Tits and Gore

If ‘78 is often considered the Year of the Vietnam War Movie because of the box-office and awards-season battle between Coming Home and The Deer Hunter, it’s informative that there is comparatively little critical work involving Coming Home, whereas The Deer Hunter has graduated to the pantheon of the classics. And I am not the guy who is going to tell you that they are in the same league. But where The Deer Hunter excels by virtue of its epic storytelling, Coming Home takes a more intimate path, and it’s an ultimately rewarding journey.

Of course, Coming Home is a very different examination of Vietnam compared to The Deer Hunter. It’s less a war movie than a post-mortem of a war movie, examining the casualties of war without ever putting the viewer in country. Surprisingly, it’s a film about relationships, and the ability (or inability) of veterans and their loved ones to communicate in the wake of the war. There’s an interesting, magnetic polarity at work; as Sally finds herself jaded by successive degrees as she comes to terms with the reality of the war, Luke is lifted out of the morass of post-war apathy and depression by Sally. Indeed, the film is most effective when it follows their uneasy intimacy to unexpected places. When Luke and Sally consummate their love, we are talked through the involved minutiae of have sex with a paraplegic man, which for me was the unquestioned emotional apex of the film. If anything, the difficulties begin here, since this moment of catharsis is only at the movie’s halfway point.

Where the film falters is in its extreme inconsistency of tone. There are quite a few moments of comic relief, but where one may succeed in easing the audience’s tension, the next may be simply jarring. The speed with which Sally seems to abandon her fervent love for Bob is also a bit difficult to swallow, the obvious physical attraction of Jon Voight over Bruce Dern notwithstanding. Why does she so spontaneously take up with an abusive disabled man immediately in the absence of her naive but much-loved husband? That Sally shows charity to a stranger from high school and not her husband despite the fact that both have been seriously wounded in battle (even if one is a physical disability and the other mental) seriously undermines the film’s message about America’s social responsibility for our veterans.

Still, Coming Home is amazingly complex in its portrayal of the variety of veteran experiences, and the three capital-letter Powerhouse Performances from Voight, Dern and Jane Fonda are unforgettable. The soundtrack is stunning, not simply because of its scope (Dylan, The Stones, The Beatles, Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel) but because of the filmmakers’ ingenious use of these songs to heighten emotions and accent moments while shifting in and out of background and diagesis. There is a whole paper just waiting to be written about the use of music in this film! But I digress; my review grows long!

Though comparisons are inevitable, I left Coming Home with a hesitancy to hold it to the same standards as The Deer Hunter. Both are invaluable documents of wartime experience, and both feel uncomfortably urgent as the Iraq War extends off into infinity. Coming Home may have structural problems and a messy emotional arc, but it manages to stay on the rails and deliver an eloquent examination of the personal costs of war.

Oh, Jean Rollin… What does it even mean when I say that this is probably my favorite Rollin film? As with his contemporaries Joe D’Amato and Jess Franco, you don’t go into a Rollin film expecting excellence - you expect abstract, face-melting sleaze! If you are like me, you will struggle through vast fields of mediocrity from these directors in search of those few glorious moments of utter, mind-blowing transgression. But does Grapes of Death deliver? Cheesy, creative gore? Check! An endless parade of impressively-endowed nekkid wimmin? But of course!

Make no mistake, the camerawork is often impressive, utilizing natural light to the fullest. There is a series of amazing tableau shots and beautiful, surreal tracking sequences through the ruined French countryside. There are even a couple sincere shivers, such as the reverberating scream of a blind girl, Lucy, being dragged off to her death. But let me be honest - the real thrills are to be found in the utterly bizarre shock centerpieces! Sure, it’s a little creepy when Lucy’s screams echo through the burning French village; but get ready to drop a fucking load in your pants when she is subsequently crucified nude to a chateau door and decapitated by her boyfriend while he moans, “Luuuucy! I looooove you!” Then he makes out with the severed head. With tongue. Oh! Jean Rollin!

In the abstract, Grapes of Death is interesting if only because it holds the distinction of being the first French zombie film. Granted, I only know of one other French zombie movie, 2004’s They Came Back, but to me it’s fascinating that a film as epically weird as Grapes of Death came out the same year as Romero’s sublime Dawn of the Dead, the standard-bearer for this tiny, beloved sub-genre. True, Rollin’s antagonists seem more like really depressed people with leprosy than zombies, and there is no great philosophical or sociological corollary on display, but there are some fantastic set pieces that will certainly please the zombie aficionado in your life.

