenge sank the floundering killer fish franchise for good. There’s been scarcely a blip on the radar since, even during the horror remake tsunami of the mid-2000’s. How could that be? How could one of the most iconic franchises in history, the franchise that more or less defined blockbuster cinema as we know it, be dead in the water just 12 years after it first dipped its toe in? Maybe the fourth and final film holds the key.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

So, who are we even dealing with here? Franchise stalwarts Sean and Michael Brody reappear, though none of the six actors who have played those roles over the years saw fit to return (Mitchell Anderson fills the role of the former, Halloween II’s Lance Guest the latter). Roy Scheider says “the Devil himself” couldn’t have convinced him to return as Chief Brody, so he cameos as a portrait hanging up in the police station (businesses in the movie universe love to overly honor old employees who shouldn’t really be that important to them). That leaves us with… Lorraine Gary?

That’s right, Jaws: The Revenge more or less centers upon Gary’s Mrs. Brody, hammily suffering a bout of grief after her son Sean is tragically felled by Amity Island’s third Great White shark attack since 1975. Rent must be really affordable there or something. She takes refuge on an island in the Bahamas while her son Michael – looking the sexiest he’s ever looked, and yes that matters a lot – works as a marine biologist. While Mrs. Brody attempts to cope by caring for her daughter-in-law Carla (Karen Young) and granddaughter Thea (Judith Barsi) and tentatively falling in love with the intrepid airplane pilot Hoagie (Michael Caine, who famously took the role so he could buy a house and has never seen the movie), she fears that her family may still be in danger.

Meanwhile, Michael and his sassy coworker Jake (Mario Van Peebles) discover that a Great White is lurking in the tropical waters, seemingly with an eye toward devouring the Brodys out of some sort of vaguely defined “revenge.” Jake wants to study the shark, and Michael agrees - while hiding the fact from his family - because he is a supernaturally stupid human being.

At least you’re pretty, Mike.

Jaws: The Revenge is the film out of the four that most resembles a stupid horror movie, and that’s actually a plus in my book. If the whole movie focused on Lorraine Gary sobbing behind a pair of elegant sunglasses and locking lips with a supremely disinterested Michael Caine, I would want to dump a bucket of chum over my head and hurl myself into the nearest ocean. But no, we gets lots of “sitting bolt upright in bed after a nightmare” sequences, jump scares involving eels, no fewer than two presumed dead characters miraculously appearing unharmed (at least, depending on which cut you’re watching), and a shark battling a plane. Jaws: The Revenge is totally cuckoo, and that’s its saving grace.

Because boy oh boy does it just not work as a movie. Michael Brody being a drooling idiot I can accept, because audiences have been watching that happen since 1978. But the rest of the plot relies on characters actively pushing against their survival instincts for absolutely no reason. Jake’s shark-studying mania rivals Mayor Vaughn’s for sheer gluttonous hubris, and Ellen Brody’s constant staring-off-into-space sessions are excellent for padding the film with flashbacks to earlier entries (all scenes where she patently was not present, mind you), but in no way reflect the actions of an actual human being.

And the effects! Every consecutive Jaws movie has had worse special effects than the previous entry, and they started off with a film whose effects were so dodgy that the behind-the-scenes struggles are household knowledge. It shouldn’t be that hard to top Jaws’ malfunctioning shark, but this entry’s Bruce the Fourth (which we see in exact, inch-by-inch detail far too often) looks like nothing more than a piece of carved foam which has clearly been dented by overuse floating listlessly through the water. 

Though I guess I shouldn’t expect much from a film that can’t even pull off a “missing arm” gag. When Sean Brody’s appendage is devoured, his left side turns into an art installation of layered rain slicker material that more resembles a papier-mâché flower than actual gore. Also the sky in this one scene is literally a wall that’s painted grey.

Star Wars this ain’t.

