After I graduated college and
still had some faint glimmer of hope of actually getting to work in film or
television production (In all honesty, I was entirely too hardheaded to move
where the industry is, and the local filmmaking community tended to be even
more insular, unless you were independently wealthy and could afford to not get
paid for doing pissant work, which I wasn’t and still am not), I received a
call from one of my professors (who was also a documentary producer). He was shooting a documentary centered on his
life and the town in which he was born (hint: it’s where the Dorsey Brothers
are from and are now buried), and he needed a production assistant. I liked the man, and I wanted the experience
(and said town is about fifteen miles from my own hometown, thus I was familiar
with it), so naturally I replied in the affirmative.
The producer, the cameraman, and
myself filmed a lot in a short amount of time, and at some points, I even got
to give a little bit of constructive input, so I was like the proverbial pig in
shit. The time came for the interview with
the director’s father, who was something of an alcoholic, which meant it was
difficult to pry him away from the local watering hole. Since the producer still needed some shots,
and the light was waning, and I was a self-described raging alcoholic myself at
the time, I got volunteered to stay in the bar with the father while the
remaining shots were (hopefully) procured, and after which, the father would
(hopefully) be interviewed. So I got to
drink for free for an evening while working on a film with people whose company
I enjoyed. I have no idea if the film
ever reached completion (though I’m fairly positive it didn’t), but I’d like to
think that it will someday. My
experience accompanying the producer’s dad put me in mind of poor Chaz (Jeffrey Combs), the chauffeur and (I
assume) valet of a wealthy corporate fat cat; not because I felt like a servant
during my short production assistant tenure, but because Chaz and I were happy
to do what we could for our bosses, and we both got to chaperone alcoholics for
an evening or two. It’s just mine wasn’t
Wings Hauser.
In Gregory Dark’s (he of the classic porn series New Wave Hookers amongst many others, here using the pseudonym Gregory Brown) Dead Man Walking, corporations have taken over control of the Earth
(what, again?) after the bubonic plague made a resurgence and the world fell
into chaos. The Plague Zone is where the
victims are shunted off to live out their lives in despair and squalor. Among the plague victims are Zero Men, who are
non-contagious but still terminal, and this is the reason why their behavior is
described as “erratic” (which is putting it mildly). Regardless, Leila (Pamela Ludwig), the daughter of Chaz’s boss, Mr. Shahn (John Petlock) is kidnapped by escaped
convict/Zero Man, Decker (Brion James),
forcing Chaz to enlist the aid of loner/Zero Man, Luger (Hauser), to get her back.
When the world goes to shit, any
cinephile worth his or her salt knows exactly who will seize the reins of
power: the corporations. Standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with shadowy government cabals (and similarly uncaring
bureaucracies), corporations are the go-to bad guys in many a film, and even
moreso in the postapocalyptic genre.
While I don’t disagree with this vilification (though I also don’t think
that every corporation spends every moment of every day trying specifically to
do evil [emphasis on “trying”]), I’m more interested in the relationship
between cinematic corporations like Unitus (get it?) and the people opposed to them. Typically, this is a twofold
interrelation. First, and most
obviously, is that there is a distinct line drawn between the good guys and the
bad guys. Still, even people who work
for an evil corporation can be good after having a crisis of conscience (or
just having scruples in general). Leila
questions her dad’s plan to build a housing project in the Plague Zone, which
he characterizes as crowd control, and she characterizes as crowding them all
together and working them to death. While
Chaz works for “The Man,” he’s still considered good, because he cares about
Leila enough to place himself in danger to rescue her (it doesn’t matter that
he isn’t very adept at it and more than a little weaselly, to boot). Second, and more intriguing to me, is the representation
of the struggle between conformity and personal freedom. This is where the Luger character comes into
the mix. Luger is individualistic to the
point that he is set apart even from the other Zero Men with whom he
commiserates and plays variations on Russian Roulette. He does what he wants, when he wants, and
doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks about it (including, but not limited to,
his quasi-girlfriend Rika [Tasia Valenza],
who gets fed up [“Won’t you just listen to me?” “No”], but I guess she likes
bad boys, just not enough to stick around for the whole runtime). Luger has no time for Unitus, and he goes
about his days taking massive risks like an adrenaline junkie (his Meet Cute
with Chaz takes place over a live timebomb).
At this point, Luger is simultaneously free and damned, since he’s got
the plague and is soon heading for death (we even get the telltale cough that
all terminally ill characters in cinema let loose, so we know time is
short). To gain ultimate personal freedom,
Luger needs a reason to live, not just a chance, and this sets up the
juxtaposition between himself and the Unitus-controlled world.
Dead Man Walking has one of the most casual apocalypses ever put to
film. Every character is utterly
non-nonplussed by everything in their lives.
Partly, this is to play up the angle of a nihilistic existence where “No
Future” has essentially come true and is completely ineffable. From the perspective of people like Luger,
there is the need to flirt with death because any moment could literally be
your last. The suicidal games the Zero
Men play is the only way to go out on one’s own terms. It’s also the only way to feel alive when an assumedly
even uglier death from the plague is assured.
By that same token, characters like Leila want to go slumming in the
Plague Zone to see what all the fuss is about, but she’s quickly disillusioned,
and you get a sense of disappointment that the plague victims don’t live down
to her expectations. After Decker asserts
dominance over her body (in a truly disturbing scene), Leila becomes even more
dispassionate. Though she cannot catch
the plague from Decker, she gives herself over to the fact that she’s as good
as dead in his company, and shuts her personality down (this is not to say she
had tons of personality to begin with).
Mirroring the Zero Men, her future outlook is nothing but grim, so she
may as long go along with it. The
societal scales are balanced. Yet, for
as much as there is in the film with this theme of finding a reason to cling to
life (or not), I never felt like any of the characters were committed to
it. In trying to convey a life of
forbidding apathy, more often than not, I simply got the feeling that no one
really cared (with the exception of James,
who gives it his sleazy, bug-eyed all every moment he’s onscreen). Even while this is part of the point of the
film, and it does come across well enough, Dark
and company never got me to care about the characters breaking free of their
lethargy. There’s no tension or stakes,
because everyone is so devoted to not caring, and Leila and Chaz’s relationship
is never defined well enough that I wanted to see her rescue actually succeed. The film is an okay way to pass ninety
minutes, but the indifference it delineates so well is, unfortunately, just a
bit too contagious.
MVT: The locations in the
film do an admirable job of creating a postapocalyptic world. I fully bought that everything had gone to
hell.
Make or Break: The first
scene we get in the Zero Club involves Luger and some guy competing to see who will
start a chain-suspended chainsaw first.
A true example of necessity being the mother of invention, I’d say.
Score: 6.5/10
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