The Delta Force (1986)

Directed by: Menahem Golan
Screenplay by: Menahem Golan and James Bruner
Starring: Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin, Robert Forster, Shelly Winters, George Kennedy, Martin Balsam, Robert Vaughn.
Running Time: 2 hrs. 5 min.
Tagline: "The Siege...The Ordeal...The Rescue..."

EDIT: Unfortunately, no matter how muuch messing around with the settings I do, seems that half the text in this is locked in at "eyestrain," so you might want to adjust your browsers zoom settings accordingly. Thanks a lot, Blogger.

Well, if things had gone according to plan, the next thing you'd have read on this blog would have been the first of my requested reviews; DEATH WISH 3, one of the most ludicrous sequels ever filmed and standee alongside COBRA and INVASION U.S.A. in Cannon Film's Glorious Trinity of garbage action movies. But ya'll know that line from DEADWOOD I'm always quoting. The passing of George Kennedy, co-star of COOL HAND LUKE, THE DIRTY DOZEN, THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT, and numerous other films and television series and a welcome sight whenever he appeared, couldn't go un-remarked upon. So me and the other knuckleheads in the CELLULOID ZEROES blogger cabal decided it would only be right to pay tribute to the memory of Captain Ed Hocken by doing a round table about some of the loopier movies he's put an appearance in. For my contribution, I give you THE DELTA FORCE, yet another in a long line of movies that illustrate why getting on a plane with George Kennedy is a bad idea.

THE DELTA FORCE kicks off, like all good military themed exploitation movies, with a big explosion, as in the very first thing we see is a helicopter go up in flames. It's 1980 and we're dropped into the tail end of Operation Eagle Claw, a real-life attempt to put a kibosh on the Iranian hostage crisis that went south due to mechanical failure and bad intel, resulting in the death of eight American serviceman and at least one Iranian civilian. As the troops are getting the hell out of Dodge, Captain Scott McCoy, since he's being played by Chuck Norris, establishes himself as our movie's Gung Ho Man of Action type by ignoring his commanding officer Colonel Alexander’s (Lee Marvin, in his final film role) orders and charging recklessly into the burning wreckage of that helicopter we saw get blown up really good to rescue one of his comrades, who is actually in fairly good condition considering he was just in the center of a huge fireball. Once he's back on the plane, McCoy, obviously not happy with how the powers that be caved to public pressure and ordered a hastily thrown together op that was botched from the get go, announces that he's resigning from the military when he gets back to the States. Obviously, since that's Norris's name and granite mug right up there front-and-slightly-off center on the poster, we can safely bet that his retirement isn't going to last for very long.

Anyhow, with our heroes properly established, the film now needs to set up the stakes and introduce those enemies of freedom, mom and apple pie that are going to be in dire need of a good old fashioned all-American boot to the face. Fast forward about five years and things pick up again at the Athens International Airport, where an American airliner is hijacked by a pair of Lebonese terrorists and forced to fly to Beirut. Proclaiming themselves as members of the New World Revolution, the terrorists (Robert Forster and David Menaham) announce that they are declaring war against “American imperialists, Zionist and all other anti-socialist atrocities” and will kill the hostages if their demands are not met. Which, y’know, I’ve seen this movie about three or four times, twice just for this write-up, and I don’t think they ever actually specify what those demands are. Regardless, news of the hijacking makes its way to the proper authorities and the Delta Force is called in to deal with the situation. And yes, it should come as no surprise that that they’ll be joined by Captain McCoy, who was given a presidential decree by Ronnie Reags himself to come out of retirement (and a promotion to Major) for this mission because Chuck Norris is just that dad-blasted important to the American military.

Of course, the hijackers aren’t just sitting on their hands while all of this is going on. For starters, they separate the Jewish passengers and a trio of Navy divers from the other hostages to have them smuggled off the plane while bringing in at least a dozen more terrorists on board. With a clutch of hostages stashed away in a militant controlled section of Beirut, the terrorists now have a bargaining chip in place should the authorities try anything. That done, they order the plane to take off and fly to Algiers, where after landing they agree to let the women and children go. Delta Force is on stand by to raid the plane once the freed hostages are clear. Unfortunately, the order to go ahead is given moments before Colonel Alexander learns about what transpired on the plane from a stewardess and his attempt to warn the McCoy and the others that they’re about to go charging into a death trap tips the hijackers off. There’s a brief gun battle and one of the hostages ends up getting executed before the plane takes off again, returning to Beirut.

If you were alive and aware of things in any capacity at any point during the mid-eighties than it’s pretty clear to you that what we’ve just seen is Menaham Golan and company doing a serial-numbers-filed-off version of the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 by members of Hezbollah. Quite a few of plot points in THE DELTA FORCE’s first half were pulled from the hijacking itself, such as a German stewardess being forced to help the hijackers determine which passengers were Jewish and the murder of a Navy diver whose body was then dumped on the tarmac. There is a key difference between the film and actual events, though. In real-life the situation was resolved when Reagan negotiated the release of over seven hundred Shi’ite Muslim prisoners in exchange for the hostages, something that’s conveniently forgotten when Reagan-worshippers blow a gasket over two or three prisoners being let out from Gitmo. In the alternate universe that THE DELTA FORCE takes place in, however, the president has no patience for resolving things peacefully and informs Delta Force that it’s clobbering time. Sure, the hostages are scattered throughout Beirut but Beirut just happens to be within spitting distance of Israel and by total coincidence, the American heroes of this Hollywood film produced, co-written and directed by an Israeli guy (the film was shot in Israel, too!) will have the full cooperation of the Israeli government in launching a small-scale invasion on the terrorist’s base of operation.

Yes, what started as a fairly straightforward “ripped from the headlines” scenario transforms at the film’s midpoint into a whole lotta exploding, bullet riddled jingoistic wish fulfillment. THE DELTA FORCE is what I like to call a “We Get To Win This Time” movie, where thanks to Hollywood, the United States can take a mulligan and get to do over situations that didn't go so hot for them in real life but with the messy and complicated situations of actual reality now simplified into something that can be solved with a lot of crowd pleasing brute force. It probably won't come as a surprise that this type of movie really found its home in the Ronald Reagan-era, where the country was still smarting from that whole Vietnam thing. RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD, PART 2 would be the iconic example of this sort of film, which ditched the original FIRST BLOOD'S somberness for a lot of triumphant chest thumping and presented a new version of the Vietnam War where all we needed to win it was a muscled up, stony-faced super-soldier with a machine gun. Funny thing is that FIRST BLOOD, PART 2 wasn't the first movie to tackle this subject: Golan and Globus beat Stallone to the punch by about a year with their own Vietnam Revenge flick, MISSING IN ACTION (another Chuck Norris vehicle) and the original FIRST BLOOD'S director Ted Kotcheff and writer John Milius gave us UNCOMMON VALOR the year before that. UNCOMMAN VALOR, which featured Gene Hackman leading a Dirty Dozen-esque team in a raid on the prison camp holding his son, is actually my favorite of the bunch, as rather than going for the obvious gung-ho route, becomes a story about coming to terms with loss and in many ways, feels like more of an actual successor to FIRST BLOOD than anything with RAMBO in the title. Stallone’s movie was the one that made all the money, though, so it was the one that set the template for the imitators that followed, which included the other Rambo sequels, which saw our All-American hero winning other countries’ “Vietnams.”

- I’d actually love to see a better writer than me take a stab at examining the different kinds of action films that were born from the post-Vietnam mentality. If movies like RAMBO and MISSING IN ACTION presented a fiction where real life events weren’t losses just delayed victories, on the opposite end you’ve got movies like ALIENS, SOUTHERN COMFORT, and PREDATOR which present fictionalized faux-Vietnam operations that are doomed from the word go. Plus, I’d like to see someone go further into how the DNA of these sorts of movies live on in the modern action / superhero blockbusters of today, where we’ve got Iron Man fighting the War on Terror and The Avengers and Superman stopping airborne attacks on major American cities. -

Which brings us back to THE DELTA FORCE. We’ve got the same idea as RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD, PART 2, it’s just applied to a different conflict. In fact, THE DELTA FORCE gets two for the price of one, because this faux-TWA hijacking also gets to be framed as payback for the Iranian hostage crisis. Hell, Ruhalloh Khomeini gets name checked at one point, with our Delta Force heroes laughing at how their monkey wrenching of the terrorists’ attempted escape into Syria is really going to give the Supreme Leader the ole stink-eye. You will note that our hero is still a Vietnam vet, though, which begs the question of how we managed to lose Vietnam in the first place if we had a bunch of invincible super-soldiers like Rambo, Braddock, and McCoy on our side. Willing to bet INVASION U.S.A.’s Matt Hunter was running around there somewhere, too. Weirdly enough, THE DELTA FORCE also seems to be a bigger-explodier quasi-remake of another film Menaham Golan made back in Israel, OPERATION: THUNDERBOLT, which itself was based on a real-life hijacking that took place in Uganda.

