Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

Revisit Day of the Dead for a Reminder That Sometimes Zombies Deserve to Win

A Scream in the Streets is a sexploitation thriller with a much heavier emphasis on the former than the latter. Like, no weight at all has been placed on the latter if we're being honest here. There are almost no thrills to be found. Plenty of sex though, if that's what you're looking for. Plenty of friction between nude bodies depicted in graphic detail for extended periods of time. (Does that get your motor running?) If your experience with softcore is something like Russ Meyer's output, you might expect plenty of shots of enthusiastically presented nudity punctuating a plot that moves like a regular movie. This is closer to the structure of hardcore movies, which are mostly sex with the plot and whatnot built around them. (I'm not making a value judgment as I've enjoyed films from both camps, merely priming expectations.) This is also quite graphic by the standards of softcore. What I'm saying is, you can see dong. One actor even whips it out and tries to play act penetration, but in a subsequent shot you can see it laying flat on the table while he's making thrusting motions. One must respect the dedication of the actor and lament that he was let down by an uninspired camera setup. One must also note that we see man ass before any female nudity, which I'm sure must have thrilled the intended audience but maybe marks the movie as a bit progressive in this one respect.

In other respects, it probably reads as pretty reactionary. The plot, what's there of it, concerns a serial killer going around raping and killing women while dressed as one himself. In between these scenes of rape and murder, we follow some cops as they go around foiling crimes, most of them sexual or sex-adjacent, like a violent incident at a massage parlour and a peeping tom. Our main character is a liberal-minded detective (who resembles David Letterman during the early '90s, and yes, I've been watching a bunch of vintage Letterman on YouTube lately) who tries to teach his eager new partner such novel concepts such as suspects have rights, and you need a warrant to check their trunk, and no, you definitely can't beat them while they're unarmed for no reason. The depiction of the villain plays into some pretty ugly tropes, and the resolution of the cop drama does not resolve with a paean to Miranda rights, but the tone of the movie is so lighthearted, and the grittier elements so consistently undermined by its eagerness to bask in constant sex scenes that it's hard to take seriously.

Looking through the cast, a number of the actresses were regulars in porn movies from the era, which would make sense given the wealth of sexual content in the movie. I recognized Colleen Brennan, and she has plenty of opportunities to flash her pleasingly toothy smile as she enjoys some flirtatious banter with a beat cop. If you have some fondness for her as a screen presence, you will likely enjoy at least her scenes. She does however have relatively straight hair rather than the curls she sports in the hardcore features I've seen with her. I assume she and many other women in the '80s spent some quality time with a plasma ball, as that would explain what the hell happened to everybody's hair during the decade. It's also worth noting that many of the cast members are redheads, and much of the production design (costumes, wallpaper, furniture) is blue, and I must tip my hat to the casting director and production designer for their astute understanding of colour theory. This is also not shot particularly stylishly, but has that bright look common in exploitation movies in the '60s and early '70s, plus an awful lot of street footage, that make this reasonably pleasant to look at. And while it's never all that thrilling, it moves at a good enough pace that it makes a nice low investment viewing. One can imagine stepping in and out of a viewing during a grindhouse marathon without missing a lot. Putting this on after a long day at work and looking for something undemanding, I didn't mind this.

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(We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.)

It is interesting that a movie that's ultimately quite technophobic happens to be a landmark in special effects. Certainly the CGI in Terminator 2 has dated on a purely technical level, but as has been drilled into my head from my avid viewing of the Corridor Crew YouTube channel, the filmmaking surrounding the effects are instrumental to selling them. (There's a reason why Jurassic Park provides so many breathtaking visuals despite it being almost thirty years old.) Here it helps tremendously that Cameron is a master filmmaker who knows how to deploy this technology in the service of spectacular images (while still staying relevant to the story). One can read this movie's stature in the action genre as having extra resonance for the story. Cameron seeks to warn us of the importance of great filmmaking craft that serves the story, but in providing a proof of concept for a living, breathing CGI character (figuratively speaking), he unwittingly dooms us to an endless wave of lifeless CGI-riddled extravaganzas decades later. And this is without mentioning the action sequences throughout that rely mostly on practical effects, assembled with taught, masterful visual storytelling. I don't think of Cameron as a great visual stylist, but there's no denying he knows how to craft iconic images.

