The Friedkin Connection

The Friedkin Connection

 The Good, The Bad and The Really Ugly

 by Morgan P Salvo 

I truly thought William Friedkin had a much more illustrious career.  Yet when I look back I find he has his share of some real truly great films and some horrific duds


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The French Connection
Gene Hackman deserved his Academy Award for his role as Manhattan homicide detective Popeye Doyle who furiously tracks down a heroin ring. Boasts one of the best car chases of all time (for the time) rivaling Steve McQueen’s Bullitt.

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The Exorcist

 The movie that has scared audiences around the world for decades still does today. The tried and true version stays close to the best seller by William Peter Blatty and gave us our first glimpses into demonic possession not to mention a little girl cursing, growing legions on her face, spinning her head around and puking green bile into a priest’s face.

Sorcerer

The most overlooked film in history. This is a remake of the French film Wages of Fear with an international cast headed by Roy Schieder about fugitives from the law driving dynamite across treacherous terrain through South America. This is NOT an evil magician movie as people thought. Sorcerer was named after one of the trucks used to transport the dynamite, but was just too misleading. Containing Schieder’s best performance ever, with a throbbing soundtrack by Tangerine Dream the dazzling filmmaking and editing are mesmerizing while the jaw dropping suspense causes unruly tension. This is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It’s in my top ten list movies of all time and the poster hangs on my wall. It is a masterpiece.

 

 

Cruising

Al Pacino stars as a cop who goes undercover in the S&M gay community to catch a serial killer. Very disjointed to say the least and a big hit in Europe. But after viewings over several years it still feels too arty and messed up but the strange ambiguous ending makes sense and is pretty good. Pacino’s performance is also strange and it’s pretty damn funny to see him snort poppers and dance with men at a club.

  

 

 Bug
 This flick put Michael Shannon on the map with one of the greatest performances of all time. Perfectly showcasing the beautifully demented script by Tracy Letts, A well-written psychological mess, this is an elaborate guessing game as to what’s real, imagined and/or manipulated. A flagrant study on the psychosis of loneliness and madness, this is all about paranoia and surreal to the hilt.

The Guardian

I am probably the only person who likes this flick.  This is one of those nanny-gone-wrong flicks with a twist: she’s a druid and wants to sacrifice the child to the tree god/monsters. Lots of slime in this one.

The Boys in the Band

Based on the play of the same name this was one of the first openly gay themed stage performance and flicks of the time. It’s all about a birthday party that reveals dysfunctions and bad attitudes stemming from the intake of way too much alcohol.

Decade Under the Influence

A very cool “must-see” documentary about the anti-establishment flicks of the 70’s. Rebellious and heavily creative, this was a time when producers, directors, writers and actors all went at it with the same integrity. A time long forgotten at this point. Friedkin is one of the most animated and vocal interviewees.

 
To Live and Die in LA

Great cast yet intensely lame and riveting at the same time. A hell-bent Secret Service agent ( CSI’s William Peterson) will stop at nothing to bring down the counterfeiter who killed his partner. A revenge flick that defines the 80’s and plays out like homage to Sam Peckinpah and Grand Theft Auto.

The Hunted

Truly a WTF were they thinking movie, Pitting acting giants Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, one a deep-woods tracker the other a trained assassin, both survivalists duking it out in the wild … ridiculous from start to finish. Filmed in Silver Falls, Oregon.

Jade

Critics hated this detective cheesy axe murderer yarn. I think it has to do with an inherent communal hatred for David Caruso or the teaming with Paul Verhoeven’s screenwriter pal Joe Eszterhas. Great chase scene where an angry Caruso gets stuck in traffic during a Chinatown parade. So bad it’s good.

 













The Birthday Party

Teaming with playwright Harold Pinter they bring to life the big screen version of Pinter’s vision about a lodger in a seaside boarding house who is menaced by two mysterious strangers who berate him by asking idiotic, unanswerable questions and then throw him a party. Thanks to Robert Shaw, Patrick Magee and Danny Nichols for they absolutely rule.

