Census Bloodbath: Computer? I Hardly Know Her!

Year:
1985

Director:
Andy Anderson

Cast:
John S. Davies, Lauren Lane, Michael Hendrix
Run Time: 1 hour 18 minutes

Plot: Interface follows Professor Rex Hobson (John S. Davies), who teaches a computer class as a local college and moonlights as a hacker. He becomes the primary suspect in a series of slayings that is being perpetrated by the Circle of Logicians, a cult of masked computer programmers who believe that they are ridding the world of evil. He reluctantly teams up with Amy Witherspoon (Lauren Lane of The Nanny), the resentful wife of his student Bobby (Michael Hendrix), when she shows up brandishing a gun and attempting to get to the bottom of things. Honestly, I'm not actually sure what her goal is, and she's mostly not sure how to accomplish it, so at least we're in the same boat. Anyway, the distrustful pair begin to fall for one another as they become targets of both the police and the computer cult.

Analysis: Weirdly, immediately after watching Post Mortem - Return to Carnage Hall, we are encountering another Texas-based student film, this time produced by the film program of University of Texas at Arlington. Even more weirdly, this one was also a pretty good time.

But let's make one thing clear. Interface is a weird movie, and that is not a word I throw around lightly. The fact that the original goal of the Circle of Logicians was merely to throw paint on evildoers is but the tip of the iceberg. Eventually the movie mutates into this bizarre femme fatale romantic comedy of errors that blends a 1970s conspiracy thriller and a 1980s slasher into the mix. And the thing is, that rom-com mode is actually where it really shines.

Interface is simply not a good slasher. Anything fun that it manages to accomplish with its techno-horror backdrop has already been done better in Evilspeak and much better in Murder by Phone, at least in terms of the kills it doles out to its victims. The body count deaths are bloodless and bland, and the movie eventually gives up on them in favor of a whole lot of gun violence, which as we know is a cardinal sin of the slasher genre. If you're not in the third act of a Scream movie, guns have no place here. Slasher murders demand flair!

The wide variety of inhuman masks worn by the Circle of Logicians (one of which is featured on the poster above) are at least very eerie and well-rendered, but the characters mostly just use their robotic voices to whine at one another in their big scenes. (That said, you do hear a robo-voice say "oh shit" at least twice in this movie, which is worth the price of admission alone.)

But once Amy and Rex are tossed in a box together and Interface starts shaking that box vigorously, everything comes alive. Their nagging, circular, back-and-forth dynamic felt punishing at first, but it eventually coheres into this bizarre blend of alt-comedy and slapstick that produces some genuinely funny moments with great timing, without sacrificing any of the movie's signature weirdness. Case in point - Rex (who is not a pinup hunk, nor does he pretend to be) spends a good chunk of the movie in a towel, having been forced to escape after coming out of the shower. Once he gets some pants, he's then forced to run around shirtless for the next 20 minutes or so. You just haven't lived until you've seen a man in a towel run away from a shotgun-wielding computer hacker. And basically every choice the movie makes is both as inexplicable and as deeply committed as that ever-so-long-running gag.

Another thing that helps boost the weirdness of the movie is the casting. The core cast is perfectly competent by the standards of this kind of amateur production, but there are some baffling choices around the edges. For instance, the movie opens on a scene where Lou Diamond Phillips (in his first credited role, already looking for all the world like a proper movie star with an innate command of the camera) battles the shortest crime boss you've ever seen. But the biggest whiff is the character of the jock bully (already a no-no for a college movie - jock bullies simply do not exist at universities, because they have already evolved into frat bros), who is portrayed by the world's most middle-aged man.

At the end of the day, none of this really adds up to Interface being "good." The first half is too tedious and packed with interchangeable characters for it to accomplish that. Whatever things it is good at, being a slasher certainly isn't one of them, and that's the reason we're here in the first place. However, it is a compellingly strange motion picture that earned a few genuine laughs from me, and that is something I desperately needed now that we have gotten this deep into 1985, which is so far shaping up to be the worst year of the 1980s for the slasher genre. At least, I sure hope it never gets worse than this.

Killer: The Circle of Logicians

Final Girl: Rex Hobson, Ph.D. (John S. Davies) and Amy Witherspoon (Lauren Lane)

Best Kill: Honestly, none of them, but the death of the prostitute Bambi (and how 1980s of this movie to assign the sex worker as "evil" rather than her pimp) at least involves her talking to a john who appears on a television screen and then exploding, so that's kinda weird.

Sign of the Times: The conversations about how computers need to be connected to phones in order to do anything was just as mystifying to me now as it probably was to people at the time.

Scariest Moment: Honestly, any time the scene lingers in the cult's lair, just staring at those masks is pretty spine-chilling.

Weirdest Moment: Midway through the third act, about 15 minutes before the movie ends, Rex takes a potty break and we just sit there watching Amy impatiently waiting in the foreground while he pisses like a racehorse for 52 straight seconds, the sound of which then makes her need to pee.

Champion Dialogue: “What's the matter? You seem more pathetic than usual."