Throw all that together and you’ve got one very odd movie. Like I said, THE DELTA FORCE has that whole FROM DUSK ‘TIL DAWN thing going for it where it starts out as one movie and shifts into a completely different one halfway through only this time it’s a bug, not a feature. For the first hour or so, it’s this claustrophobic suspense film which, turns out, actually succeeds at generating some drama and even genuine tension, such as a stewardess having to stick the pin back in a grenade or Colonel Alexander’s rush to warn the assault team about the trap they’re about to go charging into. Even the terrorists get have some sympathetic moments, like one telling a young girl that he’s only fighting because his family was killed or helping out a pregnant hostage. Of course, it also has a scene where the same guy says “six million Jews wasn’t nearly enough” when the German stewardess refuses to help them single out the Jewish passengers on the grounds of that whole Nazi thing. Something of a mixed message there, movie. Regardless, you get the sense that for the first half of this film, Cannon is attempting to make something that resembles, y’know, an actual movie, rather than the assembly line schlock they were known for. People coming here to see Chuck Norris kicking ass from minute one will probably get rather frustrated waiting on that to happen, as it’s a good hour before a single shot is fired or karate kick is thrown. Once the action does ratchet up, though, the film goes into total la la land and becomes exactly the kind of movie that one would expect from Golan-Globus. What started as a fairly grounded movie ends with Chuck Norris sliding down zip lines while firing a machine gun and nailing faceless terrorists a hundred yards away with pinpoint accuracy while everything explodes around him. The last half hour to forty minutes of this flick is almost one extended action scene as the raid on the terrorist compound leads into a chase through the desert which gives way to the Delta Force finally retaking the plane, with Norris taking a detour to hand out an incredibly one sided beat down to the terrorist leader before blowing him up with a rocket launcher. Hey, come to think of it, that’s how INVASION U.S.A. ended, wasn’t it? Well, wouldn’t you know it; both movies have the same screenwriter. (“INVASION U.S.A. had a script?” we ask, horrified.) Heck, with its crack commando unit running around the desert driving dune buggies and motorcycles with rocket launchers mounted on them, the second half of THE DELTA FORCE feels like Menaham Golan decided what the world really needed in 1986 was a gritty reboot of Hal Needham’s MEGAFORCE. Can’t help but wonder how this movie would have played if somebody stuck Norris in the gold spandex / blue headband combo that Barry Bostwick was rocking in that flick. 

Better, probably.

I don't know how much THE DELTA FORCE made at the box office but the film was successful enough to get two sequels greenlit and even inspired a Pre-Asylum made-for-video cash-in called OPERATION DELTA FORCE which managed to get more sequels than the movie that inspired it. I also remember this movie playing all the time on TBS's MOVIES FOR GUYS WHO LIKE MOVIES back in high school, so I'm willing to bet that video and cable played a part in that. As for the critical reception it received upon release, well you can imagine that it was quite a bit chillier. (Though the film did get a good review from Roger Ebert, oddly enough.) Naturally, people weren't too happy to see an actual tragedy that occurred a year before being used as an excuse for Chuck Norris to blow up foreigners. (I especially don't think the family of Navy diver Robert Stethem appreciated seeing their loved one's murder recreated for that purpose.) One wonders how RAMBO would have gone over in 1976. Now, if you've seen ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, Mark Hartley's amazing documentary about the rise and fall of Cannon Films, you'll know that Menaham Golan actually had people at the site of the hijacking, reporting back to him to what happened. He was developing this movie while the actual event was going down. Damn, even by the standards of Cannon Films, that is pretty shameless.

But, jingoistic political leanings and tasteless origins aside, I do think that THE DELTA FORCE is a fairly decent b-level action movie. I will admit that a good chunk of this is due to the fondness I have for Cannon Films in their hey-day. The Go-Go boys were this weird, one-of-a-kind mix of opportunists looking for the latest trend to cash in on and filmmakers who sincerely loved making movies. They were the kind of studio that could be producing some chintzy ninja movie one minute and then give someone like John Cassavetes carte blanche to make whatever movie he wanted to make the next. Sure, a lot of their output was schlock but there was something genuine behind it, something that gave it more character than you’ll find in a dozen “you’re supposed to like it ironically” movies today. Lord knows that something as completely insane as THE APPLE couldn’t have been made by someone who wasn’t being one hundred percent sincere. (And, yeah, high on cocaine. So much cocaine.) The other thing about being a schlock assembly line is that Golan and company had been doing for this for so long they had managed to get making this kind of movie down to something of a science. THE DELTA FORCE clocks in just a hair over two hours but the film keeps things moving quickly enough that it never feels like you’re watching a two hour movie. Considering the bloated, two and a half hour plus action blockbusters were getting inundated with today, I’ve come to appreciate Cannon’s no-frills approach more and more. Hey, anybody ready for that three hour long cut of BATMAN V. SUPERMAN?

Another thing in its favor is that THE DELTA FORCE was made in that weird little space where Cannon wasn't quite overreaching themselves like they would when they made SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE or MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE but could still throw some actual money at some of the movies they were making. It's a favorite joke among my friends and I that THE DELTA FORCE is the flick where Cannon could afford to wreck two fruit carts during the big car chase. This was the period where Cannon could afford Sylvester Stallone's paycheck, remember. Not only does this mean that the movie could get away with having some pretty elaborate stunt work and a lot of it, but could also have a cast of recognizable faces in front of it. Now, Marvin, Forster, Kennedy, and Vaughn weren't of Stallone's pay grade but these are people that starred in actual movies that folks have seen. Furthermore, they’re a group of actors that know how to not overplay things and prevent things from getting too histrionic. (Norris is still Norris, though, his face stuck in that perpetual grimace that’s either communicating steely-eyed determination or profound confusion depending on the camera angle.) Which brings us back around to talking about George Kennedy, finally. It had been a while since I had seen this movie, so I was a surprised to discover that his role wasn’t nearly as big as I remembered from my last viewing of the film. His Irish priest is a major supporting character for the first part of the movie but once the hostages are removed from the plane, he’s regulated to the background, only coming forward to say a prayer over a dying soldier in the film’s closing moments. He does get one of the better moments of the film, where he throws in his lot with the Jewish hostages, informing the terrorists, “I’m Jewish, just like Jesus Christ.” Yeah, you could argue that’s a pretty corny line, but I’ll be damned if Kennedy doesn’t sell it like a pro. So, I’m putting my memories of Kennedy having a more substantial role down to his skills as a seasoned character actor who knows how to make the most of his limited screen time.

I am disappointed that Lee Marvin gets little to do beyond barking orders at people. I had almost hoped that during the film’s closing moments, where scenes of the hostages being joyfully reunited with friend and family are being contrasted against the Delta Force members solemnly carrying away the body of their slain teammate, for him to turn to Norris and declare, “No, it was the hostages who won. We of Delta Force always lose.”

This review is part of PETRONI FIDE! a round table review session dedicated to the memory of George Kennedy, presented by the Celluloid Zeroes blogger cabal. Want some more? Pop over to Micro-Brewed Reviews for their look at NIGHTMARE AT NOON, then onto Cinemasochist Apocalypse for THE UNINVITED, and settle into the Web of the Damn Spider for STRAIT-JACKET. And if that's still not enough for ya, Checkpoint Telstar has a look at THE HUMAN FACTOR and The Terrible Claw finishes things off with DEMONWARP.

A Little Something Extra:
"The Delta Force" by Alan Silvestri of PREDATOR and BACK TO THE FUTURE fame, from that weird period where every composer seemed to be slathering everything in synthesizers:

PSYCHOPLASMICS Goes To B-Fest 2016!

And we are back! Apologies to anyone who was sticking with this blog for the past couple of months and getting nada in return, but circumstances had motivated me to put Psychoplasmics on the back burner for a brief spell. Irregularly scheduled updates should begin again in the next few weeks, including a series of reviews requested by friends of this blog from various spaces around the internet. Heck, if you want to add to that particular workload, feel free to drop into the comments and request a movie / book / video game / whatever that you'd like to see covered here.

Now, as to why I've been quiet for the past few weeks...



Poster by Mitch O'Connell

...that would be because the year of our Lord two thousand and sixteen would be the year that I would finally attend B-Fest, a marathon session of as many of the weirdest and worst movies you could cram into twenty four hours, hosted by the good people at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. It was crazy. It was exhausting. It was an absolute test of one's endurance.