Killer Instincts

Dysfunction spirals toward depravity 

by Morgan P Salvo

Killer Joe’s opening credits gives us the head’s up on the second collaboration of writer Tracy Letts and Director William Friedkin (first was Bug). Garnishing an NC-17 rating due to some full frontal rampant nudity and some kick ass sexual simulation, there is an even weirder vibe that hangs on the entire flick resulting in a need to wash out your brain afterward.

Here again the writing/directing  duo tries to reinvent the critical fame of Bug with this screwed up potboiler, but Killer Joe allows the subject matter to only half translate to film. The whole viewing time I was wishing I was watching the play and not this mostly defective film version. But what is weird about this movie is that, even for all its flaws, it remains this extremely haunting memory. Replaying scenes in my head and the strange, warped, uncomfortable feeling I got from watching this flick has somehow morphed into the same feeling of recalling a dream, like ‘did that really happen?’

The plot is pretty far fetched but allows some diabolical fun. From the wrecked world of trailer trash comes the tale of a supremely dysfunctional family who gets wind of a detective (Matthew McConaughey) who moonlights as a hit man and they want the matriarch of the family dead so they can rake in the cash from her insurance policy. This major plot reels into minor sub text about what makes messed up people tick way more than worrying about the logistics of being believable, although the twists Killer Joe takes are pretty darn good and disturbing.

Reveling in demented glee, McConaughey seems to be having as much fun as he did in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Matt fares pretty well as the cowboy detective who relates with soft spoken terror: a menacing monster capable of torture and humiliation, but I focused more on the fact that he whistles when he says words that in ‘s’. At first all the acting felt off kilter and forced except for Gina Gershon and Juno Temple who are both excellent. Then I actually put my finger on it halfway through -- I wanted two of lead actors, Thomas Haden Church and Emile Hirsh, to be different actors; almost anyone (aside from Justin Timberlake) because there was something inherently wrong with their delivery making most of their scenes a chore to get through. The best guy in the whole flick was Marc Macaulay, a solid character actor since the ’80s with 134 movies and/or TV episodes under his belt, who gives us scene-stealing screen time that indelibly smears the mind.

Director Friedkin juices up this flick with some great locations, nice bloodletting-violence and insanely wrong sexual situations. To enhance how Friedkin and Letts feel toward their audience, the assault of vindictiveness (not so coincidentally) plays along with how the characters in the film feel about themselves. Friedkin/ Letts have no regard for anyone else, which can be a good thing as it remains in the realm of art. It’s the imprint this flick makes on your brain where the impact lies. Unfortunately in so doing we lose the grasp of why and what’s happening on screen one time too many and that proves too distracting.

After a ton of disjointed weird dialogue, mounting danger, sexual innuendo and some mistake-ridden editing, the third act of the movie gets extremely engrossing. It will make you forgive the questionable acting and the cavernous loopholes. An earlier twist that is somewhat “thriller movie” based turns a new corner and we are at the crossroads of the sadomasochistic and disturbed. The unanswered questions of certain things fall into place still leaving everything totally ambiguous. But the wretched characters rear their ugly agendas in full force as dysfunction goes brutal and turbo. We begin to witness certain things that baffle, shock, titillate and disgust simultaneously. It’s a crescendo of a climax that almost makes the wait worth it.

Morbidity and lurid pleasure are batted around like softball practice, and there are some really quotable take home lines like calling Colonel Sanders’ grub  “K FRY C” or when Gershon is told she is “fumigating the gates of hell” after spraying on too much perfume.

Killer Joe is one slow burn towards an inevitable “didn’t-see-all-of-that-coming” ending. When all is said and done, this tall Texan tale coming from the pen of an Oklahoman playwright and the director of The French Connection is a prime example of hit and miss filmmaking. But due to the nasty weird-ass stuff battling it out on the screen this flick is worth a look and will undeniably stick with you forever.

