Tag: Nancy Allen

Poltergeist III (1988, Gary Sherman)

Poltergeist III is about as thrilling as watching someone wash a window. Literally. Outside ostensible protagonist Heather O’Rourke and special guest star Zelda Rubinstein, no one from the previous films returns. The film opens with O’Rourke living in Chicago with aunt Nancy Allen, a yuppie recently married to Tom Skerritt, presumably a widower with a teenage daughter (Lara Flynn Boyle). There’s a lot of setup with the family, and it goes absolutely nowhere. It’s probably better it doesn’t, as the writing’s so bad. Allen’s whole arc for the movie—which takes place over a single day—involves her not loving her family enough. Except the first act shows the opposite. She, Boyle, and O’Rourke are downright pals, turning getting to the morning carpool into a veritable action set piece.

The family lives in a combination skyscraper shopping mall; the exteriors are the John Hancock Building, some interiors there, some interiors elsewhere. It’s not a bad idea for a setting (it’s a Judge Dredd tower block), except every time the characters go somewhere interesting, the scenes are either super-short or off-screen. Skeritt works for the building, so he’s got passkeys, which will be necessary for teenage shenanigans, and Allen’s got an unlikely art gallery in the high-class shopping mall.

Except Allen makes her assistant, E.J. Murray, do all her work, which is where Allen starts getting unlikable. She never gets much more unlikable because her performance becomes weird about halfway through, as she seems incredibly resentful she’s appearing in Poltergeist III. It should work with the plot as her character eventually wants to run away from the haunted skyscraper. Still, neither Allen nor director Sherman can make Allen’s disgust in the project carry through into the performance.

However, Allen is a trooper. She gets through Poltergeist III and all its absurdities and inanities. Just when the movie seems like it’s going to focus on O’Rourke and surrogate big sister Boyle (who low-key resents having a tween charge), it instead becomes Skerritt and Allen running around the skyscraper. Sometimes they’re on their own; sometimes, they’ve got asshole child psychologist Richard Fire with them. Fire is O’Rourke’s doctor, and he hates her and hates her ghost stories. Like much of Poltergeist III it ought to be campy bad; instead, it’s boring, inept bad.

The best thing in the movie, objectively, is Alex Nepomniaschy’s photography. He shoots the building interiors beautifully. And doesn’t do too bad with the competently executed but terribly designed supernatural sequences, which are sometimes too silly to work and sometimes just too poorly directed. Even though director Sherman designed all the physical effects himself, he didn’t know how to shoot them. Bummer.

But the most amusing thing about Poltergeist III is Skerritt’s performance. Allen, Boyle, and some other cast members survive the film and never let it defeat them, but Skerritt is enthusiastic and eager in this terrible movie. Allen occasionally looks mad he’s putting so much effort into it. It never ever pays off, but it’s an exceptionally professional turn from Skerritt. The movie doesn’t deserve most of its cast members—I mean, only Fire is so godawful he deserves it—but Skerritt’s a champ for getting through it.

Poltergeist III is one of those “must be seen to be believed” pictures, but it’s also one of those “there’s truly no reason to see this movie” movies. It’s insufferably dull too. Editor Ross Albert holds shots too long (presumably because otherwise, the film wouldn’t run more than ninety minutes), and there are numerous action sequences where Sherman confuses tension and boredom.

Don’t see Poltergeist III. Watch paint dry or window washing instead.

Dressed to Kill (1980, Brian De Palma)

Dressed to Kill has oodles of style. It doesn’t have a lot else going for it–a lot of the acting, sure, but the acting never pays off for anyone–but it does have style. Director De Palma and cinematographer Ralf D. Bode create an ethereal New York for the action to play out in.

The film opens with sexually dissatisfied housewife Angie Dickinson fantasizing about, well, something more satisfying. De Palma’s got Pino Donaggio music and Donaggio music can get away with a lot but even it can make a smutty shower scene play. The film then introduces Keith Gordon as Dickinson’s technology nerd teenage son before bringing in top-billed Michael Caine. He’s Dickinson’s therapist. She goes to therapy before she goes to the museum to pick up a man.

