Deadbeat at Dawn (1988)

Jim Van Bebber subverts expectations with “Deadbeat at Dawn.” It’s ultimately a revenge fable, but it isn’t structured like a common one. It looks as if it’s going to go down the beaten path at the outset, but turns a corner into a dark alleyway. The entire film feels like it takes place in a dark alleyway, basked in the seedy underbelly of a rundown neighborhood. This is an unpleasant film, albeit a well-made one.

Goose (Jim Van Bebber) is looking to leave his gang, the Ravens, in favor of a life of solitude with his squeeze, Christy (Megan Murphy). His cohorts don’t take kindly to this, breaking into his home and brutally murdering Christy. Goose believes the murder was at the hands of their rival gang, the Spiders. Naturally, he seeks vengeance.
Except “Deadbeat at Dawn” isn’t a natural revenge flick. It moves to the beat of its own drum with the rhythm coming across as chaotic and out of tune. You slowly realize this is the point. Bebber isn’t concerned with telling a generic revenge story. He’s more concerned with examining how a lowlife thug copes with loss. Not just loss of his girlfriend, but loss of his life. Without the love of his life or his gang, Goose is directionless. He has nothing left to lose and, as we all know, there’s nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing left to lose.

Goose is a sad sack for the majority of the film, moping around aimlessly for the first half (and understandably so). He has no intentions of hunting down the Spiders, feeling more comfortable wasting away his existence in bars or in his father’s broken home. He goes to the latter first seeking comfort, but gets none from his abusive alcoholic of a father. He’s more concerned over his son replacing his beer and helping him get his fix than comforting him.

The father scenario is a tricky one. On paper, it’s reasonable; necessary even. It exists to show how Goose fell into the wrong crowd, a broken home damaging him emotionally. His father’s PTSD from serving in Vietnam parallels the war Goose engages in on the streets constantly. It even highlights Goose’s desire for compassion, hoping to bond with his father despite knowing that won’t happen. The problem is Bebber directs the father angle too comically. The father’s attitude is too over-the-top, resulting in unintentional laughter at points. Any time the drama and tension from the scenario begins to surface, it’s sunk by the overbearing performance.

This is a problem that plagues “Deadbeat at Dawn,” though it’s thankfully not consistent. While the film is always manic, as are the performances, most of it is complementary to the tone. The gang members can get away with being over the top, as that matches the lunacy of their carnage. Their outlandishness is reigned in via their heinous actions. It’s hard to laugh at them when they’re viciously beating people with bats or mowing enemies down with guns.
Bebber revels in the sleaze and grime. While this can be off-putting for some, it’s not sleazy for the sake of being sleazy. It’s representative of the world created, a languid cesspool riddled with crime and despair. The gangs exist because they have to out of survival. None of the denizens in the rundown neighborhood are given a chance to escape by society. Their Hell is a creation of segregation.

The only reason Goose is able to live out his revenge fantasy is by circumstance. He’s forced back into the gang, no longer the leader but the errand boy. He’s tasked with aiding in a theft, the kind all thugs dream of: the big one that can secure them for life. It’s through this theft that Goose is able to exact his revenge, slowly piecing the puzzle to his girlfriend’s murder along the way. He really only obtains his vengeance out of defense, snapping and turning his hand against his own gang as well as their rivals. And man, is it something! Goose becomes a badass, a one man gang who eliminates his enemies with nunchucks, guns, beheadings, and even ripping a man’s throat out!

“Deadbeat at Dawn” is no doubt a vile film. It’s one that goes too over the top at times, but never loses focus. It’s structured awkwardly, but that’s purposeful. The awkward structure matches the awkward nature of Goose’s life. It’s a disgusting life, resulting in a disgusting film. It’s not always easy to stomach, but it’s satisfying in its execution.

MVT: Jim Van Bebber. He has a tight grasp on the film and the world he created. He has a concise vision, even if the structure says otherwise. The repulsiveness of it all could have easily become too overbearing, but he does a fine job of anchoring it.