Killer Joe

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon, Marc Macaulay

Directed by William Friedkin

Rated NC-17

3 stars

Exorcise Your Rights

 Exorcism Movies have a high rate of sucking. There are a slew of terrible, and I mean god-awful, grade z, drive-in, bad Exorcism flicks, too many to mention but let me take a stab a few highlights.

The Exorcist

William Peter Blatty’s best seller comes to life in the big granddaddy of them all. When it came out I thought it sucked and was laughably bad but now I appreciate it after the flock of copycat regurgitations. Groundbreaking a for its day William Friedkin keeps the tension up and his excellent camera work and state of the art special effects (for the time) are top notch. It’s still overly quoted; I don’t anyone who hasn’t said, “Your mother sucks cocks in hell.” 

The Exorcist II: the Heretic

John Boorman’s (Deliverance) effort to add insanity to the overall feel of this flick succeeds, however it does not succeed in telling a coherent story. Worth a look for Richard Burton’s over the top performance which is a laugh riot

Exorcist III
 Heavy hitter George C. Scott stars and screenwriter William Peter Blatty directs with some very cool cinematic tricks but the thing to watch is Brad Dourif’ performance of epic Shakespearean proportions.

 





Exorcist: The Beginning aka Dominion

Before they exhausted all the demonic trimming from this worn out franchise Paul Shrader (American Gigolo/Affliction) had to put in his two cents in an attempt to tell a prequel. This abysmal \creep-fest is another testament to Shrader’s troubled soul and scattered focus: a boring mess.

Abby

The Blaxploitation answer to exorcizing demons is one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen. The line is actually uttered by the priest at a cocktail party “Leave her body ‘demond’ (yes the d is pronounced) and get out of here!!!”

The Rite

Anthony Hopkins cannot save this flick and in fact embarrasses himself by talking on such a stereotypical overdone part. It’s not a good sign when an exorcism movie pulls down a PG-13 rating. This means the amount of blood and/or cursing is probably insufficient. Hopkins once again glints his eyes, rattles off cantankerous innuendoes and sinister wisecracks in heavy makeup as CGI-enhanced veins pop out of his skin. Think an even more possessed Hannibal Lecter.  Another bogus entry “based on true events.”

The Unborn

Not scary enough to be good and too serious to be "so bad it's good." The gab-fest generic possession story goes beyond absurd and way beyond caring if it makes sense or not. Using the same material as Possession, this debacle is a horrid piece of symbolism and illiteracy. The Unborn's verbal nonsense, which tries to set the film up as a Jewish Exorcist, is enough to numb your mind. Most people will only sit through this atrocity waiting for the next jolt-scare, vicious blue-eyed-fang-face, unexplained slimy tentacles to squirm out of a wall or the next barf scene

The Last Exorcism
 A lot of movies piss me off but this one takes the cake. Showing so much promise then disemboweled by the putrid ending is a shame because finally I thought someone had mastered the genre. This was a brilliant little masterpiece that opted for such a cop-out ending that it ruined everything it had so gallantly strived for.

 
Teenage Exorcist

80’s drive-in schlock movie extraordinaire Fred Olen Ray has Michael Berryman of Hills Have Eyes and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest fame starring in this ridiculously cute silly and sexy exorcists movie for the kids. What will they think of next?  A neurotic grad student is transformed into a raven-haired, leather and lingerie-clad seductress by a demonic master. Campy beyond redemption.

The Unholy

This has the longest and most extreme amount of blood vomiting in any movie to date. Ben Cross stars a conflicted (for a change) priest battling a demon Daesidarius, or “The Unholy” that is systematically killing off priests. A gore-ific flick.

Lorna the Exorcist aka Exorcism

Okay, this is the one you’ve been waiting for: The masterpiece of Eurotrash horror from Jess Franco. Beginning with some sadomasochistic steamy lesbian action we move on to ridiculous plot, wretched acting, hilarious dubbing and great shots of Italy photography. This also includes go-go dancing, swinging cocktail parties, racy séances, lecherous priests, blood sacrifices, tons of nudity and a really insidious plot in other words, my kind of exorcist movie. Chalk up another entry in the pantheon of perversity from the demented mind of Eurosleaze maestro Franco.

