The Gold Bug

Director: Robert Fuest
Writer: Edward Pomerantz
Released: 1980
Cast: Anthony Michael Hall, Roberts Blossom, Geoffrey Holder

Thank You Mask Man

Director: John Magnuson
Writer: Lenny Bruce
Released: 1971
Cast: Lenny Bruce

Troops

Director: Kevin Rubio
Writer: Kevin Rubio
Released: 1998
Cast: Eric Hilleary, Cam Clarke, David Max, Jess Harnell, Kenar Yegyayan, Drew Massey, Dave Myers, Matthew Myers, Steven Melching, Neil Elliot, Susan Hinshaw

STEVE says: Another late night, another short film. Sue me.

Troops is just brilliant. Like an episode of Cops set in the Galactic Empire, it follows the exploits of a handful of Imperial Stormtroopers as they respond to various calls - one concerning Jawas and stolen droids, and another concerning a domestic dispute at the Lars farm.

Like George Lucas in Love, though, it doesn't work on its own. If you don't know Star Wars, you're not going to get why this is so funny. If you're a fan, though, it's going to resonate.

3.5/5

The Killers

Directors: Marika Beiku, Aleksandr Gordon, Adrei Tarkovsky
Writers: Aleksandr Gordon, Adrei Tarkovsky
Released: 1958
Cast: Yuli Fait, Aleksandr Gordon, Valentin Vinogradov, Vadim Novikov, Vasili Shukshin

STEVE says: I had my writing class read Hemingway's short story this week, so this one's been on my mind. Whereas both feature versions of The Killers (1946 and 1964) use the story as an opening, telling the full story in flashback, this Russian student film is the story. And it's not great.

That's nothing against Hemingway's story, and it's not to take anything away from Tarkovsky as a filmmaker - but this just didn't work. Pacing was the big problem for me. When Nick Adams goes to the Swede's room to warn him somebody's out to kill him, one expects him to be gasping, out of breath, maybe urgently delivering the news... Not so much, here. Adams walks in, tells the Swede some guys are out to kill him, and it's all done in a very funereal sort of style, as though they're already lamenting the Swede's passing. It just didn't fly.

It's good to have - Criterion can really put a disc together, yeah? - but not so much to revisit. For that, I've got the Robert Siodmak version.

2/5

Birthday Boy

Director: Sejong Park
Writer: Sejong Park
Release: 2004
Cast: Joshua Ahn

The Lottery

Director: Larry Yust
Writer: Larry Yust
Released: 1969
Cast: Olive Dunbar, William Benedict, William Fawcett, Joe Howarth

STEVE says: There's something to be said for a film that manages to be suspenseful and shocking, even though it has one of the most famous endings in literary history.

I tried to watch this as someone who wasn't familiar with the story, and it wasn't easy. Like the last ten minutes of The Wicker Man, where you just know Edward Woodward is going to be burned alive, but you're still waiting for someone to swoop in and rescue him - no matter how many times you've seen the movie. It was a lot like that. But I was able to appreciate the lead-up a lot more, knowing how it was going to turn out. Yust (and Shirley Jackson, it must be said) highlights the banality of evil before the audience is even aware that evil is in the picture. Genius.

After watching this short film, I'm reminded of the woman in Fahrenheit 9/11 who was pro-war until her son was killed. In The Lottery, Tessie Hutchinson - like everyone else in the town - is all for the lottery, until it affects her personally. Then, suddenly, "It isn't fair!" Considering "The Lottery" was published in 1948, this short was made in 1969, and the themes were still relevant in 2004... Well, "the more things change", I guess...

3.5/5

NIKKI says:
There's something about old farm-lookin' dudes from the backwoods that just creeps me out. And this has lots of 'em. But that's not the point of the story... so it is a famous story, and it's still as scary as it ever was. Amazing how after so many years and so many retellings you still sit there in shock that the townspeople are actually going to go through with the ritual. Maybe it's because after all those retellings, there's still no actual reason why they do it.

Steve and I decided the themes in the story have much to do with conscription and sending kids off to war. We openly and randomly choose names from a hat and send people to war to be killed. This is a simplified exploration of that very strange practice that, when laid out in this way, just seems insane. Like so many things, I guess.

3.5/5

George Lucas in Love

Director: Joe Nussbaum
Writers: Joe Nussbaum, Daniel Shere
Released: 1999
Cast: Martin Hynes, Lisa Jakub

STEVE says: I took this 9-minute short to a friend's house a few months back because I thought he'd get a kick out of it. He'd seen Family Guy's Blue Harvest episode and the Robot Chicken Star Wars Special (had turned me on to both, in fact), so I wanted to reciprocate by sharing one of my favorite Star Wars themed shorts.

