BRITANNIA HOSPITAL (1982)

A running gag on Spike Milligan’s sketch shows involved a patient visiting a doctor’s office. The doctor would ask, “Will this be on the National Health or private insurance?”

Patient: “Oh, private insurance.”

Doctor: “Right.” Then he’d flip down the flag on a taxi meter and let it run.

Now Americans, of course, don’t have this option. If we were to say “National Health”, a conservative clown car would drive up and heave us right out of there. In Great Britain (and the majority of Europe, Asia, Japan, China, Russia, Canada and far-flung Greenland) the state takes charge of its citizens’ medical needs. If you can’t afford fancy “private insurance”, well the hospitals will care for your tired carcass regardless. It’s a working system, not however without its flaws, as with any system. The main difference between, say Great Britain and America, is that ol’ Blighty won’t let you die of the plague just because you’re penniless. If you die, it’ll be due to something else. Probably unrelated.

By Lindsay Anderson’s own admission: “Britannia Hospital (as my picture is called) is the usual over-ambitious conception, satirical, ominous and absurd – designed to annoy practically everyone.” (LA/1/9/3/5/10, Lindsay Anderson writing to Pauline Melville, 31/07/1981, The Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling.) (Unless indicated, all quotes taken from Participations, Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, Walking the talk: reflections on Indigenous media audience research methods, by Kathryn Mackenzie and Karl Magee, Stirling University, UK Volume 6, Issue 2 (November 2009). If that designation was sincere, then in 1982 Anderson definitely succeeded. According to Brit critic David Robinson, “…no major British film can ever have suffered so calamitous a debut” (David Robinson, ‘Time to reconsider a masterly vision’, The Times, 15/10/1982.), and not because the movie was seen as an unsatisfactory wrap-up of the so-called “Mick Travis Trilogy” Anderson had begun when he cast Malcolm McDowell in …If and its ambitious follow-up (co-written by McDowell), O Lucky Man.

In the Autumn of 1982, the United Kingdom and its people were under considerable stress. Unempolyment was at a record high, unseen since the ‘30s, and to top that a large number of union worker strikes broke out throughout the island. Add to that the controversial war raging in the Falklands and increasing IRA-attributed terrorist strikes, the upper-lips of all England were wilting. Hardly the best timing for a movie satirizing the nation’s health system, the monarchy, unions, class warfare, rising media chicanery and even Hammer Horrors. As Mackenzie and Magee wrote in “Participations”, “In the light of this social context it is hard to overstate the effect that negative reviews, and articles in which the film was portrayed as being ‘unpatriotic’, would have on the cinema-going public.” If the movie-going population hadn’t already dropped to another all-time low since 1972, the number of outraged might have been even greater. Barely publicized by EMI, Britannia Hospital was met with spectacularly negative reviews. And (ironically, considering the film’s primary McGuffin) with his Holiness the Pope John Paul II arriving in London that very weekend, few were keen on checking out what was being advertised as a high brow entry of the Carry On series.

The film’s set-up requires the entirety of its first act, but its tone is set during the credits. An ambulance drives slowly through the wrought-iron gates of the hospital estate, winding up a driveway choked with striking workers (including Robbie Coltrane) and angry protestors. The outrage is almost evenly split along two grievances—one involving the admittance of African despotic President Ngami, guilty of war crimes against his own people who has turned his own separate suite at the hospital into a mini-village filled with bodyguards, multiple relatives and even farm animals; the second and no-less angry mob consists of Britain’s working class who demand that the hospital discharge the wealthier “private insurance” patients who receive special treatment for their generous pocketbooks.

Joining this latter protest are the hospital’s union workers and supporters. The short kitchen staff refuse to make the special breakfasts and other meals for the upper class sickies. There’s also a matter of workers who are meant to get the hallway painted in time for the arrival of a “very special visitor”, but the paints don’t match and they’re waiting on supplies, “You may not believe it, sir, but we take pride in our work!” one says over his latest cup of tea.

Fighting through the crowds, two disinterested ambulance workers haul a dying man out of the back on a gurney, bumping and jarring him through the emergency room doors. Only a handful of late-night staff are present and none of them acknowledge the new arrival. It’s time for the drivers’ tea break and the head nurse is officially off duty. As they edge their way between the admit desk and the gurney, the neglected patient takes a final breath and dies, his arm dangling limp over the side. Two orderlies return to their card game.

