The Rift (1990)

I’ve never been diagnosed as such, but I maintain that I’m actually quite claustrophobic.  I mean, I can stand in something the size of a closet or somesuch for an amount of time (the reasons for doing so don’t matter here), but once the boundaries of a space actually touch my body, I tend to panic.  I’ve been at the bottom of dog piles and felt the overwhelming urge to get out from underneath them (I think that one is more from the feeling of being crushed than anything else).  But there’s something about the idea of being stuck in a confined area in which you can’t move that sends my mind into the stratosphere.  I don’t hyperventilate or have an emotional breakdown in such situations (and let me be clear, it’s not a situation I’ve been in often).  I do, however, slip into desperation mode, and will do damned near anything short of chopping off a limb to extricate myself (of course, I’ve also never been given the option of chopping off a limb, so I can’t honestly say whether I’d give it consideration).  This is why I couldn’t work and/or live on a submarine.  I’ve toured a couple of decommissioned ones, and seeing the amount of space in which people had to exist, the reality of literally living on top of your shipmates, put the nail in the coffin of that career path for me.  Were I given the chance to go on a sub like the Siren II from Juan Piquer Simón’s The Rift (aka Endless Descent), my attitude might change.  Might.  Slightly.  The Siren II is one of the most spacious submarines I’ve ever seen this side of The Seaview from Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  But, as far as I’m concerned, it’s still an underwater casket (in more ways than one).

Submarine designer Wick Hayes (Jack Scalia) is carted off to Norway, because his baby, the Siren I, experienced a problem, leaving it at the bottom of an undersea rift.  Joining the crew of the Siren II, which includes Captain Phillips (R. Lee Ermey), biologist (and Wick’s ex-wife, coincidentally enough) Lieutenant Nina Crawley (Deborah Adair), and PC specialist Robbins (Ray Wise), Wick heads down into the abyss (get it?) and encounters far more than just a busted submarine.

I have to believe that the filmmakers behind this opus are big fans of John Carpenter.  How else do you explain a shady federal agent named Plissken?  There’s also Skeets (John Toles-Bey), the sassy black crew member who reminded me of Nauls from The Thing.  Speaking of that film, there’s also the idea of a lifeform infecting and transforming its victims (though here simply to kill them rather than duplicate them), and it all happens with a small crew of professional people in a remote location from which there is no escape.  Carpenter isn’t the only source from which Simón borrows.  There is the reconciliation subplot between Wick and Nina (shades of James Cameron’s The Abyss).  There is the undersea beastie aspect of films like Deepstar Six and Leviathan.  There is the giant jellyfish-thing enveloping the submarine, and the crew electrifying the hull to turn it away that was used in so very many episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (not to mention the multitude of other creatures the crew encounter throughout the film).  Also from that series is the element of a secret saboteur in the service of some unscrupulous government (in this case American rather than Soviet) aboard the craft (but if you don’t realize that it’s Wise from the minute you lay eyes on him and/or just see his name in the cast, then you’ve likely never seen a film featuring Ray Wise).  It’s been said, and I believe it to be true, that all filmmakers, artists, and so on borrow and/or lift wholesale things from other filmmakers, artists, and so on.  This is nothing new, but usually there is some stamp from the borrower making such references their own.  Simón’s film wears its references right on its sleeve, and they largely play solely at face value.  There’s nothing to distinguish these citations from the originals outside of the production values and the actors involved.  Still, they come close to forming a whole, and like watching an amateur impressionist whip out his Christopher Walken imitation, they’re moderately entertaining as much for what they get wrong as what they get right.

The rift of the title refers to a few things in the film, outside of the obvious underwater crevasse.  There is the rift between Wick and the government for which he once designed.  Wick is anti-war, and, naturally, the government installed all manner of nuclear weapons systems on his precious submarine.  Plus, they’re duplicitous, lying bastards, as they always are (“He bought it”).  There is the rift between Wick and Nina.  She only wants contact with Wick through their lawyers.  He tells her to stop acting like “a spoiled schoolgirl.”  At no point does any of this relationship develop or evolve until it’s necessary to give the audience a happy ending.  This shocked me a little, because the situation is readymade for dramatic tension (just add water, so to speak).  Alas…  There is the rift between the Siren II’s crew and Wick.  Most of them blame him for the incident on the Siren I, though Wick blames the ill-advised (and bellicose, more importantly) modifications made to his design.  Phillips doesn’t like Wick overmuch, because Wick is independent and non-regulation military.  None of this goes anywhere either, until it’s time for Wick to think outside the box and save everyone’s bacon with his individualistic actions.  

