Nightbeast

NIGHTBEAST
(NR, Amazing Film Productions, 81 mins., release date: November 1982)

Don Dohler reluctantly if energetically recreates his decade-old The Alien Factor for the early 1980s exploitation scene with NIGHTBEAST, the most notorious of Vinegar Syndrome's 2019 Halfway to Black Friday home video releases. Distributed through VIPCO in the UK, the cassette release was classified a "Section 3" Video Nasty, which meant that, though not prosecuted on obscenity charges, VHS merchants were bound by law to turn over their copies for immediate expulsion/destruction. Nightbeast enjoyed a smoother reputation in America; after a spell on the Las Vegas-based Paragon Video, it was snatched up by Troma in the early 1990s and became ubiquitous enough to merit an appearance in Panos Cosmatos' Mandy. And a 15-year-old composer named Jeffrey Abrams, who was a disciple of Dohler's from the days of his self-published Cinemagic magazine, made good in his thirties by creating the likes of Alias and Lost for ABC under the name J.J.

At this point in time, close to 1978 (the year when The Alien Factor was distributed through Cinemagic six years after completion), Dohler was still reticent about filmmaking, having agreed to turn over directorial reins for Nightbeast to Alien Factor star Dave Geatty, who found himself in over his head. Geatty's inability to function on a micro-budget left him behind schedule and over budget (he spent a day trying to perfect a single tracking shot and with nothing to show), and at least 15 people on the cast & crew turned up at Dohler's doorstep issuing a joint ultimatum. The project fizzled enough so that Dohler could scale back and direct his sophomore effort, 1980's Fiend, in comparable peace. But the siren's call of Nightbeast proved irresistible, and new director Dohler started it back up shortly after the release of Fiend.

The year now being 1982, Don Dohler could no longer attract attention just by blundering his way through an old-fashioned monster mash, as the post-slasher vogue for instant sensationalism was in full swing. Splatter and sex were in, handmade yet hokey visual effects were not. This tendency towards luridness is on full display through Nightbeast. Not only is the gore quota high enough that it would have undoubtedly warranted an X rating, but there are also two instances of violence towards women which would've sent Siskel & Ebert leaping off the balcony. And they involve the two "actresses" who were successfully coaxed into providing top-to-bottom nudity. There is also a more liberal use of profanity compared to The Alien Factor.

It's not even the sordid accoutrements of the modern horror trend that shows up Dohler's need to adapt. The titular space invader no sooner claims his first few victims than he is engaged in back-to-back shootouts with the Perry Hall PD, firing his trusty laser disintegration pistol at the hapless expendables doing no damage with shotguns and six-shooters. Though one elderly marksman pries the advanced weapon from the alien's grip, it comes at the expense of his son's life, leaving Sheriff Jack Cinder (Tom Griffith) to butt heads with Mayor Bert Wicker (Richard Dyszel) over evacuation protocol and the very real need for outside help. That election-minded Wicker blows off the warnings to carry on a pool party meant to schmooze up to Governor Embry (Richard Ruxton) is typical; when townie Jamie Lambert (Jamie Zemarel) embarrasses him by dispersing the party with warnings of a "poison gas leak," it reduces the Mayor and his ditzy secretary Mary Jane Carter (Eleanor Herman) to alcoholic wrecks awaiting their most gruesome comeuppance.

Not that Sheriff Cinder and his aides aren't oblivious to the danger from within. Blindsided by the arrival of an intergalactic mutilator, they fail to properly deal with psychotic biker Drago (Don Leifert), who is shaping up for notoriety as the Perry Hall Strangler. First, Drago murders his girlfriend Suzie (Monica Neff) in a jealous rage, and after getting beaten by the avenging Jamie in a fistfight, he takes out his aggression on Deputy Lisa Kent (Karin Kardian) until Jamie finally finishes him off by blasting a hole through Drago's chest. All the while, the three law enforcers and their scientific allies (George Stover and Anne Frith as Steven Price and Ruth Sherman, respectively) scramble for a solution to besting the indestructible alien.

Give Don Dohler this much credit: the nastier elements of Nightbeast impose a slickness which provides more novelty than the aimlessness of The Alien Factor. And want as I am to turn the other way at the predominantly cheesy acting talents on display, quite a few in the cast display greater gusto just as well. Although Dyszel and Herman are all too believably insufferable in their comic banter ("Stop calling me Bertie!"), Jamie Zemarel makes a strapping second banana and his longtime friend Don Leifert, doing a 180 from the mild-mannered astronomer who saved the day thrice in the last half of The Alien Factor, is gleefully demented as the brutish Drago. And George Stover, whose propensity for camp was nurtured as much by John Waters as by Dohler, blends in just fine as the concerned doctor. Equally reliable is the input of creature effects artist John (The Deadly Spawn) Dods, who understands that while sympathetic aliens are defined by their eyes, the least friendly of them squeak by on their instruments of chomp.

Nightbeast is a tighter, more efficient, certainly more outrageous retread of The Alien Factor by any metric, but one can still sense Dohler bucking under the strain of newfound expectations. The love scene between Sheriff Cinder, all gray perm and handlebar mustache, and his blonde deputy comes right out of nowhere and is inconsequential to a fault. A gut-ripping attack sequence early in the film is edited like the Tasmanian Devil yet still ridiculous protracted. The film ticks off nearly all the same boxes as The Alien Factor, and is shameless enough to refer to characters by the exact same names as in Dohler's earlier effort, which hinders the amount of genuine surprises to the more sordid supplements. And the limited resources may be admirable when it comes to optical effects and cinematography, but they're taxing for some of the performers; Karin Kardian was the hairdresser to Dohler's aunt, and you can tell by the thinness of her role and the abilities she brings to it.

But damned if Dohler's scrappiness doesn't have its charms, and being issued on Blu-Ray by Vinegar Syndrome does wonders for the first few minutes alone. The Nightbeast's entrance makes it clear that there is nowhere to go but down, thus ensuring the R-rated material its own undemanding appeal. And if, say, the creature from It Came Without Warning tended to be less hands-on in his approach to murder, preferring to launch bloodsucking Frisbees at his quarry, then the Nightbeast's grisly rampage is chock full of claw-sullying horror. I can see why this would appeal to a Stephen Thrower (the Nightmare USA author who extolled the movie's virtues on the second Video Nasties trailer compilation) or a Mike Vanderbilt (the Daily Grindhouse drifter who spilled ink on this back in 2015 for the AV Club). It was made for a Troma or a Vinegar Syndrome to revive, and may well live up to its reputation as Don Dohler's most accessible film, make of that what you will.

What's indisputable is the uptake in video quality, with Nightbeast presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio in a 2k scan from the 16mm negative. No hi-def presentation will ever relieve Nightbeast of its gaudy, grainy source flaws, but it sure looks well-calibrated in all of its colors, although reds and blacks tend to fare best. Nighttime sequences will no longer strain anybody's eyes, although the detail of the lasers burn straight into your retinas. Flesh tones are believably natural and the monster mask holds up well under closer, clearer inspection. Nothing distracting in the way of compression artifacts or haloing, and print damage is minimal. The monaural DTS-HD track brings out J.J. Abrams' keyboard/piano score nicely; his contributions were mostly chase sequences as well as the requisite tender love theme. Rob Walsh's compositions as well as library music gets an equal boost in clarity, and dialogue remains understandable despite the mix's limitations. The sound effects may lack directionality, but retain their punch.