Come the morning shift and things are no better. Mr. Biles (Brian Pettifer), Assistant to the Administrator, and Mr. Potter (Leonard Rossiter), Administrator, have to constantly negotiate to get anything done. Like the corpse on the gurney, for instance, blocking traffic. He gets back nothing but cheek. “Don’t you call us men. We’re staff.” To keep from running to the union, they’ll settle for double time, eggs, toast and sausage. Meanwhile, there’s the usual rigamarole in the kitchens. Union rep Ben Keating (Robin Askwith) insists on the rights of the staff and of the public patients. “It’s the same for everyone, or nothing at all!” This, of course, angers the Private patients who are outraged at the treatment. “For the amount you charge, matron, we expect more than a British rails box lunch.” And cite their years of service. “I drove a bus for 15 years to pay for this operation!”

To add to everyone’s pressures, “Her Royal Majesty (aka “HRM”) will be visiting in celebration of ^th Anniversary of the establishment of Britannia Hospital since its opening under Elizabeth I. Queen will be touring the facilitiesand the archways are still a shambles. Potter protests and a worker responds, “An insult to me is an insult to every unskilled worker in this hospital. Think upon that.” Within the hour, Potter is dogged by the ministers of etiquette, Sir Antony Mount (little person actor Marcus Powell) and  the Lady Felicity (John Bett in drag). Scotland Yard will have snipers on the grounds. Patients have been selected for presentation. “Nothing too gruesome, I hope,” twitters Lady Felicity.

the hospital’s 500

This very day also marks the grand opening of the Millar Centre for Advanced Surgical Science, named for its founder, a master of “experimental surgical Darwinism”, the sinister Dr. Millar (Graham Crowden, whom fans will recognize as the same sinister doctor who gave patients sheep legs in O Lucky Man). He eludes to his newest, greatest experiment, “Genesis”, and after greeting Dr. MacMillan (Jill Bennett) with a passionate but quite British kiss, they exchange a bit of dialogue regarding a new patient:

Millar: “How’s McReady doing?”

MacMillan: “Splendid, we’re expecting death within the hour.”

Millar: “I have high hopes for McReady.”

Unfortunately, McReady (a non-speaking cameo by Alan Bates) continues to linger. Taking advantage of the elsewhere chaos, Millar chooses to gently remove the patient from life support and sever his head with a laser saw. Also unfortunately, this act has been witnessed by TV journalist Mick Travis (McDowell), who has bribed a union window-washer to sneak him down the side of the building so he can spy with his state-of-the-art mini-camera. “Citizen of the world, that’s me. I started in coffee.” Mick’s inside man, such as she is, is Nurse Amanda Purcil (Marsha Hunt), who helps smuggle Mick into the Centre, has a go at him in a supply closet, then preps him for disguise as a doctor. Before long, they come to Dr. Millar’s personal storage room, containing banks of window freezers containing harvested body parts. Mick manages to move a torso from one freezer and hide there just in time to hear MacMillan report to Millar: “There’s a small problem with the left buttock. It will need to be replaced.”

Down on the street in the midst of a growing riot, Travis’ cameramen Red (Mark Hamill) and Sam (Frank Grimes), are far more interested in the medicinal offerings of the various countries they’ve visited and decide to try them all out at once, their backs to Mick’s camera feed.

Having already insulted the ministers of etiquette and embarrassed administration—sez Sir Geoffrey: “You’re not a doctor, you’re a vampire. To you Patients aren’t suffering beings to cure, but raw material for your egomania.”—Millar has little interest in the Important Visit save for how it will affect his own presentation of “Man Remade”. His own documentary film crew is documenting his opening. To the cameras, Millar purees a brain to demonstrate the possibility of harnessing the full potential of 10 billion neurons. And then invites the director to take a swig.

Quickly—or, maybe, quicklier—negotiations, manipulations, protests and preparations have all whipped up quite a head of steam, with Potter and Biles bribing union heads with seats at the Royal Luncheon if they’ll co-operate outside of their own best interests, which turns out to be a rather simple solution to a complex problem. They also have to contend with the increasingly radical Anti-Ngami factions who threaten the safety of HRM and the Luncheon. Meanwhile, Travis is found out by Millar and his staff, but happens to possess a number of…items that Millar can utilize in his experiment. After much skullduggery, HRM arrives but so, at that very moment, to the riot police lose control of the protestors. For Dr. Millar, this all means a much larger—and captive—audience to witness his perfection, his “Genesis”.