Given Cameron's liberal politics, modern viewers might be tempted to read a certain slant into the villain's adoption of a police officer's facade. The simplest explanation is a narrative one, as it would be a lot easier for the villain to get around were he an authority figure like a policeman than if he picked any other profession or costume. But at the same time, when the heroes infiltrate the Cyberdyne Systems headquarters and fend off a siege from the police, Cameron casts a suspicious eye on the unsettingly militaristic appearance of the cops, bathing them in sinister blue light. And while the Terminator is sworn not to kill, there's an awful lot of relish taken when the cops get repeatedly kneecapped. With this and the abusive orderly in the institution Linda Hamilton is broken out of, Cameron balances his anti-establishment streak pretty astutely with the needs of the story. (You can see this sentiment come up quite forcefully in Aliens, where the marines are set up as "ultimate badasses" only to be totally ineffectual against the xenomorphs, and in Avatar, where he miscalculates by casting Stephen Lang as the main villain, thereby making the evil human army way cooler than the new age Na'vi doofuses we're supposed to root for.)

I think the most common complaint about this movie is with Edward Furlong's performance, but given that his character has been uneasily thrust into the role of a hero in his youth, it makes sense that his "cool" affectations would seem so painfully awkward. I think his bonding with Schwarzenegger as a father figure actually does provide a fair bit of heart to the movie, and the denouement of their shared arc, while shameless in the image chosen, is actually quite moving. I still can't overlook how awful some of the dialogue is ("You're calling moi a dip****?"), but I think that's a failure of the screenplay and not his performance. This movie also makes a great case for viewing its star as an actual actor, rather than a mere box office presence. Arnold Schwarzenegger is like John Wayne in that he has so distinct a screen presence and speech pattern that one tends to underrate him as an actor. (That singular quality also means that Schwarzenegger has not adopted to changing times as gracefully as some of his contemporaries, although I did find his role in Dark Fate nicely poignant.) I don't think he's quite as "good" as Wayne, but like the Duke, one can compare different roles to get a better sense of his thespian qualities. Compare the subtle differences in body language and vocal delivery between his work in Conan the Barbarian, Twins and this movie, and you can see an actor aware of his limitations but able to tailor his presence to the needs of a diverse range of movies. (Not to mention his comic timing and superlative ability to deliver one liners. "Chill out, dickwad.") It doesn't matter how "good" he is in technical terms. What other actor could we buy so readily as a cyborg struggling with his humanity? (I remember a while back, Dwayne Johnson was being hyped as the new Schwarzenegger. But aside from the fact that Schwarzenegger in his prime was consistently picking better projects, there's something so unlikely and singular about his presence that it can't be replicated. Johnson, while charismatic, feels a little too focus-grouped in comparison. One wishes he would be willing to take risks more often, like in his extremely unflattering role in Michael Bay's Pain & Gain, still the best thing I've seen him in.)

So yeah, I've seen this movie a hundred times, and you likely have too, but seeing as it popped up on Canadian Netflix, I figured I might as well give it another rewatch. And the results are in: it still rules.

(Ok fine, I'll watch some normal movies too.)

*plays "Bad to the Bone"*

one of my favorite terminator movie

Good review of T2 (hey, that rhymed!) Rock; I still prefer the original ever so slightly as my favorite Terminator, due to its more iconic villain, lack of Furlong, and grittier overall tone (i.e. no forcing the T-800 into becoming yet another version of the one-liner spouting "Arnie" archetype), but Judgement Day is still a strong movie in its own right despite all that, with a lot of great action and general spectacle, which both showcases the endless possibilities of CGI, without becoming overly reliant on it like so many later blockbusters did, at least the ones that learned the wrong lesson from its titanic (heh) success. Also, like Aliens, Cameron's fundamentally smart storytelling avoids just rehashing the original's beats, but finds logical, natural ways to follow up their fallout, like the way Sarah went from being an everyday waitress into a technophobic survivalist because of her experiences; good stuff. In fact, I think this whole discussion's going to inspire me to repost my old review of it in the "Rate The Last Movie" thread, now that I think about it...