Make or Break: Strangely enough, it’s the father scenario. While that may be one of the weakest scenes due to the comical performance, it doesn’t break the film. It represents the path the film is going down, what Bebber is most interested in, and does a lot to develop the character of Goose. The scene works in spite of the comical performance, making the film as opposed to breaking it.

Final Score: 7/10

The Suckling (1990)

**SPOILERS**

An opening crawl informs us that, on April 1, 1973 (y’know, April Fool’s Day), a bunch of prostitutes and other sundry folks were killed at a rundown brothel/abortion clinic.  The lone survivor, an unidentified woman (in both the film and its credits, though she’s played by Lisa Petruno, and for the purposes of this review I’ll refer to her as The Mother), is kept at an asylum, where two doctors somnambulistically discuss her case.  Flashback to: the fateful day, where an abortion goes very, VERY wrong.

Francis Teri’s The Suckling (aka Sewage Baby) is a simultaneously tasteless and fascinating film.  Obviously, any movie using abortion as a springboard for gore effects is going to be tacky to some degree or another, yet there are things going on under the surface here that intrigue as well as exploit.  So, let’s look at the more serious side here to start.  Roe v. Wade was passed in January of 1973, making abortion legal under the Constitution of the United States of America.  Since the film takes place in April of that same year, it follows that Phil (the father) and The Mother didn’t have to go to a back alley abortion clinic from a legal standpoint (she states that “this place is illegal”; it wasn’t by this point, but for the sake of argument let’s agree that maybe she didn’t know about the Supreme Court’s decision).  Nonetheless, the very idea of abortion still had a stigma to it (and still does to a certain extent even today), as did pregnancies outside of wedlock (damned if you do, damned if you don’t).  The Mother doesn’t want the abortion.  She wants to put the baby up for adoption as soon as it’s born.  Phil, surely thinking only of his reputation, insists that she go just to talk it over with Big Mama (Janet Sovey), the madam and abortionist at the whorehouse.  The Mother is drugged, and the fetus is forcibly aborted, an encroachment of The Mother’s rights and an assault on her body that is, frankly, heinous.  By violating The Mother so personally, the characters in the brothel (and anyone associated with them) damn themselves.  Because she didn’t want the abortion in the first place, The Mother and the Suckling still share a symbiotic connection, symbolized by the deadly umbilicus that the fetus grows (helped greatly by some convenient toxic waste that drips down onto it) after being flushed down the toilet and landing in one of the smokiest sewers ever put to film.  The Mother is devastated by the loss of her baby against her will, and the Suckling responds to this.

This bond between The Mother and the Suckling manifests itself in the brothel.  After beginning its assault, the Suckling envelops the house in a placenta that the characters cannot break through, and even if they did, it would dissolve them.  First, this traps the characters in one location for easy pickings.  Second, it re-encases the Suckling in the womb from which both it and its mom didn’t want it to be removed.  The Suckling reacts, I tend to believe, to The Mother’s conscious and unconscious desires and protects her while also taking revenge against the people who hurt her.  The longing to return to the womb exhibits itself later on when the Suckling literally shrinks to its birth size and reinserts itself into The Mother.  She is already on the edge by this point in the film, and it really makes you wonder whether this wish fulfillment pushed her over the precipice, because something monstrous happened to her when the fetus was removed from her (with a wire hanger on which Big Mama hangs her coat, by the by) and something monstrous happened to her again when this malevolent creature thrust itself back inside her (which is also a bit Oedipal in my opinion, especially considering what happens to Phil).  In a way, The Mother’s body ownership is taken away from her completely by both the abortionists and by her own child, and in the end, she has shut down, a piece of meat that can no longer choose for herself what to do with her body.  The Suckling protects her from harm while it also possesses her body for itself, the symbiosis between mother and child turned toxic and permanent.