There’s a lot of running around in Britannia Hospital and it is a bit of a satire smoothy—heavier-handed social commentary than If… and more slapstick than O Lucky Man, yet, somehow more accessible than either of Anderson’s previous entries. It doesn’t have a patience-trying running time, nor the cultural disparity of boarding school life to keep the audience at arm’s length. Many viewers have expressed disappointment that Travis is not the central character this time around and it is true that he tends to get lost in the chaos (until the wonderful set piece which I insist was inspired by Gordon Hessler’s Scream and Scream Again). There’s a lot to take in, a lot of characters to keep track of and a lot of rules to be acknowledged before they’re discarded. This isn’t the anarchy of Monty Python, but rather something akin to the daily cruelty of The Ruling Class. And despite the incomprehensibility of some of the Northern accents, Britannia Hospital manages to speak to cultures outside of Great Britain—really anywhere that contains a broken system of bureaucracy, government and public welfare.

“When it came to promoting Britannia Hospital outside the UK, Anderson was keen to stress that it was not a parochial work. In interviews and correspondence he repeatedly stresses that the themes of Britannia Hospital are universal and have relevance to all societies, not just Britain. This point was picked up by Alexander Walker (one of the few British critics who supported the film) in an article about its screening at the Cannes Film Festival in the Evening Standard in May 1982: ‘Its British setting in a London hospital, Anderson’s metaphor for a sick Britain suffering a nervous breakdown, hasn’t stopped practically every nationality present at Cannes from recognising and applying the truth of its savage comedy to the conditions of their own ailing countries’.”

With all the hooraw surrounding the derogatorily-named “Obamacare” and constant hysteria in the US, perhaps Britannia Hospital was ahead of its time and would be more warmly-welecomed now. In 1982, however, United Artists had less idea how to promote it than EMI in the UK. It had been ten years since the US release of O Lucky Man, and while it was met favorably by critics, it didn’t do tremendously well with American audiences. A superstar in Britain, Lindsay Anderson was far from a household name in the Colonies. UA’s trailers for the film were cut to make it appear a “zany” Python-esque romp, focusing on familiar faces like McDowell and Star Wars’ Hamill, who actually had a much smaller presence in the film than Malcolm. Anderson was “ashamed” of the strategies in his native land and was appalled by the obscene attempts at “blockbusterizing” Britannia Hospital abroad.

“I am quite ashamed to find that the general English-speaking hostility towards BH and the film’s dismissal by prejudice and resentment masquerading as criticism have disturbed me more deeply than is healthy. Not caused me to doubt the work, exactly, but made me aware of the near impossibility of getting across a point of view, values of reason and morality so alien to the spirit of our times. It is not so much the strength of the opposition that has discouraged me, as the lack of support, the indifference of the ‘uncommitted’ majority, and their willingness to be led by the enemy behind the typewriter … I have very little confidence that the film will do well. I don’t know whether it could have, given the benefit of a brilliantly intelligent campaign. But that is pure fantasy anyway.”

Britannia Hospital basically came and went. The US critics reviews were kinder to Anderson, perhaps due to Anglophilia towards the director, but it never found the correct audience. While it’s returned to the spotlight in recent years, thanks to McDowell’s praise of it in interviews and, particularly, on his one-man show about Anderson titled Never Apologize, Britannia Hospital remains, as Mackenzi and Magee observe, “perhaps the most unfairly neglected of his films.” Its lack of acceptance led to Anderson temporarily retiring from film, returning only to direct The Whales of August in 1987.

It is absolutely true that, in terms of it being a “Mick Travis” film, Britannia Hospital does not measure up to what came before. On its own, however, the movie is solid and often extremely funny. It also manages to be shocking even in this modern age of torture porn and endless war. Not only in terms of the Hammer-esque grand guignol climax of Millar’s “Man Remade” operation, but also in terms of corporate neglect, worker apathy, and the appaling conditions both staff and paitents face in modern hospitals (take, for example, the hospital’s Rudyard Kipling Wing, the most expensive, up-to-date, state-of-the-art, CCTV-covered ward, capable of housing 75 patients in complete comfort, but lays unused at the moment due to lack of cleaning staff). It’s also an example of how class warfare is alive and well in the 21^st Century, even in the so-called “all men created equal” realm of the United States. As one placard in the crowd reads, “Priviledge is a crime!” Answering that, as the riot breaks free of the barracades and literally chases the Royal Family into Millar’s wing, Chief Inspector Johns declares that there’s only one thing left to do.