Extras start with the theatrical trailer ("This is the story of how the little people answer the big questions!") and a four-minute visual FX gallery, plus the same outtake reel which appeared on the Troma DVD release. Also recycled is the feature commentary track with Don Dohler and George Stover, which the latter dominates with his recollections of special effects challenges and friends/family in walk-on roles. They touch on some various homages (including Vincent Price and The Thing from Another World) and provide ample detail about locations, which isn't surprising given Dohler himself remained in Perry Hall until his passing at age 60 on Dec. 2, 2006.

Dohler documentarian John Kinhart locked down interviews with Dohler and the also-departed Don Leifert, as well as comments from Stover, Greg & Kim Dohler and J.J. Abrams, himself, all of whom are heard on the 25-minute "Nightbeast Returns." There's more detail on the project's doomed genesis as well as an anecdote about how Abrams, at 16, enlisted his grandfather to drive him to a video story so he could buy a VHS copy of Nightbeast for posterity. Three fresh interviews shot specifically for the VinSyn edition include actor Jamie Zemarel, cinematographer/actor Richard Geiwitz (who also shared associate producer credit with Stover and Tom Griffith) and visual FX artist John Ellis (no relation to Alien Factor alumni Dave Ellis), each lasting 15-19 minutes. Zemarel, who won a contest to be an extra in the blockbuster Grease, didn't realize how big his role in Nightbeast was until he was handed the script and is refreshingly self-critical. Geiwitz does a nice job breaking down his own beginnings and visual quirks, while Ellis is upfront about his working relationship with Dohler and the literal pennies used in presenting a cinematic version of outer space.

A Little Sex + Casual Sex?

A LITTLE SEX
(R, Universal Pictures, 95 mins., theatrical release date: April 2, 1982)

CASUAL SEX?
(R, Universal Pictures, 88 mins., theatrical release date: April 22, 1988)

Nobody goes to the movies for a sex education class, but most coitus-based mainstream comedies are actually more invested in the equally dirty deed of romance. This is especially true for both A Little Sex and Casual Sex?, then-contemporary '80s throwaways whose forthright titles are pillow talk concealing more pressing concerns on the minds of voraciously carnal singles. Is marriage a surefire cure for a wandering eye? How do you measure physical compatibility when you're fretting over the danger of STDs? Can you be seduced by either of these movies tonight and not hate yourself in the morning?

In the case of Bruce Paltrow's A Little Sex, there's nothing a TV-based sensitivity and some pixie dust can't do for a naïve beeline to the Chapel of Love. This is only natural considering MTM Enterprises (as in Mary Tyler Moore, of course) optioned this as their first theatrical release, splitting the $6,000,000 bill with distributor Universal Pictures (who also loosed Casual Sex? upon us). Paltrow (creator of MTM-TV's The White Shadow) and writer/producer Bob DeLaurentis have ported over the fairytale of New York from Mary's flagship sitcom and skewed it to a more male curiosity, but their overall philosophy is no different than the one voiced in her theme song: "You're gonna make it after all." This is true even if you're a freshly-wedded stud who's been tirelessly cuckolding your future spouse during the 10 months you were live-in lovers.

Michael Donovan (Tim Matheson) works as a commercials director, so he's confronted with temptation no matter where he goes, be it on the set or at a dinner date or strolling down a Madison Avenue past a hallucination's worth of provocatively-dressed women. His older brother Tommy (Edward Herrmann), a veterinarian at the Central Park Zoo, knows via regular conversation that Michael's raging libido is as natural as a "birth defect" and bets the $82 in his wallet that his brother will slip up and cuckold his bride, Katherine Harrison (Kate Capshaw), who teaches at the Mother of Christ parochial school for girls.

And Michael does slip, first with Philomena (Wendie Malick), the clarinet-playing girlfriend of Kate's longtime friend and Julliard teacher Walter (John Glover), and then with an aggressive wannabe actress named Nancy (Susanna Dalton). Kate catches him in the latter clinch, and all comedy goes out the window as Michael stews in the resulting guilt and loneliness. The rest of the film is an arduous string of failed reconciliations (Mike types out a list of 18 past conquests to demonstrate previously nonexistent honesty) and pleas for advice from both sides. The dejected Kate turns to her mother, Mrs. Harrison (Joan Copeland), who relates the time she caught Kate's father in bed with her grade school teacher ("their own private PTA meeting"), an act she confronted first with sober discussion and then with a broken ankle.

DeLaurentis' script cheats as often as his central character, withholding substantial information about Michael & Kate's affair (they've been going together for years rather than months, which Michael offhandedly complains about at the onset) and indulging too much in cutesy tricks and on-the-nose banter. Their introductory encounter finds Michael and Kate, presented as perfect strangers, provoking "Why, I never!" reactions from old ladies at a fruit stand as he challenges her to a foot race. "You always cheat!" Kate protests after Michael trips her up on the stairs of their apartment complex. "And I always will," Michael counters, "as long as I get you in the end." This symptomizes the faults of DeLaurentis and Paltrow, who lack the genuine sophistication or the lively comedic touch needed to invest us in the splintered relationship at hand.

Tim Matheson and Kate Capshaw are underserved by such regressive schmaltz. Having hunked himself up considerably since Animal House, Matheson labors to find the sincerity in a caddish character limited by his entitlement and hang-ups. Michael appears to have real intimacy issues no amount of Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo on the part of Mary Tyler Moore can counter. He's open about his nuptial responsibility to an old flame, Sandy (P.J. Mann), who arrives out of the blue and asks him out to a harmless dinner. But he (and DeLaurentis) disregard this for dreary scenes of Michael being overpowered by callow stereotypes of maneater femininity: Philomena assures him he'll get better at removing his wedding band on the next tryst, and Nancy all but tears off her clothes in her seduction of Michael. Capshaw, in her feature debut, is infinitely more charming under Paltrow's boxy direction than even Steven could manage. But her Katherine never develops a consistent personality. She hops into bed with Walter seeking to understand the concept of loveless sex, but is finally reduced to an indignant doormat who delights in walloping Michael with a field hockey stick.

Tis a pity, since Walter is played with refreshing subtlety by John Glover. Known for officious supporting roles in the likes of 52 Pick-Up and Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Glover refuses to turn Walter into a cauldron of self-absorbed ressentiment. He demonstrates a beguiling warmth in his scenes with Capshaw epitomized by his farewell delivery of the inevitable question all platonic friends should ask when eyed for a rebound. The good sense Glover demonstrates is more abundant in Edward Herrmann's droll portrayal of Tommy, and both actors realize the amiable honesty DeLaurentis attempts in his script. Herrmann, bless his departed soul, is the movie's saving grace, providing a no-nonsense combination of intellectual and fraternal superiority. He also gets DeLaurentis' funniest one-liners. When his brother arrives late for his wedding rehearsal on account of a back massage from a buxom mattress spokesmodel, Tommy zings Michael thusly: "Science is the art of observation. You got lip gloss on your ears."

Casual Sex? has its own stifling mundanities to overcome, attempting a farcical look at female sexuality instead of male and with the death's-head specter of AIDS plaguing the "whole man-woman relationship thing." Lea Thompson, perky as ever, is Stacy Hunter, who played the field during the sexually active first half of '80s, with a peculiar weakness for artistic types. Her best friend Melissa (Victoria Jackson) has feared to tread, blooming late during her second year of college and nearly hitching herself to an inattentive slob. What with her straight-to-the-camera philosophy about "sex [being] a good way to meet new people," Stacy appears blithely disinterested in romantic union as opposed to revolving-door boyfriends and daredevil nymphomania. The next thing you know, Stacy is pondering celibacy in the face of mounting health scares and crinkling her face at the very thought of "safe sex," as if prophylactics were an automatic dealbreaker.

