After I finished and published my column last week, I noticed that most of the movies I talked about weren’t really what you would call “Bad Ass Cinema”. Sure, one flick had superheroes ripping dinosaurs in half, another had a Slap Shot-style brawl in it, and the final movie had Jack Black playing Robocop, but looking at the column all I talked about last week was a cartoon and two comedies. Well, this week will be different. I managed to get in some more flicks while I was snowed in at my house and there’s not a comedy among them.
This week I’ve got this column chocked full of mayhem. Blood and guts will be abounding in this column I promise. I’ve got a lot of familiar faces coming back for my three regular readers, but some of them get presented in new ways. At any rate, let’s get this show on the road…
Death Hunt Starring Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, and Carl Weathers. Directed by Peter Hunt
Let’s look and see what kind of “Action stars” we have if you went to theaters right now. I’m talking about guys like Steven Strait in 10,000 B.C., or Hayden Christensen in Jumper. If the Oscar pics have finally left your local theater, the best tough guy you’ve got out there right now is Jason Statham in The Bank Job. If moody man-boys aren’t your thing and you’ve already seen The Bank Job and was disappointed by its lack of ridiculous fight scenes, perhaps you’re looking for a movie with legitimate tough guys. To you, I present Death Hunt.
Here we’ve got two of the members of the Dirty Dozen and Apollo Creed all shooting at each other for two hours in a movie directed by the man that helmed On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. That’s a pretty terrific pedigree, and the best part is, is that the movie manages to live up to it. So what’s with all the hostility between these badasses? To answer that question is a little more complicated.
Set in the Yukon in 1932, the movie is a terrific showcase for the Canadian wilderness and shows just how rough it was for settlers in this area, even in the 20th Century. We start with a vicious dog fight, with one dog getting absolutely brutalized and near death when in walks Albert Johnson (Bronson, pays for the dog and then walks out. This makes none of the residents too happy, especially the owner of the dog Hazel (Ed Lauter), who is completely incensed by someone just making off with something he considers his property.
What this ends up doing is setting up a struggle between Johnson and Sgt. Edgar Millen (Marvin) of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Don’t get any visions of Marvin in a red mountie get-up either; this is Marvin in one of the most grizzled performances I’ve ever seen him in. After Hazel tries to take matters into his own hands and assaults John’s cabin, a man ends up dead and Millen has to take control of the situation. He takes a posse up to John’s cabin in order to talk him down, but instead shots end up ringing out.
The rest of the movie is a series of shootouts and mountain chases, with Millen and his group barely holding it together while Bronson sets traps and hides in caves. This actually reminded me of First Blood in a lot of ways, only with weapons and technology that’s at about a WWI level. At one point, a bi-plane is even sent after Johnson, but the pilot isn’t ready for the harsh conditions or the survival instincts of the two leads.
As for those leads, they are both exactly as they should be; two fisted, red blooded bad asses. In some ways, Bronson gets the better role, as he gets to show his stuff while being surrounded by villains, blowing them away with shotguns and making them writhe in pain in traps he’s set for them. There’s an explosion in the film that Bronson’s character could not have possibly survived in a more serious movie, but in Death Hunt he does exactly what you expect him to do. He rises out of the ashes in iconic fashion, shotgun in hand, making the men after him wish they’d never been born.
Marvin more than holds his own though as Millen. The scene in which he nearly talks Johnson into turning himself in, one of the trigger happy rednecks he brings with him takes a shot at the Bronson character, ends up in a massive shootout with a lot of casualties. When the redneck ends up getting shot in the neck by Johnson, Millen is so angry that he kicks the man repeatedly as he’s dying. Another great scene happens early in the film when a rookie mountie shows up for duty, and Millen finds him way too eager. At one point Millen says to him, “I’m going to close my eyes and pray you disappear”. When he’s still there, Marvin’s character actually looks pissed, remarking, “Never had much luck prayin’.”
The rest of the cast is a bizarre mixture of character actors and an 80’s Action star. Carl Weathers plays Millen’s right hand man, George Washington Lincoln Brown, affectionately known by Millen as “that black bastard”. Brown is supposed to have been a pitcher in the Negro League, and was “too good” to be in the majors, because he would have made all of them look bad. Its fun to see Weathers in this flick, but with the test of wills between Bronson and Marvin being the focal point of the movie, he really doesn’t get to do much, other than have a few fun scenes.
