Post-Sexual Jane: THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?

I've been enduring a lot of reality TV 'elimination' shows like Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, American Idol, etc. for they keep me drifting back to the idea they have a direct relative in the depression-era dance marathon. And nowhere is that connection clearer than via Jane Fonda's thousand yard stare and Sydney Pollack's unflinching yet compassionate camera eye in 1969's THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?

I'm glad I saw HORSES for the first time at the right time, which is around four in the morning after I couldn't sleep, alone in my studio apartment, on a big projector and with great big stereo headphones, and hallucinating on fever and cold medicine. The idea of a group of people all forced to live, eat, sleep and occasionally die together while dancing forever in circles seemed appealing as well as horrific --as if they don't know how good they got it under impresario Gig Young's wing--given food and a place to skeep off a nice hour or so. It's both a nightmare and a strange kind of paradise, a grueling metaphor for humanity at its most withered and crushed where at least they give you free meals, and live music.

Pollack doesn't much care about the over-arching metaphor for humanity involved in this reality show-meets-ensemble drama (the players slowly drop out... who will be the next sent home?). Instead he finds everything he needs right in the eyes of the actors: the world-weary disgust that infuses Jane Fonda's as they meet Gig Young's across the room during a late night rest break (leading to reams of unspoken dialogue chronicling seduction, refusal, persistence and weary acceptance); or the wild animal fear in Red Buttons' as a heart attack lifts is skinny sweaty old body (they've been forced to run laps to speed up the eliminations, Auschwitz-style) off the ground like a condor then sends him shattering to the floor in a pale skin spastic heave, his eyes twisted and widened with pain and exhausted terror, but you can feel his soul still running through his wild eyed desperate stare, determined to win the race before the devil knows he's dead. 

It's the idea of all these people being awake for such huge lengths of time that seems to resonate most with us drug-addled insomniac cinema lovers; for we know the joy of the four AM movie, shattering the barriers between waking, sleep, reality, illusion, screen, skin, eyes (including the third) --all smashed together like an elevated subway car in Kong's ape hands. We the insane can see thaat Gig Young earned his Oscar not for any sparkle or Satanic gravitas but because he so brilliantly conveys the duplicitous way humans have of maintaining a vein of compassion even as they torture those around them. They're balanced because all their evil is spoken for, nothing bad is hidden so they can be nice and calm and try to balance it with the suppressed good rather than the more common other way around, and Young is balancing them, and it's awesome. Though frankly I don't think I can ever see the film again, I appreciate that a friend of mine once watched it over and over for 48 hours straight. In a way, she did it so I don't have to. It is a movie that should be watched over and over, all through the night and into the next, but how many of us are brave enough, crazy or tragic and tender enough to endure such a withering grind? What is the prize, aside from the way it all perfectly matches its own watching in just such a way?

Pollack knew how to create a space for Fonda to be sexual in ways she just never was while trying to be sexual under Vadim for BARBARELLA (though was great at innocent sexual openness --like Bre without the undercurrents) or SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (though is at her most gorgeous and well-costumed, her eyes wickedly alight with the job of conveying decadence without language).  Out from under Vadim and instead in service of a great director like Pollack's or Pakula's wing, as HORSES or KLUTE (1971), she transcends sex altogether. She becomes post-sexual, beyond passion's fleeting orgasms and the sense of druggy stupor that sometimes bubbles up in the war against eternal loneliness. Here if love does find her she rears back against it like, well, a horse with a broken leg. Pollack loved her for that, loved her like that healing bullet to the broken mare's wild-eyed head, like a scalpel loves the sickness of the 20th century. She can cut your heart out through a hole in the screen and the stale hypocritical endlessly-needy venom pus swell that is human "civilization" can at last begin to seep outwards, even if only down into the puddle of credits on the floor. There will be no refunds.

KONGO -The ultra lurid 1932 saga of jungle sin!

If you know in your heart that 1931-1933 was the most lurid era ever of movies, then dear heart, KONGO is your new king!

