DUEL @ 55

David Mann is in sales and has to drive across the state to meet a client. It's all routine. He'll take the highway, stop at a diner, get some petrol if needed and roll on to the meet. It'll take most of the day. Driving blithely along, he gets overtaken by a truck with the word flammable on the back of its tank. Annoyed, he overtakes it at the next opportunity. The truck sounds its deafening horn and the game's afoot. David and the huge, loud, faceless machine are bound together in a death duel. Roll credits.

Well, no. This ballet of road rage, stressed metal and fossil fuel is not so simple as that makes it. You don't have to care about any of the subtext because, though it was made for TV, this is the directorial debut of Steven Spielberg from a story by the great Richard Matheson and there is a vipers nest of theme beneath the action.

As David is driving out of the city he listens to talkback radio. A man is stuck filling in his census form because he has opted to stay at home in a then reversed role marriage. This takes so long to make its point that it forms a kind of introduction to the theme. This is a story of masculinity in contest. David is bullied by his wife and, while his rage is doing the driving whenever the big oily monster of the truck appears, he quickly assumes the role of the victim and the greater part of the film becomes his survival story. You see the boots and the arm of the truckie but nothing else; he is male threat incarnate and doesn't need an individual face. 

The rest plays out as you would expect except that even the young Steven Spielberg applies his skills like a newbie director possessed. Perfectly wound tension and release and the reminder, out here in the badlands, of the civilisation they have broken from. This is a developing master of his art announcing himself. One more and it's Jaws and then it's history.

But there's a problem. This was shot for TV and brought in at seventy-four minutes. With ads, that would get you to an easy ninety. When it was released to cinemas it was with that gap filled by extra scenes. This later version has been presented as the director's cut ever since the mid-seventies. 

When I first saw it on TV, it was the original and, even with the ads, it was rivetting. The longer version I watched for this review, ad-free, felt repetitive, obvious and endless. I kept checking the time. This is comparable to thinking of Bon Scott as the real singer of ACDC when Brian Johnston has been at the mic for decades longer. The longer cut of this film is the version. I still think it drags and overstates.

The other thing is the George Lucas style revision of effects in the vision and the audio. This movie has been scrubbed to bare skin and then glazed until it looks like it's been in the Bain Marie for weeks. While the overall effect of this is easy on the eye, it does let the side down. Can't we celebrate this master of movies with his real first step, warts and all? Doesn't that only accentuate how far he has come and how natively skilled he was way back then in his twenties? But no, we have to have it through the rinse cycle before the French polishers get to it. 

It reminds me that if you listen to the first Velvet Underground album on hi-res digital you will just hear how crappily it was produced. It doesn't stop it from being a great record but there is a real disappointment to hearing how it cannot be improved, only made clearer. I'm not a original is always better type and have only disdain for the analogue is better bullshit but when you lengthen a tight action movie with more statements of the obvious and use AI to pretend it wasn't made in 1971, you effectively  change its story; not it's narrative progression, the story of its birth and life as a movie. The job isn't as bad as those that James Cameron and George Lucas done with their back catalogue but it is a misrepresentation. At least the shark in Jaws on 4K is still allowed to look fake here and there. Then again, that's part of its story. Duel's is in danger of being obscured by recent history.

Viewing notes: I saw this as a rental on Prime. The 4K picture was true to itself, as long as you're ok with AI polyfiller. There is currently a reasonably priced 4K double disc available to buy and it does include the original TV version. I'm tempted to get that, just for the old cut but I just don't love the movie that much.

GOD TOLD ME TO @ 50

Unrelated murders happen in quick succession across New York, the only link between them is that the killer always says that God told them to do it. Detective Peter Nicholas just keeps finding questions under the answers but then does find another link: all the killers had spoken to a young man with golden hair. They can't describe his face. One witness says that the man had no face. As Nicholas moves deeper into the mystery he finds what might be his salvation or the opening beats of the Apocalypse.

Larry Cohen's genre bending quest film is a police procedural that gets bitten by a supernatural theme before things get really cosmic. This is from the filmmaker who gave us a killer baby in It's Alive, toxic sweets in The Stuff and an ancient winged serpent in Q. Those were all original ideas and Cohen made a career from exploitation movies that were packed with concepts. So, in addition to the procedural thread, Nicholas' odd marital and extra marital situation, his devotion to Catholicism but his claim of detachment from it, we get a plot that riffs on the Von Daniken God is an astronaut idea to play out to the suggestion of eventual cataclysm. Cohen declared the source material for God Told Me To was the Bible, that he had never known a more violent character in literature than God himself.

But this film is an exploitation movie. It was also released under the title Demon. The Exorcist was only three years old at the time and the possession subgenre was cleaning up at cinemas. But the original title has a tabloid force to it that does a lot of the work. And Cohen was careful not to blame the Devil. The scenes where the killers are confessing shows them chillingly calm and rational. They just don't see what the problem was.