Notice how all of these revolve around Wick.  Every character, every plot point, every scene exists solely to serve Wick, the independent everyman.  Sure, he designs and builds state of the art watercraft, but he has long hair, he lives in a modest home, and he’s a slob (more or less).  We’re supposed to identify with him on some level.  I suppose you can up to a point, but that point is pretty far down on the spectrum of audience identification.  Wick is more than an everyman hero (think Doug McClure in something like Humanoids from the Deep as a point of reference).  He is a super-everyman.  Despite the scant aspects of his character that an audience recognizes in themselves, there is far more that elevates him above mere mortals, and it’s not as if Scalia does modesty all that well, regardless.  As a result, I feel that The Rift works better on its exploitable elements (in this instance, some gore/gross-out effects and monsters) than it does on its human elements.  So, if you can make it through the clichés, the non-drama, and the banality enwrapping the characters, you’ll at least be rewarded a tiny amount with some icky, goopy, sanguinary moments.

MVT:  The effects shine as much as they can on a $1.3-million-dollar budget.  I was also surprised at how graphic some of them were.

Make or Break:  With the above being said, the Make is the first scene of the crew exploring the cavern where the monsters dwell.  It’s tough to not like it, especially if monsters are your bag.

Score:  6/10

Naked Killer (1992)

Princess (Carrie Ng), a ruthless professional assassin, kills some random thug (who wears a denim vest with one football shoulder pad on it, apropos of nothing) by smashing his head with a couple of dumbbells and then shooting him in the junk.  Detective Tinam (Simon Yam), a cop who accidentally shot and killed his own brother causing him to vomit whenever he draws his gun or has a gun pointed at him but is okay just being around guns (which makes you wonder how he gets ready for work in the morning), is on the case.  He meets violently cute with Kitty (Chingmy Yau) at a salon, and falls in love with her.  Kitty, in turn, is taken under the wing of Sister Cindy (Wai Yiu) and trained to be a killer.  But Princess and her own protégé/lover Baby (Madoka Sugawara) come into inevitable conflict with Sister Cindy and Kitty, and it’s pretty much game on.

Clarence Fok Yiu-leung’s Naked Killer (aka Chik Loh Go Yeung) is a Category III film that, from what I’ve been able to gather, has been plagued by censorship issues ever since it was produced.  In fact, I had to watch two versions of it to get a whole idea of what was going on in it.  Both of these versions are available on Youtube, but the quality is garbage, so be advised should you decide you want to check it out from that source.  The shorter version I saw (about sixty-nine minutes, fittingly enough, though the video is listed at around one hundred minutes, but all it does is restart the movie from the beginning for that last half hour) contains a couple of scenes that bond Sister Cindy and Kitty together, but it cut out all of the sex scenes and some of the violence.  It’s a real butcher job.  The longer version I saw (about eighty-nine minutes) contains the sex and violence, but it inexplicably cut the aforementioned scenes between Sister Cindy and Kitty.  The funny thing is, I enjoyed both versions immensely.  Sure, the shorter version is exceedingly difficult to follow, but it maintains the kinetic, imaginative camerawork of the longer version.  The camera whips around during the action scenes.  Often, Dutch angles are used, imbuing the film with a comic book atmosphere.  The stuntwork is top notch, with characters flipping and yerking thither and yon through the frame.  Both versions also have a charm that rests largely on the shoulders of Yau, who is adept at being sexy, mean, and coquettish, all at the same time.  The rest of the female cast are up to the task as well, don’t misunderstand.  But it’s Yau’s acting in combination with Yiu-leung’s direction that raises material which is both run-of-the-mill and offbeat and could as easily have been a disaster as anything else (I’ll theorize here that the same could be said for just about every Category III film).

Naturally, when you have female assassins in a film the emphasis on sex, specifically as it pertains to how the hitwomen are displayed, is amplified, something films about male assassins never have (at least to my knowledge, although I guess something like Crying Freeman may be an exception).  This philosophy is perfectly summed up in two scenes between Sister Cindy and Kitty.  In the first, Cindy admonishes Kitty for taking too long to kill a pedophile, stating that a woman’s body is as much a weapon as a gun or a knife.  In the second, she proves this ethos by seducing a pair of perverts and then snapping their necks. 

The film’s sexuality works in several ways.  First, there is its usage as retaliation against misogynists.  When we first meet Kitty, she stabs a male hair stylist for beating his pregnant girlfriend (he even kicks her in the stomach, just in case we might accidentally sympathize with him).  Soon after, she murders the man who cuckolded and killed her father, even stabbing his penis with a pencil at one point (I think it was a pencil).  Princess and Baby make a habit of mutilating their male victim’s genitals, and while Kitty has been known to mess with men’s wedding tackle, for her this is borne out of anger; for Princess and Baby, it’s sadism.  Kitty and Cindy, while acting in their professional capacity, kill men violently, but it’s not personal; it’s just business with style.  Second is the relationship between Kitty and Tinam.  Kitty feels bad for Tinam because of his newfound aversion to gun violence.  As the two come together (quite literally), they heal each other (sort of), and this relationship gives Kitty a heteronormative path to what happiness she is allowed within the story.  