Denied!

He had no time for a "fan-boy" movie, he told me (although he's got the entire Kevin Smith catalog, so I don't know what to make of that), and quickly turned my attention to the new Gnarls Barkley video, which I apparently had to see.

It's a shame he missed out because this is one of the better Star Wars shorts out there, along with Troops, Trooper Clerks, and possibly Thumb Wars. What's different about George Lucas in Love - and what makes it so great - is that it's not a parody. It doesn't make fun of the Star Wars universe or Lucas (well, maybe a little bit with Lucas), but uses Lucas' USC days as a backdrop for a greater story, one of a writer who's run out of ideas, and how true love inspires him to write his greatest work ever. And if that sounds suspiciously like the synopsis for Shakespeare in Love, well-spotted.

Familiar characters fill the campus at USC; prototypes for Han and Chewie, C-3PO and R2, Ben Kenobi, Yoda and Jabba the Hutt all make fleeting appearances, and it's fun to see how they fit in to young Lucas' life.

What makes this movie most remarkable is Martin Hynes' portrayal of Lucas. Nerdy and awkward, almost as if he's channeling Woody Allen, Hynes nails Lucas without making him into a punchline.

There are some issues, of course. The girl Lucas falls in love with is named Marion - the only reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and quite out of place among all the Star Wars characters. If, as it turns out, they're actually brother and sister (somehow kept apart all these years by a woman they both recognize as their mother), why not just have her named Leia. Or Leah. Or Leigh, something. And the lame reference to Howard the Duck I could have done without.

All that aside, though, I rate this one pretty high. Too bad it's longer than my friend's attention span. Maybe if there were some dick jokes...

4/5

Desert's Edge, dir. Rob Lowe (1997)

NIKKI says:

Rob Lowe's debut as a writer and director was not all that great for me. I wanted to like it, because I really like Rob, and he appears to me to be quite smart and informed. But he's clearly not a writer -- or at least at this point in his career he wasn't. But I suppose I don't expect him to be for any other reason that he elected to pick up a pen and write something. He might have given it to Aaron Sorkin or someone to go over because there are a lot of character inconsistencies and character-related plot issues, and the ultimate message left me way cold, especially after seeing what Robert Harmon did with China Lake with a similar setting and running time.

Still, I guess props to Rob for having a hearty go. I just didn't see anything in it that made me want to see more.

The gist is this: You've got a known violent guy and a wannabe actress travelling together as to a photo shoot involving guns. Much of the film is taken up with car ride to the location where the girl alters her personality about five times in order, I assume, for the audience to see the different sides of the guy, played with regular over-the-top-ish-ness by Matt Frewer. One minute the girl wants to blow him, the next she hates his guts and thinks he's a creepy old man, and then she's happy to pose around on the rocks for him pointing a gun at her head. So, who is she and why do I care about her? And he's an asshole, so why do I care about him?

The gun goes off, and Frewer must pick up the pieces. All this time, he's been talking to his lawyer about the situation, and we see flashbacks from all perspectives, even though the whole story is one long flashback of his, so that causes issues.

Ugh -- there's a story in there, but no one really knows what it is. Least of all, it would seem, the one who should -- the writer.

2/5

Within the Woods, dir. Sam Raimi (1978)

STEVE says:

This is the one everyone talks about as a prequel to The Evil Dead.

It ain't.

Within the Woods was shot in 1978 in an effort to raise money to make a feature, which would turn out to be The Evil Dead. It's basically a show-reel. But for all that, it's still mighty impressive.

Plot-wise, it's not too far off what would eventually become The Evil Dead. Four college students spending a weekend in a cabin in the woods run afoul of the spirit of an Indian Medicine Man. Bruce Campbell gets possessed here, instead of Ellen Sandweiss, wreaking havoc on his pals, and Sandweiss plays the part Campbell would end up playing in the feature; not specifically Ash (the actors all use their real names here), but the role of the "hero".

There are bits and pieces (literally) that would be used later in both The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, and you can see Raimi's directorial style already well-developed. Too bad it's from a crappy 30-year-old VHS tape. If you could actually see what was going on half the time, it might find a cult status all its own.

3/5

Nikki did not view.

Destination Anywhere, dir. Mark Pellington (1997)

NIKKI says:

This was a great revisit for the night. It's still got the same kick it had when it came out. I was a bit infatuated with it when it was released. I'd never seen anything like it before -- a short film based on an album, starring the artist, and all that. It's a gorgeous piece of work, artistically stunning and really kinda powerful in its way.

