Miracle on 34th Street

 

Miracle on 34^th Street (1947)

Dir. and written by George Seaton, Story by Valentine Davies

Starring Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn, Natalie Wood

 

Is it possible to be both a universally acknowledge classic and still misunderstood and underrated? I submit to you that MIRACLE ON 34^TH ST (the 1947 version, obviously) is exactly that. You’ve probably seen it. Along with the 1951 Alastair Sim SCROOGE and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, (and maybe throw in the actually-not-very-Christmas-heavy WHITE CHRISTMAS) it’s one of the few movies from the first half of the Twentieth Century which is still required Holiday viewing for many people, myself certainly included. And of course, it’s easy to see why: it’s a delight through and through, charming, whimsical, and, it must be said, exceptionally funny. Not just in the polite, slightly patronizing way we often talk about classic old comedies, where you acknowledge that I’m sure it was very funny back then; no, to this very day, even after watching it dozens of times over the years, I still frequently laugh out loud.

But even so, I suspect that it seems so effortlessly charming that most folks just take it for granted that it’s simple. When I mentioned to a hip cinema pal that this was my favorite Christmas movie, he kind of rolled his eyes at me. When I protested, he was dismissive: ‘Oh, they think Santa Claus is crazy, it’s like they’re putting Christmas on trial!’ he jibed, insisting the movie is a thin parable about the importance of belief, with all the religious implications for the nominally Christian holiday that accompany such a reading. That is, in fact, exactly where the horrendously ill-conceived 1994 John-Hughes-produced remake goes with the material, ending (SPOILERS for the 1994 version) with a Judge, apparently in a fit of religious ecstasy, suddenly declaring that because a dollar bill has the words "in God we trust" on the back, Jesus is real, and therefore the old man in his courtroom over an assault charge is legally Santa Claus, case dismissed.

As a confirmed non-believer, this isn’t the kind of moral message I’m likely to find especially appealing, and my friend found it very amusing that I’d swallowed this old-fashioned conservative hokum. But I maintain that he is quite wrong, at least in the case of the 1947 version (hereafter, “the good version”). While the topic of belief is definitely in the air, I would suggest that the end result is anything but a simple argument for blind faith. It has, in fact, a remarkably secular outlook, especially for 1947 – but even more so, it has a surprisingly unsentimental, sharp-eyed view of the world. Its genius is to somehow entwine a sardonic perspective on human smallness with a subtly bemused appreciation for our fallible, perhaps even hubristic inclination to imagine that we’re capable of better – and to take both perspectives seriously.

The thing that really makes MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET special is that it is, in a lot of ways, a legitimately cynical movie. It sets itself up as fiercely modern (by 1947 standards), plunging us immediately into the world of a hard-driving executive who is also a single mom (Maureen O'Hara, RIO GRANDE, known for her many on-screen pairings with John Wayne, which makes it odd that her co-star here is named John Payne. Ain’t life too funny sometimes?). In 1947, this was certainly an unusual, perhaps borderline scandalous, situation, especially for a Christmas movie. But the movie does not judge her for it; in fact, it is openly impressed by her tenacity. Sure, by the film’s end she will wind up safely in a heterosexual romantic relationship, with a restored nuclear family. But, crucially, she ends up there on her own terms. Not once does the movie suggest that her life or femininity is stunted by being a tough businesswoman and single mother. Her story has been one of triumph over adversity, and O’Hara is the absolute embodiment of a flinty force of nature, unwavering, indominable, always in control, always thoughtful about how she wants to arrange her life.* And not in a cheesy Hallmark Christmas Movie kind of way, although the standard plot about how the uptight businesswoman finding love with an easy-going small-town artisan would almost certainly not exist without her; no, she is happy, is fulfilled. She enjoys her job, she loves her daughter, she doesn’t need anything else, although right from the start she’s certainly open to the idea of romance, if one comes along that fits into her world. But she can be comfortable in looking for love because she’s confident that she can deal with anything that life could throw at her. The only challenge she has yet to overcome is the idea that life could be anything other than adversity to be beaten.

Which is, of course, the dramatic core of the movie. Friendly, eccentric Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn, THEM!, giving one of the most irresistibly charming screen performances of all time) waltzes into the lives of savvy, driven professionals –tough businesspeople, clever lawyers, canny politicians—and simply stands there, refusing to play their game, refusing to acknowledge that the world is a hard place where only the strong survive. Cheerfully --but resolutely-- refusing to admit that sanity is defined by your ability to beat the other guy. By his very existence, he challenges the defensive posture O’Hara and the rest of the modern world accept as basic common sense.

