THE FLY @ 40

Seth Brundle picks up journalist Veronica at a science and technology convention when she tells him everyone says their invention will change the world and he says, "yeah, but they're lying." He does have a point. He's developed a matter transporter which he demonstrates back at his digs in the rusty quarter of town. She talks her skeptical boss (and romantic ex) into putting her on the story and one night when Seth gets drunk and jealous he puts himself through the machine, not noticing the stray fly that's followed him into the pod.

The Fly is often cited as the moment that David Cronenberg met the mainstream but he'd already done that with The Dead Zone (which even fans forget, however unjustly).  What The Fly more accurately signifies is Cronenberg bringing his trademark body horror to Hollywood. The one before Dead Zone was Videodrome which would not have flown in Hollywood with its paranoid themes of controlling media but The Fly was a remake of a '50s move (incidentally, one set in the Canada of Cronenberg's childhood years) and felt like a bankable update the way that Body Snatchers had in 1978 or The Thing in '82 (though that one didn't hit).

Regardless of what they thought they might have been in for what the suits and the public got was the work of an auteur glad to have a roomy budget and one careful not to waste a cent. What they also got was one of his most toughly visceral outings, an unflinching look at bodily disintegration and mutation. Cronenberg consciously chose against an allegory of AIDS which he felt would not only date the film but provide an irrelevant distraction from Brundle's story. To that end he encouraged his FX and makeup crew to concentrate on the effects of human aging, rendering Brundle's transformation all the more universal.

As it had in almost all Cronenberg's previous films, the exchange between strange technology and corporate interests gives way to the most profound aspects of the horror. The exclusivity of the Starliner housing development in Shivers serves as a perfect incubator for the sexually transmitted parasite. The pop psychologist's cultish manifestation of his patients' rage in The Brood gives literal brith to an army of homicidal monsters. In The Fly the initial entry point of greed is through fame, Brundle's in the science community and Veronica's in the publishing world, but the obvious commercial potential of the invention is there to begin with and, while not exploited in the running time, is clearly pointing to the future.

What doesn't point to the future is the effect on Brundle as he edges toward life as Brundle-Fly. Going from constant sexual arousal, climbing the walls, predigesting his food with acidic vomit, he is soon enough filling a display case of his unnecessary human features. They adorn the glass shelves of his museum of human history. The shedding of his humanity is reduced to a series of squelches and tearing dead tissue. As he narrates to a video camera how he is changing, we are increasingly aware that he is travelling on a one way ticket. This is a major departure from the '50s original in which rthe hapless Dr. Delambre continually resists his new state. Brundle not only accepts it but, thinking his new strength is a result purely of transporting, encourages Veronica to try it. When it's clear that he has fused with the insect his chief drive is curiosity and excitement. Only when this turns into deterioration does his philosophical acceptance emerge. Before the catastrophes of the final act, this is the scientist and his examination of his own passing.

The casting of the film included real life couple Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum who were about to have very good '80s and '90s. Goldblum exhibits the nervous intellect that still keeps him famous and it is perfect for Brundle's mix of rapid thought and frenetic self-effacement that gives the character his depth. He'd already delighted audiences with his similar turn in The Big Chill and this is his rarified version. Geena Davis with her sharp intelligence and warm deeper voice provides a presence that can complete the picture, beat for beat. This film always feels like a two hander rather than Goldblum's showcase and that is down to Davis' presence.

Also starring is the work of Cronenberg's workshop of effects and make up masters who served up a wealth of grotestquery that outdid all of Cronenberg's previous body horrors put together. From the mangled baboon to the various stages of Brundle's disintegration, to the maggot baby (with Cronenberg himself as the obsretician) to the final mess of a thing that yet invokes our pity and sorrow. All of it looks both physical and a little dated but dramatically so strong that we effortlessly watch along. 