Damn straight I'm going again.

Some quick backstory: Without digging too much into the gruesome details, I was in something of a slump personally last year and had to finally admit to myself that the current direction I was headed was a dead end street. College and the career path I had chosen was a complete bust. I found myself struggling with staying employed and an emotional mess. I needed a change.

So, I'm going back to school. Local technical college, taking a year long course in instrumentation tech and then we'll see where things go from there. Classes won't be starting until later this year, though, which left the question of what I'm going to do in the meantime. And this got me to thinking, "Y'know, I've never really taken a trip by myself."

Which brings us back around to B-Fest. First heard of it through the B-Movie Message Board, former mutant appendage of the old Stomp Tokyo movie review site and one of the first Internet forums I posted at with any regularity under the alias "NeoKefka." (Because when you're a video game fan fresh out of high school, you think naming your on-line identity after the villain from FINAL FANTASY VI with "Neo" prefixed on sounds like a Good Idea. A decade and change later, however...) B-Fest, started way back in the 80's, had become the defacto annual meet-up for folks from the forum and myriad associated sites. It sounded like fun but y'know, that whole "It's in Chicago, I'm in Louisiana and just shy of broke most of the time" deal put the damper on any notions I had about attending for the time being, which was always a huge disappointment. Because let me tell you something I've learned: In a final analysis, geography doesn't mean squat when it comes to connecting with people. The folks I had met through that message board and kept in touch with had, over the years, become this weird little extended family of mine, a much needed constant over my life's shifts and turns and that geography was a factor in preventing me from meeting with them was frustrating.

Well, when faced with the fact that you really have no idea where your life is going to take you in the next couple of years, you realize there some things you don't want to find yourself looking back on and thinking "It would have been nice if I had done that." So, I said to myself "Just go."

Obviously, this whole deal was going to be a little more complicated than just up and going. First off, I needed some extra cash to pay for all of this, which lead to me taking a seasonal stint over at nearby Best Buy. I got hired to do the early morning inventory shift, which meant I got to spend the next two months completely wrecking my sleeping and eating habits so I could get the real important work done, like peeling price stickers off and making sure we could cram one more friggin' Disney Infinity Star Wars figure on that shelf. Granted, the money and a little something extra to throw on the resume was appreciated but when I was done, I came to the conclusion that if I ever tried to get another retail job again, I want someone to please slap some sense into me. (If I try to get said job during the holidays again, slap me twice.) I'll die a happy man if I never see another Fitbit or Beats by Dre headphone set again, let me tell you.

Then, of course, there was the whole to-do about getting there. Naive goof that I am, I had planned to make this big road trip adventure out of it, driving over two days from Louisiana to Chicago. In the middle of winter. Considering that I've lived most of my life in a place that shuts down if there's more than an inch of snow on the ground, where the biggest city that I've driven in is Shreveport, which would probably make up a modest sized suburb for Chicago, and the fact that my car is a Ford pick-up, which is not well suited for traveling on icy roads...this was not one of my brighter ideas. Thankfully, my Dad (and a "service brakes soon" light on my dash) convinced me to take a flight out of Little Rock instead. Definitely glad I did so, because not only did the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel convince me that had I gone with my original plan, Chicago traffic would have eaten me alive, but the view from the plane as it flew over the snow covered landscape was absolutely amazing. Roads and cities were little more than blue lines etched into fields of white and words can't do seeing Lake Michigan from the air justice. Wish I had snapped a photo or two. That a eight hundred mile plus trip that was originally going to be spread over two days got hacked down to just a skoosh under three hour drive to the airport and an even shorter flight is nothing to sneeze at either. Unfortunately, my carry-on bag, too big to fit in the overhead compartment, got caught on something when I put it under the seat and I ended up tearing a good sized rip in it trying to get it loose. Crud.

Got to the hotel somewhere around three o'clock. This would be the Best Western Morton Grove Inn, which has become the unofficial official gathering place for the BMMB people coming to B-Fest for the past few years. Cool thing is that since the B-Fest crowd has brought so much business to the hotel and generally behaved themselves, Tim Lehnerer was able to convince the hotel to offer a discount if you were staying for the fest. My checking account definitely thanks him.  Ran into two of the B-Fest regulars, Natasha Lynn Haney and Jacob Smith, in the hotel lobby when I checked in, then stopped by room to drop off my stuff and take a shower to clear my head. Sent Tim a text to let him know I was here, to which I got a reply that he had no idea who this was because I wasn't in his contacts. (Whoops) Thankfully, a phone call cleared that up, and I ran into Tim on the way to the hotel lobby where everyone was gathering up to go to dinner, so we took a quick detour so Tim could hand off the B-Fest mix CD's he had made for me. Since this was my first B-Fest, said CD's ended up being every disc he's whipped up since he started throwing them together in one big brick. I figure I'll finally get done listening to all of them by the time I get another chance to head up to B-Fest.

It had been decided that we'd be having dinner that night at the Squared Circle, a pro-wrestling themed restaurant owned by ex-WWE star Lisa Marie Varon, and then later hit up a used bookstore called Myopic Books. Not a big wrestling fan but hey, food is food, and telling me there's a place that I can get books at a discount is like telling Dr. Zoidberg the buffet is free, so I was down for it. So, we met up with the rest of the crew - Bryan Clark, Lisa Mary, and Scott Ashlin and Jessica Ritchey, - and headed over to the nearest L-train station.  After grabbing our CTA day passes (and then checking to make sure the station was clear of roving bands of Turnbull AC's) we hopped on the train and headed to another station that where we were assured by the Magic Voice Lady on Tim's phone, it was just a short walk to The Squared Circle.

Turns out Magic Voice Lady was a damn liar, as that short walk turned out to be a half hour plus hike through whatever section of Chicago we were in. When I recounted this on twitter the next moring, Sean Frost commented that he was glad to see that the Fiasco Field was still in effect, which tells me that one, things go wrong during these little excursions and two, have done so with enough frequency that they came up with a term for it. The hike wasn't actually too bad, though. First, I'd expected the weather to be a bit worse in the lead up to this trip but when I finally got there things had warmed up from the previous weeks' "somewhere between Hoth and north of the Wall" temperatures to something around the mid-to-upper twenties. Heck, that's downright balmy. Second, the whole "what have we gotten ourselves into" vibe and getting to briefly talk with people on the way over helped take the edge off a bit. See, I was a bit intimidated coming here and meeting everyone. I've never been what you call the most social of people and I don't talk much, so fears that everyone was going to think I was some kind of weirdo had made themselves right at home in the back of my mind. But as someone said later, when I admitted my nervousness, "Have you seen your friends?" Point.

Anyway, we finally get to The Squared Circle. Going there was Jacob and Natasha's suggestion as they're the big wrestling fans and they got to fill us in on various trivia while we were waiting on our food. I ended up getting a macaroni, cheese and bacon calzone, which turned out to be big enough that I could possibly have cut it open and crawled inside it. Not bad, but one can take only so much starch and gooey cheese in one go, so I wasn't able to finish it. (My eyes being bigger than my stomach turned out to be a reoccurring thing on this trip.) That I was snagging fries, chicken strips and what not from other folks when offered probably didn't help things. Still, I had a good time. Then it was another train ride and much shorter "wait, where are we?" walk to Myopic Books, where I managed to snag copies of Stephen King's THE RUNNING MAN, (written under the name Richard Bachman, and nothing like the Schwarzenegger movie), Clive Barker's fantasy novel IMAJICA, and Ray Bradbury's DANDELION WINE, which is one of those books that I've been wanting to get but always seem to vanish from the bookstores in my area whenever I finally have cash on hand. Didn't have a copy of James Ellroy's THE BIG NOWHERE, the only book in the L.A. Quartet I didn't have and another one I've been scouring second hand bookstores for, but Tim was able to snag that for me when he stopped by Half Price Books later on in the week.

So, with our outing for the evening done, we headed back to the hotel, where we all gathered up in Jacob and Natasha's room and let Scott and Jess inflict the "Spock's Brain" episode of the original STAR TREK series on us. There's a workable enough idea at the core the episode, which is basically "what if the Eloi got their hands on the Krell lab from FORBIDDEN PLANET," but the execution is just goofy as all get out, featuring things like a remote control cyborg Spock, costumes that suggested they just threw on what was available in the closet, some prime hammy "in pain" acting from Shatner and company, and choice bits of dialogue like one actress angrily shouting 'BRAIN? BRAIN? WHAT IS BRAIN!?," a line I'm certain Ed Wood's pissed somebody beat him too. Amazingly enough, this was the first episode aired for the series' third season, which means it would be the first new TREK episode fans would be greeted with after they launched a campaign to overturn the show's cancellation. Good grief. With that, I bid everyone good night, deciding that I couldn't stay up too late tonight...and then proceeded to spend another hour and a half watching TV in my room before passing out.

