Twilight’s Last Gleaming is a good destination for anyone looking for precursors to The Rock or the television show 24. The Rock possesses the idea of a rogue army officer threatening a terrorist attack against a U.S. government that he feels has acted dishonestly. 24 contains the idea of a race against time told across split-screens. However, neither The Rock or 24 had Robert Aldrich in command.

Robert Aldrich is a pulp fiction filmmaker. His movies deal with the less than noble elements of society – the criminal, the corrupt, the broken and the battered. However, his heroes are often trying to right a wrong or to make amends.  Twilight’s Last Gleaming is no different,  but as Aldrich flicks go, this ones is not his greatest. Forced to re-create U.S. military installations in Munich, where the film was shot, the sets lack the heft and weight of real life military structures. The chintzy sets and props cheapen the look of the film and distract from the rather serious political statement being made by the characters.

Further more, the split-screen is more experiment than artistic statement. While it pulls together disparate locations and characters something is amiss with the editing within each frame. It is a matter I want to explore more deeply in other films that use split-screen, but in short let me say this. When a split-screen is used to show that two actions are taking place in two different locations and edit within one of those screens indicates a break in time or a shift in location. This disruption, especially when no such disruption takes place in the other screen is jarring.

Still, this is a tense little chess-match of a film and like most Aldrich films we find ourselves rooting for an unlikely, but fully driven, anti-hero, who in this day and age would be labeled a traitor or worse yet, a terrorist. And, just what does this terrorist want? Simply, the truth – that the U.S. government has hidden away some rather nefarious facts from the general public, facts that would forever change how Americans view their country. It’s an idea as possible today as it was in 1977, but let’s hope it remains pulp fiction.

Meet the new scream queen of menstrual cinema.

So rare is it that I get to go to the movie theater that you’d  think I’d make greater use of such a rarefied night than going to see the new Rob Zombie horror flick. Yet, there I was, at the cineplex awash in regret. The choice of film was not exactly mine, but considering the other things playing in town, this was sure shot. There was no way The Lords of Salem was going to disappoint, but don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting it to be good.

Here’s a little side-note. I’m much happier enjoying a film that I know is going to be a disaster than expecting a film to connect with me emotionally or a film that is trying to sell me an image of coolness. If a film has some sort of statement to make about the human condition or it’s trying to wow me with the lifestyle of the characters in the film I don’t want to see it, not when I’m looking to just lose my mind for an hour or two. Give me madness, give me bat-shit-demented-off-the-rails-crazy. This is why I went to The Lords of Salem not Place Beyond the Pines or To The Wonder.

However, no sooner did the previews start before I began to rethink my stance on entertaining cinema.  As expected, the trailers playing before The Lords of Salem were for other horror or thriller films. Most exploited flashy editing, shocking imagery, and high levels of grotesqueness. They got me primed for the feature presentation, but mostly they got me wondering why I waste my time at all with horror movies. Why subject myself to such brutal imagery? Can’t I just turn on the news? I swore that if I lived through this night out I’d change my viewing habits for good. But, tonight, it was too late. I was there, in my seat, ten dollars poorer, and full of regret. Roll the film.

The Lords of Salem is not a great horror film. The first hour drags, so much that I fell asleep. But Thankfully, I woke in time to witness a demonic wookie in a room with a neon cross. That is when The Lords of Salem got entertaining. For the next hour a series of seemingly connected, but never fully developed, scenes flashed on the screen. The film is littered with gothic, witchy, demonic imagery and lots and lots of elderly full frontal nudity. Because, what is scarier than the body of an aging woman, right?

I suggest you let the demonic wookie win.

Rob Zombie’s aesthetic is that of a music video director. The image is king and the story need only hold on by the thinnest of threads. His plan of attack is that of a chimpanzee flinging shit. He throws so many plot lines, ideas, and half-formulated concepts at the screen see what sticks and what slides away. What’s left is a scatter shot of interesting ideas that never fertilized. As the film progresses the weirdness quickens. Zombie appears desperate to shock and awe his audience, but what ends up happening is something different, something ludicrous.  Lucky for him, or perhaps lucky for me, people didn’t mind laughing at his vision hell.