The Fly saw David Cronenberg, the maestro of the weird idea in contemporary city life, reach the point where it felt he was finally comfortable with his actors. He's already worked with many highly accomplished casts but their performances can feel, in those earlier films, on the stilted side. With the young power couple at the centre of The Fly for the first time we know warmth in his stories. That final ingredient that makes The Fly more easily rewatchable than anything he'd already done (though my favourite will always be Videodrome) and it was an experience he took to almost everything he did thereafter that didn't require a cold touch (like Spider or Cosmopolis) completing the pieces to allow him to move between the mainstream and the personal without stylistic compromise. It depicted a terrifying transformation but it resulted in his own creative one. 

Viewing notes: I don't know if there will be a 40th Anniversary 4k of this in 2026 so I went ahead and watched my old Blu-Ray which is a superb transfer with clear impactful sound (frequent collaborator Howard Shore really got to play around with a big orchestra this time). On Disney+ with subscription, rent from Apple, Prime and Youtube, and out of print in Australia but always affordable through a market for around the $20 mark. 

Review: IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT

Vahid, the boss of a garage, freezes when he hears a sound coming from one of his customers. It's a little squeak from a prosthetic leg. It takes him back to days in political prison when the torturer Pegleg was committing atrocities on a daily basis. He follows the man (with young family) home and then kidnaps him and prepares him for summary live burial in the desert. The man's pleas include a challenge to test his claim of mistaken identity and Vahid is struck with reasonable doubt that dances around with his righteous anger. So he phones some friends, or at least others who were imprisoned by the regime at the same time. They need a positive ID.

But they can't quite do it. The closest any of them get is something remembered from the darkness of a solitary confinement cell. Between them they still don't quite have enough to stop them killing an innocent and very unlucky man. By this time Vahid's van is crammed with a wedding photographer, her subjects including a bride to be in tiara and gown, a firebrand, and the war criminal/innocent man  packed into a coffin sized tool box.

Jafar Panahi's thriller has a story that has been told before. It's one that highlights the costs of totalitarian regimes and the crimes against humanity that nurture them. In this case the story has some more urgency, being from the current Iranian situation. Panahi has been a prisoner several times over in the regime's jails as well as house arrest. He has been generally forbidden to make films and famously made one by stealth while under house arrest title This is Not a Film.

Here, he is operating with loosened restrictions and presents this alarming tale in his usual neo-realist style, mixing muscular characterisation with enough comedy to smooth things while the ethics stay centre stage. There is one massive humanity-testing circumstance in the middle act that manages to be both funny and demoralising, another moment where officials expect kickbacks and things that should run smoothly are subject to wrinkles in the tape. 

Panahi does give us a conclusion (no spoilers) which is followed by a tense and almost eerie finale moment, shot with impeccible judgement. At a time when the world's news is loud with the actions of blustering tyrants and forced loyalties to atrocity organisations, we need this film. We need to remind ourselves of the terrifying decisions that await us when the curtain lifts to reveal danger from our own neighbourhoods. Think about it, it seems to call, just think.

Viewing notes: I went to a morning screening which was sparsely attended but did feature a couple of senior women at the back row who talked all through the trailers and commercials and then through the opening coprorate badges that inform that the movie is about to begin. They weren't loud but I hadn't paid to listen to them. I did as I no longer fret to do and turned until I located them and loudly intoned: "Excuse me. Please stop talking." They did, for the entire film. We need to do this more.

Review: SEND HELP

Linda, corporate nerd engine has been passed over a promotion she was promised. The new boss Brad gives it to his friend. Linda plucks it up and confronts him and he gives her a chance to impress on an upcoming business sortie. As the bros laugh openly at her Survivor audition reel, the plane hits turbulence and blows up, crashing into the sea, leaving only Linda and Brad to wash up on the nearby island. Gonna be a long wait for rescue.

Sam Raimi's fable of peeling the veils of civilisation is not the brittle satire I imagined, though it deals with the same elements. Silver spoon Brad is dependent on Linda for his survival, first through his incapacitating injury and then through his incompetence. If they clear that difference there's still her resentment and his contempt. There's a ton to work through. If that sounds a little too much like a corporate training video then rest assured that Raimi is only too happy to supply eye popping gore with black humour and a constant undercurrent of unease. The master cineaste of The Evil Dead is still among us.