The Suckling is also unafraid to go extremely broad in its humor, a decision I’m unsure about to the extent of whether it helps or harms the film (though I do tend to lean towards the latter, because it’s frankly not clever or subtle enough to be successful as black comedy, and in the context of this film, I think that’s key).  For example, a nerdy guy in a loud plaid suit and bowtie and a kid with the word “fuck” written on his tee shirt gawp as a man liquefies in front of them (a blunt, one-note “joke,” to be sure).  The clearest exemplar, however, is the rich john who visits the brothel while the abortion is taking place.  He enjoys getting pegged with a large dildo while wearing a propeller-topped beanie.  Said propeller, naturally, responds to what happens to this guy’s body, spinning and even popping off at one point (to the accompaniment of goofy sound effects).  The prostitute he’s with rolls her eyes and leaves in the middle of their session.  Later, he’ll be made to bark like a dog in a different context.  But he’s wealthy and entitled, and for as much as he sees himself as above the prostitutes in the brothel, his bizarre proclivities, his dirty little secrets, make him lower than them.  The prostitutes work for their money, and this is just a job for them, an act they put on in private.  The john, by contrast, puts his act on in public.  In private, his true self comes out, and it’s the hypocrisy of respectability that is lampooned (successfully or not) in the scenes with him.

The Suckling itself is a decent monster makeup, even for how odd it is.  It has spikes everywhere on its body and hook hands (and I have never completely understood beasts with hooks for hands like Gigan, the Hook Horror from Dungeons & Dragons, et cetera; they’re totally impractical outside of the one obvious function, but whatever), and its teeth are about the length of a man’s forearm and protrude from its maw, resembling a pink, slimy Venus flytrap (or the monster from The Terror Within on crack, and The Suckling bears some resemblance to that film in the monster child department, as well; coincidence?).  As a concept, it makes no sense, but as something cool for makeup effects lovers, it works well enough in its uniqueness.

And yet, the film itself is lifeless outside of the gore/effects scenes.  The acting is wooden across the board.  The characters are either irritating or distasteful or both.  There is zero sympathy built up for any of them, including and especially The Mother, who spends the entire movie as a passive, crying lump.  The cinematography is flat and static with the brief exception of the few scenes shot in the sewer which actually looked visually interesting.  There is no plot once the killings start, no tension either between the characters (despite the attempt to do so with the shitheaded thug/contagonist character Axel [Frank Rivera]) or as anticipation for where and when the Suckling will strike next.  So, the best advice I can give to anyone interested enough in watching this movie is to be sure you keep your finger floating over the fast forward button.

MVT:  The effects are about the only thing that worked for me in this.  Maybe that was the point/intent, so credit where it’s due.

Make or Break:  The Break for me was the “funny” scene between the rich john and the hooker.  Humor that low grade takes a certain talent to pull off, and sadly, that talent is lacking here.

Score:  5/10     

Sisters (1973)

“Sisters” opens with one of the best misleading sequences in cinematic history! A blind woman accidentally walks in on a man in a changing room and begins undressing, his presence unbeknownst to her. Just as he approaches for a closer look, the film freeze frames. It’s revealed this is a scenario for a raunchy game show in which unsuspecting men are lured into situations in which they’re peeping toms. The contestants bet on which option the man in question will take: prey upon the lady with voyeuristic eyes or retreat.

Phillip Woode (Lisle Wilson) goes the chivalrous route and retreats, which lands him a date with the actress in the prank, Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder). All goes well, sans a run-in with her obsessive ex-husband, Emil (Bill Finley), who stakes out in front of her house every night. Despite the omnipresent ex-husband, the two engage in a one night stand. The next morning, Danielle’s sister arrives and murders Phillip.

Catching all of this is Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt), who just so happened to witness Phillip’s crawl for help through the window (a callback to the peeping tom game show). She immediately calls the police, but by the time they arrive, the body has been hidden. What we the audience seen was Emil return and for him and a frightened Danielle frantically hide the body inside of her pull-out couch. This scenario plays alongside Grace’s sprint toward the apartment in a unique and ingenious way of building suspense! Instead of cutting back and forth, De Palma lets the two scenes play out alongside one another to highlight the immediacy and ratchet up the tension. It’s very Hitchockian.