The shark attack sequences are also terrible, presenting muddled flashes of close-ups that completely lack any sort of style of coherent geography. Literally the only thing this film adds to the Jaws canon is these little splashes of water during the shark POV shots that bob up and down through the surf. Nevermind that the shark doesn’t swim with its eyes above the water, at least there’s a scrap of a sense that there’s a human being behind the camera.

So.. that’s that, I guess. Jaws: The Revenge is horribly conceived and executed in every possible way. Its thorough stupidity does lend it a kind of dopey charm that makes it completely bearable to sit through, but Lorraine Gary treats this like it’s Ellen Brody Gets Her Groove Back, and she couldn’t carry this pile of narrative rubble if she tried. Frankly, there’s no reason I can think of to watch any more after the original Jaws, and I’m not even especially keen on that one.

But then again… Jaws: The Revenge is technically a Christmas movie, so that’s fun (the opening shark attack takes place just before Christmas, and the Caribbean scenes take us through the local Boxing Day celebration of Junkanoo and the New Year. Also a side character’s birthday. Pretty much every holiday in the book gets name-checked at one point or another.). You can add that to your holiday season counterprogramming playlist right next to Die Hard and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. And I honestly wouldn’t mind watching this again. It’s horrendously insipid, but I’d sooner rewatch it than Jaws 2 or Jaws 3-D. Which is something, I guess.

TL;DR: Jaws: The Revenge is a goofy patch on the already faded Jaws franchise, but it's at least admirably dumb.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1080

Reviews In This Series
Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
Jaws 2 (Szwarc, 1978)
Jaws 3-D (Alves, 1983)
Jaws: The Revenge (Sargent, 1987)

Frog Bless Us, Every One

Year: 1992

Director: Brian Henson

Cast: Michael Caine, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire 

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: G

So, here we are. The reason I foolishly decided to begin a Muppet marathon in the month leading up to Star Wars VII, only the biggest blockbuster event in the annals of blog history. No, The Muppet Christmas Carol does not hold the same currency as a review of, say, The Empire Strikes Back. But as a fiendish bit of counterprogramming, it works perfectly, injecting a bit of felt-covered family fun into the Popcorn Culture Christmas season, which is generally a notoriously bloody affair.

The Muppet Christmas Carol, released in 1992, heralds in the darkest stretch of our retrospective, the decade immediately following Jim Henson’s tragic death in 1990. Steve Whitmire does an admirable job covering his shifts as the classic characters Kermit the Frog, Rizzo the Rat, and Beaker, but with the loss of Henson, the floppy ensemble also lost their guiding light, that indomitable spark that twinkled at the core of their features. That is not to say that Muppet Christmas Carol is a bad movie. But it is profoundly lacking in that Something that even the worst Muppet features contained.

Cough, cough, Great Muppet Caper.

The Muppet Christmas Carol begins by immediately bringing back the meta absent from the previous entry with hurricane force. Gonzo (Dave Goelz) and Rizzo (Steve Whitmire) welcome us to the film. Gonzo is portraying Charles Dickens as the interactive narrator to the story. As much as he is, in the film, wholly and irrevocably Charles Dickens, we are meant to understand that he is also wholly and irrevocably Gonzo. And both of them, whoever they are, have chosen to partner with a Guido rat to tell us the story. I bet you thought these movies wouldn’t require several advanced degrees in rhetorical logic, but these are still the Muppets we’re talking about, Henson or no Henson.

Anyway, Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge (Michael Caine, somehow) is a miserable, miserly old man who hates Christmas, charity, the poor, and pretty much anything that doesn’t rhyme with “honey.” He is cruel to his employees, including the kindly Bob Cratchett (Kermit (Steve Whitmire)), who lives in destitution with his wife (Miss Piggy (Frank Oz)) and their kids, including the crippled but loving Tiny Tim (Robin (Jerry Nelson)). You know the story, weed of Christmas past – whoops, sorry, I got my The Night Before notes mixed up in there. Ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future arrive to show Scrooge the error of his ways and teach him to respect the spirit of Christmas.

Side note: There are serial murderers less creepy than the Ghost of Christmas Past.