To which, Potter replies: Potter: “Cut the Luncheon!”

Without giving away the surprise (or, perhaps, lack-thereof) of what Millar’s “Genesis” is revealed to be, I’ll leave you with his final speech. What might have seemed heavy-handed in the ‘80s seems much more relevant today:

“Friends! Fellow Members of the Human Race! We are gathered here for a purpose. Let us look together at Mankind. What do we see? We see Mastery. What wonders Mankind can perform. He can cross the oceans and continents today, as easily as our grandfathers crossed the street. Tomorrow he will as easily cross the vast territories of space. He can make deserts fertile and plant cabbages on the Moon. And what does man choose? Alone among the creatures of this world, the Human Race chooses to annihilate itself. Since the last world conflict ended, there has not been one day in which Human Beings have not been slaughtering or wounding one another, in two-hundred and thirty different wars. And man breeds as recklessly as he lays waste. By the end of the century, the population of the world will have tripled. Two-thirds of our plant species will have been destroyed. 55% of the Animal Kingdom. And 70% of our mineral resources. Out of every hundred Human Beings now living, 80 will die without ever knowing what it feels like to be fully nourished... While a tiny minority indulge themselves in absurd and extravagant luxuries. A motion picture entertainer of North America will receive as much money in a month as would feed a starving South American tribe for a hundred years! We waste! We destroy! And, we cling like savages to our superstitions. We give power to leaders of State and Church as prejudiced and small-minded as ourselves, who squander our resources on instruments of destruction... While millions continue to suffer and go hungry, condemned forever to lives of ignorance and deprivation. And why is this? It is because mankind has denied Intelligence, the unique glory of our species - the Human Brain. Man is entering an era of infinite possibility, still imprisoned in a feeble, inefficient body... Still manacled by primitive notions of morality, which have no place in an Age of Science... Still powered by a brain that has hardly developed since the species emerged from the caves. Only a new intelligence can save Mankind! Only a new Human Being of pure brain can lead man forward into the new era. I do not speak of dreams. Such a being exists already. I have created it! It is here. Now. Prepare yourselves to meet the Human of the Future. Neither Man nor Woman. Greater than either. I have given it a name. Genesis. Birth. A New Birth. A New Beginning for Mankind. People of Today, Behold Your Future!”

Fill in the blank.

SOUTHLAND TALES (2007)

As a long-time fan of “quirky” movies, I was predestined to enjoy Richard Kelly’s debut feature film, the quirk-filled Donnie Darko. Taken as I was with the theatrical release, I was very excited about the upcoming “Director’s Cut” and to prep for it, I listened to the director’s commentary on the original DVD. About ten minutes into it, director Kelly said something that threw me off completely:

“And from this point on we’re in the alternate universe…”

“What?” I said. I literally said this to the television and demanded Kelly to repeat what he said. I’d watched Donnie Darko a couple of times prior to the commentary and his pronouncement caught me completely off-guard, making me question not only my understanding of his movie, but his understanding of his movie. Like most viewers, I considered the titular Donnie’s journey throughout the film to be a Lynchian dreamscape while his awake body quivered with fear over nuclear destruction, just as we all did in the ‘80s. When I viewed the “Director’s Cut”, I saw where Kelly labored to leave additional clues to time travel and alternate time lines, but I still felt, in the end, that I never would have come to those conclusions without him telling me. His commentary definitely changed my view of the film. Where before I thought it was enjoyable, trippy and intelligent, I was now thinking of it as a muddled, metaphysical mess.

So it came as no surprise to me when  his sophomore film, the $17 million dollar-plus Southland Tales, with its stunt cast and visual tics, I viewed it as a plainly, laid-right-out-there-in-front-of-god-and-everybody, muddled, semi-metaphysical mess, albeit with some ham-handed satire. I enjoyed it, in much the same way I love fever dreams like Forbidden Zone and Dr. Caligari, but my final thought was that every scene was terrific, but none of them were actually in the same movie.

The film’s sprawling narrative takes us from a nuclear blast in Abilene, Texas, in 2005, to the “present” of 2008, where America is in the middle of a tight electorial race (the shudder-inducing Clinton/Lieberman vs. Eliot/Frost), is under the constant watch of Orwelian surveillance via the company USIDent (overseen by Bobby Frost’s wife, Nana Mae Frost (Miranda Richardson), is on the threshold of a new Tesla-esque machine that will turn the ocean into a perpetual motion machine of renewable energy, and an extreme Democratic Left-turned-terrorists, weilding guns and poetry and going under the umbrella of “Neo-Marxists”.