It looks so good because of Mark Pellington who shoots dirty backstreets like they're the entrance to a child's birthday party. The grit and grime of Chelsea nights is in full view, but it's colourful and vibrant. Pellington did the same thing in Bruce's "Lonesome Day" video, making the ripped up, black heart of Asbury Park a rainbow again. I don't know how he does it, but especially here it adds a strange contrast to the work; these awful things going on with this backdrop of colour.

The gist is this: Jon and Janey are falling apart following the hit and run death of their little daughter. He runs off on benders leaving her alone to work long hours and drink herself insane. The movie begins with Jon returning home after one of those benders. We come to know straight away why he runs away -- Janey is draining, killing her pain and taking it all out on everyone else. Jon runs again. He gets advice from his friends, and winds up on yet another night away involving drink and strippers. He's killing the pain in his way, and we know it's not working. So, the movie is about how these two reconnect. 

Meanwhile, a baby is dumped in the trash. Janey works at the hospital where the baby is being kept. And she makes a decision to finally be free of her pain that is tragic and horrifying, but strangely perfect for this couple.

It's a heavy film, full of lost-soul imagery and death, and it offers redemption to its characters in difficult ways. I think it's really brave. Jon and Demi are just so great, too.

4/5

The Room, dir. Erik Lieshout and Rutger Hauer (2001)

NIKKI says:

A really interesting meditation on life and death starring Rutger Hauer and Rutger Hauer's twin who's 30 years younger than him. Did they clone Rutger Hauer for this? Couldn't they have cloned another one for the Hitcher remake?

It's about a man, Harry, who talks to us about this room he used to see when he was young. He could only see inside it a little way, he could see books and hear the music playing inside. When he gets older and looks for a place to settle, he ends up in the room, but now it's empty. He talks about his life, his loves, his experiences, always tying them back to the room, and its enticements. How he comes to view the room in the end is poetic and highly moving.

Rutger Hauer and his clone, Mattijn Hartemink:

To see Rutger Hauer, this juggernaut of a man, sit and reservedly discuss the end of his life is just fascinating. The film is beautifully shot, the tale told fully and intensely in less than 10 minutes.

4/5

China Lake, dir. Robert Harmon (1983)

NIKKI says: Oh my holy fucking GOD. Where the hell did this little movie come from? It may just have become my favourite short film. We watched it at about three in the morning, and it was just the perfect atmosphere for the kind of random horror Charles Napier spreads over the countryside.

This opens with Napier's cop character revealed as on holiday. Then we see him in uniform, pulling over a woman and asking her to take a sobriety test. She is clearly sober. And then things just turn weird. There's no real violence, just stuff that happens that will make your skin crawl right off your body.

It's just a tight little movie about a deranged cop going a bit mad while taking some time off. Could be a metaphor for how we all feel crunched up in reality, and needing a bit of free-wheeling now and again. Not that we all go to these extremes, of course.

The other great thing about this movie is the photography. Apparently, it was made to showcase Robert Harmon's abilities as a cinematographer, and man does it do his all kinds of justice. The film is beautiful, and if he made it about something so awful to contradict the calming landscape, then he's even more of a genius than I thought. Weird he didn't go on to do more in this field. Stil, perfect little movie. And Charles Napier should be damn proud of himself for playing one of the most evil men in film history. You rock, Charles Napier!

4.5/5

[Steve also watched The Dark Knight again.]

Michael Jackson's Thriller, dir. John Landis (1983)

NIKKI says: We got to this because I got the idea to watch concert videos on the big screen and pretend I was actually there. How awesome it was. First I watched my new James Reyne DVD, which is very cool -- just James and his band playing the Espy with no crowd. Then I watched Kenny Loggins belt out "Peace of Mind", which is just shiveringly brilliant. And then... Michael Jackson. Steve wanted "Thriller", so "Thriller" it was. Music, turns out, is just as great to watch on the screen as movies and Moonlighting.

How great is "Thriller"? You really can't fault it. It's funny, spooky, and really well put together. It's hard to believe it came out 25 years ago. Wow, that's shocking. I just love young Michael, with his crazy sense of humour, and his love of horror and sci-fi stuff. He just smiles all the way through this (except when he's a zombie), and he looks to be having so much fun. I miss the fun-having MJ.

Anyway... so this was cool to revisit. The zombies look great, the dancing is the best, and I love how it's all about blending artforms and using them to their fullest effects.