The next day started off with breakfast at Seven Brothers, a restaurant that's a short walk from the hotel, (where again, I ate too much. Next time, order just the pancake stack w/o sides, goofus.) before everyone split off with their little groups to do whatever. Tim, Bryan, Lisa and I, along with new arrivals Kelvin and Melissa, decided to head over to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Naturally, it was in the middle of winter so most of the bigger animals had been moved indoors but there was still plenty to see. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to charge my camera battery, which crapped out about halfway through, so I wasn't able to get any photos of things like the primate houses, where I got to see a baby monkey using a rather resigned adult's tail as a swing, or the big cat house, where a lion was gnawing down on a hunk of meet. Thankfully, I was able to snag some pictures before it gave up the ghost, including this nice shot of a lioness lounging on a snow covered rock.

Plus, I got some shots of a family of meerkats, so it wasn't a total loss. We had also discovered that one of the primate houses had a Mold-O-Rama machine. Y'know, drop a couple buck in and it gives you this cheap-o plastic figurine? Of course, I got one of 'em, which was a green chimp that I think Tim ended up dubbing Green Lantern Monkey. (Sounds like a very Tim thing to say.) Melissa loved the Mold-O-Rama, so she looked up whatever info she could on them. Who'd have thunk it, an injection molding machine is, in fact, pretty expensive, somewhere to the tune of $60,000. She also found out there was another Mold-O-Rama machine at the zoo...this one for cows. Figure that one out.

After seeing everything we wanted at the zoo, we hopped on a bus and headed towards the nearest L-train station. We had get off the bus and walk a couple a few blocks to get to it and en route, we ran across some store called Hollywood Mirror and decide to pop in for a few minutes. Mostly it was costume supplies and vintage clothing but in one of the back corners, we discovered a shelf full of Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Godzilla toys. The plan to distract the store clerks so we could haul it out of there, possibly with a hat and scarf draped over it as a disguise, sadly, went nowhere and I decided to get stingy with my cash at that moment, so I didn't buy any. Considering I had a fair amount of cash leftover, I'm a little disappointed I didn't take the chance to grab an extra souvenir or two. For next time, I guess.

That evening we ate dinner at the Palace, a Chinese place that was near the hotel, where we were joined by Mike Bockoven and Matt Campbell. I had the pressed almond duck, "duck brownies," on Bryan's recommendation, which was pretty good but as is becoming the regular refrain for this write-up, the portions were a bit larger than I could handle. From there we went back to the hotel to get ready for a B-Fest, tradition, the trip to the Hala Kahiki Lounge, a Hawaiian kitsch themed bar. Tim had the idea for as many of us as possible to wear these horrible looking jackets and ties he had unearthed from various thrift stores, with Bryan coming out the...uh...winner, I guess, with his nuclear nightmare of a jacket and tie. Pop over to his blog to see a picture of it. For better or worse, very likely better, nobody took a picture of me in the 70's drug dealer's accountant jacket that I got saddled with. And if the jacket wasn't bad enough, I was also wearing a black and blue flannel shirt and orange t-shirt with it, and didn't even bother tying the tie because it had been so long since I'd ever needed to do so. The cumulative effect of these very poor fashion choices was, as Jessica described, an "80's action movie henchmen who stopped caring." Funny thing was, when I got home, I showed the jacket to my dad and he didn't think it looked too bad. Didn't really fit him either, though, so back to a thrift store it will likely go. As far as the bar went, I've never been much on alcohol ever since I tried some dark rum my granddad had back in high school, so I played it safe this go around and stuck to the non-alkie drinks and sodas but still had a good time and got to meet some other folks from the forum.

After the bar, and uh..."taking the scenic route" back to the hotel, a group gathered up in the lobby to watch TARKAN Vs. THE VIKINGS, a thoroughly delirious Turkish film about a Hun Turk hunting down the Viking raiders who killed one of his pet wolves like a 10th century John Wick. Highlights include: learning that having two wolves makes you twice as invincible, that both of Tarkan's wolves are named Kurt, which is apparently just the Turkish word for "wolf" anyhow, the Viking's offering up sacrifices to an inflatable octopus pool toy whose appearance is always accompanied by Also Sprach Zarathustra, Tarkan being somewhat terrible at the whole hero deal and Kurt the Younger having to do most of the heavy lifting, the Viking's outfits seeming to made of recycled bathmats, random Chinese villains and a snake pit of doom that is populated with about a dozen or so sleepy garter snakes. That's just the tip of the iceberg and happy days, this movie is the first in a series. I checked to see if it was available to watch on YouTube so I could link it here but it's cropped all to hell. Once TARKAN finished up, a few of us stayed up to watch GYMKATA and chatted with the desk clerk at the hotel, who was enjoying watching these crazy flicks with us knuckleheads. (And was also in training to be a mercenary / bodyguard for hire. Wow.) Unfortunately, the day finally caught up to me and I had to bow out midway through GYMKATA and call it night.

We never did get around to watching any of the movies I brought: CONAN THE BARBARIAN, FLASH GORDON, and HARD BOILED. (Which I was informed broke "the rules" by bringing flicks sane human beings would actually want to watch.) Maybe next time, with something like NINJA III or STARCRASH thrown in.

Kicked off Friday with everyone in our group, which had grown substantially since Wednesday, descending upon The Omega, a fairly fancy little restaurant, for breakfast, Totally recommend it if you're ever up that way because the food was great and they give you complementary coffee cake. Then it was a brief stop back by the hotel to pick up whatever supplies we figured we were going to need for B-Fest before I joined up with Scott, Jessica, Lisa, Brian and some of Brian's buddies for a drive into Berwyn, where we checked out Horrobles and Reel Art, a pair of shops located next door to each other that specialize in horror and sci-fi / comic book merch and memorabilia, respectively. I saw a good bit at both that I was tempted to grab, including a photo of the Faun from PAN'S LABYRINTH that was signed by actor Doug Jones and some full size posters, but the mix of the prices and little room left in my luggage to carry anything put the kibosh on that. I ended up settling for a DVD of SUPER INFRAMAN, so I could take home one of the movies we'd be watching in the Fest. Anyway, it's likely I'd have had to duel Jessica for that PAN'S LABYRINTH photo and I hear she fights dirty.

Oh, and yes, Virigina, that coloring and activity book based on David Lynch's adaptation of DUNE you see pop up here and there on the internet really exists.

Once we were done poking around the shops, it was time to head into Evanston. Before we hit the Fest itself, we decided to grab dinner at the first place that caught our eye, which turned out to be an Ethiopian place called Addis Abeba. If you've never eaten at an Ethiopian joint before, they'll bring out everyone's food in one giant platter and then rather than utensils, they hand out these baskets of flat bread called injera, which is like a big spongey tortilla, and you tear off bits of that and use it to scoop up your food from the platter. I ended up having these beef tips with spices that was absolutely delicious and even got to try some stuff that was served raw.  First time that I had ever eaten at an Ethiopian place and needless to say, we're going to have to stop by one whenever and where ever I meet up with my crew again. And of course, recounting all this got me craving some more, so I just checked to see if there were any restaurants near where I lived and discovered the closest one to me is in Wylie, Texas, which is over three hours away.

Bummer.

We made it to the University and into Norris Auditorium about a half and hour before the Fest started and the place was already packed. Still, I managed to find a spot down towards the front in the general area where most of the BMMB folks had gathered and settled in for the first real stretch of the Festival. Things got off to a great start even before the movies started (I'll discuss those more in-depth in the next post) when Tim, Bryan and a couple other guys went up on stage and did an impersonation of FURY ROAD'S War Boys, spraying their faces with this edible silver paint and shouting "WITNESS ME!" and getting the crowd worked up and chanting "WITNESS!" back at them. I have it on Bryan's word that that paint tasted absolutely godawful.