But that’s all background. The meat of the story involves an action movie star named Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson) (married to Madeline Frost, daughter of Republican VP nominate Sen. Bobby Frost), who has been missing but was found with amnesia by porn-star-turned-talk-show-host Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar, who’s line about “I like to get fucked and I like to get fucked hard. But violence has no place in porn. That’s why I don’t do anal.” Surely caused some fanboy heads to explode.) The two of them wrote a screenplay called The Power, in which both will star, that tells about the last three days of the world, as prophesized by a newborn baby that has not produced a bowel movement in almost a week. To research his part, Krysta arranges for Boxer to ride-along with Officer Roland Taverner (an appropriately bewildered Seann William Scott).

Parallel to this, a Neo-Marxist group run by Cindy Pinziki (Nora Dunn) and Zora Carmichaels (Cheri Oteri) have hatched a plot to rig the election using “donated” severed thumbs, whose prints can be reused in multiple districts. Cindy (as “Deep Throat 2”) is also in possession of an incriminating sex tape starring Boxer and Krysta that could only spell scandall to the Frost campaign if released. In exchange for this tape she demands one million dollars and a vote of “Yes” on “Prop 69”, which will limit the powers of USIDent.

The third part of their plot seems to have been Zora’s brainchild. She forces the amnesiac Ronald Taverner to kidnap his twin policeman brother to pose as him and manipulate Boxer’s ride-along. The plan is to catch “Roland”, a “racist cop”, gunning down activist performance artists Dion Element and Dream (Amy Poehler), using blanks and squibs, of course. Once Boxer catches this assassination on tape, it can be used as further leverage against the campaign and Frost advisor Vaughn Smallhouse (John Laroquette).

Thirdly, there is Baron von Westphalen (Wallace Shawn), grandson of Karl Marx’s wife Jenny Von Westphalen, who is the genius behind “Fluid Karma”, the gigantic machine that harnesses the oceans waves to produce a continent-wide energy field to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil—from which we’ve been embargoed anyway due to four Middle East Wars (Iraq, Iran, Syria and Afghanistan). But the Baron, far from a philanthropist, wants to use Fluid Karma for world domination.

Finally there’s the narrator, Pilot Abilene (Justin Timberlake), a disfigured war vet, omnicient from his perch in an anti-aircraft turret, who has ties to the major players, deals a drug version of “Fluid Karma” from his arcade on the Santa Monica pier, and warns us from the beginning, “This is the way the world ends: not with a whimper, but a bang.”

This reworking of the T.S. Eliot poem, “The Hollow Men”, is reiterated several times throughout the film. As are lyrics from Jane’s Addiction’s “Three Days”, The Killer’s “All the Things I’ve Done” (which is used as an extended music video-dream sequence starring Pilot Abilene and a group of nurses who are meant to look like Marilyn Monroe, but bear the platinum locks of Jean Harlow). The question is, are these lines meant to represent the weight of the narrative, or are they misdirects, giving over the propecy to dialogue like, “I am a pimp, and pimps don’t commit suicide.”?

I’m going to make a grand, sweeping statement that anyone will find Southland Tales impenetrable on first viewing, and may very well conclude at the nebulous anti-climax that it isn’t worth a second. That was certainly my attitude as the credits rolled. But something nagged at me. And continued to nag at me for a couple of years. Was there more to this pseudo-satirical jab at celebrity worship, government over-reach, fascism, Marxism, action film parody and theoretical physics than just all of the ingredients fed into a salad shooter and sprayed all over the viewer? Or is this another Donnie Darko, that will only make complete sense to its creator?

As I’ve found, on subsequent viewings, that the answer is probably a combination of the two.

When Kelly debuted a rough near-3 hour cut of Southland Tales at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, it was met with jeers, boos and walk-outs. Notoriously, Roger Ebert wrote that it was as big a disaster as his most-hated The Brown Bunny. But Sony found promise in it and agreed to bankroll $1M worth of visual effects for completion if Kelly agreed to lose at least 20 minutes of running time. 