Which brings us to the third and most important point.  The females in this film, with the exception of Kitty, are lesbians, and there is a sharp line drawn between this lifestyle and that of heterosexuals.  Princess and Baby have sex that is cold in every way but the physical.  They do it in a swimming pool filled with one of their victim’s blood, for example.  This is transgressive while also playing to the audience’s prurient interest (remember, this is still a Category III film).  The division between homo- and heterosexuality is best depicted in an intercut sex scene, featuring Tinam and Kitty on one side and Princess and Baby on the other.  The shots of Tinam and Kitty are well-lit, almost glamourous, with lots of closeups, and the two are sharing in each other’s bodies, committing to each other.  The shots of Princess and Baby are in a dark, dank setting, with the bed at an odd angle to the camera’s lens, and the camera itself at a distance from its subjects.  There is no true intimacy here.  It is also unsatisfying for both of them, because the two cannot connect on a human level.  Sister Cindy lies somewhere in the middle.  It is clearly implied that she had a sexual relationship with Princess (they share a significant smooch later in the film), but we can assume that their breakup had something to do with Princess’ predatory, cruel worldview.  Cindy’s relationship with Kitty is different.  She feels a sisterly/motherly connection with her young charge, and the two discuss things openly.  It is possible that Cindy wants an amorous relationship with Kitty, but she won’t force it, and she is just as happy (probably moreso) in their platonic, teacher/student kinship.  Even though the film leans more toward heterosexuality being the acceptable form of love, Sister Cindy helps balance the scale by being able to exist in both worlds.  She is the most stable of the women, being a lesbian but not a rapacious one like Princess while also being a friend and mentor to Kitty, who could certainly use the guidance.  Sure, Sister Cindy still wants to kill Tinam, but it’s in the service of professionalism rather than jealousy.  And isn’t that what friendship is all about?

MVT:  The four women in this film are fantastic, in my estimation.  As talented physically as they are astoundingly attractive, each of the actresses gives their character a strongly defined personality, and this really aids Naked Killer in separating itself from the crowd.

Make or Break:  The opening assassination sets up everything the film needs to get moving, being stylish, sexy, hyperviolent, and ridiculous simultaneously.

Score:  7.25/10     

Mortuary (1983)

When I think of Christopher George, I think of two films.  First and foremost is William Girdler’s fantastic “JAWS with claws” Nature Amok film Grizzly.  I cannot count the number of times I watched this film on Channel 16’s Million Dollar Movie.  It stands up just as well for me today, and having at long last seen it uncut, I was actually surprised at the level of some of the violence.  The other film is also from Girdler and also a Nature Amok film: Day of the Animals.  Everyone remembers this one for a stripped-to-the-waist Leslie Nielsen wrestling a bear (maybe the brother of the antagonist from Grizzly? in revenge mode).  I remember it more for George and Richard Jaeckel surviving against a world gone insane.  But what I remember most of all is that George’s character in Grizzly is named Kelly.  This is his surname, but everyone always refers to him as Kelly throughout the film, and for some reason, this stuck with me to the point that I was under the mistaken impression that George always played characters named Kelly.  This thinking lasted for many years.  Combine this with the name of a police officer named Kelly in Larry Hagman’s (yes, THAT Larry Hagman) Beware! The Blob, and I begin to find that I simply like male characters with that name, be it their proper name or their surname.  I have no idea why.  Having said this, George’s character in Howard Avedis’ Mortuary (aka Embalmed) is named Harry Andrews, but that wasn’t nearly so disappointing to me as the film on the whole.  

Christie’s (Mary McDonough) dad is beaten with a baseball bat and knocked into the family pool to drown one fine, sunny day.  Next thing you know, two stunads, Josh (Dennis Mandel) and Greg (David Wallace), are sneaking into Mr. Andrews’ warehouse to steal some tires.  Josh gets offed with an embalming needle, and Greg flees the scene.  Quickly thereafter, some creep (whose identity is about as secret as the recipe for ice) in white face paint a la The Exorcist’s Pazuzu (and I like to think The Embalmer is the inspiration for Brain Guy’s look on Mystery Science Theater 3000, though honestly I believe the “vampires” in The Omega Man would be closer to the mark [I have substantiated none of this]) runs around threatening Christie and slaying seemingly random characters.

What stands out the most to me in Mortuary is the idea of what lies beneath the façade of bourgeois normalcy, what lurks behind all the white picket fences of the middle class.  Andrews has séances in his mortuary and warehouse.  These are some of the oddest séances I’ve ever seen, since the first one we see is just a bunch of women in diaphanous capes swishing and dancing in a circle, while George simply stands there waiting for his SAG check to clear.  Later, one is depicted a little more traditionally, with a moving table, questions answered from the beyond, and so forth.  These aren’t witches or Satanists, though they bear the hallmarks of those, and this isn’t something that any of the characters does out in the open or will admit to in public.  It’s still given a dim view by society and so must be kept secreted in the shadows.  