We went to see the remake of Halloween, and this is the first time I’ve seen the original. So yeah, I’m that person. I’m that sixteen-year-old who thinks Sheryl Crow wrote “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” From Mike’s extensive disclaimer (about how lots of techniques and style choices would seem trite because they are everywhere in horror films now, but this was the first), I was worried. But after watching for awhile, I really started to get into the time period and the style, and I think it’s one of the best horror flicks I’ve seen.

From the very start of the film, the highly voyeuristic camerawork, which intentionally fails to provide an “antecedent” or reference for the point of view, is not only jarring, but it also sets up the entire style of the remainder of the film. Ignorance provides the basis for the horror in this film. We don’t know why this young child turns homicidal on Halloween. We don’t know why he wears a mask. And lots of times, we don’t even know where he is.

Whereas the recent remake fills in some of these gaps in information, the original uses the simple idea of less is more to its advantage, creating a creepy mood by forcing viewers to fill in the blanks for themselves. I think many modern horror films could benefit from this technique.

Before viewing Coming Home, I expected it to be a political and social commentary on the Vietnam War. But Coming Home presents an array of problems with American life generally—not just with war. From marriage to patriotism, this flick uses emotion to drive its thesis: that Americans should do a better job of questioning reality.

The first is the idea of the perfect husband and wife. Characters (and presumably, Americans) seem to feel like a perfect marriage is both required and exhaustingly unattainable. Several times at the beginning of the film characters make reference to Sally Hyde as “the captain’s wife,” with an intonation of simultaneous envy and disgust. Luke Martin is particularly harsh toward Sally at the beginning of the movie, though toward the end he is a stalwart supporter of Sally, both in her independence and in her attempt to revitalize her relationship with her husband; he understands her situation and motivations. After the compelling sex scene between Sally and Luke, Sally reveals that Luke has just given her her first orgasm. This doesn’t speak well of the traditional American marriage at that time. A man paralyzed from the waist down gets a woman off the first time he’s with her; whereas, her fully-abled husband couldn’t provide that sort of intimacy in the decades that they had been together. It’s striking. It’s almost as if these people have to be broken (whether physically or emotionally) to let their guard down enough so that they really need pleasure and seek it out in the open and productive way that actually leads to comfort and, well, orgasm.

The marriage problem also translates to a problem of sexism, which leads also to a problem of masculine insecurity. Several times throughout the film, Sally and Bob talk about how Bob doesn’t want Sally to work. If Sally worked, Bob would feel like his masculinity, his motivation for being the perfect military man, would be negated. In the scene when Bob and Sally Hyde see each other for the first time since Bob is sent home, they relate in a very telling way by talking to each other through a chain-link fence, while walking toward the gate. Though they can see each other, there is a meshy barrier between them, preventing that previously discussed intimacy from being realized. Also, they are moving, like they’ve been moving through life. It’s like they’ve been so busy moving toward a goal, toward perfection, toward being a good couple, that they haven’t had a chance to just stop and BE together, to just touch each other and look at each other. Getting caught up in the idea of their life together has masked the sadness of the reality of their unfulfilling life together.

Coming Home also effortlessly takes on the problem of patriotism in the United States. There are seemingly endless references to the inhumanity of the American soldiers—of their turning people into “gooks” and ears used to make necklaces and heads on poles to intimidate the V.C. But all these images are less compelling than one of my favorite scenes in the film; it features a man reading his speech about “What July 4th Means to Me” in what seems like a voiceover while we watch group after group of crippled soldiers in wheelchairs interacting, playing games, just hanging out, trying to find joy in what remains of their lives. Is patriotism an end in itself? I feel like patriotism and religion fill the same hole in people’s lives, but it takes paralysis or death for a person to realize that the hole can’t really ever be filled. How does it help to believe in god and/or country when you’re dead or broken? It simply doesn’t.

Coming Home protests. It says, “Think about how your life really is, not about some ideal that’s ultimately unattainable, and even if attainable, unfulfilling.” I think it’s a pretty noble message.