“Part of me feels like I got away with murder,” Mr. Kelly, 32, said in a recent interview in Manhattan. “It’s a film some people might consider an inaccessible B movie, and it’s been slaughtered at the biggest film festival in the world. They could have been like, ‘You want more money now?’” (NY Times, by Dennis Lim, 10/28/2007) 

Returning to the editing room, Kelly removed the requested twenty minutes, excising an entire subplot involving Jeaneane Garafalo as a military general working in collusion with Simon Theory (the gratefully-underused Kevin Smith), the only two upper brass who know the identity of the charred corpse found in Boxer’s SUV following his disappearance. Also reworked was the structure, moving a gruesomely funny scene involving the Baron and a Japanese business rival and the terms of a contract for Fluid Karma, from the first act to the second. Placing this scene later in the film manages to keep the Baron out of the “villain” role until much later. In the theatrical version, Wallace Shawn is simply a creepier version of The Princess Bride’s Vizini up until the “contract negotiation”. Further overtly villainous lines are also removed, but this also vagues up his connection to the Neo-Marxists, the identity of the burned corpse, and what role he expected Boxer to play in his scheme. While the Garafalo/Smith interactions didn’t add much to the plot (and only one scene with Smith had to be reworked to make it appear that he’s instead working under Nana Mae), but its removal makes a quick shot of Garafalo during the end celebrations a head-scratcher, but by this point, you should be through scalp and down to skull.

The real irony of the reworking is that the Cannes Cut is actually much more straight-forward of a narrative, inasmuch as Southland Tales can be considered straightforward. One thing that’s much more clear is how often Boxer slips into his character of Jericho Cane (an explicit dig/homage to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in End of Days) and the world of his screenplay when his psyche can’t handle the reality around him. Dwayne Johnson’s performance as Boxer among the highlights of the movie—when he’s stressed, he tents his fingers and twiddles them together, and to combat that he will “take a moment” and slip into the macho Jericho and, fortunately or not, the world of The Power. In the theatrical cut, this isn’t immediately clear and only alienates the viewer from the ostensible hero.

Kelly seems to have directed all of the actors to deliver lines as either stilted or overly-sinister. Then again, with so many hidden agendas, maybe it’s possible that every character suffers from some sort of identity crisis, even if they haven’t traveled back in time 69 minutes to meet their future selves.

The film’s primary problem lies in the fact that it does not stand alone as a film in its current state. It requires patience and multiple viewings, but, as I stated above, if one is feels completely disconnected from the characters by quirk and misdirected satire, those multiple viewings will not occur.

Then there’s the argument that Southland Tales was never meant to stand alone. Prio to the film’s release, Kelly wrote three prequel graphic novels which apparently give further clues to the story’s intricate mysteries: Abilene and “his best friend” (as he says in the last line of the movie) Roland Taverner were subjected to experiments in Iraq that resulted in a panicked Roland lobbing a grenade in Abilene’s direction, causing his disfigurement and PTSD. It’s also implied that Abilene and Taverner—and anyone who takes Fluid Karma injections—become telepathic. The comics also explain Boxer’s numerous tattoos and how he received them under Krysta Now’s guidance (including the portrait of Christ on his back that bleeds through his shirt during a critical point in the climax), and even why that dumb Killer’s song is relevant.

I came upon all of this knowledge after the fact, and in point of argument, rather resented it. I am aware, now, of the “immersive” marketing studios do now, leading fans to hidden videos and website scavenger hunts, but that still feels a bit like a cheat to me, especially if critical information is being withheld by this strategy. If the movie can’t stand as its own entity, then it isn’t really a movie, it’s something else. In this case, Southland Tales is a story told in six chapters, broken across three graphic novels and the three “chapters” presented in the film.

To call Kelly’s vision for the movie “ambitious” is akin to referring to the ocean as “damp”. Inspired by the events of 9/11, Kelly had a lot on his mind and did his damnedest to cram it all in: political culture, instant celebrity culture, the evils of the Patriot Act, the idea of perpetual war, PTSD, conspiracy and the near-magical realm of quantum mechanical coincidence.

It’s no wonder that any first viewing feels like a high-pressure mental delousing. As Kelly said in an interview for About.com: “You know, there’s always that risk [that the audience won’t get it]. But I think we’ve made it as accessible overload. It’s going to be overload. It’s one of those movies that’s going to melt your brain. It’s definitely going to melt your brain when you watch it, but I think it’s now going to melt your brain in a way where you’re understanding it just enough to keep going with it. And the important thing also is you’re laughing.” (Exclusive Interview with Southland Tales Writer/Director Richard Kelly By Rebecca Murray, About.com Guide)

When Southland Tales was finally released, it was met with largely negative reviews. Because, no surprise, nobody knew what the hell to make of it. Over the years, it’s started to garner a cult following and has shown up on at least one “Most Under-rated Movie” list that I’m aware of. And that’s because the film, for all of its goofy obtusity, is worth multiple viewings. Like a character in a Dan Brown novel, on the second or third time through you start to see the connections, albeit slowly. You begin to see how pieces fit together—particularly if you pay close attention to the multiple computer-voice readouts of news reports that are ubiquitous in the soundtrack background. And if you don’t mind pausing every few seconds to read the scrolling info on Abilene’s laptop screen, other clues can be found and other connections can be inferred.