After picking up the man, which isn’t a good pickup sequence at all, but is a fantastically executed bit of filmmaking. Dickinson’s walking around the museum, everything’s silent, and it’s just great. Bode, De Palma, editor Gerald B. Greenberg, it’s awesome.

When she wakes up at the man’s apartment, Dickinson finds herself involved in a bloody homicide. Nancy Allen comes into the film at this point to also witness the murder, setting off Allen’s story line. The killer is after her, it turns out, eventually leading to her teaming up with Gordon.

Caine’s in it because he’s pretty sure the killer is another one of his patients, though he doesn’t want to give that information to cop Dennis Franz. Franz, meanwhile, is trying to get Allen to help on the case. She’s a sex worker and he’s sort of blackmailing her? Franz is a creep. When De Palma tries to do a denouement redemption of Franz, it’s one of Dressed’s worst moments. De Palma’s script is occasionally jaw-dropping in its pure stupidity, but the redemption of Franz is something else. Especially given it comes through the big “explanation” scene (out of Psycho, natch, with that museum pickup being out of Vertigo) where De Palma manages to be–at least what appears to be–unintentionally transphobic.

One of Dressed’s big plot twists–it’s got at least two, maybe three depending on how you want to count the minor ones (because then there are plenty of minor “twists”)–involves a transsexual person. Dressed to Kill is exploitation. It’s gorgeous, it’s got sometimes A list stars, but it’s exploitation. Yet when De Palma brings in gender dysphoria, it doesn’t seem like he’s using it as a punchline. Because he butchers what he’s doing with it, bringing in multiple personalities and whatnot. The script is really, really stupid. It’s hard to explain how unintentionally stupid Dressed to Kill can get.

And not when De Palma’s intending it either. He has quite a few split screen shots in the film, which works in maybe two cases, but never with Dickinson. Dickinson has the split screen shots to remember something sexual or somehow related to sex. Given how little material De Palma actually gives Dickinson to work with in the script, her performance is incredibly impressive.

But De Palma doesn’t direct the actors poorly. He often directs them quite well. Everyone gets good direction. Even Dennis Franz. It’s just Franz is one step too far. Dressed to Kill’s fairytale New York City clashes with Franz’s lounge lizard detective.

Allen’s decent throughout, occasionally downright excellent. Dickinson’s good. The script does her no favors and neither does Greenberg’s editing (everything else he can edit, but not Dickinson’s reaction and pensive close-ups), but she’s good. Caine’s fine. De Palma doesn’t really give him a lot to do. He meanders through the film.

Gordon’s good. He’s really likable. The likable part is more important. Once he and Allen are hanging out, there’s this strange lack of sexual energy, like only the adults in De Palma movies get to be sex-crazed. And they’re mostly all sex-crazed and De Palma wants to talk about it. A De Palma scripted interchange between a sex worker and a therapist is simultaneously cringe-inducing and mesmerizing.

Dressed to Kill is, overall, cringe-inducing and mesmerizing. It looks beautiful. It sounds beautiful. It’s just vapid. Sometime in the second act, it seems like it might get a little less vapid.

It doesn’t. But it still moves pretty well. There’s an unfortunate false ending, coming after some of the biggest third act problems, but the quality of the filmmaking–and Allen’s performance–gets it through. And brings up the film a bit.

A bit is a lot for Dressed to Kill.

Robocop (1987, Paul Verhoeven), the director's cut

There are a lot of acknowledged accomplishments to Robocop. Pretty much everyone identifies Rob Bottin and Phil Tippett. Bottin handled the startling makeup, Tippett did the awesome stop motion. Director Verhoeven gets a lot of credit–rightly so–and Basil Poledouris’s score is essential. Big scene or small, whenever Poledouris’s music kicks in, the film hits every note better.

One scene in particular is the Robocop in his old house sequence–which is just after Peter Weller starts to get the role as a character and not an automation; seeing Weller make that transition is amazing because he can’t do it with expressions, only pause.