I think this might be the first flick we’ve reviewed for the site so far that actually contains tits and gore in that fun filmic unit sort of way. And boy, the gore! Maybe it’s because these folks were French, and they can tolerate more gooey, stinky things than your average American, but this gore was so gross! I actually had to cover my eyes and turn away a couple of times, mostly due to severe gooeyness. The first instance of extreme gooeyness was the sad zombie dude on the train. His face was really leaky even at the beginning of the scene, but by the end, he was yanking off different pieces of his goo face, and it was just absolutely disgusting. This continued and just got more disgusting as the film played out.

Besides Grapes of Death being really gory in a pus-heavy sort of way, it’s also particularly creepier than your standard zombie movie because the zombies are so much more coherent than they usually are. Since they know what’s going on in these disturbing moments of clarity, yet still have the zombie’s intrinsic homicidal impulse, I almost felt guilty watching their blood-thirsty escapades. Or dirty. Yeah, I felt dirty watching the characters go after their relatives, while plaintively muttering, “Je t’aime, je t’aime” in their sad little zombie voices.

And speaking of dirty, many of the scenes in Grapes of Death reminded me more of porn than other zombie flicks. In particular, in the final scene where our protagonist finds out her boyfriend has been turned, the way the blood shoots and drips onto her face combined with the angle of the camera looks more like a cumshot than a tragic denouement. Interesting.

On an unrelated note, as a foodie, since thinking of France makes me immediately think of wine, I thought it was really funny and clever that the zombification delivery system was tainted wine. Cute.

Okay, so honestly, I’ve never been the biggest fan of action, and martial arts rank right up there at the top of the list of what I don’t enjoy. That being said, since meeting Mike, I’ve reevaluated lots of things—from winter to the idea of spawning—and action flicks couldn’t be that far behind!

So when we first started watching Drunken Master, it was really annoying, like a combination of the Three Stooges and Rush Hour. But it got better. The slapstickiness of the first half of the film was offset by actual humor in the second half. I can see how this flick has influenced lots of future action films, and I’m looking forward to seeing this influence as we finish with 1978 and head forward to the present!

I’m a Jackie Chan junkie, and so it was a pleasure to watch Drunken Master, the film that catapulted Jackie to stardom when it was released in Hong Kong in 1978. It takes the familiar martial arts story of Wong Fei Hung (a role also played by Jet Li during his early career in the Once Upon a Time in China movies) and turns it on its ear, making Wong a big fucking jackass who likes stealing food and groping women. It’s a pretty typical HK screwball comedy high concept, albeit translated onto a very atypical historical figure!

Druken Master definitely suffers from a weak first act, although there are some excellent fight sequences as the story develops. Even at this early stage in his career, you can see Jackie’s trademark, lyrically-choreographed kung fu and stuntwork taking shape. There are also some sincere, huge laughs, mostly once then-66-year-old Simon Yuen takes to the screen as Jackie’s titular drunken mentor. This was one of Yuen’s last roles, and you’ll have a hard time believing some of the acrobatic stunts he pulls off in his advanced years, although there are a few noticeable uses of a body double.

Like most fight films of the period, the plot is mostly an excuse to usher in the next kung fu exhibition. Thankfully the fighting is uniformly excellent (as well as the comedic training sequences, which show off Chan’s admirable physique), particularly the final battle, where Chan seamlessly utilizes eight different forms of drunken kung-fu to dispatch his foe. Of particular note is that this is also one of the few chances you will have to see Jackie consistently get the shit kicked out of him. His stunt falls are truly inspirational, with more spins and somersaults than you can imagine.

Though not one of my favorites, Drunken Master offers a welcome look at Jackie’s early development, featuring some great laughs and just about the most kung-fu per minute of any martial arts film you’ll ever watch! If you really want to get into the spirit, have some drinks handy for your screening; in the immortal words of Simon Yuen, “Power and wealth are to no avail - let only our drinking prevail!”

It’s not my intention to be throwing around high-star ratings willy-nilly so early in our endeavor, but I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize what I believe are the best movies out there simply because I have this nagging feeling that there is some kind of predetermined allowance of nigh-perfect films that I can’t exceed. And so we come to The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino’s otherwordly epic of the Vietnam War.