A screenplay that keeps things on the boil with wit and eviscerating obervations, nurturing toxic developments in characters as well as the ingredients for collaboration is brought to life by the casting. Dylan O'Brien as Brad is believably dickish but given enough clear intelligence to prevent him from eliciting a measure of empathy. It's his edginess that carries a lot of the tension. But this is still Rachel McAdams' film. She took on a type-reversing frumpy nerd and turned her into a jungle queen with constant conflicts through the survival scenario. It might lead to a splattery end but her growing hardness in the circumstances involves a near visible shedding of the social compliance held contemptible by the business world.

The result is one of the most gripping thiller comedies on offer. Raimi's effortless mix of violence and humour comes to the rescue of some of the most white knuckle scenes. But there's also a softer satire to provide relief from the intensity. Linda's discovery of a waterfall plays like a moisturiser commercial. Brad's breakout escape plan is shown with pathos as well as ridicule. 

The third act suffers from some needless expository dialogue during a scene that would have benefitted from wordless tension as the pair prepare for the big showdown. Then, that showdown is a fine toughened setpiece of conflict between the antagonists who now are both wiser and barer than their starting states, amid the trappings of luxury. The coda, if on the sour side, provides an apt cap.

I like this film more than some of Raimi's other genre outings like The Gift or Drag Me to Hell. Send Help is closer to the more complex A Simple Plan for the depth work done with the characters. The sustain of underlying tension and shifting ethics give even the most benevolent acts a queasy edge. Even when Linda's worst instincts lead her to darkness, we see she's also the victimised office drone and our judgement needs reservation. The choice of Blondie deep cuts Rip Her to Shreds and for the closing sequence One Way or Another is inspired. If you know the songs you'll welcome them here. They are the perfect aperitif and dessert cocktail to a fable that illustrates why civilisation should be earned, not assumed.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 @ 45 (Spoilers)

After a prologue that blends a recap of the legend and ending of the first film with a stalking and killing of its final girl, we gather at a new summer camp with new counsellors. It's also on Crystal Lake because why not? Pranks and gossip buzz and the chief Paul and his current flame among the staff, Ginny, smooth out their bickering. Meanwhile, handheld camera at ankle level, Jason is shown active as a full grown man roaming the woods as the young adults cavort in them. The crew get one last night on the town before they get down to prep for the summer camp and then the killing begins and the formula clicks into place.

That might sound cynical but this film, made at the dawn of teen slashers while the rules were still getting their first draft, happily reinforces everything that works and presages some features that the franchise itself would use. The first Friday the 13th was an attempt at distilling what worked about Halloween and dispensing with all that pesky character development. It worked and its first sequel added even more filtration. Get young adults together in a remote location. Kill them.

While I am not about to exaggerate the nuances of the relationships and characterisations here, there is some basic work done on what's between Paul and Ginny, Vickie shows paraplegic Mark that her attraction to him is not drawn from pity, whacky Ted is not just a pranky git. Ginny's bar-side musings on the legend of Jason and that he might have grown to age with no means to distinguish violence from morality. Surrounded by people washing their own ethics away with gushes of beer, it's a poignant moment.

So then you get the kills and they're good. Although gore effects emperor Tom Savini did cross paths with Jason and his victims, this time the setups are handled by Steven Kirshoff. Hammer claws to the skull, machetes to the neck, an encore of a javelin through sexually engaged bodies. All who paid for more of the first one were getting just that. As to the score, Henry Manfredini is back with his Psycho-inspired shrieks in the high stirngs. There is more electronica on the same stage though and the viewing I did for this featured a scene backed by the violin intensity and some strange synthesised chirping which added an uncomfortable weirdness to the scene. 

The most famous setpiece in the film comes at the end when Ginny musters everything she knows about psychology to hypnotically convince Jason that she is his murdered mother. She dons the deceased's jumper and talks to the killer, stopping him as he crashes through the door. It works. With her life at stake, and those of countless future others, she does a turn for the ages as Jason's vision blurs through confusion to acceptance, right up to the moment where he sees his mother's dessicated head still on the altar where he left it. Ginny is making good with her theorising and adding a comprehension to it  that feels like compassion. Where the inspirational figure of Michael Myers in Halloween's sequel (same year) might benefit from a few sprinkles of rounding back detail, he remains a mechanical predator. Jason gets a personality and history of abuse, the childlike killer left is made all the more terrifying.