Same goes for most of the rest of the cast, with guys like William Sanderson (Blade Runner, HBO’s Deadwood), Len Lesser (The Outlaw Josey Wales), August Schellenberg (the New World), and Maury Chaykin (Dances with Wolves, War Games) all showing up in cameo capacity. Schellenberg and Chaykin are especially good, serving as the movie’s comic relief, as they play a couple of Hazel’s henchmen who keep getting into ridiculous arguments about events that apparently happened prior to this movie.
If you’re Dad loves movies like First Blood, The Fugitive or Jeremiah Johnson, I’d definitely steer him towards Death Hunt. These are two of the screen’s biggest bad asses, with Action Jackson thrown in for good measure. There may be better movies with these men in them, but this one is nearly on par on a fun level.
The Mother of Tears Starring Asia Argento. Directed by Dario Argento.
Let me just preface this by saying that Dario Argento is far and away my favorite director of Horror movies. I loves me some John Carpenter and George Romero, but no Horror director has ever fascinated me, or creeped me out like Argento has over the years. His masterpieces, like Suspiria and Deep Red are the wildest and most stylish Horror films I’ve ever seen. I’d compare Argento’s revolutionary genre work in the 1970’s to the works of Sergio Leone in the Western a decade before, during which time Argento actually co-wrote Once Upon a Time in the West for Leone. This was why I was incensed a couple of weeks ago when the reports of David Gordon Green remaking Suspiria. It was also why I was horrified by just how bad Argento’s new film, The Mother of Tears really was.
Now for those that don’t know The Mother of Tears is the third film in a pseudo trilogy for the director that starts with 1977’s Suspiria, with 1980’s Inferno being its loose follow-up. Each film deals with one of a mysterious trio of witches, each inhabiting a different city where they carry out their devilish plots. Suspiria and Inferno deal with the first two witches of the trio, and finally, Argento has come back to finish his trilogy, but the return is not a joyous one.
The big problem with the film is that in no way does it feel on par with Argento’s best work, especially the other two entries in this trilogy. While the other two films played fast and loose with plot and logic, their style was so heavy and the movie’s cinematography so gorgeous that we simply didn’t care. The Mother of Tears has the same storytelling deficiencies of its predecessors, but none of the amazing style of its predecessors.
The movie deals with The Mother of Tears being let loose from an ancient tomb, sending the city of Rome into chaos. People just automatically turn on each other violently. Mothers start to murder their children and friends mortally wound each other in the street for no reason. The only person who is trying to get to the bottom of the mystery is a young student named Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento), who has a history with the Mothers and goes through a labyrinth of demons and ancient evils to stop Rome from burning.
Now, if you are simply looking for gore, you will definitely find it here. There’s a sequence early on in this movie where a woman is smashed in the mouth with a drill, disemboweled and then chocked to death with her own guts. Sequences like this are actually pretty frequent, but then creative and astonishing violence has never been shorted in Argento’s pictures. What’s missing is the amazing atmosphere that the director used to employ. Look at the first 12 minutes of Argento’s Suspiria, which I think is the greatest Horror sequence ever put on film. The lighting, music, camerawork, and production design equals the most amazing mixture of operatic beauty and intense violent horror ever conceived.
There’s not a single moment in The Mother of Tears that’s even in the same league as just the beginning of Suspiria. Instead, we’re just given loads of gore and nudity to make up for the film’s lack of creativity. I’m hoping that budget is the biggest reason for the film’s inadequacies. Perhaps Argento just doesn’t have the money to pull off the sort of cinematic magic he used to be able to, but in my gut I feel like maybe he just doesn’t have it anymore. That’s a really depressing thought, and I hope somehow Argento can prove me wrong really soon. Please let him prove me wrong.
Alright, so I went a little longer with these films than I planned again, so next week I’m going to finish up this little marathon with one of the weirdest Westerns I’ve ever seen, and a battle epic with tons of Kung fu craziness. Until next week!