Body Count: 12

1. Punk Sidekick is shot.
2. Crime Boss is shot.
3. Nervous Punk is elbow-choked.
4. Bodyguard is shot in the forehead.
5. Lead Punk is killed offscreen.
6. Bambi is killed in a hotel room explosion.
7. Paul is electrocuted by his phone.
8. Sidney is killed offscreen.
9. Male Cop is shot.
10. Security Guard is shot.
11. Female Cop is shot.
12. Cult Member is bonked on the head.

TL;DR: Interface is not a particularly good cyber-thriller slasher, but it's got a surprising amount of vim and vigor as a warped romantic comedy.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1133

Una Poca De Gracia

Year: 1987

Director: Luis Valdez

Cast: Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, Rosanna DeSoto

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

I don't really like biopics. Human lives are messy. Good things happen, bad things happen, and then you die. There's no narrative there. It's not particularly interesting, no matter how monolithic a public figure you happen to be.

Of course, Hollywood is keenly aware of this. That's why they love to punch these things up with long lost loves, criminal subterfuge, and various nefarious, melodramatic doings. Is your Zayn Malik biopic not turning out the way you want it to? Toss in a cancer-riddled BFF. Maybe a hot air balloon chase. And boom. Box office gold.

1987's La Bamba is perhaps the only biopic in the world that refrains from indulging in these excesses. The story of Ritchie Valens, tragically concise as it is, turns out to be near-perfect fodder for the sickly format. It's short, sweet, simple, and sincere. While it's still beholden to the meandering weaknesses of the genre, the source material is uniquely tailored to the world of cinema.

This is gonna be one of those sad reviews, isn't it?

La Bamba covers a very short period of the life of Richard Valenzuela (Lou Diamond Phillips), beginning with his move to the San Fernando Valley in 1957 and concluding with his devastatingly early death in a plane crash two years later. As he rockets to superstardom at 16 years old, he struggles to balance his Mexican heritage and his American identity, bouncing between his jealous alcoholic half-brother Bob Morales (Esai Morales), his privileged white girlfriend Donna (Danielle von Zerneck), and his loving mother Connie (Rosanna DeSoto).

After he joins a garage band called The Silhouettes, his talents are discovered by Bob Keane (Joe Pantoliano) of Del-Fi Records, who signs him more or less immediately as a solo act. After a series of singles make it big, he sock hops all the way to the bank, providing a good home for his beloved mom and just generally being a saintly, angelic person. It's very Pollyanna, but if there's ever someone worth airbrushing and idealizing, it's a dead minor, I suppose.

Donna's not worth the trouble, though. She's kind of a dick.

The story of La Bamba is more myth than biography, reducing the Valens story into broad brush strokes to create a fablistic tale about passion, family, love, loss, and culture. In doing so, the film necessarily becomes a little bit shallow, but the surface-level plot and themes are functional and slick. 

It's a shame that some key moments (Ritchie agreeing to change his name, or making the fateful decision to incorporate the Mexican folk song La Bamba into his discography) are left by the wayside in a plot that assumes you already know these stories and don't care to hear them again, but for the most part La Bamba is a rollicking soap bubble about a young boy's triumph and his legacy: the tentative prods at acceptance between the Caucasian and Chicano communities of Southern California.

The film is most important as a piece following the lives and losses of the minority community in the Valley. Directed and written by Luis Valdez, a prominent figure in the Chicano theater movement, La Bamba thrums with energy during the scenes that more explicitly explore racial interactions. As Ritchie (a fully American teen who doesn't speak a word of Spanish) learns that he will never be perceived that way because of the color of his skin and begins to embrace his ancestral culture, the screen comes alive with passion and color.

In fact, the parts of the film that depict his meteoric rise to fame could hardly be more perfunctory. Only one moment - Ritchie's first recording session - truly captures the same effervescence and humor that is brought to the scenes of Ritchie's everyday life and internal struggle. By removing nearly all of the iconography from such an iconic figure, Valdez finds the human truth beneath the gloss.

The human brain beneath the perfect hair, so to speak.

Listening to film students talk all day really changes your perspective on what makes a good metaphor.

So La Bamba has heart, a talented and committed cast (especially DeSoto and the newbie Phillips in his first feature role), and a director who knows what to do with the material to make it unique. It's an essential watch in the history of Chicano cinema, and it's an enjoyable rock 'n roll fairy tale to boot. I can't really complain about that. 

This was made in the late 80's, after all, so there are some patently cheesy moments (the final shot, for one thing, and the alarming percentage of The Big Bopper's dialogue that's just "Helloooooo, baybay!") as well as an unnerving fixation on foreshadowing the inevitable plane crash, but all in all La Bamba is a treat. 

It's a biopic that ignores the superficial traditions of the genre, and it's a humanistic fable about finding oneself in the midst of success. It's not complex, but it doesn't need to be. And it's a nostalgic, glowing assessment of one of rock 'n roll's most tragic figures that focuses on his joys and successes rather than the melodrama. I can't think of any way to make the film more rewarding than that.

TL;DR: La Bamba is probably the best of a bad genre, and an excellent account of Mexican-American life in the 1950's.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 913