Here's what I wrote about the film in a post from last time it played TCM, October 2008:

Based on a play that originally ran in 1926 (with the film's same stars, Walter Huston and Virginia Bruce), Kongo is also a remake of the Lon Chaney silent film West of Zanzibar. Silent film devotees might laud Chaney, and/or say Huston is channeling Chaney here, but I'd say it's more the reverse since Huston originated the role in the theater. Plus, if you love Huston as I do, you will know he would never just emulate someone else, or phone it in, or just ham around in a role where he's the center stage tyrant. He gives it 11,000,000 percent. Lupe Velez is in the Jean Harlow role of good natured floozy who lives at Flint's trading post/bar, where she spreads her charms liberally and gets drunk (and other things) with Flint's two dimwitted white flunkies. All is "well" until Flint makes his move for revenge... involving pulling a sweet innocent white woman played by Virginia Bruce out of her Cape Town convent and dragging her into the pits of HELL!

Infamous for his tight control of a vast 80 mile section of the Congo, Flint hoards ivory and controls the local tribes via displays of magic tricks all while planning his OLDBOY-style revenge against the guy who carved up his face and left him crippled to die. This plan involves Flint taking custody of his enemy's daughter and putting her through an all girls convent school, only to pull her out on her 18th birthday and throw her into a Zanzibar brothel for a year or two. After she's sufficiently debauched he drags her out to his godforsaken corner of the jungle, gives her "black fever" and strings her along on booze and beatings. Meanwhile, a white doctor (Conrad Nagel) in the throes of addiction to some kind of local opiate root shows up, and Flint tries to get him clean (via leeches!) so he can operate on Flint's back. But Lupe Velez secretly risks having her tongue cut out in order to bring the doc all the root he can handle in exchange for sex. And that's not all! A parade of sadistic horrors are either narrowly escaped from and/or inflicted offstage while Huston roars in sadistic laughter; and what about the native practice of burning women alive on their dead husband's funeral pyre? GOOD GOD! This was made in 1932!? It's almost too hot to handle even today. With all the implied sexual and physical abuse and degradation it would likely get an NC-17.

Aint no doubt Billy Bob Thornton be good in the remake

Part of the pleasure of the pre-codes is in trying to fathom just how X-rated and lurid they can be; we're just conditioned from childhood to think of old black and white films as being safe, innocent fun. When we see something like Kongo  it's like having the bottom drop out on all our socialized expectations; like being all prepared for a boring three hour lecture and having the professor start shooting up speed, passing around brandy and reefers, flogging the latecomers, and cutting off the tongues of anyone who talks without raising their hand.

Time to bleed the junky...

Bruce and Huston's performances here are beyond "riveting"-- each feels very "lived in" (thanks probably to their time spent together in the 1926 play version), like they've been dragged through the ringer together. If you've had a chance to catch Huston's wild-eyed cattle patriarch perfection in Criterion's The Furies, you know how ably this man can embody a super-manipulative, authoritative nut job, roaring in laughter when a man tries to shoot him, weilding his whip like a cross between Indiana Jones and Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, and playing with his weird chimp companion or awarding bottles of brandy as rewards for debased behaviors. Like Brando in Streetcar, you hate him for crushing the spirits of the weak, but love him for his canny bravery and raw animal humor. (as opposed to, for example, Rocco in Key Largo, who wont give his poor alcoholic mistress a drink even after she debases herself by singing -like Brando in THE GODFATHER, that I do not forgive).

For her part, Bruce is a powerhouse who matches Huston in sheer seething rage, and despite all her torments, she still possesses a sense of humor and a grip on sanity and dignity that can't be destroyed; for all her ranting she's much more an Anna Christie than a Broken Blossom.