“Sisters” is as Hitchcockian as a Brian De Palma film gets. It plays out just like one of Alfred’s thrillers, with the mystery of the plot slowly unraveling. In this case, we the audience already know who did the killing and what the twist is. The twist being that Danielle and her sister, Dominique Blanchion (Margot Kidder in a dual role), were conjoined twins; keyword being were. What we don’t know is when and how they got split apart and why Dominique is crazed.

This is why De Palma introduced Grace. She’s our makeshift detective, a feisty reporter who is determined to prove she witnessed a murder. She’s driven by selfishness, both professionally and personally. The professional aspect coming from landing a big story, the personal aspect coming from overcoming doubt. The police don’t trust her story, both because she’s already written puff pieces on police brutality and there’s no evidence to back up her claim. The former is a clever way to throw out the police investigation and add suspense to Grace’s search (as well as the initial investigation). It could easily come across as a cheap tactic, but it plays into Grace’s personality wonderfully. It exists not just to serve the plot, but in development of the protagonist.

For as sharp as De Palma’s script and direction are, he does stumble in Grace’s actual investigation. The murder and immediate police investigation took up the first forty-five minutes of the film, leaving only an hour left. Thirty minutes of that is in revealing the sisters’ backstory and the eventual finale. This leaves only thirty minutes into Grace’s investigation, which in turn gets rushed. It’s too quick and convenient for Grace to piece the puzzle together, even with the help of a private investigator in Joseph Larch (a scenery-chewing Charles Durning). This lessens the suspense of the search as well as Grace’s personal redemption.

While “Sisters” may be De Palma’s most Hitchcockian film, it doesn’t feel like a rip-off. De Palma has been labeled as such in the past, but I’ve never felt that was justified. His films may pay homage to the master of suspense, but they each have their own flavor to them. Case in point, the voyeurism in “Sisters.” This has been a trademark of De Palma’s and it’s present here. Not only do we have the aforementioned peeping tom angle, but the entirety of the mystery hinges on voyeurism. Grace’s fascination with the conjoined twins mirrors our own, with each new detail feeling like a dirty little secret. Sexuality as a whole is explored in one scene in which Emil reveals he can never shake the thought of Dominique when making love to Danielle. These acts of voyeurism drive the film, giving “Sisters” its own identity. Both Hitchcock and De Palma are concerned with character motivations just as much as the twists, but Brian is more curious about their sexual deviance.

Brian De Palma was inspired to make “Sisters” after reading a story on conjoined twins being separated. The photo provided in the article showed one sister as jovial and the other despondent. This one photo sparked a tale of madness in him, which I’m all the more thankful for.

MVT: Brian De Palma. Both his direction and script are sharp, with his fetish for the forbidden being the driving force behind everything. We feel as if we learn just as much about him as we do the characters in the film. “Sisters” wouldn’t be half as strong as it is without his touch.

Make or Break: The first forty-five minutes. While not being one-take, it all flows together seamlessly, feeling like one. The opening game show meet cute seguing into the one night stand seguing into the murder seguing into the investigation is done flawlessly! It moves so quick in effortless fashion that it’s quite the spectacle. It perfectly sets the tone for the film!

Final Score: 8/10

New Rose Hotel (1998)

Directed by: Abel Ferrara
Run time: 93 minutes

When I saw this movie in high school I was rather disappointed. I liked Johnny Mnemonic and when I found out this movie I had to watch it as well. Being a teenager and insufferable ass I found this movie boring. My thoughts at the time was that it need an 80's stereotypical covered in chrome stomping on some suit while in car chase with gun fire. I don't think my teenage self was wrong but I'm older and I have read most of what William Gibson written.  So a re watching was in order and it proved that my teenaged self was an idiot. 