Between the Cannes cut and the theatrical, I found a very rich, dense and thought-provoking satire. Had I not heard of the Cannes cut and managed to run it down, to be honest I might never have revisited the film. But at least as far as Southland Tales goes, it’s not the “makes sense in my head” movie that Kelly thinks he made. Rather it’s a mystery puzzle box with clues scattered throughout the frames and running time. If you want to make sense of it, the movie demands your participation. Otherwise, you’re just stuck in a room with a bunch of folks with violent tourettes trying to explain the Book of Revelations.

[This article barely scratches the surface. Until I can further analyze this movie under controlled conditions, please check out this piece from Salon.com)

 And don't forget to pick up your copy of 

Fervid Filmmaking: 66 Cult Pictures of Vision, Verve and No Self-Restraint 

Now Available through McFarland Press

 

SOCIETY (1992)

Class warfare has always been ripe for satire. Oscar Wilde, Moliere, Luis Bunuel, Alice Cooper, National Lampoon—all the majors have tackled the idea that the rich feed off of the poor, that proper standing and breeding are more important than human decency. In 1989, horror producer Brian Yuzna took the themes and ran with them for his directorial debut, Society, and wound up with a very strange movie indeed.

As well-bred Bill Whitney (Baywatch’s Billy Warlock) approaches his eighteenth birthday, he starts to suffer the onset of existential angst. Yes, he has it all—fancy girlfriend, wealthy parents, the high school presidency all but locked up, but he just feels so alienated by it all. Dr. Cleveland, Bill’s therapist and an old family friend, chalks it up to normal post-adolescent angst, shoves some pills down his throat and sends him on his way. But then he runs into Blanchard, his sister Jenny’s creepy and bloated ex-boyfriend, who gives Bill an audio tape containing what sounds to be his family involved in a perverse and squishy murder-cum-orgy. When he plays the tape for Dr. Cleveland, however, Bill hears only the delighted sounds of Jenny’s “coming out” party.

Only Bill’s lower-upper-middle-class best friend Milo believes his story. Blanchard’s sudden death in a car accident confirms their suspicions that something is amiss. At a high-class party, the insufferable upper-upper-class Ferguson boasts to Billy that not only was the first tape real, but he was there and he had sex with Jenny. In quite a huff, even a huff-and-a-half, Bill leaves the party with the genetically-perfect Clarissa. At her house, they have sex a contortionist would envy—at one point, Bill enters the bedroom convinced that he sees both her front and backside aimed in his direction.

Things get even nastier for Bill at home. At one point, he walks in on his parents and Jenny oiled up together on the bed, grooming or preening in their underwear. Which, face it, has to be worse than anything you’ve ever caught your parents doing.

After a series of misadventures, Bill winds up back at his parents’ house, where he is caught in an animal-control snare and dragged into the dining room where another party is being held. All the upper-and-upper-still-class members are there—his parents, Jenny, Ferguson, Dr. Cleveland, Clarissa (the Professor, Mary-Ann, etc.)—and they want to confirm his fears. He’s not blue blood-related at all and the rich really are different from us. To prove it, they drag a stripped-down Blanchard into the middle of the room and corral him for “the shunting”. All around him, Bill sees the people he’s known all his life, their bodies elongating, melting and merging, changing form—his father’s head, for instance, literally pokes out of his ass as he, mom and Jenny have “sex” for lack of another word. The upper-classes start to ooze around each other, becoming a single organism as they literally absorb Blanchard’s nutrients, reducing him to similar fleshy ooze while he screams. And Bill is meant to be next—he’s been bred his whole life for just this night.

“Surreal” doesn’t begin to describe the climax and it must be seen to be believed—just don’t make the mistake of eating while you watch. Reducing pompous rich folk to malleable slugs must have been satisfying to all involved but particularly Yuzna and effects-maestro Screaming Mad George. The climax is especially effective because it’s clear that’s where the movie’s entire budget went. The rest of the movie looks low budget, cramped and cheap, which it was. Made at the tail-end of the ‘80s direct-to-video hey-day, getting a weird movie in the can and to the audience was the main goal. And like the best of that era, Society is not your run-of-the-mill horror entry.