It is at this point that I should probably note that this was the moment in Muppet history where the Disney company first decided to get their hands dirty in the franchise, preparing for the purchase of Jim Henson Studios. Perhaps this is the reason Muppet Christmas Carol feels more like a cheery, corporatized slog. Perhaps it was the loss of Henson, or the advent of that most peculiar epoch known as the 90’s. Whatever the reason, this film, despite continuing the Muppet legacy of solid family content, feels altogether more typical and uninspired than ever before.

It certainly doesn’t help that the film’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ morality tale is slavishly faithful, even to the point of including full, direct passages because you know how much kiddos love their 19th century literature. Although this does have the intriguing effect of preserving the abjecet horror present in the material, it stifles the ability of the Muppets to do anything other than paint in the numbers, occasionally breaking into one of a litany of mostly boilerplate theater in the park songs. Except for the addition of a little juvenile slapstick here and there, the film is just another lump of coal in the bucker of generic Christmas Carol adaptations, of which there have been literally dozens since the birth of cinema.

Perhaps the single biggest flaw at the core of the film is Michael Caine. This feels like utter heresy to say, but it’s true. He coasts through the film, leaning on his inherent Britishisms to provide an adequately curmudgeonly performance, but nothing more. Many talented actors have trouble interacting with the Muppets (my least favorite being those who pitch up their voices and overact like they’re talking to a damn child with a poopy diaper – don’t they know who they’re dealing with?), but what he’s asked to do here (fly into a time portal with a china doll, shout angrily at a tiny bunny rabbit, and – worst of all – sing) seems to completely flummox him.

The other unfortunate effect of Caine’s starring role is that even the A-list Muppets are sidelined. Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear (Frank Oz) literally get less screen time than freaking Bunsen Honeydew, and even Kermit hops out of the film for massive stretches. The ghosts and the bulk of the ensemble aren’t even played by recognizable characters! This is a Muppet film that blatantly flaunts its lack of the Muppets, and it suffers greatly for it. Caine is called upon for no comedy at all, and the classic characters are trapped in treacherously serious side roles, so the results are bleakly dull for a miserably large proportion of the time.

I never thought I’d actually be happy to see Electric Mayhem on my TV screen.

If you take the film at face value as a Dickens adaptation, it is acceptable holiday fodder, but from a Muppet fan perspective, it’s an undue slog. The one place where the film really shines with the proper intensity is in its overall aesthetic. The gingerbread Olde England architecture that populates the sets is imbued with a whimsical, dare I say expressionistic, twist that reliably induces the proper sense of fantasy with wonky, tilted designs that delight the eyes.

Muppet Christmas Carol also retains the daring, rule-breaking puppetry that defined all the previous films. Although, there are none of the bicycle shots that Muppet  filmmakers inexplicably adored in the 80’s, we get ice skating Muppets, floating ghost Muppets in chains, and an indescribably stunning shot of Kermit walking down the street with Tiny Tim on his shoulder humming a Christmas ditty. That moment more than any other captures the sentimental magic of the franchise in a perfect little microcosm. Put that crap in a snowglobe, and I’d buy a dozen.

So no, I don’t hate The Muppet Christmas Carol. It is as far from being my favorite Muppet movie as my 12-pushups-a-day physique is from Chris Evans. But as a film, it is at the very least tolerable and from time to time, pretty fun. The Muppets were still reeling from the loss of Jim Henson, as they would be for a decade and change, but this is perhaps the best iteration of his legacy made during that period, even if the choice of material was certifiably dubious.

TL;DR: The Muppet Christmas Carol is a dully devoted adaptation that sidelines its most lovable characters.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1189
Reviews In This Series
The Muppet Movie (Frawley, 1979)
The Great Muppet Caper (Henson, 1981)
The Muppets Take Manhattan (Oz, 1984)
The Muppet Christmas Carol (Henson, 1992)
Muppet Treasure Island (Henson, 1996)
Muppets from Space (Hill, 1999)
The Muppets (Bobin, 2011)
Muppets Most Wanted (Bobin, 2014)