Andrews’ son Paul (Bill Paxton) is the epitome of yuppie mediocrity at first glance.  When we’re introduced to him, he’s dressed in a shirt and tie with a brown sweater over top.  He’s excited (or as excited as one can be) that he just bought a Mozart album that he wants to share with Christie.  This is expressed in the same way that comic book fans gush about their favorite titles to non-comic book fans, and it garners about the same level of polite disinterest.  It isn’t until we discover that Paul is Andrews’ son and works at the mortuary that we are given the impression that he’s not as normal as he looks.  This isn’t to say that there’s anything distasteful about the mortuary sciences, of course.  It’s a combination of two things that puts an audience ill at ease.  First, most of us aren’t privy to the details of these services in our normal lives, and we have been trained by society that there is a certain dignity in death that the realities of embalming a cadaver demystifies.  Second, is the casualness with which morticians ply their trade.  Greg is summoned into the embalming room by Paul, where a naked woman is prepared for embalming.  While Greg is ostensibly a little in awe of this (you can’t really tell from his acting), for Paul this is as normal as breathing.  

Christie’s mom Eve (Lynda Day George) puts on a nice exterior, but she is a participant in Mr. Andrews’ extracurricular activities.  Further, she and Christie have a tense relationship centering on the death of the family patriarch and Christie’s recent sleepwalking sojourns.  Christie believes that her mom is trying to drive her insane or maybe just get rid of her so she can move on with another man.  The film attempts to strip away the veneer of the typical suburban family, sadly not exposing tons when you think about it at length, but it is in there.

Another aspect the film deals with is the act of grieving.  The two families at the heart of this film have recently had losses.  Christie’s dad was murdered, though it was ruled an accident.  Christie and Eve deal with it in their separate ways.  Eve attends séances to contact her husband’s spirit and find closure.  She believes his death was accidental, so the answers she receives in these sessions are enough to bring her peace.  Christie knows that her father’s death was intentional, but since she doesn’t know who did it or why, her internalization of this quandary leads to her sleepwalking habits which are potentially dangerous (once she winds up in the pool, another time hovering by the front door with a knife in her hand).  Mr. Andrews also recently lost his wife to suicide.  We can assume that this is why he started his little séance group in the first place, though he seems a little bit too into it for it to be a casual attempt to find solace, and for all we know this could all be a scam.  This leads us to Paul, who behaves as if everything is same old, same old, despite his mom’s recent, tragic passing.  He goes about his day as if nothing has changed, and this is just as unhealthy in the long run as Christie’s somnambulism.  Interestingly, it’s the adults, in their arguably excessive, unconventional, and likely misguided activities, who deal the most healthily with the realities of the death of a loved one.

So why, then, is this movie such a dog?  I maintain that the answer to the question lies within applying the same primary query to some specific examples.  Why does Greg make a medium-level to do about Josh going missing and then never bring up the disappearance of his friend again?  Why does Christie wear makeup to bed?  Why are there more jump scares in this film than there were bodily fluid stains at Plato’s Retreat?  Why did the filmmakers focus on these cheap frights rather than playing on the dread and innate creepiness of the story’s titular location and its goings on?  Why, when Christie wants to take a break from Greg, does he not only not get emotional but also acts pretty fucking chipper when he sees Eve on his way out the door?  Why are we introduced to a trio of Greg and Christie’s pals (including the requisite “funny fat guy” character) at a rollerskating rink if none of them contributes a single thing to the story, even as potential victims?  Why does a mortuary stock sedatives?  Aren’t all their clientele already free from all bodily pain?  Why doesn’t The Embalmer kill Greg when he has the drop on him?  You can dismiss any of these as stylistic flourishes, and they may, in fact, be the reason you happen to enjoy this film.  Nevertheless, it’s the level of apathy threading its way through all of these exemplars that just kills it for me.  There is no point to any of this outside of the big “surprise” ending which isn’t a surprise to anyone over the age of ten who has ever seen a movie before.  The lackadaisical approach deflates any tension and derails any compulsion to find out where the narrative (and its uninteresting characters) is going, because it isn’t going anywhere.  The big question I had after watching Mortuary was why couldn’t it stay buried?  

MVT:  The film was made in the Eighties, so at least you get some nice snapshots of that time (the roller rink being the one that stands out in my mind; funny, since the scenes set in it are utterly pointless).

Make or Break:  The idiotic noncommittal of Greg to tracking down Josh, who we suppose is his best friend, and the film’s dropping of this plot point “just because” is the clearest indication I can think of as to why no one should commit the ninety minutes to watch this thing.

Score:  4/10