Stacy and Melissa opt for a week's vacation at the Oasis Spa, which caters to fitness-conscious singles and welcomes patrons with gift baskets full of condoms (enough to safeguard the entire planet, sez Melissa). On their first night, they and the other guests engage in a geographically-themed matchmaking party ("Ecuador? Ecuador?") where Melissa is paired with the negging Matthew (Peter Dvorsky) and Stacy is stuck with Vinny Valcone (Andrew "Dice" Clay), a palooka from Paterson, New Jersey, who refers to himself in the first person as "The Vin Man," often to the sing-songy refrain of Tom Jones' "She's a Lady" ("I'm the best from the East/I'm a wild, crazy beast"). Stacy would much rather be with aerobics instructor Nick Lawrence (Stephen Shellen), a bohunk with stunted adolescent dreams of becoming a rock god, while Melissa is pined for by another staffer, Jamie (Jerry Levine), the closest thing to a Perfect Man at the resort.

Screenwriters Wendy Goldman & Judy Toll have adapted their 1985 musical performance piece of the same name, the question mark at the end a reflection of the lip service paid to AIDS and other venereal maladies. But under Ivan Reitman's production auspice and his wife Genevieve Robert's one-shot direction, Casual Sex? wouldn't have felt out of place a year before the play's debut, when Blame It on Rio and Where the Boys Are '84 premiered theatrically. The heroines sunbathe at a nude beach and engage in slumber party conversations about vibrators and orgasms. Men and women alike are characterized in the broadest terms befitting the typical low-rate sex comedy of those "innocent" years. The caliber of actors and filmmakers here are surely better than the bulk of those, but Casual Sex? is only two steps up the evolutionary ladder from, say, The Allnighter.

This hedging of bets is there in the way the soundtrack flogs Buster Poindexter's "Hot Hot Hot" from the main titles on down to almost every scene transition to follow (a far more tolerable Kid Creole song is withheld until the end credits, and the nominal composer is Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks). It's there in gags involving girl-watching goons getting hit in the groin by projectile tennis balls. It's there in the tender lovemaking scene between Stacy and Nick, only now the ingénue breaks the fourth wall a la Ferris Bueller for a wry punchline. And it definitely shows as the movie strains to wrap itself up by rewarding Stacy and Melissa their happily ever after coda. In much the same way as A Little Sex and its deliberately juvenile competition from Porky's on down, Robert takes a preoccupation with sex and removes all the pleasure from it. With the exception of Jessica Rabbit, the cold hard truth about cartoons is that they just aren't sexy.

The leading ladies certainly are, even Victoria Jackson as the inexperienced Melissa. Her spacey comic style is like Kimmy Robertson emulating Melanie Griffith, and it's wholly endearing. And yet the vivacious Lea Thompson, a seasoned starlet if ever there was one by 1988, runs into more trouble here than when she played Beverly Switzer in the woeful Howard the Duck. She is hardly the Ms. Matthew Broderick that Genevieve Robert tries to coax out of her (Elizabeth Shue would've been more natural were she willing to go au naturel), and Thompson's reliable effervescence peaks early on during a montage of Stacy's oversexed past (e.g.: her dilettantish guffaws at a hack comic's pelvic undulations) and never builds back up again.

And then Robert rolls the Dice.

Having declared his John Travolta parody the best thing about the otherwise lousy Making the Grade, Andrew "Dice" Clay builds upon that muscular goofiness to deliver an honest-to-goodness comic creation as the Vin Man. All the ingredients of his impending superstardom are here, the leather jacket and "bada bing, bada boom" dialect and dimwitted machismo (complete with pet name for his dong), but they fuse with Goldman & Toll's sketch-minded satirical acumen to make the Vin Man like something Clay could have conceivably workshopped for the Groundlings troupe. When he raps a long-winded confession joke at Melissa that lands with a plop, he bounces back with "Well, they're not all golden, honey." Although it is implied that Vinny and Melissa make a meatball sandwich on the beach, the Vin Man saves the cheese for Stacy, who is so initially charmed she refers to him as "a living argument for birth control."

The guido can't help it. Not even a demonstration of dating tips gleaned from "The Pretend You're Sensitive Handbook" makes him seem less of a nuisance to Stacy, who has agreed to let Nick live with her back home in L.A. But Nick turns out to be even more of a selfish deadbeat than Vinny, who retreats back to Paterson only to experience a rush of soul-searching ("I've forced myself to take a closer look at the Vin Man. Ya know, open 'im up, pull him out, dissect 'im like a frog"). A dynamite ending would've had Vinny arrive on the same soundstage as Stacy and Melissa, during which Stacy would say the rightful closing line ("What can I say? Life is bizarre!") and then proceed to jump him the same way she did her old sous-chef, Gunter Kroger. It would've made more sense than the tacked-on joint New Year's/Christmas epilogues we do get, which unbecomingly smothers both Clay and the film in creamed corn.

(An alternate ending, preserved on the DVD, involves a character played by Bruce Abbott of Re-Animator fame, whom I hate to admit I didn't notice at all when I watched the film.)

As it stands, Casual Sex? is another perfunctory late '80s studio comedy. Goldman & Toll don't really do much with the resort setting besides recycle the usual dream sequences (the funniest involves Nick sweeping Stacy off her feet as her past lovers interrupt to inform her of what else came next), schlock rock numbers (Nick miming a godawful Dan Hartman ballad to Stacy's face) and deadpan asides to the audience ("I'm concerned about this penis size thing"). On the evidence of their respective sex comedies, Genevieve Robert and Bruce Paltrow are the more compatible soul mates next to their hetero-genous seekers. Mating social commentary with celluloid conventionality, A Little Sex and Casual Sex? are, to quote Rick Moranis, "a long ceremony [leading to] a short honeymoon."

Liquid Sky

LIQUID SKY
(R, Cinevista, 112 mins., U.S. theatrical release date: April 15, 1983)

It's a rare but welcome surprise when a cult film manages to trip you up. Midnight movie masses tend to flock towards the most inept, most earnestly dreadful movies ever brought to fruition, so the discovery of one which actually is novel and assured rather than derivative and amateurish is something I celebrate. James Nguyen is a hero to the Rifftrax audience, and Tommy Wiseau has his own Ed Wood treatment thanks to James Franco. But I was burnt out with both Birdemic and The Room instantly because they don't reward ritualistic viewing thanks to being both hopelessly shoddy and thematically sloppy. They exist purely for ironic pleasure, and this is one of the biggest turn-offs I have developed in response to a world of online criticism where arch glad-handing has allowed mediocrity to thrive in the places where genuinely great films deserve to occupy.

Liquid Sky is a deathlessly kinky anomaly in a cult movie pantheon that often requires neon signs advertising a film's ineptitude to get recognized. It's safe to say Liquid Sky has osmosed itself into fringe appreciation, especially when you ponder the inspiration for such musical provocateurs as Peaches and Lady Gaga. But I have the hardest time trying to explain Liquid Sky categorically. Is it a new wave Ms. 45 via Paul Morrissey and David Cronenberg? What do I make of a glamorous lead actress who plays a supporting role in male drag? Are the performance art take-offs embellished satire or another stretch at anthropological authenticity? How do I deal with the micro-plots involving a deadbeat junkie husband and a Jewish TV producer seducing a German astrophysicist? Are the heat vision visual effects transcendent of their shoestring appearance?

When a movie raises that many questions, my instinct is to watch it over and over looking for my own answers. And Liquid Sky hit me with that laser beam, in 1980s parlance, relaxing me with its deadpan charms enough to let the film's casual cruelty and "fashionable" desperation swirl around in my mind instead of slapping me upside the head. Conceived by Russian émigrés in tandem with an American performance artist, Liquid Sky is at once inside and outside the nihilistic DayGlo pageantry of the post-punk club scene. There is heroin, rape, catfighting, necrophilia, and enough free-floating hostility to make George Carlin seem like a pussycat. It's also visually and aurally sumptuous.