The story is about two mega corporations, two experts in corporate extraction, a girl, and bio engineering rock star.  Hiroshi is a bio engineer character has the ability to walk into a lab and turn out numerous multimillion dollar patients. This makes his mega corporation Maas a lot of money and gives character anything he wants.  However this is not making him happy and he is looking for greener pastures.

This is where Fox (Christopher Walken) and X (Willem Dafoe) come in. They are freelance corporate extraction experts and they are more than willing to help character get out of Maas' grasp and working their rival Hosaka. In order to get close to Hiroshi they need an intermediary who can sell him on finding happiness with Hosaka. Luckily for X and Fox they found the perfect agent for this in Sandii (Asia Argento). So Fox and X train her to seduce Hiroshi so she can convince him to leave his wife and Maas. During Sandii's training Fox falls for her and slowly the simple extraction plan gets complicated

Time passes and Hiroshi follows Sandii from Maas to Hosaka. Fox and X help set up a lab on Hosaka's behalf for Hiroshi in Marrakesh. Fox and Sandii make plans to give up life as corporate pawns and get married. X learns that Marrakesh is being coming the site for an impromptu convention for  Hosaka's top scientists. This leads to Fox and X being distracted by their divergent interests. That is when the complication from earlier happens it forces everyone to deal with the fallout.







This movie is a rather faithful adaptation of the William Gibson short story with the same name. It gets the feel of Gibson's writing and presents the story in the same quick pace that his short stories take. The leads are great in both performance and casting. That being said, the run time being padded with cuts from unsteady surveillance camera footage really took me out of the film. Also there are long scenes of dialog that make the film seem to drag. I get the scenes in question are there to develop the characters and to cut down on cost but it would have been nice if they shorten those scenes and shown more of the world or shown more.

Overall my younger self needed a punch to the head, this is a solid cyberpunk film, and a good Gibson adaption. This is a must watch if you are a hardcore cyberpunk fan and or William Gibson fan.

Make or Break: The unsteady surveillance camera footage did a hell of a job of jarring me out of the film. I get it was made in the 90's but less would have been better.

MVT: This film shows smart phones years before they were a thing.

Score: 5.9 out of 10

The Sound of Horror (1965)

Professor Andre (Antonio Casas), along with archeological assistant Stravos (Francisco Piquer) and Andre’s niece Maria (Soledad Miranda), are blowing up cave walls in a secluded Grecian valley.  They discover some petrified, prehistoric eggs which just so happen to hatch (as these things do), and unleash an (mostly) invisible horror from out of time.

José Antonio Nieves Conde’s The Sound of Horror (aka El Sonido de la Muerte aka Sound from a Million Years Ago aka The Prehistoric Sound) is a cozy little creature feature.  It has a small cast of victims, an interesting take on an old premise, and some surprising black and white gore effects.  It deals, as just about all monster/science fiction films from the Fifties and well into the Sixties did (and much further back, to be sure, but there was a pointedness to the object lessons during this era), with the consequences of tampering with Nature and/or God’s domain.  Andre and his crew are destroying these caves to find a treasure (they use dynamite, which boggles the mind, especially if they want to find what they’re looking for intact).  Aside from the eggs, they also discover a very well-preserved Greek mummy, indicating that the caves were once an ancient burial ground (was there anything not buried in this cave?).  By uncovering these things, they offend the Powers That Be and incur their wrath.  These things were meant to stay buried, even though the process of discovery insists that they be dragged into the light.  This is the same paradigm at work with atomic-age horrors; For all the value culled from splitting the atom, it brought with it heavy negatives, and there are also the aspects we have not or cannot comprehend about these “breakthroughs” which may come back to bite humanity in its collective ass.  