That scene’s also fantastic for the unacknowledged Robocop accomplishment–Jost Vacano’s photography. He’s the one who makes the film feel real. Well, along with Verhoeven and the writers distaste for the cool-looking future they create. The writers are able to get in some great observations, but they never let the future get too real. It focuses the story’s attention unexpectedly well.

It doesn’t hurt the film’s perfectly acted. Easy examples are Kurtwood Smith and Miguel Ferrer, but everyone’s great. Nancy Allen is the perfect sidekick for Weller. Given how fast their characters get established in the film, they have to work well together immediately and they do.

Verhoeven’s the real star–he, Weller and Bottin, actually. Without Bottin and Weller, Robocop wouldn’t seem real, but without Verhoeven the film wouldn’t work. His approach to the violence–and the quiet–are essential to Robocop’s success.

Carrie (1976, Brian De Palma)

In terms of De Palma’s direction, Carrie is a little bit of a mess. It’s a combination of Hitchcock as camp–which really cuts into the effectiveness of the finale–more religious imagery than, say, The Ten Commandments and, finally, some truly brilliant composition from De Palma. He, cinematography Mario Tosi and editor Paul Hirsch create a sometimes transcendent experience.

Sadly, the technical talent–including Pino Donaggio’s lovely score–and good performances don’t overpower the script problems. De Palma falls into the horror standard of using a big surprise ending to avoid having to include, you know, an actual ending. Someone seems to have misplaced Carrie‘s third act.

Some of the trouble probably stems from how much the filmmakers are hiding from the viewer. That aspect plays, unfortunately, into the Hitchcock camp factor I mentioned earlier. De Palma never figures out how seriously he wants to take the film–he’s often either slathering on the religion or making it a tad too goofy. The film’s at its best when he can’t do either, because the scenes need actual content. De Palma’s only goofy when he can fiddle with the pacing.

Sissy Spacek’s excellent in the lead, though she’s not really the protagonist or even the main character. The film forgets about her for long stretches. Nancy Allen’s also excellent as her evil antagonist. William Katt’s quite good too.

Piper Laurie’s okay, nothing more, as the psychotically religious mother.

The strong first half nearly makes up for the misfired finish.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Brian De Palma; screenplay by Lawrence D. Cohen, based on the novel by Stephen King; director of photography, Mario Tosi; edited by Paul Hirsch; music by Pino Donaggio; produced by Paul Monash; released by United Artists.

Starring Sissy Spacek (Carrie White), Betty Buckley (Miss Collins), Piper Laurie (Margaret White), William Katt (Tommy Ross), Nancy Allen (Chris Hargensen), Amy Irving (Sue Snell), John Travolta (Billy Nolan), P.J. Soles (Norma Watson), Priscilla Pointer (Mrs. Snell), Sydney Lassick (Mr. Fromm) and Stefan Gierasch (Mr. Morton).

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Robocop 3 (1993, Fred Dekker)

It’s actually not hard to find nice things to say about Robocop 3. There’re about fifteen nice seconds of Phil Tippett stop-motion, Dekker’s got a neat way of shooting cars to give a sense of realism (his cinematographer, Gary B. Kibbe, did a lot of Carpenter’s films)… umm… wait, I’m sure I can find a third. It was cool seeing Jeff Garlin in a movie? Does that one count?

Robocop 3 is an unmitigated disaster, made on the cheap–made a few years later, if Orion Pictures had maintained solvency, it would have just been a direct-to-video entry–the only amusing way to pass a viewing experience is to rate the actors’ sense of embarrassment. Worst has to be Nancy Allen, who had so much vested interest in the sequel’s artistic import, she demanded to be killed off. There are a few “reasons” Peter Weller didn’t return–the costume, filming conflicts–but maybe he just read the script. As a PG-13 movie, Robocop 3 is silly. It turns RoboCop into a Saturday morning cartoon superhero, complete with bad one-liners.