Liquid Sky takes place in the span of one day, and Slava Tsukerman labors to preserve a more unique portrait of New York than usual when compared to its seedier contemporaries. The Empire State Building is viewed as a shrine in the glow of golden hour cinematography. Not content with mere aerial shots, Tsukerman manages fresh footage of an airplane landing and makes the most of the window and rooftop motifs. The city streets are reassuringly heavy with traffic during lunchtime, and there is a dazzling make-up session conducted under black light that epitomizes the richness of the primary colors. There is also a nightclub sequence near the end which is rendered more extraterrestrial than the requisite UFO, which is no larger than a dinner plate and inconspicuously settles atop an apartment building cluttered with empty bottles and crates.

The alien craft is drawn to the penthouse suite occupied by model Margaret (Anne Carlisle: Desperately Seeking Susan, Crocodile Dundee) and dealer Adrian (Paula E. Sheppard: Alice, Sweet Alice) on the promise of heroin, which upon injection stimulates a chemical reaction in the brain which the aliens harvest for sustenance. Or at least so until now, as West Berlin scientist Johann Hoffman (Otto von Wernherr) has gone from noticing the bizarre pattern of deaths in drug-abusing punk circles to finding a connection involving sexual intercourse, particularly the rush of endorphins at the orgasm stage. The defiantly androgynous Margaret proves useful in the alien's mission as she is exploited by predatory soap stars, professors and failed artists, all of whom wind up with glass arrows lodged in their heads and/or vanish completely post-coitus.

Margaret was once of "Mayflower stock" before moving from Connecticut to Manhattan to pursue indoctrinated ideals of fortune, going from the notion of marrying a lawyer ("And on the weekends, we'd barbecue...") to waiting tables and wishing upon an acting agent instead. These modes of subservience and blind luck are shattered completely by the realization of her newfound power of sexual agency, which isn't limited to men. With her already outré face paint and hairdos, Margaret reaches the depths of her alienation even before she is emboldened to snatch a naive mate off the Danceteria floor ("Be nice to your audience") and send him off to a euphoric oblivion.

Her roommate Adrian is made of harder stuff, "concrete mazes, stone and glass." Confrontational and vulgar, this child of a hospitalized mother who once baptized a fancy restaurant with her urine is more of an outspoken nihilist than Margaret, who still retains tokens of gentle femininity (even when she turns primal, she's essentially Fay Wray as King Kong). Though she talks about relocating to Berlin, the European hub of glam culture and creative freedom, nothing becomes Adrian so much as her decadent New York environment. Whether reciting a ferocious poem devoted to her rhythm box ("It is preprogrammed/So what?/Who of your friends is not?") or writhing sensually atop the corpse of Margaret's acting teacher Owen (casting director Bob Brady), Adrian takes to being one of the damned with sardonic, sickening relish.

Trafficking in smack, Adrian's most pathetic client is Margaret's boyish opposite number, Jimmy. He latches onto Margaret at the start just so he can raid her apartment looking for the fix he can't afford, and proceeds to act even nastier to her as they share photo shoots. Anne Carlisle gender bends in the grand tradition of David Bowie by playing both these rival models, with trick photography and seamless doubles allowing them to be within striking distance of each other. As Jimmy, Carlisle flashes a 1000 watt sneer and takes cues from the Bowie/Ferry image of the debutante, slicked blonde hair and dapper tuxedo. The heated confrontation near the end between Margaret and Jimmy, where she is goaded into performing oral sex on the spiteful Jimmy, has to be seen to be believed.

The interactions between Margaret, Jimmy, Adrian, and the overbearing types courting them (from cocaine-huffing designers and their catty underlings to snooty reporters) are highly vitriolic comedy. Jimmy mocks Margaret by referring to her as an "ugly chicken" and steps on her toes, and her sadomasochistic response is to flatter his enabled ego as "the most beautiful boy in the world." Margaret is constantly defensive of her colorful style, as when Owen chastises her for looking like a hooker despite his history of wearing blue jeans as his own form of theatrical rebellion ("You thought your jeans stood for love, freedom and sexual equality while we at least know we're in costume"). Adrian's eulogy for the horny professor is delightfully profane and bitter ("You dropped dead fucking! It suits you well..."). And when Margaret is assaulted for the first time by soap opera hunk Vincent (Jack Adalist), who forces Quaaludes down her throat to render her docile, she resists with dry gusto. Incidentally, I didn't realize until a second viewing that Vincent would return later in the movie when Margaret accepts that there is one more score to settle.

Luckily, not all the humor is that black. Otto von Wernherr is endearingly straight as Dr. Hoffman, who asks his colleague Owen "How can I study the behavior of this creature if it's on private property?" His failed attempt to warn the defensive Adrian of the alien invasion is misinterpreted as a narco threat. And when he finds suitable space to conduct his studies, it's with Jimmy's mother Sylvia (Susan Doukas), the aforementioned Semite who works in television and throws herself at the duty-minded Donald Sutherland analog with an arsenal of playful bon mots ("You have protection from aliens? You have a laser gun in your pants?"). These lighter touches are effective counterpoints to the vagina dentata exhortations of Margaret, whose sci-fi venereal disease may arouse connotations with the then-nameless AIDS epidemic which was claiming hundreds of lives as early as 1982.

Credit joint screenwriters Slava Tsukerman, Nina Kerova (Tsukerman's longstanding wife) and Ms. Carlisle herself that Liquid Sky, while unavoidably rough due to a filming budget of less than $500,000, is never stilted or cloddish. Even as Tsukerman and DP Yuri Neyman seek to dazzle you with their ace location photography and vivid lighting, the characters in Liquid Sky possess inner lives and aggressive personalities. Margaret, jaded as she is, is played by Anne Carlisle with a voice as enthralling as her appearance. Paula E. Sheppard finds the sexiness in Adrian's hippie-gone-hostile patois. And the snide monotone Carlisle adopts for Jimmy is its own comic reward: when Sylvia tries to offer him a ride uptown, he matter-of-factly states "No, I'm going down."

Tsukerman also helped out on the film's eccentric score, composed on a Fairlight CMI handily available for public access at a library. This pricey synthesizer, which was big among experimental musicians for its ability to program natural sounds as musical notes (think Peter Gabriel's fourth album and Kate Bush on The Dreaming), allowed for variations on new and existing melodies, sometimes coming across as harsh (in that traditionally fast, processed "new wave" style) and other times gentle (bell-like and carnivalesque at a stately pace). He even feeds spoken dialogue into the keyboard for added disorientation, particularly the point where Margaret is taunted by all sides, especially from Jimmy, at her last modeling gig.

Liquid Sky has been a hard movie to come by, but Vinegar Syndrome offered a limited edition BD/DVD combo package (3000 units total) which sold out fast over the 2017 Black Friday shopping weekend. Restored from 35mm elements and remastered in 4k resolution, Liquid Sky is a revelation even if you only check out some of the screen caps posted at the AV Club. Slava Tsukerman and Anne Carlisle discuss the film in brand new interviews as well as an Alamo Drafthouse Q&A session (co-composer Clive Smith is also in attendance), although their commentary track is disappointing; recorded in what appears to be another apartment room, there are stretches of awkward silence which last for minutes where it would've been better to revert back to the soundtrack proper. The best option of all these bonuses is the 50-minute Liquid Sky Revisited, which boasts a wider array of participants (Kerova, Neyman, Doukas, and many more) as well as the chance to see Carlisle revisit shooting locations. The nightclub no longer stands, but I smiled knowing that a Petco has taken its place.

Liquid Sky has fast become one of my favorite movies of the 1980s. Here's hoping this alien artifact touches down again in a reissue format.