Tony Lo Bianco's Peter Nicholas is reckless to begin with but the forces in the tale that give him self-conflict take a toll on him. Lo Bianco demonstrates great stress and pounding frustration as the initial investigation reveals only infuriatingly difficult questions. As he approaches the difficult truth of his journey and a sense of his personal power becomes evident, his confidence warms and ices us down. It's a performance you might not expect in a film like this.

Around this, the plot races, establishing its anchors and pivots rapidly, ensuring a smooth and quick series of developments. Cohen used everything he had as a film maker to do this. The opening traffic sniping was done guerrilla style without permits and the setpiece at the police parade (with a young Andy Kaufmann in an unforgettable walk-on) was matched between documentary footage Cohen shot and close ups deftly shot and inserted. Handheld sequences are used to heighten unease and add more documentarian vibes. One account featuring a UFO was pieced together from the old sci-fi show Space 1999 but doesn't look like it. What does look like itself is New York City and it's the grimy endless metropolis that also played itself in the same year's Taxi Driver. Cohen takes us into a realm of local religious festivals with Catholic fetishism, real condemned high rise tenaments, and streets that never seem to get sunlight. It's like neither more than superficially but this story lives in the same world as The French Connection and The Omen (another 1976 release).

I first saw this as Demon on Brisbane late night TV in the early '80s and marvelled at how the genre turned on a five cent piece but it all still felt like the same movie. When things get cosmic from halfway through, there is no contradiction. The sight of the ethereal (and scary) Bernard Phillips rests as effortlessly in the look and feel as the visit to Sylvia Sidney's abduction victim and implant receiver. Sandy Dennis' exhausted but manipulative wife could be a few blocks away. When the time comes for whizbang special effects we get physical performance and lighting. There is peril inside a burning building which might make you worry for the cast and crew for its authenticity. Cohen might have been judged a B-movie hack but takes the hard road to get this story told.

There wasn't an option for buying a copy of a film wasn't an option then but I vowed to be in the queue of the Schonell or Valhalla or any art cinemas such as they were, to see it for real. Decades later, when the market expected punters to buy the new digital home video movies for themselves, I sought a copy of the Blue Underground special ed. Then, I saw and heard it in as close to a cinema experience as I could have dreamed of. It was a marvel all over again. Larry Cohen left as a few years ago and when I knew of it I garthered a few friends to watch the 4K, some had seen it, others not, and we talked about it all night after the end credits rolled.

Viewing notes: I watched my Blue Underground 4K with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos sound and luxuriated in this film's look and feel and the weight of its conceits. This is not locally available in physical media but can be bought overseas in fine editions. It can be hired through Prime for $2.99.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 6: JASON LIVES @ 40

Tommy from Parts 4 and 5, returns to Crystal Lake (now Forest Green) from his stay at a mental health hospital to kill the already dead Jason Vorhees to prevent him from ever returning. He and a friend dig up the grave and Tommy impales Jason with a fence spike which catches a bolt of lightning which brings Jason back to lethal life. Good one, Tommy.

And then it's kill kill kill, thrill thrill thrill and then the credits. Except that this part takes up the challenges of the previous one (which I won't be spoiling) and runs with them. The franchise holds its own from the first to the fourth better than most comparable horror franchises of its time. The second sequence begins with an acceptable twist but then we're really only retreading the formula with a few threads of commentary on the times to extend it. Where once there were hillbilly families and bikie gangs there are now white collar paintball teams. The summer camp is back, having been absent for a few installments, and this time we get the kids who go to it, not just the counsellors, adding a potential quarry for the man in the mask.

Also, there's the Tommy thread which has to do with indentity and agency as defined by suspicions against him. This is difficult to detail as it involves spoilers for gthe previous two parts but I can say that it's treatment of Tommy's predicament lifts it from the generally disappointing Part 5. If you remember that this is part six of a slasher franchise, Jason Lives does its job with some inventive kills that include character setups sufficient to prevent the murders from simply adding to the kill count. And there is the line, early in the piece: "I've seen enough horror movies to know that any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly." Ten years on and that self-reflexivity became de riguer with Scream and its imitators.

What is there left to say about this installment in time, as its own film? It's lean and muscular and does what it says it will do. Neither particularly profound nor trying to be, ressurecting the monster and leaving him at the door to any number of sequels, the way everything should work.

I witnessed the origin of the F13 franchise as a one-off during Schoolies Week in 1980. It worked great magic. I'd seen Halloween the year before at the drive-in and its memory towered over this. Much later, when I relaxed my cinephilia with the admission that I love horror movies, I caught up with both franchises (along with Nightmare on Elm St, Hellraiser and a few others). 

Comparing the descendants of Halloween with F13 is a sobering exercise. While Halloween kept going off its own rails by copying the thing that copied it (F13) and strayed into potentially interesting territory with the third installment, once it relaxed into dishing up the kind of slasher movies that the original's imitators did, it lost touch with its inspiration and became the game it had changed. F13, for all its callous copying and base exploitation, kept showing it could try new things. That's pretty much why I bought a blu-ray set of the first eight plus the 2007 remake as I knew it would feel less try-hard than a comparable set of Halloween. F13 doesn't beg too much but does get on with it. That beats a fading current of nostalgia any time.