The Jason of this outing has yet to put his iconic hockey mask on his face. He does wear an Elephant Man hessian sack with a single eyehole over his head, though. In the first we only see him as a mangled child projecting from the water in Alice's memory.  The dialogue states that it was five years between then and this one. Now, Jason is a grown man who has learned to dress himself and survive in the woods without discovery. Ok, but if you're going to hold what will increasingly be a disturbing thread of a figure liminally between worlds who becomes a slashing monster in this one, you won't be getting much out of this franchise. 

So, this one does what it says on the tin without pretending it's doing anything else, while adding some intriguing innovations. As to the tired criticism of slashers being puritanically anti-sex, recall the cry of the hosts of the great Faculty of Horror podcast: the film is rad, the killer is the prude. On the other hand, if I've managed to interest you in this one, move to the underrated Part 3. He gets the hockey mask in that one ;)

Viewing notes: I watched my blu-ray from a set of all the Paramount chapters. The presentation is stellar HD with good muscular audio mix. This set is no longer currently available but the whole franchise is rentable through a few streamers. 

WAKE IN FRIGHT @ 55

John Grant is in a bind. Young, intelligent and middle class, he signed on for a teaching career as a way of getting to an interesting and fulfilling life through a transformation into journalism. But the Department sent him to Woop Woop to teach the entire schoolage population in a single room as flies buzzed around them and the great arid outback wasteland spread to all horizons. He's in a bind because the only two ways of escaping are through seeing his contract through or buying his way out at a hefty 1971 thousand dollars. Not even the lump he gets for his upcoming holidays would come close to that.

But he is about to flee the scene for the Christmas holidays. His frequent daydreams of his girlfriend in Sydney emerging from crystal waters, gliding over the sand to plant a soft and loving kiss on his mouth keep him going through the rowdy train journey with its deafening drunks and racial exclusion. He has to stop at Bundanyabba overnight to hook up with a Sydney flight the next day. 

The Yabba clings around a mine and its pub is filled with loud, sweating men. John, bumping his way through to the bar gets a beer and retires to the closest thing to a private corner he can find. The cigarette he takes out is lit by Jock the local cop whose avuncular method of interrogation has John blurting out his predicament and sense of superiority over everyone that surrounds them. Jock then proceeds to lock John into the kind of shouting match that, in the Aussie lingo, only ends up with everyone plastered and vomiting beer. 

At the end of the night, at John's pleas, Jock takes to an afterhours diner where he finally gets something to soak up all that beer and hosts a constant two-up game. John looks at the Boschian nightmare of barking men in a room whose odour makes it through to the celluloid it was shot on, and he thinks: one thousand dollars. Soon enough he's shirtless. Bye bye, plane to Sydney and even train back to Tiboonda. He's stuck. If his teaching job was in Purgatory where he might just wait it out before redemption, he's now in Hell, possibly forever like the old Doc Tydon a man whose peace with the Yabba has made him poetically cynical and irretrievably depraved. 

What follows is a journey through that blistering wasteland. There's more ribbing and torment, violence and spooring toxic masculinity and rivers of beer. Kenneth Cook's source novel (same title) is a reference to an old saw: dream of the Devil and wake in fright. Well, that happened

Ted Kotchieff's film of the book from Evan Jones's screenplay is a carefully measured depiction of a steel trap closing on a victim. From the oppressively overheated plains of the opening shots to the inferni both meteorological and human, the crowd choreography that never feels staged, to the insertion of the brutal roo hunt, Kotchieff builds a world of minimally clothed savagery that, substantially exists to this day. The inclusion of period slang customs, aside, Wake in Fright feels as timeless as Hell itself.