I am safe in assuming the original is your #1, then? Because it's not like there's much competion besides those two, heh...

huh confused

You said that T2 was one of your favorite Terminator movies, so I was assuming that the original was your actual favorite.

t2 is my favorite then the number one is my 2nd favorite

After a certain point, probably sometime in the '70s, westerns had become so scarce that a new one, by virtue of being made, functioned as a kind of statement. Certainly movies like Unforgiven and The Proposition are designed as reflections on the genre rather than mere exercises in the form (and this reflective quality extends to movies that traffic in western aesthetics, like No Country for Old Men). But even movies eager to bask in the simple, unpretentious pleasures of the genre come off like statements through omission, by virtue of being so rare. Silverado is one such film, and a pretty good one at that. This is a movie about good guys being good, bad guys being bad, spinning pistols and being crack shots, hopping on horses and riding into the sunset. If any of those things sound good to you, you're likely to have a good time with this anyway, but some astute casting goes a long way in making this work.

The heroes are played by Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, Kevin Kline and Kevin Costner, who are roughly given equal weighting, although Glenn is perhaps the most alpha. Glenn is perfect for westerns, with a face so leathery it might as well match his boots and so craggy it blends into the harsh landscape. (I've heard him described as weird looking, which is a bit unfair. Rugged is a better term, and if you squint, he's maybe even a little handsome.) He has a certain low key presence that suggests confidence without overplaying it, and is instantly credible as a man who's averse to violence but awful good at it if the need arises. He's also the coolest looking of the bunch, with a hairdo and wardrobe that look stylish and modern without compromising the period. (Black Friday is coming up and I can't promise I won't order some western wear as a result of this movie, although I suspect the short jacket he wears for much of the movie would not look flattering on me.) This was during the period when Glenn was being pushed as an action hero, and his work here fits nicely with The Challenge, a pleasingly excessive swordplay movie with a well used Toshiro Mifune, Man on Fire, a thriller whose artfulness better matches the samurai-inspired quality of its source novel than the more jagged Tony Scott adaptation, and Wild Geese II, the sober followup to the cheerful mercenary shoot 'em up. Glenn had also donned a cowboy hat in Urban Cowboy, where he stole the movie from John Travolta, and it's nice to him put on a hat and play a good guy this time around.

Glover is someone I always think of as very old, likely because his best known role includes a famous line of dialogue commenting on his age. This is the role I've seen him where he comes off the least geriatric, and like Glenn, he brings an unforced heroic quality (and his character is a better shot too). His introduction can remind viewers of the extremely lame ways modern movies will try to pander to righteous sensibilities by having a character face racial injustice (or some other kind) in an awkwardly written scene, but the one here works because of two indisputable facts: One, Glover is kind of cool in this, and two, watching him beat up racists is objectively enjoyable. Compared to him and Glenn, Kline comes off as relatively genteel, but in a way that creates tension between his desire for respectability, his violent past, and his need to pick up a gun again for the sake of justice. His might be considered the Henry Fonda role, and he has some nice, maybe romantic chemistry, with a saloon operator played by Linda Hunt. And in contrast to all of them, Costner is the most excitable, bringing some of the spontaneity and anarchic energy of a young Tom Hanks. I've usually seen him cast as an everyman, which can help ground a movie (like in the frantic, paranoid JFK), but it's nice to see him in a completely different mode. (In contrast to Glenn's costuming, Costner's is a little more flamboyant and goofy, in keeping with his character's youthful indiscretion.) If you like these actors, you'll get a lot out of the way the movie savours their distinct presences.

The strong casting carries over to the rest of the film as well, including the aforementioned Hunt, Brian Dennehy as the heavy, a purposefully incongruous Jeff Goldblum, and the list goes on. To borrow a phrase from the We Hate Movies podcast, this was made in an era when studio movies had deep casts (good, recognizable actors all the way down). This is directed by Lawrence Kasdan, and like Raiders of the Lost Ark, for which he wrote the screenplay, this is deeply nostalgic for the films of yore, although the innate significance of a western made in this era probably forces it to be more sprawling and quite a bit less terse than the B-westerns that would have inspired it. It's not as good as that movie, as Kasdan lacks Spielberg's immaculate action direction. (Consider a scene where Costner guns down two foes, one on each side. Kasdan chooses to cut when holding the shot would have made the punchline land better.) But at the same time, the baseline of craft in studio pictures at the time was a lot better than it is today, and on the whole this is quite enjoyable, especially if you like hanging out with the stars and spending time in this setting. I know I did.