We had some technical issues with our starter, THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES, where the volume was too low to be able to hear anything, especially over all the noise the crowd was making, and then the volume was almost too loud when they did get it turned up. Despite all that, HERCULES was the perfect movie to kick things off with, fast paced and completely bonkers. Making it even better it that whenever Hercules (Lou Ferrigno!) would punch somebody, somebody would hold up a sign done up like the old Batman show starring Adam West - y'know, BAM! BIFF! POW! - only they were written in Greek, Everybody absolutely loved that. They'd also break out a really well done drawing of Mothra whenever the twin oracles showed up. It was the only real stage skit that we had for the whole show but it hey, it was a good one. Following up HERCULES was CALTIKI: THE IMMORTAL MONSTER, an Italian riff on THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT probably best known for having it's cinematography done by Mario Bava and the bizarre-yet-distressingly-prescient comedy AMERICATHON came after that, Tim told me that at your first B-Fest that you'd run up against your limits and I ended up crashing and dozing off during movie numero four, the Inner Sanctum mystery CALLING DR. DEATH. However, I was told I didn't really miss anything except Lon Chaney Jr. having an hour long inner monologue, so good timing there. After that came the special effects short THE WIZARD OF SPEED AND TIME, which is shown every year and is one of the big audience participation dealies at the Fest and since it was my first time at B-Fest, I had to take part. Basically, you just go on stage, lay down and stomp your feet in time with the short as they play it forwards and then in reverse. Doesn't sound like much but man, my legs were freakin' humming when we were done and I nearly fell over trying to get off the stage. I also ended up dumping the change in my pocket on the floor while I was stomping along. After that was the other B-Fest tradition, a midnight showing of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. I stuck around for most of it, throwing paper plates along with the rest of the crowd. but stepped out for a bit towards the end to stretch my legs and get some water. I headed back in for the next movie, the completely nutbar blaxpo-flick THE HUMAN TORNADO starring Rudy-Ray Moore. I started drifting off at points during this, so I came half convinced I dreamed some scenes in this movie until I found it on YouTube a couple weeks ago and gave it another watch. Nope, it was all real. After this was THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS movie. Yes, somebody made a movie based on those gross-out cards from the 80's. Everything I've heard about this movie makes it sound absolutely god awful in all the wrong ways. By total coincidence, I started to feel like I could really use a nap about this time and went and crashed on a couch in the student union, Slept through all of THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS and most of BLOOD MANIA, the movie that came after. I'm all broken up about that, let me tell you.

When I got back in the auditorium, I had no real interest in muscling my way back to where my seat was, so I just plopped myself right down on one of the steps and leaned against the wall for the next movie, MOON ZERO TWO. Hilariously enough, this turned out to be the best seat in the house. MOON ZERO TWO, despite some wonderful production design and being from the same director as QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, ended up being a total slog. When it was apparent that LOW BLOW, the next movie, wasn't doing much for me, I decided to head back to the food court to grab a cinnamon roll and sweet tea at the Dunkin' Donuts they had there and then hung out with Jessica and Scott in the student union for a while. (I heard later that LOW BLOW livened up considerably after I had left, including a scene where a guy basically gets snuggled to death by rotwiller pups.) The student union had a great view of Lake Michigan and so, adding to the ever growing list of things that I need to do next time is snag a photo of it. We all headed back in for the next movie, THE FIFTH MUSKETEER, which turned out to be actually a surprisingly decent movie, maybe even too good for B-Fest. We eventually concluded that the main reason THE FIFTH MUSKETEER was shown due to its rather odd cast, including Beau Bridges (who, as Bryan observed, had the same haircut as Audrey Hepburn), Ursula Andress, Emmanuelle-herself Sylvia Kristel, Loyd Bridges, Alan Hale, Ian McShane ("Welcome to Gay Paree! It can be combative!"), and Bernard Bresslaw. Throw in music by Riz Ortolanti of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST fame and we were expecting some weirdly miscast craziness and instead got a fairly entertaining flick, like something you'd watch on a Sunday afternoon as a kid.

After that was lunch and then a raffle where I actually won something! I wasn't paying attention, though, so I had no idea until I got down there to collect it what I had won. Turns out I got a copy of THE MUPPET MOVIE and MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND on VHS. Yeah, I think my niece will enjoy getting those. What came next was one of the movies I had been most curious about when the line-up was announced, ROAR, Noel Marshall's attempt at a SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON-style adventure set on his and Tippi Hendren's large cat preserve but played out more like EVIL DEAD 2 in denial, with lions. The result was complete insanity. Unfortunately, the next movie up, KANSAS CITY BOMBER, somehow managed to make "Raquel Welch does roller-derby" completely uninteresting and felt like it went on forever. Realize that at this point we had been there for over twenty hours, so even if the movie was good, we'd start to feel every minute of it, so no surprise most of this snoozer was spent hanging out and chatting. Thankfully, the movie that followed up would be the closer for the festival and what a note to go out on...SUPER INFRAMAN, a Family Dollar knock-off of ULTRAMAN and KAMEN RIDER produced by the Shaw Brothers. Tim, who sponsored the movie, summed it up best in his intro, "the first fifteen seconds are little slow...then a pterosaur belly flops onto a highway in front of a bus full of kids and causes an earthquake and then Hong Kong explodes. After that, things just get turbo loopy." One of the most bugnuts crazy movies ever made, and honestly, I don't think that I'll have a movie going experience in the remainder of 2016 that can even come close to watching this movie on the big screen with the enthusiastic crowd we had.

And so ended my first B-Fest.

On the way back to hotel we talked about what were our favorites of the bunch, with HERCULES, ROAR, and INFRAMAN being the unanimous winners, with AMERICATHON  being something of a dark horse. After a brief stop at the Best Western to shower off the fest-funk we had accumulated, we all headed out to a place called Portillo's, where I got to try my first Chicago hot dog. Also ran into Gavin Smith and his son Ian, who was just adorable. I had him give me a high five when I got there and every time I walked by afterward he held up his hand and wanted me to give him another one. Afterwards, Scott and Jessica invited me and couple other people to go track down this whiskey bar called Delilah's. Unfortunately, I had to head out early the next morning to catch my plane home, so I had to turn them down and say goodbye. (Boo!) As it turned out, I probably could have gotten away with it because I was so keyed up from everything I barely slept at all that night. Like I said earlier, I'm not much on alcohol, but really would have liked to have one last hurrah with my friends. Oh well, I guess that just means I'll have to come back, maybe stay an extra day. Thankfully, I was able to hang out a little more with Tim, Mike, and Matt the next morning while waiting for the taxi to take me back to O'Hare airport. \

Amusingly enough, I had a much, much easier time getting through security at one of the biggest airports in the country than the one in Little Rock, where I damn near had to strip before I could step in the X-Ray machine. The flight back actually managed to be even shorter than the one over and Dad picked me up when I got to the airport, which meant I could catch some much desired z's on the drive back home. My throat had started to get a little sore that day, and as much as I hoped that I just made raw hamburger out of it hooping and hollering at B-Fest, nope, it turns out that I had caught a case of Con-Crud and decided to stay over at my parent's place for a day or so to recover.

Like Bryan said in his recap over at Cinemasochistic Apocalypse, it took forever get to B-Fest and then it was over before I was ready. But it was worth it. It was exactly the little kick I needed after a fairly rough few months, so you bet your life I'm coming back. Don't know when that will be and y'know what? I may keep it a secret when I do find out, just to surprise everybody.

Want to read more about this year's B-Fest. Hop over to Checkpoint-Telstar and check-out Tim's take.

The Most Beautiful Thing In The World Must Be Shadow

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979); Dir: Francis Ford Coppola

Don't Torture A Duckling (1972)



Directed by: Lucio Fulci
Screenplay: Lucio Fulci, Gianfranco Clerici, and Roberto Gianviti
Starring: Barbara Bouchet, Tomas Milan, Florinda Bolkan, Marc Porel, Irene Papas, Georges Wilson
Running Time: 102 minutes

As the old saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. I had two other choices in mind for this VENGEFUL WITCH films round table and both had to be put on the back burner. SUSPIRIA was going to be my go to choice for this but that had to be put aside because I've decided to save that for a special project I'm working on for this blog. The next choice was going to be the bizarre Dutch silent "documentary" HAXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES but then that got hit with that bane of Netflix queues everywhere "Short Wait." Fortunately, I still had some notes left over from another project that ultimately didn't pan out, a series of posts about the films of Lucio Fulci that I planned to post this Halloween, so I had a back up handy. And unlike those other two, this one actually does feature a vengeful witch in a predominant role. "Vengeful" was more of a guideline than an actual rule, you see... From 1972, Lucio Fulci's unique entry into the Italian giallo genre, DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING, or as it's known in its native country, NON SI SEVIZIA UN PAPERINO. 