With typically detailed MGM production design, Kongo's action doesn't play out as much in the jungles (though they are represented) so much as the bar and bedrooms of Huston's compound - and holds just enough stock footage (probably taken from West of Zanzibar) to make it interesting: The only animals you see are crocodiles, snakes and spiders! No boring zebras or antelope herds. More than anything, Kongo is a valuable window into a time when "going native" in the mind of Hollywood and post-Victorian morality meant being a law unto yourself and indulging in whatever capricious and kinky cruelty suited your mood, the vice and evil stockpiled in repression's cobwebbed basement suddenly elevated to the drawing room, and the roof blown off. In addition to the vice, sex, violence, and vengeance, racism abounds: the film sees the native Africans as inferior savages to be manipulated and abused, and once the flames of sadism get going, the white woman is next! We see in pre-code jungle horrors like Kongo that the tortures and degradations of SAW, HOSTEL and their ilk are nothing new. Though this kind of kinkiness was abolished during the bloodless reign of "the code", before 1934 there was still a place for drugs, sex, slavery and sadism... it was called the jungle. Long may it reign, though thank god it's safely in the past... except for YOU, if you tune in today... on TCM!

Great 70's Dads: Will Varner (Orson Welles) in THE LONG HOT SUMMER

"I love life, Minnie."

He may be made-up to resemble some expressionist Apache War Chief, but Orson Welles is in fine sparkly, robust form as Will Varner in 1961's THE LONG, HOT SUMMER (1961) and in fact I love this character even more than his Hank Quinlan. And when one considers with Welles all the great films Welles could have done and didn't due to his heroically self-indulgent arrogance, such as deciding to play the dopey romantic lead instead of the slimy self-loathing lawyer he'd likely written for himself in LADY FROM SHANGHAI, ore realizes great roles like this should be cherished. Director Martin Ritt keeps Orson on a short leash, for his own protection, but he's still allowed to bark.

So often Welles became his own worst enemy; no one wanted to work with him because he couldn't stop suggesting things, and then eventually suggesting so many things he tried to take over the picture. He did best when a good director and rest of cast was able to at least hold their own and not let his portly ego capsize the vessel. This might be the reason John Huston didn't cast him as Ahab in MOBY DICK, for example, but gave him one long sermon to cut loose in (as the preacher) then left him on the dock.

But we were talking about Will Varner. He's acidemic in the way no other Welles character is, aside from himself in F FOR FAKE, naturally. Good-natured if bossy, robust and over-the-top, witty but devious; fearless but frail (the movie starts as he comes home from the hospital, high on HOT TIN roofies). A drinker unafraid of trashing his aging constitution, Will Varner is a living force to be reckoned with -- until he dies, that is, which he may do soon. The closest thing the film has to a 'villain,' it's more like he's a father who teaches by bullying and bellowing; he's a Great Santini without the military drive. He forces his weak-willed son Jody (Anthony Fanciosa) to desperate measures for letting himself get outfoxed by old Ben Quick (Paul Newman) while all but chaining Quick to his dow-ta's baid.

Best of all is the way he calls out the coded momma's boy (TV's Oscar Madison) for wasting the fertile years of said brainy, ill-banged (in both senses) daughter, played by Joanne Woodward. The DVD extras tell that Newman and Woodward were hot, crazy lovers at the time and spent their weekends driving off to luxury hotels to shack up for marathon lovemaking sessions, which probably explains why Woodward's character comes off as the most comfortable-in-her-own-skin 21-year old virgin in cinema. We also learn from the extras that Welles re-wrote his scenes and no one could understand a word he said.

Why is he a great 1970's dad for all that? You can't understand most of what 1970's dads say either. Another reason is encoded in how Woodward's belle triumphs over the manipulations of father and suitor through perseverance and wiles. She doesn't do what her dad wants, or let the handsome stranger seduce her though her whole body, mind, and soul clearly responds to him. That's the sign of a loving patriarch who--for all his assertive grandson-craving bellowing and turf-stomping--clearly hasn't cowed his kids. There's no indication of physical abuse in their faces, no ominous chords in the score indicating he might slap someone at any moment. His tantrums and demonstrations of force preclude all resorts to mundane physical or mental abuse to get his way (unless you count hollerin' - but since Woodward's not at all cowed by it, you shouldn't). I'm sure some students of feminism and the male gaze would object to Will Varner's sheer ungainly macho manner, and maybe they're the reasons so many movie, TV, commercial fathers all talk in these high, wimpy little voices. Varner's proof that it's far better to have a strong dad to rebel against rather than a 'friend' who tries to appease your every need, his whole sense of self hinging on your happiness and regard for his parenting.