 

Whatever Happened to Baby Em?

Enhancing Clichés and Opening Pandora’s Hasidic Box

By Morgan P Salvo

Good Lord, another Exorcism movie and with the tagline “based on true events”? Holy crap the only thing worse is a haunted house movie with the same claim to fame. Yet The Possession achieves the near impossible in that it makes us care for the two central characters Clyde (Jeffery Dean Morgan) and Emily “Em”  (Natasha Calis). This hasn’t happened since the original Exorcist where we sat on the edge of our seat out of concern for Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair and Jason Miller.

Filmmakers who choose this subgenre cannot escape the inherent generic formula. All they can do is embellish on a tired old tale. Most of the time it’s done with smoke and mirrors: overdone special effects and /or piling on the bone snapping, contorting and gallons of gory blood oozing. Here Danish Director Bornedal (Nightwatch, Just Another Love Story) brings some nice ambient tricks to the table while setting a somber mood amidst the stereotypical shenanigans and exploring what the hell is going on with Emily and the box. But yes, there are a slew of special effects, like a hand in the larynx, swarms of moths either in the air or dive-bombing into mouths, droopy eyes rolling around while turning white, an insanely stupid MRI scene, oh, and wind - it seems all exorcism movies come with their own wind. Plus the possessed always have to barf up something, if not green pea soup or blood than some kind of insect, in this case moths.

The thin plot mildly thickens as basketball coach Clyde, saddened by divorce, tries to keep it all together with his weekend visits with his daughters (Calis and Madison Davenport) while dealing with his over-bitchy wife (Kyra Sedgwick) and her anal new boyfriend (Grant Show). Things are okay until Clyde buys Em a box at a garage sale. Then this flick can’t make up its mind if it’s a demonic box story, possession movie or a new installment of Hellraiser, but it wants to be Jewish more than anything. So following in the footsteps of The Unborn, soon we’re in Little Jerusalem, New York and the yarmulkes are flying.

The story is actually based on the article “Jinx in a Box” about a small wooden cabinet that went up for auction on EBay containing two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and of course a “dybbuk," (literally translated: a dislocated spirit) popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller said the box was haunted and had caused bad luck and weird paranormal stunts. The prologue of the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man covered this facet of Jewish folklore, as did Gary Oldman’s Rabbi in The Unborn. Of course the Coens’ version was more entertaining than this entire flick and much shorter. We get it --- evil possession is not just delegated to Catholicism. Jews can have demons, too.

The Possession covers all the demonic bases and leaves plenty of room for pathos and emoting by the actors, except for maybe Jewish hip hop musician Matisyahu who looks like he doesn’t know where he is the entire time. And thanks to the performances of Morgan and Calis we experience their pain, sorrow and fear. Sedgwick on the other hand over acts every nuance she can wring out of the tepid script, and my personal favorite was the brief encounter with the principal who obviously comes from the “you-gotta-look-like-a-principal” casting company.

Hokey throughout, there are glimpses of The Shining and The Omen and a great horror movie soundtrack yet too many fades to black. The overworked lines “Em’s not here” and “Noooo…take me instead!” are actually uttered.

I get the feeling that there’s no good way to end one of these flicks and this one is no exception. Possession’s climax is a rush job exorcism in the basement of a working hospital where they make a ton of noise with caterwauling incantations, wind howling and little girls screaming. Where the hell is hospital security?

Even though Possession has all the makings of a disaster, it never veers toward campy or “so-bad-it’s-good”, but rather falls into this bland category of “I’ve seen worse”. So I have to say, no harm no foul. This flick plays out with such conviction that it’s hard to fault it even if it is an exorcism movie.  

The Possession

Starring Jeffery Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick, Madison Davenport, Natasha Calis, Grant Show, Matisyahu

Directed by Ole Bornedal

Rated PG-13

2 Stars