What’s peculiar about the film is the cast. It’s a veritable who’s who of television personalities–famous ones. There’s Stephen Root from “NewsRadio,” he’s really bad. CCH Pounder, I’ll use “ER” as an example to keep up the strange NBC connection, is also bad. She’s usually quite good, so I suppose by not being more visibly embarrassed while delivering her lines–well, there’s a compliment somewhere in there. Jill Hennessy from “Law & Order.” She’s absolutely atrocious. Robocop 3 was delayed a couple years while Orion worked its way out of bankruptcy and I wonder if, had it come out as scheduled, she’d ever have gotten another role again.

But my favorite has to be Bradley Whitford, if only because he’s actually all right in Robocop 3. His character’s a generic corporate slime, but Whitford’s got a couple good deliveries. It doesn’t make the movie any better, but they’re funny deliveries. I wonder if he kept the glasses he got to wear in the movie.

I haven’t seen Robocop 3 in ten years and it appears to have corked rather significantly. I haven’t even gotten to some of the worst performances, which is mind-boggling since I have mentioned Hennessy already. I’m just worried I’ll forget the stunt performers, who jump long before they have any reason to, creating an almost surreal effect. But I don’t think Dekker was trying to bring Fellini to Robocop.

There’s an annoying little kid in this one–Remy Ryan Hernandez–she’s real bad. She’s got a great scene where–after doing calculus at a Doogie Howser age–doesn’t seem to understand her parents have been bussed away (the script’s got some real logic problems). Every scene with Hernandez is painful. It’s like the filmmakers were trying to appeal to a Disney girl audience or something.

Rip Torn is also terrible here, mugging for the camera (I’d believe it if they told him he was just doing a voice for a cartoon, which might explain his exaggerated expressions and so on). John Castle, terrible. Mako, terrible. Daniel von Bargen, okay.

As the new RoboCop, Robert John Burke is the pits. Why they didn’t just leave the helmet on all the time and hire Peter Weller to dub in the lines….

Well, that suggestion makes sense and nothing in Robocop 3 makes any sense.

Robocop 2 (1990, Irvin Kershner)

I remember in 1991, when I was visiting a friend and he showed me the Robocop movies (there were only two at the time, of course)–I’m tempted to go on a tangent about when one could still show someone movies… you kind of lose that opportunity with adulthood, then you just get to recommend. Anyway, after watching the two films, I commented the villains were better in the first one. He responded, “You read that in a review.” And now I’m writing it in one.

There are three major problems with Robocop 2. First, the villains. They aren’t as good, even though many of them are well-acted by their performers. It’s actually a cheap list item, because it so directly relates to the second major problem. Robocop 2 has little to do with Robocop. There are attempts to give Robocop a story in the film, but they stop pretending after a while, during the long sequences he’s off-screen all together. Robocop 2 is more about the bad guys than the hero, who’s possible journey is knee-capped in the first fifteen or twenty minutes. Robocop’s an inherently tragic figure–he’s the hero who never gets a reward–and the film would rather ignore him than deal with him.

The third problem has, big shock, a lot to do with the first two problems. Nothing really happens for the first hour. Nothing really good anyway. The first hour is spent engineering the second hour, allowing for the scenes to take place. Obviously, a plot complicates and a plot progresses, but Robocop 2’s script is pretty incompetent in terms of plotting. The lousy villains are also the script’s fault, specifically Frank Miller’s, who’s done enough work (and had his original script adapted to a comic book) to have the blame easily assigned. I’m not sure if it’s his fault Robocop 2 isn’t about Robocop… it might have something more to do with the first film being incapable of providing an easy sequel.

Now for the good. Irvin Kershner is a sturdy director. He doesn’t get to really shine until the big action ending–when it’s a mix of Kershner’s direction, Phil Tippett’s unbelievably wonderful stop motion, and Leonard Rosenman’s score. The film also takes forever to have any action scenes of merit–script’s fault–with most of the early ones being boring, unimaginative shootouts (contrived to progress the plot as conveniently as possible).