Also true to great 1970s dad form, Varner's comfortable in his sense of sexual mastery, making only the feint-inest attempt at discretion when driving over to his mistress's. Larger than life, committed to his see-gars, Varner demonstrates his excellent child-rearing not in his outrageous procreative demands but in the way he indirectly rewards his children for rebelling against him, which mirrors in turn the way he rebels against society at large, even if he is, in effect, society itself (at least in that town). He'd rather have his kids fight him every step of the way than have them be type of children who cling to their cribs too long, the way Oscar Madison does.  He even recognizes progress in his spoiled simpleton son Jody, not because Jody tried to burn him to death but because he changed his mind, and rushed to rescue him at the last minute. That he could have this profound realization of forgiveness makes him a top flight 1970's dad!! And through it all, Welle's Will stays true to his oversize, deep-bellowing way of life and outrageous expressionistic Apache make-up. Will Varner loves life, Minnie, and I love Will Varner!

IN THE LIMO OF FIRE: the Freebase Firebomb Cinema of Jeffrey Squier

When discussing the career and person of an auteur like Jeffrey Squier, one is tempted to use words like: didactic, shrill, and corpulent. However, what do such words mean, in the end? They do little to analyze who he was, and what his pictures stand for: GAS OF AGES (1984), THE UNLEADED (1984), PARENT REPELLENT (1990), and BACKSEAT DIER (1991) are all considered classics of the “burning limo” genre (hereafter referred to by their common parlance as “B-Ellers") even as they confound expectations.

Of course the B-Eller began with 1978’s Clint Eastwood vehicle IN THE LIMO OF FIRE and for many it ended there. As you may recall, Clint played a burned-out limo driver (pun intended), whose plan to torch his limo and collect the insurance goes awry when he inadvertently forgets there is a coked up client in the back, whose own freebasing tools aid in turning what he intends as a small leather seat blackening into a full-on fireball. The second half of the picture becomes a ghost story: the corpulent cokehead's ghost follows the now limo-less and disfigured Clint hither and yon, eventually prefiguring his grisly death at the hands of a burnt-out Sumo wrestler with nothing left to lose who swallows a half a tank of gasoline and enters a sauna without permission.

Influential, reviled, discussed, IN THE LIMO OF FIRE slowly ignited a crude oil wellspring of discussion, beginning on college campuses and gradually leaking out all over the world. Though only a marginal box office success, imitators began to accrue: There was the Italian knock-off contributed by Mario Bava’s distant non-relation, Luigi Bavacelli, who gave us El fuego Limosina (FIRE OF LIMOUSINE) for example in 1979, and LIMO OF ENDURANCE, LIMO OF ENDURANCE 2, and BIG BLACK BORIS AND THE FREEBASE MACHINE in 1980. As none of the three were released with subtitles or even dubbing, or even Italian, the US audiences were confused by these films, and nervous if they saw them at the drive-in, especially if their cars were parked next to a long limousine, as was the style of the time (as in the ill-advised "freebase limo" party tie-ins). But New World Pictures contributions to the budding genre: BURNT LIMO and HOT HOT DRIVER (both 1983) did reasonably well for a flame and limo-hungry public for whom the strange psychological meanings of the tale were only beginning to register on the ride home, as they wondered about their own cigarettes in proximity to the gas tank.

Then Squier came out with his second major offering, AT LAST A LONG LIGHT, in 1986, reigniting the smoldering genre. The film features an emotionally shaky limo driver (Lance Henriksen) being offered a cool thousand dollars if he will escort a very, very hot girl (Lori Candide) across town. The trouble is, this girl is so hot Henriksen needs to flame retard the white leather seats and put non-conductive fibrous casing around the metal door handles and frames; the girl is so hot she must be handled with tongs. Yet even with all these precautions, it seems inevitable that you-know-what is going to happen. All this contributes to the suspense-packed finale as the shaky driver is stalled at intersection after intersection, anxious to reach his client's destination before the inevitable fireball that signals the climax of all these pictures.