The movie was considered lost. I saw it on late night TV in Brisbane in the early '80s but that was from the same kind of crud source that made it onto home video. It wasn't until the 2000s that the original elements were excavated and restored that anyone saw it in anything like its original form. I say this because the lost years created an impression that John Grant plummeted into a world of torture and depravity because of the bad boys in town but a good solid viewing of the film shows an ostensibly civilised man tearing away at the cuts from a few stoushes to find himself as feral as all the others. The early signals of his conversational hubris are punished until his increasing compliance is brought to screaming life as he strives to outdo the worst acts he sees, to make that same claim of superiority. He is not a babe in the woods, he is the sneering, me-first overgrown baby that anyone can be if given a little licence.

When he has a moment of lucidity towards the very end and rails at a local about the nightmare ethics of the culture, it's only partly from moral outrage; the other part is his failure to excel at it. The conclusion, emerging minus his pretensions to accept a fate mundane, humbling and ugly, shows us one changed from baseless arrogance to a life of accepted mediocrity. It's my view that it's this, rather than the obnoxiousness of the Yabbans that audiences in this country really objected to. If we really were that worried about bush machismo we wouldn't have had Crocodile Dundee.

But it's not all extreme fist fights and pub lore and an unforgiving pallet of barren earth that makes Wake in Fright the deserving classic that it is. We also get performances the like of which Australian cinema had never sported and it was a rich mix of bravura playing and sullen natrualism. 

Gary Bond, a British stage actor, gives John Grant a put upon pain that his looks (near identical to Peter O'Toole) and initial confidence render reasonable. His transformation through brutality are all the more striking and even shocking because of this. Australian veteran actor Chips Rafferty was never before not after as sinister as he is here. Typically, the Everystralian, good bloke in every crowd, character, he presents that but with a manipulative edge and a sneering superiority that has seen too many John Grants to care about their formal education and airs. In context, his performance is the most frightening.

Donald Pleasance, another import, is Australian enough to make it through his lines smoothly gives us a brutalised man whose pragmatism suggests far darker bargains and interactions than we see here. Sylvia Kay whose longing eyes show a detachment to her surroundings that has led her to a confusion between escape and oblivion whereby her joyless sexual excursions have become her sole exit. The attempted seduction of John and his response (is it revulsion or just too much beer?) ends with a rebuttoning and a lack of comment. For her the myth of Sisyphus might as well be a kind of lifestyle porn. The young Jack Thompson who was about to have an enviable '70s, bursts in with all the dangerous energy of that bloke at the barbie that you hear before you see, loud, intimidating, unstoppable. Hell of a debut.

Is this film unfair? On release, it was championed by all the John Grants in the community and condemned by all the Jock Crawfords. Did it really take a foreigner to show us ourselves? Ted Kotcheff went on to the satire Fun With Dick and Jane and the tougher First Blood. He knew the importance of details in world building so that the globe is bigger when seen in closeup. The documentary feel to the crowd scenes would have been familiar to local viewers from the likes of 4 Corners on the ABC. That he set a compelling drama within that points forward to the decade of Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman. He wasn't attacking Australia or its stereotypical blokes, they just got in the way via the setting of a novel. Masculinity? Yes, that's most of the bullseye on the target as it is the root cause of almost everything in the general malaise. It's not Australian culture but that of a people who will not break it where it needs breaking. We might have moved on, here, but incidents like the Nazis at populist rallies and deflating referendums (the Voice as well as the republic) and other horrors lead us right back to the room for improvement. Wake in Fright is not a time caspule. It's a clear and present caution.

Viewing notes: For this blog I watched Umbrella's outstanding 4K presentation of the 2000s restoration. Goodbye gluey video, this looks like film. It's available on 4K with a Blu-ray on disc, and streaming for hire on several platforms. A the moment you can see it for free with ads on Brollie and without ads on ABC iView. Go ye!

Review: 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE

Almost no time has passed between the end of the last one and the opening of this one. Young Spike is facing an initiative fight to the death with one of the other Jimmys in the gang. He wins but not how you'd reckon it and is then part of the gang of marauders in Jimmy Saville costumes. We also see Dr Ian from the last film, wandering around his bone temple and finding something unusual in the behaviour of the local alpha infected zombie. Then we meet some of the folk from an uninfected settlement who escape an infected encounter and run home only to find that the Jimmys have invaded their house. Times could be better.