So, what's a giallo? I guess the first time you really start to discuss this genre on your movie review blog, you're sort of required to do a quick recap of the origins of the term. In 1929, an Italian publisher named Mondadori released a series of cheap crime / mystery pulp novels, most of which being Italian reprints of American and British crime authors such as Agatha Christie, Ed McBain, Ellery Queen, Raymond Chandler and others. The book series was titled "Il Giallo Mondadori" due to their trademark yellow covers. ("Giallo" being the Italian word for "Yellow.") The series proved to be popular and some other publishers wanted in on some of that fat cash, so they too put out their own series of crime novels, complete with yellow covers. Cultural osmosis being what it is, "giallo" would eventually become synonymous in Italian pop culture with any type of detective / mystery thriller. Movies like Hitchcock's PSYCHO and VERTIGO would be considered "giallo" by Italian audiences, for example. However, what is popular considered a giallo wouldn't really be established until the 1960's, which is when Mario Bava released two films: THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and BLOOD AND BLACK LACE. These two films, the latter especially, would be what would codify the basic tropes of a giallo: mysterious killers in black gloves, heavily stylized visuals, baroque titles, elaborate murder set pieces, outsider protagonists, glamorous women as the victims, etc. But while critical hits, neither of these movies apparently made much bank at the box office. The movie that would do for the giallo what A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS did for the spaghetti western wouldn't be along until 1970. That film would be THE BIRD WITH CRYSTAL PLUMMAGE, the directorial debut of Dario Argento, a former film critic and screenwriter. (Prior to this, he had co-written the screenplay for ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, one of my favorite movies.) The film, which apparently drew heavily from Bava's BLACK LACE while ramping up the stylized violence, was an international success and kicked off the giallo's stint as a viable money maker. Between 1970 and 1973, Italy alone produced more than sixty five of the damn things and even the Spanish and German film industries would get in on the act. Their influence can even be seen in notable American films, such as Hitchcock's FRENZY, Brian DePalma's controversial DRESSED TO KILL, Wes Craven's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and the original HALLOWEEN, which John Carpenter would call "his Argento movie," making them a connective tissue of sorts between Hitchcock-ian thrillers and slasher films.

I must admit, that while I'm a familiar enough with them to recognize a giallo film or the elements in other movies that were influenced by them, the whole giallo genre is one of my big blind spots as far as my movie watching goes. I think I've seen more movies that take their cues from them, like some of the ones mentioned above, than I have the real deal, completely unfiltered pure uncut giallo experience. From memory I can only name DEEP RED and PHENOMENA, both by Argento, and seeing part of Bava's BAY OF BLOOD / TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE a while back. SUSPIRIA is one of my favorite horror films and it definitely has a lot of giallo in it's DNA, for obvious reasons, but ultimately it's more of a supernatural horror film / dark fairy tale. Well, I've been off and on something of an Italian horror kick since the middle of October as of late, so I've decided to correct this. DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING was the movie that started me on this, in fact.

I've seen DUCKLING described as Fulci's fun house mirror version of Harper Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and, y'know what? That's actually not as absurd as it might seem at first glance. At their heart, both stories are of the manner in which a town's suspicions and prejudices escalate due to a horrible crime and how the fallout of that leads to the death of an innocent scapegoat. (Movie Morlocks has a good little write-up about how the influence of the 1962 film adaptation of MOCKINGBIRD can be traced through the entire horror genre. Read it here.) Even the title is somewhat evocative of it. The setting is Southern Italy rather than Alabama, here the rural village of Accendura standing in for Maycomb and in many ways, Accendura itself seems to be more of the main character of the story than any of the people in the film. When a twelve year old boy goes missing and is later found dead, Accendura finds itself the center of attention from both law enforcement and the national media. This is just first of several murders that will take place in this seemingly quiet town and as more and more young boys turn up dead, the town turns its suspicion and rage towards its various pariahs, culminating in one, a disturbed woman who practices witchcraft (Florida Bolkan), getting savagely beaten to death. When another of the town's outliers (Barbara Bouchet), a drug addict who was in a habit of making sexually provocative advances towards the victims, finds herself as the new prime suspect, she's forced to work with a reporter (Tomas Milan) to uncover who the real killer is.

DUCKLING is nestled in an interesting spot in Fulci's overall career. Like a lot of Italian directors, Fulci was a jack-of-all-trades, getting his start directing screwball comedies and westerns (one of which featured a pre-DJANGO Franco Nero) before tackling crime thrillers, horror films, and even dipping his toes into CONAN THE BARBARIAN knock-offs with his truly "What the hell?" CONQUEST. It was his horror work that made him an international success, marking him as one of the "big three" of Italian horror with Bava and Argento. The flashpoint, in this case, being ZOMBIE, his notoriously gruesome and grotty gutmuncher that was marketed in Italy as a sequel to George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD. It's ZOMBIE or perhaps his unofficial "trilogy of death;" CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD / THE BEYOND / HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY that horror fans know him for best over here and made "A Lucio Fulci movie" practically into a genre unto itself. However, before ZOMBIE, he made a trio of giallo movies that, like I said, are interesting to look at in the context of his entire career because they seem to represent something of a transition for Fulci from his earlier to later movies. 1969's PERVERSION STORY seems almost like an ancestor to 90's erotic thrillers ala BASIC INSTINCT, while LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN seems to be Fulci's first attempt at the hazy, hallucinatory narratives that would define his later work. DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING would be the third film of the bunch, and it's probably the most interesting, not only for how much it diverges from what we've come to expect from Fulci's films but from gialli as well.

First off, there's how it differentiates itself from other films by Fulci. When you think of a Lucio Fulci horror film, odds are you'll be thinking in terms of something like the aforementioned ZOMBIE or the GATES OF HELL trilogy. These are movies that run on a sort of feverish dream logic. Stuff just happens in them, basically, as if Fulci and his screenwriters had ideas for scenes and then whipped a vague idea to connect all of them. (Like say "You really shouldn't build your hotel over a Hellmouth.") Thing is, when Fulci's has a handle on things, this ends up working in the film's favor, such as in THE BEYOND, where the incomprehensible narrative actually helps instill the sense that reality is becoming more and more unhinged. His movies are also known for their extreme gore, even by the standards of the Italian horror film, with his trademark being something truly egregious happening to a character's eyes. (Poor Paola Menard.) Hell, ZOMBIE's level of grue was so infamous it had barf bags made and distributed as a promotion. His previous giallo, LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN, had a scene which featured eviscerated dog props that were so realistic looking Fulci and special effects artist Carlo Rimbaldi had to prove in court that they were fake! Here, content serves story and the tangents the film ends up going on, like whole subplot with the witch Maciara, actually work as a part of the whole. As for extreme violence, there’s really only two scenes. One is the attack on the witch Maciara by the townspeople, a vicious whipping with chains that presages a similar scene that opens up Fulci’s THE BEYOND. The other is the death of our killer, who smashes their face on rocks repeatedly as they fall from a cliff. It has to be said, this would already be a fairly ridiculous sequence but that it features a dummy that couldn’t be more unconvincing if you tried doesn’t help. Sparks shoot out of the thing’s face at one point! The rest of the time, we only come across the aftermath of the violence, the discovery of the boy’s bodies. The only other killing depicted on screen is a brief strangling. Obviously, there’s a very simple explanation for this. I imagine that even with it’s lighter restrictions on violence and sexuality, the Italian film industry still considered depicting graphic murder of children something of a no-no, so much of DUCKLING’s running time, Fulci had to find other ways to get his shocks across. This would be achieved either through imagery such as the film’s opening scene where we witness Maciara digging bare-handed in the dirt, unearthing the bones of a small child, or in edits like the one where we cut from one of the boys still alive immediately to the discovery of his battered body face down in a stream. Not yelling “influence” here but I’d like to note that depicting the results of the violence, rather than the violence itself, would also be put to good use in David Fincher’s gialli influenced SEVEN.

It’s effective and the fact that DUCKLING doesn’t rely on over-the-top murder sequences to knock you on your ass gives it a feel that’s fairly distinctive from other movies of its kind. The violence itself isn’t the only way in which DUCKLING goes out of its way to differentiate itself from other giallo. Many popular giallo elements rear their head here; the “outsider” protagonists, the mystery that’s “solved” more by not letting yourself get tripped up by red herrings than any actual piecing together of clues, and yes, the one murder we do see is carried out by an unseen figure wearing black gloves. But in many other ways, DUCKLING likes to screw with your expectations. Getting back to what I was talking about earlier, whereas most giallos would rack up a body count primarily of attractive women, much like slasher films, DUCKLING goes the more taboo route of makings its victims male children. In fact, the women are among the film’s more sympathetic characters, the movie even allowing Patrizia, a promiscuous drug addict, to become one of the heroes. Then there’s common technique of keeping your killer hidden, by only showing their hands as they prepare or stalk their victims. This is used here but that’s to help set up Maciara as a red herring!