American Nightmare + Visiting Hours

AMERICAN NIGHTMARE
(R. Pan-Canadian Film Distributors, 88 mins., Canadian release date: Mar. 8, 1983)

VISITING HOURS
(R, 20th Century Fox, 105 mins., U.S. theatrical release date: May 28, 1982)

I think it's aboot time I tackled some early 1980s Canuxploitation, including one which was a certified Video Nasty. And they do have a few things in common, particularly the presence of both Michael Ironside, the balding, scowling king amongst Canadian B-actors, and Lenore Zann, who managed to survive a career in trashy thrillers with ample amounts of voiceover work and Democratic representation for the government of Nova Scotia. There's also a lot of women being threatened with knives, if that happens to floot your boot.

If you remember that Black Christmas was a North American (read: north of the American border) production way before Halloween and Friday the 13th, then it becomes less peculiar that the slasher boom that was birthed by Carpenter and Cunningham was dotted by flicks which wore their maple leaves on their sleeve. My Bloody Valentine is at the top of my list, and David Cronenberg was undoubtedly a rising talent in the field. And then there was Paul Lynch, who was inspired by Halloween producer Irwin Yablans to make his own festive murder mystery with Laurie Strode herself in the cast, given that she was shooting Terror Train concurrently.

The result was Prom Night, the Canadian horror blockbuster of 1980 and the lynchpin for Paul Lynch's subsequent career as not only director, but also as a producer. So in addition to helming 1982's Humongous, Lynch financed American Nightmare in 1981 with Anthony Kramreither, producer of Humongous, to the sum of CAD $200,000. The film's producer, Ray Sager, was Lynch's assistant director on Humgongous and many of the other big Canadian horror films at the time, including Terror Train and My Bloody Valentine. Its screenwriter, John Sheppard, would be employed by Lynch again when it came time for Olivia d'Abo vehicles Bullies, featuring Bernie Coulson from The Accused, and Flying, which starred some kid who was in a lot of forgotten Canadian films from the mid-‘80s. I think his name was...Keanu?(!)

Composer Paul Zaza, the workhorse that he was, tinkled this out between My Bloody Valentine and whatever Bob Clark project he'd go on to score. And in addition to Ironside and Zann, I noticed the rapist from Humongous, Page "The Hitchhiker" Fletcher, playing Zann's moralist fiancé who gets interrogated by Ironside at the moment his girlfriend is prime killer bait. American Nightmare, which is often trumpeted as a Canadian giallo for those in the know, is an exploitation film whose topic is essentially exploitation. When the brother of a missing 18-year-old prostitute seeks police assistance, Sgt. Frank Skylar (Ironside) decides to let her closest friends die without any hope for protection. When said hooker's closest friend tries out for a hostess gig on a fundraising telethon, the producer demands she drop her skirt and snap off her blouse. And the truth of the girl's disappearance involves so many skeletons in the family closet that one of the more repulsive is preserved on Betamax.

The opening scene leaves us no doubt that Tanya Kelly (Alexandra Paul: Christine, Baywatch) the street name of teenage runaway Isabelle Blake, was brutally murdered by her last client despite a phone call warning her to get the hell out. So despite the Hardcore similarities when Eric (Lawrence S. Day: How Sleep the Brave) comes investigating based on a frightened letter from his estranged sister, this isn't Schrader. Tanya's slayer conveniently stalks about her squalid, graffiti-strewn apartment waiting to pick off her roommates as they return home from the strip joint they all perform at, the Club 2000. The cops are hardly concerned with the girls' safety, preferring to see them as the dregs of society, so they're easy pickings. Even the friendly transvestite next door, Dolly (Larry Aubrey: The Vindicator), inadvertently helps by not only leading the killer to the strippers' place of employment, but returning to the apartment even after one girl has been murdered there and the heroine, Louise Harmon (Lora Staley: Risky Business, Summer School), has fled after discovering the killer broke into Dolly's own room.

Eric, taking time off from his famous lot as pianist, comes to Louise for answers regarding his sister, but they are resentful of each other to melodramatically defensive extremes. Louise is such a hardened cynic, she blows off the fact that Tanya/Isabelle has been missing for 48 hours by saying "They come and they go." She assumes the blandly concerned Eric is another prudish scold and indignantly blows him off. When he tries to reconcile following the framed-as-suicide murder of Andrea (Claudia Udy: Joy), it's Eric who gets offended by Louise's decision to audition for his father Hamilton Grant's (Tom Harvey: Strange Brew, Scanners II: The New Order) telethon. Mr. Grant runs a charity program for needy children called Uni-Save, yet drove both Eric and Isabelle out of their childhood home.

Such a pussycat is Eric that he has to say he's sorry to Louise twice ("You come to a funeral to apologize?"). It isn't until Eric rips a mugger's ear off in self-defense that they both cop to feeling scared. Louise even treats him to one of her routines at the Club 2000 as well as something much better than a lap dance in a motel room. Now Eric has the sack to confront Tanya's hotheaded pimp, Fixer (Michael Copeman: The Fly, Gnaw: Food of the Gods II), for possession of the videocassette revealing what became of his sister that the killer is trying so viciously to conceal.

American Nightmare is the proto-Stripped to Kill, developing an endangered community of erotic dancers including a topless juggler as well as Lenore Zann's memorable Tina, who straddles a pitchfork as she absorbs the leery energy of the red lights. Zann, it has to be said, may have beaten Amanda Wyss to the punch as a blonde damsel-in-distress. The movie threatens to establish her as the female star by offering us an intimate argument with Page Fletcher's Mark, who hopes to marry her out of this seedy environment. Louise doesn't factor until the first scene in the ladies' dressing room, and even then she seems like an ancillary character. Zann has a tremendously fragility on her face when she scrambles for eyeshadow, ignoring Mark's further points of lovesick contention. And Tina's showdown with the killer in the empty bar, set to gleefully taunting whispers as she pops the safety corks off her stage prop, is easily the film's sterling moment.

Lenore Zann gives the film's most sensuous, compelling performance. It's no surprise director Don McBrearty (Coming Out Alive) recycles her devil-may-care stage show for a brief reprise once he's exhausted all other avenues for T&A. Second best is Larry Aubrey's Dolly, who play-acts as one of the girls without going the full monty and whose panic is the least pharmaceutically-induced and the most endearingly humorous. Lora Staley is charismatic enough, but poor Lawrence Day (not to be confused with Lawrence Dane) dredges up memories of Scanners' lead Stephen Lack in that all of his screen presence is contained within his eyes. As for the eternal Darryl Revok, "Mike" Ironside, he cuts his dependably imposing swath largely because the make-up crew have left untouched that blister-like scar above his left cheek. Playing the insensitive if gritty detective without that fanatical menace, Ironside doesn't steamroll over the rampant sleaziness of the rest of the film. 

American Nightmare was shot on 16mm in late 1981 but didn't surface on the Toronto streets where it was filmed until March of 1983. Its U.S. release the following year was straight to video via Media Home Entertainment. Michael Ironside didn't get to capitalize on his Scanners infamy until a full 16 months later when Visiting Hours premiered theatrically with major distribution clout from 20th Century Fox. By that point in 1982, a Canadian import called Porky's became the studio's biggest success story and, as Roger Ebert once put it, the era of the "Dead Teenager Movie" gave way to the "Horny Teenager Movie," equally low-rent and just as heavily criticized for sexism but with different aims.