Early on in The Deer Hunter, Mike (Robert DeNiro) uses a bullet as part of an object lesson. “This is this,” he says. “This is not something else. This is this.” He’s setting up the major theme of the picture’s first act, the idea of immutability and America, about the steel mill and its community and its vision of the war as a microcosm of American thought. A is A - why question; why change?

Indeed, the film is so powerful precisely because it thoroughly demolishes this well-developed superstructure. Russian roulette may be a metaphor for the arbitrariness of war, but moreover it demolishes free will, it demolishes immutability. The certainties of blue-collar thought and immigrant struggle are revealed as defense mechanisms against a country that is openly hostile to both; God is erased from the sky, from the minds of the characters and hearts of the audience. The holy trinity of the departing soldiers is torn asunder by torture and glued together again by three tiny bullets, all symbols erased and replaced with the random and tangible. The soldiers are inexorably drawn to the game of roulette again and again, because any immutable judgements about character or religion or the nature of a bullet are dwarfed by this last true certainty, the inevitability of death.

In the final, heart-breaking tableau, the cast mourns the death of their America as much as their friend. Americans, here and now, may have lost the ability to create another film of this caliber without reaping scorn or apathy. We seem content to leave it to our forebearers (and our forebearers’ art) to answer our most difficult questions about patriotism.

What do you say about The Deer Hunter? It’s just so good. I suppose the most striking aspect of the film for me was the Russian roulette theme. As metaphor for war, especially such a difficult and controversial war, Russian roulette is so perfect. Each time we go into war as a country, each time a person is deployed, we play Russian roulette with our lives, with our “honor,” with our families, with everything. What is there to prove? What does a person prove by going to war, by playing Russian roulette with his life? One shot, and Nick is dead. But why does Nick want to die so badly? Why can’t he go home and deal with life after war? Maybe he realizes the game has already been played out—that by playing at all, he has already chosen his fate.

This was my first opportunity to see this film, and admittedly, from the beginning, I couldn’t quite grasp the significance of the title, of the deer hunter theme. But as the Russian roulette sequences played out it became clearer and clearer. When DeNiro’s character, Michael, first vaingloriously states his belief in “one shot,” in reference to killing a deer in a single attempt, it seems like a noble idea. But when the idea of one shot is applied to human life in the Russian roulette sequences, the whole theme changes. In some ways I think this film is addressing life in general. We literally have one attempt—one shot—and what is the point of wasting it? What is the point of wasting our own lives, or worse, the lives of others over conflicts that no one even believes in? This film really made the problems of the Vietnam War seem relevant for me, even three decades after it was released.

Debbie Does Dallas is one of those much-talked about porn classics that few people have actually taken the time to see. For my part, I’ve seen it about eight times over the course of the past decade and used it as a teaching tool. I’ve watched two different modern remakes and I even took in the off-Broadway musical version during my first year in the Big Apple. Theoretically, I should be the biggest Debbie fan in the world! But in the final analysis, its originality notwithstanding, it’s a difficult picture to recommend outside the context of its obvious historical importance.

And Debbie Does Dallas is definitely an important work. It may features all the hallmarks of early porn: a straightforward narrative story, unremarkable-looking actors, a funky if erratic original score and lots of hair; but what we may perceive as a relative lack of sophistication today was unique and groundbreaking in 1978. Debbie is arguably the first modern teen sex comedy, the progenitor of that storied genre, from Porky’s to American Pie. In fact, it is so liberally cribbed from within this genre that it begs the question: why haven’t more people seen it?

Honestly, because it hasn’t stood the test of time; to be fair, almost no films from the dawn of porn have. The producers of early theatrical releases of this nature could not possibly have predicted the omnipresence of pornography in modern culture. At the touch of a button, we can experience a vast array of unimaginable sexual activities; the curve of filth trends ever upwards - nothing stays shocking for long. Narrative porn has gone the way of the dodo - its power to titillate long ago surpassed its ability to entertain. And in this world of infinite sexual possibilities, no one wants to watch the same porn they watched last week, much less an awkward, half-funny mess made thirty years ago.

These days, Debbie is a museum piece, ancient history; she got old, and though we’re all content to examine her legacy, no one wants to watch her fuck anymore.