Of course, he is crazy. Harmless, certainly; likeable, certainly; but nevertheless utterly delusional. The movie loves Kris, but never seriously flirts with the idea that he might literally be a mystical figure. But his delusion allows him to do the one thing that no one else in the movie is immediately able to do: see the best in people. Not that it’s an easy thing to see! Indeed, the movie expects people to be myopic, self-interested hustlers most of the time. Likes them for it, even; respects the funny, sharp-eyed canniness of the conman. But it also believes firmly that deep down, just about everyone would like to do the right thing, would like to be warm and caring and generous. They've just resigned themselves to the fact that they don't live in a world where that's possible. And most still get on pretty well! People live practical lives, learn to enjoy the madcap rat race, and don't spend a lot of time moping about how the world is. The "Miracle" of the title is the way the jolly machinations of one kindly, delusional old man upend that world and get people to actually behave humanely to each other, in the most unexpected way possible: by playing on that very cynicism.

From the money-grubbing department stores that are stunned to discover that putting people before profit actually boosts their business, to the lazy postal workers who end up saving the day by pawning their inconvenient mail off on someone else, virtually every good deed done in the movie is done out of cynical self-interest. In fact, a great deal of the movie's considerable joy is about watching feisty lawyers and salesmen try to get one over on each other, so much so that the movie's abrupt pivot to a cat-and-mouse courtroom drama for the final act feels much more inevitable and smooth than it probably has any right to.

And yet, there's something deeper, too; the "miracle" is that, when these people are suddenly, unexpectedly offered a chance to do the right thing for purely selfish reasons, something else happens. Sure, they do it because it’s the smart move for them, the same thing they do every day. But this time, it also happens to be the right thing, and that surprises them, wakes something inside them, something that they'd mostly ignored or forgotten about. They're glad to do the right thing. It makes them feel good, gives them something they didn't know they were missing.

It's a small thing, really; there's no suggestion that it's going to change their lives forever and they're going to give away all their possessions and become enlightened. But there's something very near magical about the way the cast uniformly seems startled and giddy about finding good inside themselves they didn't expect. When business tycoon R. H. Macy (Hollywood bit player Harry Antrim) is forced to take the stand to improbably testify in support of the sanity of a man who believes himself to be Santa Claus, his first thought is for his own business: he suddenly imagines tomorrow's newspaper headlines trumpeting his abandonment of the old man. This obviously cannot be allowed to happen, and he stammers something noncommittal. But then, pushed by the cross-examining attorney, he's asked to directly answer if he believes "Mr. Kringle" is actually Santa Claus. This time, he doesn't think about himself, but thinks about the kids, and how happy his Santa made them. If this old man is crazy, he doesn’t want to be sane. Suddenly the imperative for self-preservation actually overlaps with doing something genuinely good. And then he answers with confidence: "I do." And he’s not just relieved, he’s elated. He remembers something about himself, a feeling he’d probably just written off long ago as unrealistic sentimentality. But there is it, overwhelming him, real as the nose on his face. It's a moment of serenity in a world which offers so few chances for such moments.

The movie is full of little moment like that, tiny, impossible victories for the human spirit. And for once, they cost nothing – they require no sacrifice, no hard choices. For once, good is just sitting there, waiting for you to take it. You don’t have to worry that the world is going punish you for showing your humanity, you can just give in and see how you like it. Most movie fantasies play on our desires for selfish things –what if I suddenly had power, or good looks, or wealth?—but this one offers a more unusual fantasy: what if I could just do the right thing? Wouldn’t that feel great? It’s not realistic; the movie knows –puts it right out there in the text, even—that you’re going to be faced with a million chances to be kind and compassionate, and you’re mostly going to have to just ignore those options and be practical and do the sensible thing and get on with your life. You can’t give away all your possessions, can’t just drop everything and help someone in need, can’t devote every moment of your life to saving the world. But maybe it’s valuable just to know it’s in you to want to. Life gives you so few chances to just indulge in that fantasy that you can forget, can think that you really are tough and hard and cynical deep down, rather than just pretending to be so you can get by. And of course, you do have to get by, and that’s OK. But MIRACLE ON 34th STREET is a gentle reminder that there’s something better in you, too, even if the world doesn’t give it a chance to fully emerge very often. You never really doubted it. It’s just your silly common sense.