How about how this movie looks? There is certainly some memorable imagery, such as the skeletal grim reaper figure that looms over the boys while at prayer, and some disorienting camera angles are used, but you won’t see much in the way of garishly colored, baroque visuals and sets. This wouldn’t fit with the story Fulci’s trying to tell. Instead, DUCKLING opts for a more naturalistic, earthy look and many of the locations used in the film wouldn’t look too out of place in a spaghetti western, in fact. That film’s other eventual hero is played Tomas Milan, star of THE BIG GUNDOWN, Sergio Corbucci’s COMPANEROS, and one of the myriad DJANGO sequels, adds to this. (Also, good lord, that’s mustache he’s sporting.) Patrizia’s modern home is the only set piece in the movie that resembles anything you’d expect to see in an Argento movie and that’s supposed to stick out like a sore thumb, the home’s inconsistency with the surroundings, not to mention her modern brightly colored outfits serving as marks of her outsider status.

It’s actually a bit frustrating that information about Fulci’s childhood and early life is so hard to come by. All I was able to dig up was that the man had a Catholic upbringing, which isn’t surprising – a Catholic Italian? Come on! – because Catholicism and more importantly, Catholic guilt hangs over everything in the movie. Fulci got into a bit of hot water, in fact, with the Church with this movie because it felt that it presented a negative image of the organization. The reason I became interested in learning about Fulci’s early life because Fulci cited DUCKLING as his favorite out of all of his films and called it his most personal movie. There’s something incredibly autobiographical about this film and the way it depicts life in small town Italy. Unlike his much of his later work, you get the sense that Fulci is trying to really say something here about this. And well, whatever he’s trying to say, it’s not too good. In DUCKLING, small town life isn’t presented as some sort of wholesome counterpart to the decadence of the city, but rather a place that has its own form of corruption simmering under the surface. The modern world is encroaching on Accendura, represented by a newly built highway on the town’s outskirts, and the people there aren’t happy with it. Repression is the name of the game here, with the town showing suspicion and prejudice against anything that doesn’t fit their ideals. At one point, a Catholic priest tells a reporter that the church has final word on what magazines and other publications can be distributed in Accendura. This repressive attitude is taken to its most cynical extreme when we finally uncover the identity of the killer, who was murdering the children because they had began to show interest in things like smoking and sex and didn’t wish for them to fall into sin. Of course, no one in the movie (or in real life, either) grasps that it’s this repressive attitude that’s driving them to behave like this. When you emphatically tell a kid to not do something, well, that’s going to make them what to do it even more but without any real understanding of what they’re dealing with. Take the movie’s most infamous scene, where Patrizia teases one of the boys after he stumbles across her sunbathing in the nude. That kid, who was all bravado earlier, becomes scared, timid and is in completely over his head. Man, way to make “nude Barbara Bouchet” disturbing, Fulci.

It’s this whole repression angle that ties into my observation that real main character of DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING is Accendura. The idea that the environment they’ve created made the murders possible and that a moral authority may be the one responsible for it never crosses the villagers’ minds. Instead they turn against the freaks, the weirdos, the Others, because in their minds they’re a convenient, guilt free target. They don’t fit with whatever moral standard we’ve imposed on ourselves so obviously only they could be capable of doing this horrible thing. Whenever a scapegoat is offered up, the townspeople immediately form a faceless mob and start baying for blood. (A theme Fulci would briefly touch on again with CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD) Which leads to the entire subplot with Maciara, who, to get back to the TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD parallels, is our Tom Robinson figure. Maciara confesses to the murders but when her confession entails putting a “curse” on the initial victims in revenge for their defiling the grave of her stillborn child, the police realize that these are simply the ravings of a disturbed woman and let her go. What follows is without a doubt the stand out stretch of the film and one of the best scenes Fulci ever staged. Walking through Accendura’s sun-baked streets, Maciara is spat upon by old women and then later followed and corralled into a local cemetery by some of the men, where she’s beaten bloody all while pleasant music from a local radio plays over the scene. Shades of Tuco’s torture scene from THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, perhaps? Maciara doesn’t die there, managing to drag herself to the local highway before expiring, passersby ignoring her or deciding that they don’t want to get involved. When the police arrive on the scene, the officer in charge pieces together fairly fast what happened and just by glancing at the gathered crowd, knows that the entire town had a part to play in the murder of an innocent women. You can’t arrest an entire town, though, and police can’t do anything but leave the one’s responsible to live with what they’ve done.

This, I think, represents another transition in Fulci’s horror films. While I haven’t seen them, discussions of PERVERSION STORY and LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN made them out to be very moralistic films, stories about how these people have done wrong and they’re getting their just desserts. This isn’t quite the case with DUCKLING. Yes, the killer is eventually unmasked and dies but look at the damage left in their wake: families destroyed, an innocent woman dead, and people with her blood on their hands. ZOMBIE, THE BEYOND, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, etc. all seem to be set in an uncaring universe, where, to quote UNFORGIVEN “deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” We see the beginnings of that here, where it doesn’t matter if what age you are, what walk of life you’re from, how moral you are, if circumstances deem that you are screwed, then buddy there’s nothing you can about it.

Or to put it another way, “Forget it, Jake…it’s Accendura.”



This review was a part of DIRTY HEX APPEAL: A Vengeful Witch Round Table, presented by the CELLULOID ZEROES blogger group. First up is WEB OF THE BIG DAMN SPIDER and their take on ATOR, THE FIGHTING EAGLE, then hop over to MICRO-BREWED REVIEWS for MIDNIGHT OFFERINGS. Still not enough? Then swing by CINEMASOCHIST APOCALYPSE, who's cooking up some BLACK MAGIC or stop off at THE TERRIBLE CLAW REVIEWS for THE HAUNTED PALACE!

A Little Something Extra:
"Burn The Witch" by Queens of the Stone Age. Getting into the music of Brody Dalle also lead me to check out Josh Homme, her husband's music, which includes Kyuss, Eagles of Death Metal and this band right here. A mix of classic and stoner rock, Queens have joined Monster Magnet and White Zombie on that list of bands where the volume just can't go high enough...

Cronos (1993)

Directed by: Guillermo Del Toro
Screenplay: Guillermo Del Toro
Starring: Fedirico Luppi, Claudio Brook, Ron Perlman, Tamara Shanath
Running Time: 94 minutes

Guillermo Del Toro was bound to turn up here at some point. It was inevitable. The big Mexican is unquestionably my favorite director to come along in the past decade and a half and one of the few whose movies I make every effort to see in theaters when I can. I first crossed paths with him when I rented MIMIC from Springhill’s local mom and pop in a stint between semesters at Louisiana Tech – not a movie that floored me, but enough of it has stuck with that I think it’s overdue for a re-watch – but the real gateway drug was BLADE II, his bloody, crazed sequel to Marvel and New Line’s surprise hit. Its mix of Hong Kong action and ALIENS channeled through gothic horror was right up my alley but it was the intelligence, humor and enthusiasm that Del Toro showed on the DVD’s special features that completely won me over.  I wouldn’t call Del Toro and myself kindred spirits but there’s enough in his obsessions and sensibilities that parallels what I enjoy in movies and art in general that I can jokingly describe him as a director who makes Movies Just For Me. His films are celebration of the strange and fantastic, undercut with a sense of melancholy and genuine empathy for the imperfect, the broken and the monstrous, whether they're heroes or villains. In Del Toro's world, monsters are more often than not tragic victims, something that runs throughout his entire body of work and can be seen as recently as his lavish gothic horror CRIMSON PEAK. As I stated when discussing Paul Verhoeven, in an industry that relies too much on "safe bet" entertainment, there's something quite wonderful about sitting in the theater and experiencing a film by a director that clearly doesn't care one bit for whatever the mainstream dictates. So, you can imagine how happy I was when I got hooked into participating in the Criterion Blogathon and while perusing the selections saw that not one but two of his films were available: His Spanish Civil War set ghost story THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE and my choice, CRONOS, his wholly unique twist on vampire mythology. I went with CRONOS because I feel that it may be in danger of getting lost in the shadow of Del Toro's later, more visible output. CRONOS isn't a perfect film, too obviously the work of a young, inexperienced artist who was still working on how to best express himself, but much of what would become Del Toro's trademarks are very much in evidence here and that definitely makes this movie worth your time.