More than this, the excavators’ motives are not completely pure.  Andre is hellbent on finding this supposed treasure, and at first blush, he appears to be doing this for the sake of historical exploration (“we cannot allow superstition to block the way of progress,” according to Andre; a line uttered by many a mad scientist).  However, it quickly becomes apparent that his true motivation is avarice.  Andre’s two buddies from World War Two, Asilov (James Philbrook) and Dorman (José Bódalo), show up with the second half of the map Andre has been using incorrectly up to this point.  This introduces Andre’s ulterior motives for his dig.  There is booty supposedly hidden in the caves by an ancient gang of international thieves, and the professor and his buddies plan to split it and live the high life (“a beautiful villa, fine clothes, and limousines”).  These three feel entitled to this loot from what they had to endure during the war, spending their youth “dancing to bullets.”  

Contrasting the old men’s cupidity are Stravos and Asilov’s driver/guide Pete (Arturo Fernández).  Stravos is content merely with the archeological discovery of the mummy.  To him, that’s “treasure enough,” and he ignores Andre and company’s further searching for the money in order to study the corpse in detail and sketch it (I suppose, like in many museums, flash photography is not allowed in archeological dig sites).  That the body is left lying disdainfully in the middle of the cave is further evidence of the disrespect that calls down the proverbial thunder on the heads of these people.  While everyone else talks about all the material things they want to buy with the money, Pete only wants to expand his tour guide business.  He is satisfied just polishing his truck (which he has dubbed Diana) and making time with Maria (can’t blame him for that).  Only the three old men have dollar signs in their eyes, but it is their actions that periclitate the group as a whole.

The film’s most unique aspect is right there in its title.  It makes excellent use of sound to convey menace and delivers frights.  The monster emits a high pitched skirl that rises and falls as it closes in on its prey.  This device, of course, has two purposes.  On a practical production level, it covers for budgetary restrictions in the costume department.  The only time we see the monster is at the very end, and then it’s shot from far away, and it is thankfully indistinct enough to not completely ruin everything that’s been built up beforehand (honestly, it does not look like it would impress if seen clearly).  Otherwise, there is a brief glimpse of the monster’s outline in double exposure, and the appearance of its footprints in flour.  That’s it.  Everything else is left to the viewer’s imagination, and while there’s something to be said for giving the audience what it wants, there’s equally something to be said for holding back and making the audience engage their minds in the creation of the fantasy.  On a stylistic level, it maintains the mystery of the creature, and it creates tension, because you never know precisely where the beast is (other than that it’s near you).  Additionally, the fact that the monster shrieks like a banshee is unnerving (and it should be noted, it is a very human shriek, almost as if the creature were mocking its victims).  

The clear pinnacle of the use of sound in horror is Robert Wise’s The Haunting, which was released two years prior to The Sound of Horror.  The major differences between these films and their aural displays are twofold.  One, Conde’s film uses a simple sound with slight variations on it.  Wise’s film used various sounds to exude the notion that the entire house is alive.  Two, whereas Wise combined his audio approach with a visual flair, Conde’s film is fairly static in feel.  His camera does move around some, and it’s usually well-motivated, but his aesthetic is still very staged and more economical than Wise in many ways (never uninterestingly, but certainly not innovatively).

Despite what the film gets right, however, its middle sags a bit more than it should after it becomes something of a siege movie.  At this point, what tensions there are between the characters melt away, and the film simply waits for the next attack.  It fills this time with characters sleeping and chatting idly.  Funnily enough, there are just enough moments of action to pep things up occasionally, so it’s not a total loss.  That being said, this is a damned good low budget horror film.  I’m surprised The Sound of Horror isn’t brought up more often among genre enthusiasts, because it really deserves to be.  Seek it out (it’s on Youtube in full, if you’re interested).

MVT:  I appreciate the conceit of the film, largely because it’s something that wasn’t done often at the time, and even if it were, wasn’t consistently successful enough to be noteworthy.

Make or Break:  The first kill of the film works in spades.  The unsettling cry of the monster along with the rather well done gore effects actually captured my full attention.

Score:  7/10