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 @ 50

When a raid on an outlying police station ends in the theft of assault weapons and the death of gang members, the gang vows revenge. The next morning, newly commissioned Police Lieutenant Ethan Bishop starts his day with the assignment of taking care of decommissioned police station for its last night. A man is driving with his daughter to pick up her nanny through the streets of the same rundown neighbourhood as the station and the gang headquarters. The gang prowls the streets in a car, armed with those assault weapons. The girl is shot dead getting an ice cream. The man escapes the scene and, after some near lethal encounters makes his way, raving in shock to the station. The gang can kill two birds with one stone. Oh, and a group of hard criminals is being transported by bus including a notorious murderer and a very sick prisoner. It's not the babysitting gig Lt. Bishop expected but then he did tell his boss that he wanted to be a hero.

Reading that, it's a ton of plot but watching the movie it never feels like it. John Carpenter's second feature film but first that didn't begin as a student film finds him ready to rock. All those narrative threads above are woven seamlessly through a personable first act which ends in atrocity. The seige story that follows forms the pattern for Carpenters next decade finds place here as a compelling play of tension and character development. Assault is overshadowed by both the cheeky space adventure prior to it (Dark Star) and the horror masterpiece that followed it (Halloween) but it offers great rewards for the repeat viewer.

A significant debt, aside from Carpenter's confessed Rio Bravo, is the independent source point Night of the Living Dead. This might well have guided the casting of a black actor for Lt. Bishop (Carpenter doesn't mention it in his commentary) but it definitely suggested the middle act discusison of whether to go upstairs or to the basement for best defence. While the gang members are not zombies (the sleek choreography of their movements gives them an extra spike of threat) the sense that they are as relentless drives their scenes. They are also, poignantly multi-racial. Closing in on an ethnicity would have distracted from their purpose as pure antagonists.

However, once you understand these precursors any overriding influence of the history of cinema vanishes under Carpenter's confident helming of the action and tension. If you think of Dark Star as the college film that escaped, Assault emerges as among the strongest of debut features. This is also where Carpenter began his practice of shooting in the widescreen ratio of 2.35:1 to add a sense of cinematic value. At no point, however pulpy or B-movie it gets, the film never looks less than prime.

Then there's the world building. The Los Angeles invented suburb of Anderson is all bungalows and dried untended lawns. The gangs have driven everyone indoors and the paved empty streets look post apocalyptic. The comparative cosiness of the station offers visual sanctuary until it becomes a target and the quarry of the gang and then it resembles something more like a disintegrating prison. The sense of abandonment by the rest of the city's law enforcement adds a clear saddening hopelessness as the night progresses.

On characterisation, this is a film with dual leads. We have already met Lt. Bishop but it is his nominal antithesis who takes co-ownership of centre screen. Napolean Wilson, the mass murderer accepts his judgement and potentially lethal punishment and it is strangely disarming. He is the chief wit in the film and the moment of respect that passes between him and Bishop gets us hankering to see them bounce off each other.

Austin Stoker's Bishop is a strong leader but beset by doubts on his first job as an officer. His fluent physicality deepens his openness. Darwin Joston as Wilson manages to squeeze charisma out of his every dialogue exchange and maintains a strange mix of effortlessness and intensity. Laurie Zimmer as Leigh is Carpenter's first properly drawn female character. Zimmer plays her as someone discovering the reason she has bravery and confidence when faced with lethality. Carpenter would get Jamie Lee Curtis to do to opposite in Halloween two years later. In this early go, Zimmer gives Carpenter an early win. She's magnetic on screen and the swelling connection between her and Wilson feels deliciously dangerous. 

So, if John Carpenter's first fully fledged outing as a feature film maker stepped beyond good for a rookie to announce the emergence of a stylistically easy action guy where did he have to progress. The next decade would be a career yoyo with global hits like Halloween but anti-zeitgeist flops like The Thing. Cartoony adventure with Big Trouble in Little China but ideas-heavy sleepers like Prince of Darkness or the prescient They Live filled his screens. His self-effacing blu-ray commentary leaves his description of Assault as an exploitation film but we are looking at an engaging, characterful action feast that can be gripping and eerie by turns. Oh, it's also one of his strongest music scores, fully synthesised, brooding, menacing and relentless. When weirdo trip hopper Tricky used it for his Bomb the Bastards rap, he just let the theme music play without adding anything more than his own vocals. That's a bow of tribute.

Viewing notes: I watched my excellent Umbrella Blu-Ray of this film and hope that someone puts out a 50th anniversary 4K. Meanwhile it can be rented from Apple, Prime and YouTube. Umbrella's BD (which includes a director's cut of Dark Star as an extra) is out of print. 

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.