Through a series of ultraviolent encounters we learn that the Jimmy's, under the hand of the self appointed Lord Sir Jimmy Crystal, roam the land, dispatching the infected in cartoon but very effective fashion as well as spreading the message of a twisted morality based on his experiences as a child. If you have seen the previous installment, this Jimmy is the boy who tries to take refuge in the church where his father is vicar to permanently scarifying effect. Keeping the kids of the gang, his fingers, in check with the constant threat of violence, his leadership is drawn entirely from fear and the spectre of Satan. Jimmy's conferences with Satan are imaginary but effective in building a culture of dread.

Ian the doctor, tends his memento mori, the columns of bones he has built from the decades since the outbreak. His response to the infected is measured, death in self defence but professional curiosity when observing a pause in the behaviour of some of them. One such, a mountain of an infected man, seems to understand the danger of Ian's blowpipe with its sedating dart. Ian has a project.

I won't reveal more plot. This film measures that out in digestible doses. I will say, however, that this is the most engaged I have felt throughout the whole running time of any of this series, including the original (which I loved up until the final act where it got weirdly cute). The injection of Nia DaCosta into the blend has helped. She has dispensed with the indugence of Danny Boyle's diluting influence, allowed the violence to speak for itself, and let the darkness of the tale take its own energy. It works. It's very violent, and it's scary which is more than I can say of the rest.

Jack O'Connell as Sir Lord Jimmy (the order wanders) is fearsome with his pauses, near reasonable ponderances, and sudden lethal judgements. The suggestion that he doesn't believe his own preaching gives him a danger beyond the average villain, toward a barely contained explosive malevolance. Ralph Fiennes does what he does, making himself wlecome while mumbling through old New Romantic song lyrics or putting on a magnificent cabaret to an old Iron Maiden classic. Alfie Williams as boy Spike holds his own, torn between the conscience he brings from his former life to playing the motions as a Jimmy. Erin Kellyman as the dynamic Jimmy Ink makes us doubt at every turn. 

The cinematography, a pleasing, clean and rich digital video, emphasises the indifference of green, wind blown nature which seems impatient to be done with these violent things running through it. Music, by Hildur Guonadottir is stealthy, squeaking here, roaring there, in step with the look and feel.

I was more captivated by this late entry to this long standing franchise than any other of the entries that I've seen (never bothered with 28 Weeks Later). This is because the guest director seems as though she has worked to make something that is effective whether it is standalone or seen as part of a series. Danny Boyle's 2002 original was a mostly good film, ruined by a hasty conclusion and apparent need to appear cool. I found 28 Years Later self-subverting with its overly comfy presentation of the survivor colony and its laddishness. Did writer Alex Garland feel the same? The absence of those over-warmed tones in Boyle's films is welcome. Perhaps, the mooted final sequel which purports to be about redemption will fulfil the promise of this stylistic detour. I doubt it but doubts are part of wishes.

SOMETHING WILD @ 40

Charlie, white collar on the rise, gets caught out in one of the microrebellions he stages to assure himself he's still vital (skipping out on a lunch bill). His pursuer is a young woman named Lulu with a flamboyant dress sense who recognises his motives and invites him on an adventure. Action by action, his resistance is broken and soon he's cheating on his marriage with her in a motel paid for by the work Christmas Club cash he was bearing. All the corporate heights he was heading for, with their rewards of status and riches in the conventional world are about to be stripped away, leaving him at rock bottom. Is he about to find out that that's exactly where he needs to be?

Jonathan Demme had over a decade's worth of exploitation flicks and thrillers, graduating from Roger Corman University in the '70s to the heights of Oscar nominations by the mid-'80s. By the time Something Wild hit his desk he had the luxury of taking his pick. It read like an old screwball comedy but with a harder more contemporary edge. The director who would launch the formalised serial killer genre in a few years with Silence of the Lambs would have seen that right off.

This is why the whacky looking poster art sent out for this movie is such a bait and switch. Melanie Griffith looks wickedly alluring and Jeff Daniels, upsidedown, is worried. But despite the meet cute outside the restaurant and the initial joyride she takes him on, the comedy steadily cranks down and gets replaced by darker matter. That's before the disruption in the middle act.