5/5

STEVE says: When MTV started running Thriller in December of 1983, my brother Mike was only a little over two years old. He would watch it religiously, every hour-on the hour, kneeling in front of the TV, fascinated by the dancing undead.

Nearly a year later, when all the Thriller hype had died down, MTV ran the video (a short film, really, hence its inclusion here) on Halloween. Twenty-five years later, I can't remember if it was Michael Jackson turning into the Wolf Man, or whether it was the Zombies pulling themselves out of the damp earth, but my brother promptly forget that he'd already seen this clip about 72 times with no adverse reaction, because he started crying, bolted up the stairs and hid under my desk.

He'll kill me for telling you that.

Later, of course, when he was closer to five, he'd be watching Re-animator with me and asking how the effects worked, so this Thriller thing appeared to be a one-time-only episode. It's a great little, flick, though - due largely in part to John Landis.

It was Landis' American Werewolf in London that started this whole thing. Jackson, being a huge American Werewolf fan, asked Landis on board for this clip, and he brought his own style and sense of humour along. Once the Wolf Man part of the story is revealed to be a movie, we can hear one of the actors on-screen reciting Landis' famous in-joke, "See You Next Wednesday", and there's even a poster for Landis' first film, Schlock, hanging outside the theatre. And the disclaimer "Any similarity to actual events or persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental" is a nod to American Werewolf itself.

Credit must be given, too, to Rick Baker and his crew for their Zombie make-up. Only four years earlier, George Romero's Dawn of the Dead opened unrated in theatres because he wouldn't cut it for an R rating. Baker and his crew pulled off some pretty nasty looking Zombies here, some certainly scarier than the legion of undead in Romero's film - and Thriller ran on television... where it could scare the pants off of unsuspecting two-year olds.

4/5

The Call of Cthulhu, dir. Andrew Leman (2005)

NIKKI says:
Lovecraft Week is going well. This one was especially successful. I don't think I've seen anything like it. It's an experimental-type film, based on a Lovecraft story, that pretends to be a silent film from 1925. It comes complete with stark b/w lighting, stage make-up, and old-timey stop-motion effects. I worried I might not get into it, but it was absolutely gripping.

The movie is about an old professor who leaves his box of Cthulhu stuff to his nephew. The nephew becomes obsessed as the professor was, and heads out to find the truth behind the cult. The call of the beast sends him mad...

Somebody wrote on the Database:
"The story embodies HPL's nihilistic world view, his cosmic perspective, and his sense that mankind is doomed by its own insignificance."

Great way of putting it. I'm fairly new the Lovecraft oeuvre, but that's a worldview I can get behind. These old stories are just amazing -- the author writing a hundred years ago with this sad future for the world that's coming true. The beat might not be a big octopus with tentacles and scary eyes, but it's something... I love the subtext, the metaphors. All in all, loving Lovecraft Week.

4/5

STEVE says:
The Call of Cthulhu may be the best, most faithful Lovecraft adaptation ever. Director Andrew Leman and screenwriter Sean Branney have crafted the film in a way so faithful to Lovecraft's story that it maintains the flashback within a flashback within a flashback structure - and pulls it off.

Clocking in at 45 minutes, it manages to tell the complete story without reworking it (Re-animator), using it as a springboard (From Beyond and The Unnamable), or embellishing an already workable story to create some awful hybrid (The Lurking Fear).

I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.

They're working on a second film, The Whisperer in Darkness. Though it won't be silent, I expect it to be every bit as faithful to both Lovecraft and the film making techniques from the time-period. The Call of Cthulhu is really an amazing accomplishment.

4/5

The Tell-Tale Heart, dir. Jules Dassin (1941)

STEVE says:
This was a disappointing but well-made adaptation of Poe's story that fails only in its departure from the original work.

I lay the blame here, not on Jules Dassin, but on screenwriter Doane R. Hoag, who decided to leave out the narration which made Poe's story so interesting: Here's this guy, clearly insane, trying to justify the murder of an old man for no other reason than the old man's blind eye freaked him out, by calmly and sanely relating the tale. It's given a miss here, and instead we have a guy who's unjustly abused by his boss and decides to kill him. It's just not as interesting, now matter who shoots it.

The murder scene isn't anywhere near as interesting as Poe's, either. Poe had the narrator hide behind the old man's bedroom door and fix a beam of light on his eye ("I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle…") until the old man died of fright. Here, the young man does bring the lantern into the old man's room, then casts it aside and strangles the old man to death! What the hell is this?