Peter Weller’s good as Robocop, though he’s got very little to do throughout the film. Nancy Allen kind of hangs out in a practical cameo (Patricia Charbonneau–in an uncredited performance–has more resonance). Tom Noonan’s good as the villain, Gabriel Damon’s good as the evil Frank Miller kid villain. The corporate villains, Belinda Bauer, Dan O’Herlihy, Jeff McCarthy and, in particular, Felton Perry, are all good.

The film has very little to do with the first one–it’s a sequel to the first film’s success, rather than the characters and their struggles in it–but it’s well-produced.

The grand action finale is amazing to see. Robocop 2 becomes a monster-on-the-loose movie all of a sudden and Kershner produces a great sequence. It’s also at night, one of the film’s few scenes at night… it really helps. In fact, it closes so well, one can almost (but not really) forget the first hour of the film.

Blow Out (1981, Brian De Palma)

If one were to, empirically, examine the films of the 1990s and onward to the present, he or she might be inclined to not believe in Blow Out. Literally, not believe such a film could exist. Not only does Brian De Palma’s remake of Blowup work, it succeeds… partially because of De Palma’s script (here’s one of those unbelievable elements), particularly the spectacular dialogue–delivered by (here’s the other unbelievable part) a fantastic John Travolta. Travolta’s obviously picked up standard mannerisms from “successful” performances and they’re all so neon, seeing him without them is startling. How De Palma went from the compositional genius of Blow Out–his shots here, beautifully photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond, are viscerally unmatched. Describing De Palma’s success in terms of direction is not impossible, but it’s too bothersome for me to do here… It’s somehow singular, even taking in to account the frequent Hitchcock references (which De Palma uses differently here, relying on Pino Donaggio’s score to make the connection more than any visual cues… except maybe in terms of the settings).

De Palma’s script, probably the last thing I expected to start a paragraph admiring, creates this wonderful character for Travolta. Blow Out’s a tragedy about selfish people who try not to be selfish, mostly for the wrong reasons. Kind of. It’s also got these great moments–Travolta arrives at a train station to meet Nancy Allen and, thanks to De Palma’s composition, the simple scene is magnificent–or the lengthy flashback sequence, which is totally out of place in the film, but in place for the character. De Palma’s able to visualize Travolta’s exposition to Allen… a narrated flashback… and doesn’t just make it work, but he makes it great.

The only significant problem with De Palma’s script is how interested it is with John Lithgow’s bad guy. De Palma goes overboard with the attention Lithgow, who goes from a good villain to a cartoon one, gets at the expense of Travolta and Allen.

Allen’s performance is the strangest element in the film. She’s incredibly annoying–playing a complete ditz–and it takes a long time to warm to her (about the same time Travolta develops deeper feelings for her on screen). Lithgow’s fine, not too much with his villainy (another post-1990s impossibility, given Cliffhanger) and Dennis Franz shows up for a small role. Franz is a lot of fun here, establishing his image.

Some of Blow Out’s success–and it’s notability for film school grads (which is how I discovered it ten years ago)–is its fetishistic approach to film editing. The film’s beautifully edited, sure, but it’s also about a sound editor who edits on screen… seeing the machines work is a lot more enthralling than watching me cut something together in iMovie. There’s an energy of physical creation and discovery in those scenes (much like in Blowup) and seeing the process carry out is as thrilling as any chase scene.

I hadn’t seen Blow Out in eight or nine years. Given how invigorating an experience–what a genuine thrill for the cinematic storytelling process it left me with–I hope it isn’t as long again.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Brian De Palma; director of photography, Vilmos Zsigmond; edited by Paul Hirsch; music by Pino Donaggio; produced by George Litto; released by Filmways Pictures.

Starring John Travolta (Jack Terry), Nancy Allen (Sally), John Lithgow (Burke), Dennis Franz (Manny Karp), Peter Boyden (Sam), Curt May (Donahue), John Aquino (Det. Mackey) and John McMartin (Lawrence Henry).

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