Ishiro Honda's King Kong vs. Godzilla was one of those films I'd seen many times as a kid and seldom since, and as a result, a few images had seared themselves into the back of my brain. One, King Kong chomping down on power lines, and two, Kong swinging Godzilla by his tail. I don't know if I'd necessarily call the experience formative, but the fact that these stayed with me probably means something. (This and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla were the ones that seemed to play most often on television when I was growing up. Both were in the English dubs.) I wouldn't call myself a great kaijuhead, but over the years I have proven responsive to the innate level of spectacle offered by giant monsters on a rampage, and also appreciated the variations in effect between some of the Showa era Godzilla movies when I watched them a few years back. (See, I'm a man of culture.) So I was pretty interested to see how this one would hold up after all these years and to see what, if any, role childhood nostalgia might play in my enjoyment.

The good news is that it holds up pretty nicely, and I don't think nostalgia played much of a role, given that I was too young when I last saw it to remember the movie with any clarity. Like I said, there's an inherent level of enjoyment to be had when giant monsters go about their business onscreen, and compared to the preceding Godzilla movies, you can see the craft being honed in the service of this spectacle. The miniature effects have improved since the original (although one scene where I thought they had a great, slimy octopus puppet turned out to have been made with a real one), and the colour cinematography gives the proceedings a nice pop. (If the movie miscalculates, it's by setting too many scenes at night. In the preceding entries, the black and white images offered enough contrast to render the action coherent. That balance hasn't quite been nailed in this one.) You can also see Godzilla's body language becoming more pronounced. While he didn't fully become cute by this point (that would happen in Invasion of Astro-Monster, with a notorious off-world celebratory dance), you can see the seeds being sewn for that transition, as he becomes more defined as a character rather than the almost disembodied force of nature he was in the original film. In contrast, King Kong, played by a man in a suit rather than the stop motion effects that originally brought him to screen (a great point of contention for Merian C. Cooper, one of the directors of the original Kong Kong, who was not consulted on this), has the body language of a baggy pants comedian and a scraggly, unkempt appearance, far less cute than a real gorilla in my humble opinion. (Toho would bring Kong to life again a few years later in King Kong Escapes, where he faces off against the comparatively adorable Mechani-Kong. I seem to remember that movie capturing Kong's essence a bit better, but it's been a few years.) As a sucker for jungle atmosphere I did enjoy the early scenes on Kong's island, although I must note that the villagers are played by actors in brownface, which while not unexpected during the era may still bother some viewers.

What probably surprised me the most, at least compared to my childhood memories, is how much plot there is before the the titular match takes place. (I watched the original Japanese version this time around; I assume some of the story elements are brushed over in the English dub.) King Kong and Godzilla are both discovered by expeditions sponsored by rival pharmaceutical companies seeking to boost ratings for their respective television shows. It isn't until the Japanese army, having an epiphany similar to what a child might have when smashing together their G.I. Joes and Star Wars figures, realizes that yes, Chewbacca should totally fight Cobra Commander...I mean, King Kong should totally fight Godzilla. The general wisdom is that the human parts of these movies are not terribly exciting and you're really here for the monster scenes (a dynamic pushed forcefully by Michael Dougherty's Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which features tremendous monster imagery and atrocious human scenes and tested the limits of my compartmentalization abilities; I had a good time, is what I'm saying), but I don't think that's an entirely fair assessment. While the particulars of the premise might be a little dated, there is a nice level of satire around the media and capitalist pursuits. It's perhaps a little broad, but when juxtaposed with the somber cautionary tale dimensions of the original and the fable-like anti-capitalist themes of Mothra vs. Godzilla, there's an instructive quality to the message, pitched perhaps at a level the children in the audience could understand. Moreover, it achieves this satire without sacrificing the thrills. (In contrast, I found Shin Godzilla completely insufferable for the view it lazily deflates any sense of excitement in the pursuit of satire I found mostly obnoxious. Hideaki Anno seemed to care as little for kaiju as he does for mecha, but he at least understood the spectacle of the latter enough to be able to subvert it in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Yes, I realize I'm winning a lot of points for saying King of the Monsters is more enjoyable than Shin Godzilla.) And even if it's on the level of pure recognition, I enjoyed seeing future Bond girls Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi pop up during the proceedings.

Suppose our boy Kong deserves some representation too.