Normally, when I crack-up in a theater I’m expecting sneers, cold-stares, or death-threats. This happens more than you’d want to know and it probably explains why my wife and I rarely go out to the cinema. I make bad cinema interactive and I guess that even in this day and age not everyone wants interactive. That or we all don’t agree to call a bad film out when we see it.  Thankfully, I was not in the minority at The Lords of Salem. Because when Rob Zombie’s version of Satan waddles onto the screen – and don’t worry I won’t spoil the best laugh in the film by describing this abomination – but when it shows up, the dams burst and the whole theater erupted in laughter.

Kudos to you Rob Zombie.  You turned my regret into unabashed joy. I don’t understand what your problem is with your wife’s menstrual cycle and there is enough evidence in this film for a graduate student to write a thesis, but for now I’m not giving up on horror films. I’m just going to continue to seek out the head-scratching horror; the films that are more scared of making sense than making scares.

Also, I think the font in the credits of Re-Animator is the same as Law & Order, no?

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

This movie was fun as a kid, but it’s more funny than fun once you are over 30 and no longer trustworthy. I think I’ll stick with Out of the Blue. 

1) The Battle Royale or BR-Act was created after a massive student walk-out. Never is it really stated why there was such a massive walk-out. We are told that it had to do with a decline in the Japanese youth’s respect towards authority, but everything we are told about the decline of Japanese civilization comes from the perspective of those holding power.

2) Few of the students in the class chosen for the Battle Royale complain about school or the abusive powers of authority. Many recoil in shock when they find out that they have to kill one another or when they watch a classmate get killed, but few ever complain about the conditions of school or society that caused them to rebel, walk-out, protest, or whatever they did to help degrade society. It leaves me wondering if I am missing something. Was Japanese society at the turn of the last century already witnesses an unraveling of its social fabric by the youth of the country? Was there simply something in the air that signaled a drop in respect for tradition and authority was imminent? And what was causing the youth to act out? Were they pushing back against a schooling system that was pushing them too hard or were they falling under the influence of Western civilization? Most most intriguing is how Battle Royale simply asks audiences to accept the deplorable behavior of Japanese youth with little evidence. Compare this with Punishment Park, a film that used the war protests and actions of groups like the Weathermen as a basis for its vision of a brutal future.

3) Is Battle Royale more a send-up of teen melodramas than a dystopian nightmare? Most of the students concerned about expressing their lustful feelings for each other before they die. The vomiting forth of pent-up emotions and suppressed lust comes erupts awkwardly, like a John Hughes film. Petty differences are put aside by some, while others relish the opportunity to use the BR-Act as a chance to strike back at their tormentors.  Battle Royal also follows the teenager slasher trend of making slutty girls pay for their past transgressions while virginal school girls survive…or at least one does.

A Carol Reed reference by way of NBA JAM?

4) Knowing nothing of real hacker culture I could be way off the mark when I speculate that hacking software does not always involve cartoons characters slam dunking basketballs. Again, I plead ignorance.

5) What’s the logic of throwing ringers into the mix? The two transfer students are far superior at the Battle Royale and their inclusion helps raise the death toll quickly, but are they necessary? The rules of the game already ensure that the regular students have to kill each other if one of them hopes to survive. So, you don’t need merciless hunters to bring about a winner. Plus, if Takeshi Kitano‘s character is rooting for one of the girls two win, the inclusion of theses ringers does more to damage her chances of surviving. Since they are more like hardened killers than bad students forced to kill one another. Of course, I’m arguing about a scripted story with a predetermined outcome. But, I’m also saying that if the day ever comes that Battle Royale becomes necessary and real I’d forgo the idea of throwing in ringers as transfer students.

Made one year after Shampoo starring Warren Beatty, Black Shampoo is one of the oddest twists blaxploitation has ever taken.  With its odd mix of styles the film sexploitation, blaxploitation, even gayploitation (if that is even a genre) this film mixes action, comedy and romance in a way that only director Greydon Clark and writer Alvin L. Fast are capable of doing.

Black Shampoo often screeches to a halter for the sake of showing some serious skin. Clark knows that sex sells and many of his exploitation films try to take this philosophy to the bank, but often in such head scratching ways that his films become either brilliant forays into the unexpected or bungled messes. It really depends on how you look at it and how much you demand a film stick to convention. Personally, I’ll take unexpected, even wonderfully crazy, if I’m looking to be entertained. Show me something I could not think up on my own. A black hairdresser kicking ass with chainsaw and partying at a gay rodeo…where else am I going to see that?