It helps that the cast is without exception terrific, it helps that the script is unshakably lively and funny.** But if the movie is a miracle, it comes out of its unique blend of snarky cynicism and warm humanism, and its certainty in the value of giving people a chance to do the right thing, even if it's only for a moment. I don't know any other Christmas movie which manages to strike such a perfect balance between unsentimental satire and genuine good-heartedness, and maybe no other movie of any kind. No wonder it’s remained so beloved for three-quarters of a century, during which time a lot has changed and much culture has become difficult to relate to. People may not completely understand it, but they can certainly feel it. If it’s a testament to the power of belief, it’s a testament to a very particular belief, and one which I sincerely hope will never be completely extinguished, no matter how much countervailing evidence life piles on the scales: that the world may push us to be callus, but somewhere deep inside, we’d rather be kind. If the spirit is willing, even if the flesh is predictably weak, there is always hope.  

 

Merry Christmas.

 

 

* In particular, O’Hara’s ability to furiously turn away from someone who's angered her is powerful enough to melt steel, and I doubt any human could survive having it used on them. These are just special effects, kids, or poor John Payne would be splattered all over that wall.

 

** Even if pivoting to a courtroom drama and abandoning almost the entire cast in the last act is such an insane thing for any script to do that even one this savvy can't entirely avoid some turbulence, but whatever, it makes it work.

False Positive

 

False Positive (2021)

Dir. John Lee

Written by Ilana Glazer and John Lee, story by those two plus Alissa Nutting

Starring Ilana Glazer, Justin Theroux, Pierce Brosnan

 

I like Broad City quite a bit, so when I heard co-star Ilana Glazer had a horror movie, you bet I was on-board. Frankly, I’m more bullish on comedians making horror movies than the artistes who we have lately allowed to run roughshod with the genre; at the very least, they tend to have a more innate desire to entertain. I mean, it worked out pretty well for Jordan Peel, right? If top-tier satirists are feeling drawn to the horror genre, I’m at least game for it, even if horror-comedies have a pretty uneven track record (and anyway, it’s not like normal horror is exactly famous for its consistent high quality). Plus, we can always use more movies written by women; though horror has never exactly lacked in female representation on-screen, it’s rarer that a female star also serves as co-writer, so that’s a nice bonus.

The pedigree is worthy, then (along with Glazer, we have director John Lee, a longtime trench worker in weird comedy like Wonder Showzen, Xavier: Renegade Angel, and The Heart, She Holler, along with episodes of Broad City and Inside Amy Schumer and such, and also director of PEE-WEE’S BIG HOLIDAY). This time, however, the resulting movie leaves a little to be desired. FALSE POSITIVE (which is not something this review will be) tells the story of Lucy (Glazer), who, along with her vaguely-defined husband Adrian (Justin Theroux, noted former Jennifer Aniston boyfriend, and hey, he was also in MULLHOLLAND DRIVE!) is having difficulty conceiving. Somewhat reluctantly, she goes to see Adrian’s old med school professor, leading fertility expert Dr. Hindle (Pierce Brosnan, Treehouse of Horror XII) who quickly manages to induce pregnancy, but at the cost of the fact that he’s, like, openly evil, and so Lucy begins to suspect that something sinister is afoot, which would certainly explain all the ominous music on the soundtrack.

This is, then, pretty obviously a riff on ROSEMARY'S BABY, if by "a riff" you mean "the exact same movie except with iPads and a way lamer ending." It correctly understands that ROSEMARY'S BABY is about subtle subversion of female bodily autonomy --an important topic which is every bit as relevant today as it was 1968, sadly—but in trying to articulate that theme, it simultaneously lays it on too thick and too tentatively, emerging with a “message” movie whose message is artlessly blatant but also lacks much bite. It grasps the idea of womens’ autonomy being maliciously undermined in small ways, but the only thing it can think to do with that concept is to run through little sketches which demonstrate it. The doctor addressing her husband first and only then turning to the person with the womb. Her theoretically-supportive boss constantly asking her (the only woman at the firm) to pick up everyone’s lunches. Her friends patronizingly blaming her anxieties on “Mommy brain.” And so on, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, each time turning to us to say “See? See?” until at the end the villain walks out and says “My evil plan was to maliciously undermine womens’ autonomy!” and the movie says “What we have just seen is a movie exploring the idea that womens’ autonomy is maliciously undermined” and we roll credits.

Which is not in itself inherently a problem. When you’re as mad as this movie is, sometimes a direct approach is exactly what’s called for, a righteous hammer rather than a delicate ballet. Thing is, though, for a movie this absurdly on-the-nose, it’s also weirdly shy. The story keeps insisting on hints: small moments, insinuations, careless slights and minute faux pas. But since it is also absolutely petrified by the very notion that anyone watching might miss the point for even a single second, it insists on giving you the same tiny hint over and over until it’s sure you’ve got it. Which is to say, every single scene in the movie –every single one-- involves someone saying something subtly disempowering while Lucy looks quietly hurt. Little things, but little things which contain a clear message. All frustrating and –for many women-- probably extremely relatable slights which sketch out an invisible conspiracy every bit as malicious and far-reaching as the Satanic one in ROSEMARY’S BABY, but far more mundane in practice: just a loose affiliation of good ol’ boys who, despite their pretense to the contrary, will never, ever take women seriously. But if the movie convincingly depicts these little moments where the mask slips, it also never escalates into bigger moments, basically just repeating the exact same scenario with the exact same spooky insinuation for the entire none-too-hurried 92 minutes.