Produced by the same team behind Cronenberg's splodey-head sleeper, Filmplan's Pierre David and Victor Solnicki, Visiting Hours corralled Oscar-winner Lee Grant (Shampoo) and returning Star Trek captain William Shatner and marked the English language debut of French-Canadian director Jean-Claude Lord (The Vindicator, Mindfield). It was part of a brief blip of body count films located in hospitals (Halloween II, X-Ray) and an even bigger trend involving adult female celebrities in jeopardy (The Howling, The Fan, The Seduction). But what gave Visiting Hours its everlasting charge is the fact that it was seized by those limey gatekeepers of morality and tacked onto that notorious list of 72 allegedly obscene Video Nasties.

Turns out they just didn't like protracted scenes of knives being swept up against the half-naked bodies of pretty girls. Go figure.

Grant plays Deborah Ballin, a firebrand telejournalist who is rebuking speculation that a woman who shot her husband in self-defense faked her own tokens of domestic abuse. Shatner is her pushover producer and lover, Gary Baylor, who considers pulling the heated debate to avoid a libel suit. And Ironside's Colt Hawker apparently works as the studio's janitor and is not too pleased with Ballin's crusade for women's rights. Ballin comes home to find Hawker dressed in her jewelry and mad with homicidal rage, having already slaughtered her maid. He delivers one nasty knife wound and jettisons her out of a dumbwaiter, but she is saved when Baylor arrives to find her crawling on the floor in agony.

Thus sets up, to quote Frank Cotton from Hellraiser, "the cat-and-mouse shit" to come, with Colt Hawker taking time out from his fitful pursuit of bedridden Deborah Ballin, who is awaiting surgery in time for her follow-up interview concerning the battered wife on trial, to assault Lenore Zann's frizzy-haired Lisa after picking her up at a diner. He also endeavors to menace overworked nurse and single mother of two Sheila Munroe (Linda Purl: Crazy Mama, The High Country), who catches Hawker exiting the building after claiming two more victims, including an old woman whom the resentful psycho subjects to first-degree euthanasia, snapping photographs of her asphyxiating face. Screenwriter Brian Taggert throws in plenty of pat psychology for the burly misfit, from framed letters spewing vitriol at every minority to an ignoble father who was scalded with hot oil when Hawker was a boy and now lives in a rest home.

American Nightmare and Visiting Hours are indeed similar films not just in the pairing of Michael Ironside and Lenore Zann. They are both painfully outside attempts at sensationalizing social pathologies, courting those patrons of the arts who smuggle liquor in their raincoats whilst catcalling the nubile actresses on screen and cheering on their vile tormentor. They aren't developed enough for subversion or lingering criticism, kind of like the race-baiting Fight for Your Life. American Nightmare threatens to undo itself with every strip club interlude Don McBrearty serves up, but it does have small moments like the ones with Zann's Tina and Dolly the scared transvestite that humanize the deviant casualties. And the murder mystery plot outline affords it curiosity and anticipation.

Visiting Hours, meanwhile, is like a glossy rehash of Nightmares in a Damaged Brain with elements of Peeping Tom and The Fan mixed in. The post-Psycho swath of disturbed loner bloodbaths seem to run together if you dwell on them too much, and whatever earnestness the film conveys about "repressed hostility" (which another pundit talks about within ear's reach of the antagonist) is moot given that every woman Colt confronts is reduced to whimpering docility by his sick, self-righteous vengeance. Michael Ironside is a fine actor who can freshen up a routine villain with some welcome sarcasm (Watchers) or playfulness (Total Recall) or guilt (Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II) or glazed hamminess (Destiny to Order). But with one fleeting exception where he cracks in the hospital's basement, Colt Hawker is basically a human bogeyman, the Shape of Halloween II without the costume, allowed unfettered powers of access and infiltration not limited to Ms. Ballin's operating room. Nobody at all can deduce his overwhelming presence save for Lisa, who trashes Hawker's room in retaliation and notices Sheila's face enshrined in his closet hit list.

Hawker's methodical prowess, epitomized by his self-mutilating last ditch effort to gain entry into the hospital, is stretched to the breaking point even further thanks not only to incessant stretches of pronounced victims creeping along unsafe houses, but also the bumbling way in which he fails to finish off Ms. Ballin every time he gets into that hospital. It's worth noting that he fails to kill Ballin, Lisa and even Sheila because these combined blunders drag the movie out to 105 minutes, during which time Taggert offers a few inconsequential lambs Hawker does successfully butcher, such as a meddling nurse and a gabby fellow with gallstones (R.I.P. Harvey Atkin: Meatballs, Funeral Home).

American Nightmare, for as shoddy as it gets, has the courage of its guttural convictions, whereas Jean-Claude Lord and the name cast he shepherds are a professional lot who seem to be squandering their talents. Lee Grant becomes more shrill with every scene, William Shatner seems like a complete and total afterthought and Michael Ironside coasts on his remorseless death‘s head glare. Lord is a more competent cameraman than either Rick Rosenthal or Boaz Davidson, but his occasionally tense set pieces would've had more power were they not attached to Brian Taggert's redundant, rudderless script. Taggert would go on to write the cheeky man vs. rat flick Of Unknown Origin, which was far more assured and also boasted richer contributions from director George Pan Cosmatos and star Peter Weller, but he's also responsible for Poltergeist III, another by-the-numbers spook show ripe with nefarious plot holes and teeth-rattling repetitions of character's names ("Carol Anne! Carol Anne!") where a decent story should've been.

Putting aside its memorable one-sheet poster art, Visiting Hours should itself be hooked up to a life support machine. And after having reviewed it twice in my lifetime ("Lenore Zaan?" "Video Nasties last?" Jay-sus!), I suggest we pull the plug.

Deathtrap

DEATHTRAP
(PG, Warner Bros., 116 mins., theatrical release date: March 19, 1982)

Sidney Lumet's Deathtrap, based on the long-running Ira Levin twister which premiered on stage in 1978, plays to win and then plays all over again, becoming more playful with each curveball. It's a blatant pun to hang an opening statement on, but Levin and the characters he wrote kid knowingly with the impetus of creation, the huffing motivation and the dramaturgic glossary of the pre-production stage. And Lumet, whose Christie adaptation Murder on the Orient Express will be getting revamped by Kenneth Branagh, has relinquished his grittier side (12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead) for sprightly humor and potboiler suspense. The main character, an over-the-hill author of theatrical murder mysteries (with names such as "Gunpoint," "In for the Kill" and "The Murder Game") realizes while clutching his own outside goldmine: "Even a gifted director couldn't hurt it." One can easily picture Lumet coming to the same epiphany with Levin's sure thing, rewritten for the screen by Jay Presson Allen.

Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine) could use such a windfall more than Sidney Lumet. "Murder Most Fair" has just opened appallingly at the Music Box, his fourth successive flop and the catalyst for derisive jeers from producer Seymour Starger (Joe Silver) and the theater critics on TV, among them Joel Siegel and Jeffery Lyons. "I'm doing the only sensible thing," Bruhl screams at his wife Myra (Dyan Cannon), who's resting up back at his Easthampton abode. "I'm getting pissed!" But he gets too soused and misses the train station, reaching the end of the line at Montauk ("Bloody symbolic"). Further humiliating him is the unimpeachable first draft of a play called "Deathtrap," written and sent by one Clifford Anderson, who attended Bruhl's most recent college seminar. Estimating its value at up to $5,000,000 (not including T-shirt sales), Bruhl looks at the antique mace on his wall mount of weapons, stage props and genuine articles both, and contemplates making a killing.