Now, while the sociological reading of the B-Eller’s popularity is obvious (privileged freebasers, exploding, signifiers of wealth bursting into cathartic flames, symbolic redistribution and rejuvenation of a depressed culture), Squier’s work defies logic, becoming instead an opening salvo towards a Brechtian deconstruction of the genre's trappings. Suddenly it was all right to play with audience expectations and maybe (heaven forefend!) not even have the limo burn at all. By now the audience expected the limo to burn, the rich cokehead to run around in flames, and the limo driver to drink and nod wearily, generally getting away with nothing but a few third degree burns and a lecture from his dispatcher. Squier changed all that, and what followed was to be considered the classic of the B-Eller oeuvre.

Squier's mid-western coming-of-age drama, GLASS OF AGES (AKA 'WINDSHIELD'), for example, had no mention whatsoever of a limo or flame in its title. In fact, a limo doesn’t even appear until halfway through the film, when the glasscutter’s son takes his near-sighted date to the prom. Yes, the son lights a cigarette as he waits for the date to come down the stairs, but he extinguishes it long before entering the limo and, unlike most limo clients in these films, never once freebases. The few lines of coke he does snort seem like trivial child’s play in comparison to the gaudy, nostril-swelling excess we'd grown used to in the B-Ellers, and since this mild episode is soon over and the focus of the narrative back on the glass-cutting and clock-watching, why even classify it as a burning limo picture? But that was Squier, as we will see in the next work.

PARENT REPELLANT (1990) seems to conjure up images of fiery retribution for freebasing authority figures with its mere title. One hears the name Squier and sees burnt, scarred, limo-riding zombie parents shambling after their terrified progeny with relentless determination. The plucky children and the emotionally vacant limo driver hole themselves up in a deserted bus station while ghost limos circle the parking lot and the hideously burnt father urges, ghost-like, from without: “Come join us, kids, you can sit in the front!” But absolutely none of that happens in PARENT REPELLANT. Instead Squier gives us 90 minutes of shrill guitar tuning, used to drive parents from the room so kids could freebase and explode on their own. 

Moving in yet another direction, Squier's  UNLEADED stars Winona Judd as a dissolute caviar connoisseur who must adapt to quail eggs when she is unfortunately stranded in a part of rural Wales with no upscale markets. Her limo driver (far from burnt-out and in fact quite randy) tries to order some caviar for his stranded  passenger via the internet. Foolishly, Judd’s character gets impatient and attempts to make caviar out of jellied gasoline and freebase cocaine. Strangely enough however, she only explodes near the limo, not inside it. Fans barely noticed the difference.

Literally, Squier was backing away from the smoky, charred remains of the B-Eller, and his next, BACKSEAT DYER would confound BL conventions even further by having the limo driver be both emotionally scarred and played by Meryl Streep Most of the film involves her chauffeuring around various models and acrobats, none of whom even talk dirty, much less freebase. Finally, in a special moment, an actor with a glass pipe enters the limo, but then he pulls out a pouch of tobacco, and proceeds to smoke quite normally, with jaunty music on the soundtrack, indicating Squier is deliberately disrupting narrative expectation ala Godard or Brecht.

In the end however, it may have been too early to be so flippant about meeting the audience's expectations.  DIER tanked at the box office, and the Italians and New World/Concord people went off in search of different targets to imitate, namely FRIDAY THE 13th-- instead of freebase and limos, it was axes and hockey masks. For some of us, though, the B-Eller still drives through those lazy midnight stop signs while we smoke at home, but thanks to blu-ray, we can cheer over and over as the fireballs brighten the surrounding shop windows, and the screams of rich cokeheads echo through the ages like a pyromaniac Marxist lullaby. In our economically depressed times, isn't it time to burn them once more?