Occasionally referred to by fans as a black comedy version of From Beyond, which Yuzna produced in 1986 with Stuart Gordon at the helm. The Lovecraft-inspired Yog Shoggoth story also featured body horror in the form of molecular change. While Society lacks Gordon’s polished panache, Yuzna keeps things moving admirably. It still feels like a “first film” in a lot of places, but it doesn’t feel like anyone else’s first film, that’s for damned sure. The plastic atmosphere generated by the low budget actually works to the film’s advantage in this case, accentuating the artifice in which the “Society” lives outside of their marble palaces, where they retreat to be themselves.

Unfortunately, Society may have proved to be too pointed in its satire as it had a hard time finding an audience. Completed in 1989, it didn’t reach home video in the U.S. until 1992 and then in only limited release. But it did quite well overseas. Europeans in particular found it clever, disturbing and wonderful. Which seems to add gravity to the argument that Americans can’t make fun of themselves in the same way as the Europeans. We have thinner skins and unless Hollywood is lampooning itself (ala The Player), the suits in charge certainly don’t take well to some indie upstart pointing a finger at them.

Now in the DVD era, Society is a little easier to locate, thanks to Anchor Bay. The stand-alone edition is out of print, but it can be found on a double-feature disk with another underappreciated entry, Tobe Hooper’s Spontaneous Combustion. You are now free to view society in all its squishy, slimy glory, but from the safety of your own home. It gives you a solid reason to appreciate being an outsider. Seriously, tell me you couldn’t see Donald Trump melting down like that in a sex orgy with Oprah Winfrey? …Actually, don’t tell me. I don’t want that image in my head. Bottom line: the rich are different.

HDYEStM: THE DEMOLITIONIST (1995)

 Robert Kurtzman loves to keep his friends working. As in his later films like Wishmaster and The Rage, his directorial debut is rife with cameos from buds like Reggie Bannister, Bruce Campbell, Jack Nance, Sarah Douglas, Joe Pilato and numerous others. The “hey, there’s…” drinking game level just adds to the enjoyment to be had from this campy little SF actioner. It may not be a masterpiece, but at no point does it feel like either a waste of talent or a shameless, soulless grab at money.

In an obvious “nod” to Robocop, an undercover cop named Alyssa (Charles in Charge’s Nicole Eggert) is murdered by a horrible villain (played by 21 Jump Street’s Richard Grieco! Of all people!), she is saved by science (represented here by Re-Animator’s Bruce Abbott) and put on the streets by the corrupt mayor (Forbidden Zone’s Susan Tyrell) and the chief of police (Deadwood’s Peter Jason), to clean up the streets so dirtied by Grieco and (wait for it) Tom Savini. Clad in skin-tight leatherette and a futuristic scuba mask, Alyssa leaps onto her supercharged motorcycle and runs roughshod over the villains. Meanwhile, Heather Langenkamp as a reporter covers the corruption in the government, Grieco prefers looney over menacing in an odd character choice, Savini whispers his dialogue and lots and lots of bullets are fired.

While the above sounds like something between a recipe for disaster and a MAD TV parody, The Demolitionist is actually a pretty deft satire of violent action films, albeit using violence to bring attention to violence, in much the same way Paul Verhoven was often credited with doing. Actually, it’s obvious from the get-go that Verhoven’s oevre is The Demolitionist’s prime target. The comedy is painted with broad strokes here, due in part to Kurtzman’s abject love of movies. One of the founders of KNB, Inc., the Academy Award winning special effects company, Kurtzman wrote the script with his wife, Anne, and tore into his first job as a director with all the enthusiasm of a sugared child on Christmas. As a result, there’s a giddy excitement injected into every scene—even talking head expositional sequences seem electrified. The movie charges past its limited budget and structural silliness with great abandon and the pace never slows. The Demolitionist’s campiness works in its favor and all of the actors seem to be having a great time.

A staple of late-night cable for a short time, The Demolitionist can be hard to find now. Because of this recent scarcity, it’s developed a nice cult following which has only grown since the release of Kurtzman’s similarly-campy zombie outing The Rage. For folks who grew up haunting mom and pop video stores in the ‘90s, revisiting The Demolitionist is like a return to puberty. Analyze that statement however you want, I stand by it.