The purse-clutching Myra, whose angina has set her constantly on edge, is catatonic at how serious Bruhl is about the murder plot. He calls Anderson up and invites him over under the pretext of collaboration and counseling. When Bruhl goes to pick up the first-time protégé, it's not a "glandular case" or a stammering dolt he encounters, but a handsome boy scout. Anderson (Christopher Reeve), taking along the proof of his beckoning career's work, coyly rebukes Bruhl's egomaniacal assistance, all the while Myra raises a voice of frazzled conscience. Alas, Bruhl bluffs his way into one-upping Anderson by proclaiming he's got two hot new projects. One of which is based on Harry Houdini, the better for Bruhl to entice Anderson to try on "trick" handcuffs.

Welcome to Act I of Ira Levin's (filmed) play, the 40-minute set-up for ever more chicanery fraught with suspicion, envy and homicidal urges. Deathtrap continues the battle of wills between Anderson and Bruhl, but what happens is far too eccentric and witty to dictate in review form. 35 years later, it is fairly known that a chaste smooch between Caine and Reeve appalled straight audiences, inspiring novelty musician Tom Smith to claim that "Two Guys Kissin' (Ruined My Life)." Mad Magazine ridiculed the film in their October 1982 issue, and Dyan Cannon was singled out by the Golden Raspberry committee for a Worst Supporting Actress nomination (Cannon, Rutanya Alda from Amityville II: The Possession and Colleen Camp in The Seduction all lost to Aileen "Annie" Quinn).

Come on. I just tore Seltzerberg a fresh asshole for their thoughtless crimes against parody. I wouldn't trust an obscure "filkie," a poor man's National Lampoon and the homeless man's Stinker Movie Awards to make fun of what already is an immensely humorous effort. And there is a lot to laugh at in Deathtrap without acting on juvenile superiority. Dyan Cannon is advertently playing Myra for laughs. Her every doting exclamation of "Sidney" or "darling," even going so far as to call Sidney "my darling darling," is a friendly, ticklish poke in the ribs instead of a balled fist. But she is also convincingly fearful in those speechless moments as she watches Bruhl scheme, her cupcake-sweet face going haggard and pupils dilating in close-up, nervously clutching her ring finger in the backdrop. The guilt she confesses in her attempt to tell Sidney to move out is palpable.

And Cannon isn't the only one with a firm grasp on the insanity of it all. Michael Caine has been in a lot of schlocky movies where he was reduced to a stick of dynamite begging for a match. The character of Sidney Bruhl puts the flame to the fuse. Christopher Reeve was clearly still fixed in the collective conscious as a mere comic book hero. As Clifford Anderson, he's sexier, smarter and phenomenally sinister when the occasion calls for it. Caine and Reeve would recycle the same personae in Peter Bogdanovich's version of Noises Off a decade later, but Lumet not only scratches the surface, he gets these actors' exposed marrow. Reeve feigned nosebleeds as the dimwitted hunk in Noises; Deathtrap allows him uncut hilarity after rising from the dead in the Bruhls' vegetable patch.

And there's a fourth party, the Dutch empath next door who occasionally surveys the hazardous shack while sensing "pain, pain, pain!" every foot of the way. Helga Ten Dorp is a budding showbiz personality with a book about her fantastic life of ESP-assisted criminal investigation and a slot on The Merv Griffin Show. And she is played by Irene Worth in one of the most amusing supporting performances of 1982, a comic blitzkrieg on the level of Sean Penn's Jeff Spicoli, Bill Murray's Jeff Slater and Joe Bologna's King Kaiser. She will, in as much as the principal stars, be diagnosed with Bruhl calls "thrilleritis malignus," or "the fevered pursuit of the one-set, five-character moneymaker." And like the "master plotter" himself, the fortune awaiting the run of "Deathtrap" strikes her as an enticing retirement fund, as she is aging out of her precognitive talent as much as Bruhl.

The biggest change from Levin's original amorality tale comes at the end, which wraps up in cautionary fashion with Anderson and/or Bruhl's play causing Helga and the porter to become starry-eyed over the prospect of their very own shot at "Deathtrap." The movie diverges in that, complementing the addition of an opening scene depicting Bruhl's pitiful opening night, we actually see who reaps the rewards (here, the porter is played by Henry Jones). The decision strikes me as less of a cheat than the Hollywood ending of Noises Off, if only because there is some context and the kind of irony you'd find in the non-directory yellow pages. The shock cut which takes us there, however, makes it come across as a rushed, if not false, note.

Sidney Lumet does more wonders with the baked-in staginess of Deathtrap than Bogdanovich on Noises Off. Once again assisted by Andrzej Bartkowiak (of Prince of the City and the subsequent The Verdict), Lumet fashions a homely menace out of the countryside mansion, replete with dapper door and windmill, and judiciously moves his camera to get over the one-set, two-act treachery. The foreboding storm which darkens the house at the conclusion works the strobe light a bit too much, and the same overkill is applied to Dyan Cannon's piercing scream during an equally scary set piece, which results in an obvious dubbing gaffe. Would that those were as natural as Johnny Mandel's frisky score, the presence of Tony "Signore Bumbacelli" DiBenedetto (as Burt, the Bartender) and Tony Walton's astute contributions to both production and costume design. 

Deathtrap's ultimate enjoyment comes down to a quartet of excellent performances, the moments where fanatical ambition gives way to sociopathic psychoses and the inflating manner in which real life writes the play. What compels Sidney Bruhl and Clifford Anderson to succeed by nefarious pragmatic necessity is either a self-loathing yearning for the simplest possible life or the cocky, deranged reverence which is the downside of most aspiring self-starters. Bruhl wants to hold on to upper-class prestige without being lumped in with the "ex-mistresses of ex-presidents, former CIA assassins and happy hookers" just out for publicity. Anderson's giddy demeanor just feeds off that fantasy. Where Myra Bruhl and Helga Ten Dorp fit into this story...well, I suggest you find out for yourself. Deathtrap is really that good. Even a gifted reviewer couldn't hurt it.

[Thanks to Drew McWeeny and Scott Weinberg of the '80s All Over podcast for lighting the fuse of this particular rundown.]

My Favorite Year

MY FAVORITE YEAR
(PG, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 92 mins., theatrical release date: October 8, 1982)

Alan Swann, the swashbuckling screen icon making a guest appearance on the Comedy Cavalcade, live on NBC every Saturday evening at 8:00, is a graceful disgrace. Having combated jet lag in his own debauched manner, Swann bursts into the writing staff's office as they screen the climactic duel from his signature vehicle, "Defender of the Crown." "Good God, it's Renfield!" Swann notices with sloshed alarm. "I thought he was dead." Reliving his victory from the movie superimposed over him, it's clear that the combating images don't match. One is at the height of his heroic glory, the other is relying on his rapier wit instead. The embarrassed head writer screams "[Swann's] plastered!" Swann counters: "So are some the finest erections in Europe." He fails the physical challenge part of his sobriety test just as regally. The only employee not prepared to dump Swann is his biggest fan, freshman writer Benjy Stone, and thus he lands the responsibility of being Swann's caretaker until show time.

Cementing the comeback he began with The Stunt Man, Peter O'Toole received a well-deserved seventh Oscar nomination as Swann in My Favorite Year, the third of the '50s-themed comedies I've covered on this blog. Whereas Diner was the most poignant and Porky's paraded the lowbrow populism, Richard Benjamin's debut has the highest ratio of side-splitting comedic performances and set pieces among these period capers. Much like fellow actor-turned-director Rob Reiner, Benjamin takes this opportunity behind the camera to truly showcase those he places in front. So alongside O'Toole as the lanky British legend, Benjamin corralled another promising newcomer in the lead role of Benjy and surrounds both Mark Linn-Baker and Peter O'Toole with a slew of top-notch cut-ups.