The '80s saw the emergence of a new kind of American upwardly moving salary jerk or perhaps just a new name for them. The Yuppie was a figure of fun or malevolance, the notion that the future of western culture would be in the hands of greed driven psychos was a terrifying one and, whether it was comedy like Desperately Seeking Susan or thriller like Fatal Attraction, the Yuppie Nightmare movie appeared to assuage our fear with their disintegration or satisfy our powerless envy through ridicule. This bled into the following decade even more extremely and had already been taken far enough by Martin Scorsese with After Hours that the jokes landed so hard they stopped being funny.

If I say that E. Max Frye's screenplay takes a softer approach, it's not to suggest that Something Wild is a lightweight piece but concerned less with attacking the Yuppie than understanding them. Demme ran with that, adding enough to let the gravity takeover feel natural. Demme keeps his eye on character and nurturing performances that give the extraordinary situation credibility.

Melanie Griffith, if she had started today, would have been called a nepo baby because she was Hitchcock blonde Tippi Hedren's daughter. But that would still be unfair considering she was a child actor and as a teenager played opposite Gene Hackman Night Moves, and then in Roar with the lions she grew up with. This role feels like a vindication of her life experience to date. After the whacky update of a Rosalind Russell or Katherine Hepburn screwball agent of chaos has worn out and the wig comes off in her mother's house, she's Audrey with a real life story that involves pain. Griffith assumes the dignity smoothly, risking the audience's resentment at the loss of the sexy flake, and gets away with it. This is her film.

Jeff Daniels as Charlie has a tougher job winning us over from his ginger token rebellion. He's exactly the starched effigy the audience has been warned against, using everyone else's money to make his fortune regardless of everyone else. He is given his own pain and it's fed to us piecemeal but his playing of the turning point is exceptional, winding up the spring that shoots him into his new life he ums and ers and appeals to everything his antagonists should superficially assume about him. All of that suit-deep convention is jettisoned as he physcially leaps toward Audrey. He is careful, after that, to retain Charlie's timidity, tiny tics and casting of his gaze that speak of a life of passive aggression. Daniels was a realitive newcomer to the screen and while he might have been initially chosen for his clean-lined all American look he gave depth to prevent the kind of caricature that would have plunged this film into obscurity.

Ray Liotta, lean and hungry, who would soon hold his own beside De Niro and Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, provides a prototype performance, adding a growling narcissism to his bad boy role. He is unpredictably dangerous. When Charlie stops a train of conversation about Audrey's sexual performance, retaining the better part of his old conventionality, Ray surprisingly relents but then moves on to further violence, a walking hair trigger.

Something Wild does look like the '80s cinema around it with big bright colour and soft light in the dark and a mix of needledrop and scored music. The credits open with a solo David Byrne track that sounds like Talking Heads, the score credits for John Cale and Laurie Anderson cover both arthouse and mid-'80s cache. Those are ticked boxes but there is one moment I noticed in the most recent watch that struck me. In a brief establishing shot of a street, a convertible glides past with a brace of yuppies in it, the song on the car speakers is New Order's Temptation, a song four years old at the time. While the chaos is transforming Charlie inside, the rest of America is still in the Yuppie dream, driving a vintage convertible, consuming the Noo Wave now that it is safe to do so. Such a pleasant alternative to something like About Last Night's constant screaming mainstream pop.

Jonathan Demme chose to quietly subvert the film he was expected to make by finding the sobering core in the screenplay. He might easily have got away with making the movie of the poster, raked in a good opening weekend and moved on but the question of what lay beneath the designer shirts and investment portfolios of his culture proved too compelling. It was an example that the film culture didn't heed, with the likes of Basic Instinct or The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. Then again, it was Demme's Silence of the Lambs, showing he was happy to dress up base exploitation in glossy-budgeted finery and start one of the most detestable, convention-guarding genres in recent cinema history, so he wasn't really above anything. Except there was this moment where he went with his gut, plied his craft and made something durable.

Viewing notes: I watched this free with my Prime subscription in an HD presentation. Also available to rent through YouTube and Apple.