The rest of it pans out pretty much the same as in the story, with the police arriving, the young man hearing the beating of the heart, etc., and that's all done brilliantly - but the narrator's cocky nature in the story is undone here by just making the young man crazy, apparently driven over the edge by guilt.

In all, I guess if I hadn't read Poe, I wouldn't have minded this one so much. If Dassin had had a proper screenplay to work with, this would have been a minor classic. As it is, it's kind of forgettable.

2.5/5

Nikki did not view.

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, dir. Les Blank (1980)

NIKKI says:
And he really eats his shoe.

I'm sad to only be discovering Herzog recently. He's very much my kind of philosopher. Although, it would take many changes in my life to live to his standards -- freeing myself of American television and chain stores is in the grand plan, but so very hard to stick to.

He's a man of conviction, and his conviction inspires, even if it is weird to the point of near-insanity. He promised Errol Morris he would eat his shoe if Morris completed a film. Morris did, and so the shoe-cooking occurred. He used this short film to tell his audience that there is no excuse for not achieving one's goals. If you want to do it, do it. As Steve said, the man is like Jesus. He dies for us, or he ate his shoe for us. We owe him.

Rating: n/a

STEVE says:

She stole my thing.

I was going to say about how I said that Herzog is like Jesus, he ate the shoe for us and now we have the obligation to make movies.

I'm giving it a low rating, though, because it's just not that good. I don't enjoy the cuts to Charlie Chaplin eating his shoe, I don't enjoy the annoying song that plays endlessly throughout. I do enjoy hearing Herzog postulate about how we have no defining imagery, running over McDonald's and cigarette ads, but it's undercut by - ironically - the filmmaking.

The short was included on the disc Burden of Dreams, a doco about the making of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. I sense a Herzog double feature in our future...

2.5/5

The Cowboy and the Frenchman, dir. David Lynch (1988)

NIKKI says:
I almost felt like like this was cheating, watching a short film instead of a feature for our project. And then I thought, but short films are still films. They're still conceived as whole stories. And, really, to deny the short film in favour of a feature was to do the art a disservice. That's how I'm justifying my pick of the 34 minute Cowboy and the Frenchman tonight.

Truth is, I was so tired after work, I couldn't handle anything longer. This is when I treasure our collection -- need a short film on the double? Got one!

I chose this because the story sounded intriguing. Apparently it's part of a larger project to do with how US filmmakers and storytellers "view the French". This is David Lynch's perverse rendering of an entire culture, and as much as it's suitably and predictably bizarre, it's also rather entertaining. Some dyed in the wool cowpokes spot a mysterious creature falling down a hill and go find it. It's a Frenchman. The group converse, then they sing and dance, then that's about it. Harry Dean Stanton plays the near-death Slim who says words like "goll dang" and "bull-doggin". At first, Slim is a bit scared of the Frenchman, pondering whether or not he's a "goll dang alien spy". A quick search through the man's bag to pull out snails, an Eiffel Tower statue and a breadstick lead Slim to realise this is not an alien, but a French person. Upon discovering this, Slim befriends the man and they share a night of beer and music. During this time, the two (and Slim's ranch hands) share cultures. The Frenchman, for instance, teaches Slim to say "ooh la la" and Slim returns the favour, teaching the Frenchman to say "yippie kai ai aye".

Lynch's absurd view of these intermingling cultures is fascinating and creepy. I hear Werner Herzog also contributed to this series of shorts, and now I'm all about checking that one out.

This I give 2.5 out of 5. The highlight for me in this one was Tracy Walter paying back a loan.

STEVE says:
David Lynch is an oddball, this we know. But The Cowboy and the Frenchman is as weird as I think we've ever seen him - and that's saying a lot. It's his first foray into outright comedy, pre-dating On the Air by three or four years, and it's funny enough - at first: Harry Dean Stanton plays a mostly-deaf rancher with Jack Nance and Tracy Walter as his ranch hands. They see someone sneaking down the hill and immediately rope and apprehend him. "Might as well see what's in his case before we shoot him," Stanton says, at which point they pull wine, baguettes, little replicas of the Eiffel Tower, and a plate of snails from his suitcase. "He had a bunch in his pockets when I found him," Walter offers, with the explanation, "Maybe he fell asleep next to a stream." It's a plate of French fries that convince the trio that he's a Frenchman.

There's no real story up to this point, and there's even less in what follows: a strange montage of French women, a horse and an Elvis impersonator.

Worth it for hardcore Lynch fans, but I'd recommend others stay far, far away.

3/5