Linn-Baker (Noises Off, Perfect Strangers) as Benjy Stone (re-)acquaints us to the world of 1954, but more importantly mediates the warring egos to whom he's subservient. There's enough hustle and bustle where he works to make up for the Manhattan traffic. Chief writer Sy Benson (Bill Macy) tells Benjy his sketches are awful when he's not deriding Swann's oeuvre as "crap." Lording over both Benjy and Sy is the host of the Comedy Cavalcade, himself, Stan "King" Kaiser (Joseph Bologna), and he's not particularly fond of Sy's contributions. Despite his show business milieu, Kaiser's personality isn't too far removed from his recurring character of mobster Boss Hijack. When he goes too far in belittling his staff, Kaiser slips his assistant producer K.C. Downing (Jessica Harper) some greenbacks for a set of whitewall tires or a pair of used, ill-fitting shoes as compensation. Kaiser is such a seasoned wise guy on the set that he's well-prepared to insult the object of Hijack's weekly ridicule, labor leader Karl "Boss" Rojeck (Cameron Mitchell), in person.

King Kaiser's mocking refusal to cater to Rojeck's cease-and-desist brings its own bad juju outside of Alan Swann's reckless behavior. That Swann manages not to make a scene at the Stork Club once again ("It's been a year and a half. Surely, they've repaired the wall of the bandstand by now") is immediately undone by the lascivious spree immortalized on the next morning's front page. Even after Benjy treats Swann to dinner with his Jewish family (and prizefighting Filipino stepfather), the night ends with a fruitless scheme to generate passion between Benjy and K.C. (it's the rooftop scene from Die Hard predated as old-timey comic catastrophe). As they walk home, the two solidify their mutual bond by relating the identities they sacrificed in the name of entertainment. It would be valiant for Swann to try and reconcile his deepest shame(s) on any other day but Saturday, as he's leaving Benjy and the show hanging by the frailest thread. Can Swann (and Kaiser) pull it together or will 1954 be the year they pioneered the rerun?

Richard Benjamin, who won a Golden Globe as supporting actor in The Sunshine Boys and kept a solid profile in the 1970s in movies such as Catch-22, Westworld and Portnoy's Complaint, made an incredible transition in 1982. He went from playing the father in the unheralded horror-comedy Saturday the 14th to captaining what Premiere placed as #37 in their 2006 list of the 50 Greatest Comedies of All-Time, the only film released in 1982 to do so (Tootsie, Diner and Fast Times at Ridgemont High all made the AFI survey denied Benjamin). Not only that, My Favorite Year was ranked above This Is Spinal Tap and A Fish Called Wanda in Premiere's article.

Though it avoided the fallacy of heightened expectations since I watched it without context, My Favorite Year does not unseat either Spinal Tap or Wanda in my opinion. It's too wistfully old-fashioned to compete with the fresher material Reiner and Crichton realized so uproariously. But in an era where Bringing Up Baby could be plagiarized to suit a faulty pop icon or a Parker Brothers board game begat a low-hanging Murder by Death, My Favorite Year is effortlessly snappy and quite intelligent in its many varieties of humor. Benji's self-deprecating if steely persistence in winning a date with K.C. ("Sanctuary, my ass!") drives him to propose a live-in relationship in the ladies' room; when Swann follows unawares, wardrobe lady Lil (Selma Diamond) gets more than she bargained for in her objection to the aging cad. There is a framed photo of Kaiser with darts embedded it in, something his writers scramble to hide when he appears for a conference call.

Writers Dennis Palumbo and Norman Steinberg have worked, respectively, in network television (Welcome Back, Kotter) and gag-oriented comedies (Blazing Saddles) prior to this. They manage to take real life personas (Errol Flynn, Sid Caesar, Neil Simon, even their producer Mel Brooks) from the Your Show of Shows era and boil them down to their most humorous essentials. Benjy Stone is a quick-witted egghead who sees the world divided between those who are funny and those who aren't, but without the neurotic irritability of his more forceful supervisors. He does convince K.C. to join him for dinner and a movie within their 30 Rockefeller Plaza work space, and even though the dame bungles one of the easiest jokes in the world, K.C. garners a worthy laugh after they lock lips. Given his comfortably broad delivery, Mark Linn-Baker comes off like a younger, gentler Albert Brooks, especially when he says to Swann at one point, "There's the door! Come on, let's go give it a try!"

Peter O'Toole impresses across the board as the boozy, flirtatious Alan Swann. Having been reclassified as freight on the plane ride to New York City, Swann is dragged atop the luggage performing a spirited rendition of the "1812 Overture." Tied up in the latrine ("Go ahead and lash me, you swine! You'll not loosen my tongue!"), his clothes are all tear-away so as to best prepare him for a sobering bath. Having been restored to his senses, Swann's infamous return to the Stork Club delivers the playfully debonair and sometimes rueful veteran Benjy is happy to call his personal hero. Swann is wise enough to know he is still living off the perks of stardom, but with an estranged daughter in Connecticut and deep-seated doubts about his own talent, Swann's dashing, drunken allure is worthy of resuscitation. O'Toole is Dudley Moore and Sir John Gielgud rolled into one, melding stringy physical comedy and urbane one-liners with infectious freedom.

King Kaiser is a slave to his own pampered arrogance, and Joseph Bologna (R.I.P.) puts his own hilariously forceful spin on the archetype. The offhand ways in which he makes fun of Boss Rojeck during their sole confrontation, parroting his threatening manner with a cigar as well as reciprocating Roejck's remark about being in the "removal business," establish Kaiser as a worthy comedian since there are only a couple moments of his show in rehearsal. By humiliating Rojeck, Kaiser sets off a series of mishaps, from waylaid sets to falling spotlights, which render him a nervous wreck moments before the show is called to action.

Benajmin's skill with these three actors extends to the supporting cast, too. Jessica Harper (Suspiria, Pennies from Heaven) is given the most constraining role by contrast with her predominantly witty peers, but the aforementioned indoor date she has with Mark Linn-Baker warms her up considerably. Sadly, Harper's charms aren't elaborated further in the script. Given more time to make fine impressions are the team of Anne De Salvo (Arthur) and Basil Hoffman (Ordinary People) as underling writers Alice and Herb, the latter a silent clown who whispers his bon mots into the ear of the former; Adolph "Moses Supposes His Toeses Are Roses" Green as producer Leo Silver, whose full head of gray hair is the result of handling the temperamental Kaiser; Tony DiBenedetto (Prince of the City) as "Signor" Alfie Bumbacelli, Swann's loyal chauffeur; and the invaluable Lainie Kazan as Belle May Steinberg Carroca, Benjy's perfectly embarrassing Jewish mother out in Brooklyn. Ramon Sison is splendid as Rookie, the domesticated ex-boxer Belle married, now packing his punches within the recipe of his Meatloaf Mindinao.

(Other familiar faces to watch out for include Lou Jacobi as Uncle Morty, George Wyner as Boss Rojeck's lawyer Myron Fein, Titanic's Gloria Stuart having a dance with Peter O'Toole, Repo Man's lobotomized scientist Fox Harris, and Corrine Bohrer of Vice Versa as a stewardess Swann romances early on.)

Rather than conjure Rob Reiner or Robert Altman, My Favorite Year is the kind of movie I wanted Soapdish or For Your Consideration to measure up to (a wortheir heir, unsurprisingly, is NBC-TV's own 30 Rock). Sophisticated in its structure and not without ample heart or humor, this is more a tribute to the jubilant anarchy which goes into developing live comedic television than 1954 in particular. The focus is as sharp as the ensemble who makes these flustered go-getters look genuine. My Favorite Year did not rake in the boffo gross upon its release nor has it gone viral in the modern world 25 years since then. But what Richard Benjamin did achieve is storied in its own right: a finely-crafted showbiz farce with one of the single funniest performances of the 1980s from the eternal Lawrence of Arabia.