CRONOS's story is a simple one by design: In the year 1537, an alchemist completes his work on the titular Cronos device, a gnarly crossbreed of mechanical scarab and Faberge Egg which our narration informs us will grant everlasting life to anyone who uses it. The device was obviously a success because when we jump ahead almost four hundred years later, we find the alchemist is still alive…but not for long, as he has been grievously injured by debris in a collapsing building. His invention was never recovered, hidden away in the base of a wooden archangel statue. That statue eventually finds its way into the possession of Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi), an elderly antique dealer who lives in Mexico with his wife and orphaned granddaughter (Tamara Shanath), who discovers the device while cleaning up a roach infestation. (An amusing touch, I thought. Resilient insects and all that.) While examining it, Jesus ends up activating the device, which sprouts several needle-like appendages that drive themselves into his flesh. The serious damage does to his hand will be just the beginning of Jesus’s problems. Come night time, his injuries won’t stop itching; he’s burning up with a fever and can’t seem to slake a powerful, sudden thirst. Most disturbingly, he can’t seem to take his eyes off of that piece of bloody meat in the refrigerator. Desperation for any kind of relief will drive him to use the device again and its here that we learn that the Cronos device houses an undying insect that lives off of the blood of its victim. In return, this creature injects them with a strange fluid of its own that restores their youth and vitality, ensuring that the creature has a healthy and grateful host to feed on for the foreseeable future. At first, Jesus enjoys his rediscovered passion and vigor but as he uses the device more and more, he's unsettled by the developing side effects; an aversion to sunlight, a weird substance oozing out of the wounds the machine inflicts on him, and those pesky cravings for blood. Those really don’t want to go away. 

Further danger comes from industrialist Dieter de la Guardia (Claudio Brook) and his thuggish nephew Angel (Ron Perlman). The Cronos device is de la Guardia's obsession, a possible escape from the grotesque half-life a terminal sickness has reduced him to. He can't leave the clean room that rests at the heart of his factory, can't consume anything but pills for nourishment and many of his internal organs have had to be removed. (He keeps those in a display case like some sort of Cronenbergian trophy set.) Dieter will do anything to get his hands on the device and while Angel doesn't understand his uncle's madness -- "All that man does is piss and shit and he wants to live longer?" -- he's willing to play along if it means he can get his hands on Dieter's business empire. The fight over the Cronos piece comes to a head at a New Year's Eve party, where Angel kidnaps Jesus and savagely beats him before shoving him over a cliff in a car. That would be the end of Jesus's story right there...except for the little detail that thanks to his repeated use of the Cronos device, Jesus can't die...

Del Toro describes himself as a filmmaker who nearly kills himself making the kinds of movies that others would dash off for a quick buck. CRONOS's creation was exactly that sort of uphill struggle for the director, who wrote the screenplay at twenty one but wouldn't film it for another seven years. To gain the necessary experience to direct feature films, Del Toro served as a regular director on HORA MARCADA, Mexico's equivalent to THE TWILIGHT ZONE. He had to found his own make-up and practical effects house specifically for the production of CRONOS due to the lack of any sort of special effects company in his home of Guadalajara. (Once the film was completed, the company was shut down.) Despite the film's budget being the highest for any Mexican film production -- Two million dollars -- money issues plagued the production. Del Toro had to resort to mortgaging his house and selling his van in order to make up for the lack of funds and barely had enough money to fly his wife and himself to the film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The struggling production and Del Toro's growing pains as a director transitioning from television to film is readily apparent in the final result. Del Toro's movies are noted for their elaborate spectacle, camera work and sets, with the man himself regularly regarded as one of the industry's best visual designers but we catch only glimpses of it here. At times, CRONOS feels more like an elaborate television production than anything. The characters as they stand are more prototypes for what would come later than they are their own, though the cast is capable enough to do the heavy lifting. (It's no surprise that Perlman and Luppi would make regular appearances in Del Toro's movies.) The attempts at humor, including a comical interlude with a mortician and Ron Perlman’s nose job obsession, are genuinely amusing but seem so at odds with the sense of melancholy and loss elsewhere that they almost feel like intrusions from another film. There's strong imagery and moments of greatness here -- an undead Jesus's return home to his granddaughter after his funeral is a standout sequence -- but they come in between scenes where its obvious that Del Toro is still stretching his wings.

It's those moments of greatness, intermittent though they are, that make CRONOS worth watching. Del Toro may have still needed to get a handle on his filmmaking craft, but even at this point in his career his considerable talent is on display and we can see the first explorations of themes and ideas that would be refined in subsequent films. The extraordinary forcing its way into ordinary lives, discovering beauty in ugliness, the re-examination and re-purposing of classical imagery -- religious or otherwise and the aforementioned monster as a tragic victim. CRONOS is a vampire movie but it's view of the vampire is definitely not a romantic one. There's no regal aristo in suit and cape here but a poverty row junkie suffering from a near animal need for their next fix. (An idea continued with BLADE II's Reapers.) Jesus is so agonized by his newly developed craving that he'll lick up drops of blood from a bathroom floor. He becomes even more pitiful after his "death," his flesh rotting and peeling away and dressed in the tattered remains of his funeral clothing. His vampire's cloak is an old blanket he retrieves from the garbage and his coffin is his granddaughter's toy box. Even the Cronos device is revealed to be nothing more than a cage for a tick-like parasite. In an interview about the movie, Del Toro states "Life is beautiful because it has a beginning and an end." To attempt to go beyond this limit is to commit a crime against nature itself, something CRONOS illustrates not only with the fate of the alchemist and Jesus's deteriorating condition, but in the pathetic state de la Guardia's attempts to staving off his impending demise has left him in. Indeed, it's only when Jesus finally rejects the Cronos device and its costly immortality that he's allowed to regain his dignity. 

It's his love for his granddaughter Aurora that gives him the strength to destroy the device and it's this relationship that forms the heart of the film. This is another theme that crops up again and again in Del Toro's movies: familial bonds across generations. Yet another appears when you contrast Aurora and Jesus against de la Guardia and Angel; that of families that act in opposition to one another while serving as distorted mirrors of each other. Where the latter is an abusive, adversarial one, defined by what the two can get out of the other, the former is ultimately defined by selflessness and sacrifice. When Dieter is mortally injured, Angel wastes no time in finishing the old man off to that he can take over. When Jesus is similarly hurt during his confrontation with Angel, Aurora does whatever she can to save him, even offering her blood to him. No matter how monstrous Jesus becomes, Aurora's love for him never wavers. It's interesting to note that Aurora was adopted by Jesus after his son's death because we see over and over that the strongest bonds in Del Toro's films are those formed by surrogate families formed by circumstance. Blade and his mentor Whistler, for example. The orphans of THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE. Stacker and Mako In PACIFIC RIM and the "freaks" of HELLBOY I & II's B.P.R.D. The connections with the most solidarity are the ones that gain the strength to overcome hardships placed before them.

Finally, beyond the thematic elements, CRONOS shows that Del Toro was already firmly aware of how to distill down his numerous influences into something that is uniquely his own. The story is stuff of classical fairy-tales, the feel is like that of Hammer horror, and the visual influence of gothic art and Italian horror is all over the place. Notice how the face of the archangel statue has crumbled to the point it resembles a skull? Or that de la Guardia's clean room is like a sterile, industrial counterpart to the witch's lair in SUSPIRIA? Not to mention Del Toro shows a knack for bodily horror that puts him in company with Barker and Cronenberg. He may not strive for their flesh ripping extremes -- though I assure you that flesh does get ripped to spectacular effect in CRONOS's finale -- but he's clearly taken notes from them in how to make you squirm in your seat. Try not to cringe when the device's scorpion like appendage hovers over Jesus's bare wrist, almost as if in anticipation, before plunging in or the delight taken in giving us an up close look at Jesus's mouth being stitched shut by a mortician. The way Jesus cuts those stitches is equally unpleasant. These are not mere references and quotations though but rather recognizable elements that make up a unique piece's DNA.

Speaking of Barker, he's the creator I'd say Del Toro most resembles. Not only in their usage of violence and nightmarish transformations but in how both men love to re-purpose and subvert the religious iconography of their upbringings and that their sympathies lie steadfastly with the Outsider and the Other. You wouldn't be crazy for seeing a lot of NIGHTBREED in Guillermo's comic book adaptations and CRONOS is definitely Del Toro's HELLRAISER, his story of an ancient artifact that transforms a man into a vampiric monster. If you ask me, I think the Cronos device would look marvelous on a shelf next to the Lament Configuration.

One can imagine the relief when CRONOS became one of the big prize winners at Cannes, later sweeping the Golden Ariel Awards, Mexico's answer to the Oscars, and receiving considerable praise from notable critics, including Roger Ebert. It was an entire lifetime's worth of hard work paying off, opening doors and securing the career he wanted so badly. If he was to make CRONOS today, Guillermo muses, it would be a different movie because the director is so different now. Would it be a better movie? Maybe not. Flawed though it is, CRONOS was a necessary step in his development as a filmmaker. It's exactly the movie that he needed to be make when he did.

This review was part of the Criterion Blogathon, a six-day event celebrating film sponsored by Criterion Films. Click here to go to the Blogathon's main page and check out the other entries by participating blogs. Some friends of PSYCHOPLASMICS are also participating in the event and direct links to their reviews will be added as they go up.

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