The result is basically MICRO-AGGRESSION: THE MOVIE… but played as if it was THE OMEN, complete with bloody hallucinations and ominous images set to music just this side of THE SHINING. That’s a disastrous mismatch, because it refuses to allow us to simply empathize with Lucy over how rude everyone is to her. Everyone is kind of a prick constantly, but the movie’s tone insists that this is a matter of apocalyptic evil rather than a perpetual annoyance. And the very mundanity of the situation makes that hard to square, despite the insistent score (from Yair Elazar Glotman and Lucy Railton, making their feature debut) and the moody, dread-soaked camerawork (by Pawel Pogorzelski, Ari Aster’s guy).

It simply pushes too hard with too little, making it impossible to stay on its side. Whereas ROSEMARY'S BABY was content to let the little red flags add up and speak for themselves, FALSE POSITIVE is functionally incapable of letting things speak for themselves, and therefore strikes a tone of absolutely -- dare I say?-- histrionic panic right from the get-go, making its equivalent emphasis on little red flags completely self-defeating. Despite the quietly mendacious insinuations the movie clings to, there’s no room at all for ambiguity; even if we ignore the aggressively spooky tone and miss the opening few minutes (which flash forward and reveal this will come to a bloody end*), Brosnan is practically twirling his mustache from his first scene. He’s obviously a villain, the film is practically screaming at us that there’s evil afoot, and it assures us this will end in blood from the very start, so we don't ever experience the genuine horror of tumultuous self-doubt that might actually strike a nerve (though obviously that's where the script wants us to go), and instead this lady just seems like a chump for taking the world’s bullshit and looking secretly wounded over and over. She’s so mopey and passive in the face of the movie’s screeching proclamations of doom that eventually we stop feeling sorry for her and start to feel like she’s less a victim and more a passive-aggressive doormat. Which is not the direction you want to push your audience when the whole point –I mean, like, the entire point—is to generate sympathy for pregnant women oppressed by the patriarchy.

I think this is possibly one of those "visual metaphors" you always hear about

And yes, that is the point, and it’s not a point the movie is going to let you miss. Like so many A24 movies, FALSE POSITIVE feels unreasonably anxious to dispense with the dull requirements of narrative and genre content so it can get down to the business of loudly declaiming about the ISSUES, about the PATRIARCHY, about how SCIENCE IS A MALE-CENTRIC MALE-OCRACY AND NATURAL CHILDBIRTH IS THE ONLY WAY A REAL WOMAN WOULD EVER BRING A CHILD INTO THIS WORLD. The last of which is a particularly uncomfortable sentiment to espouse so passionately at this exact moment (um, is Ilana Glazer an anti-vaxxer? Seems kinda like it), and unfortunately not one which you can really ignore because due to the movie's terror that you might miss the subtle point that it keeps making in every single scene, it also takes the liberty of just going ahead and stopping everything to have a character give a lecture on this topic, complete with a slideshow of BABIES DEFORMED BY THE CALLOUS, COLDY UNFEELING SCIENCE OF THE PENIS (these appear to be real medical photos, an especially questionable choice). The criticisms expressed here are not exactly unwarranted or without merit, but a youtube slideshow lecture sure is an awkward, clunky thing to have right in the middle of your genre movie, and it's about as subtle as Steven Seagal's speech at the end of ON DEADLY GROUND. And it just feels so desperate. Do they really think that if we didn't understand by the millionth repetition that the cavalcade of little slights ends up leaving the lead character feeling oppressed and gaslit, that explaining it aloud is going to do the trick?

As with so much modern horror (particular from A24), this makes FALSE POSITIVE feel like a PSA first, and a movie --let along a genre movie—a distant second. It's the kind of movie so eager to demonstrate its intersectional right-thinking that it goes out of its way to introduce a disorientingly stereotypical “ethnic” character just so it can admonish itself for being racist. I mean, come on. I hate to use the term “virtue signaling” because it's been co-opted by the absolute worst people on the planet, and hey, virtue is a good thing, and it's fine to signal it, especially if it encourages others to be virtuous. But this smug, handwringing genuflection to the alter of twitter talking points is exactly why this kind of thing irks people. In fact, it makes the very real issues the movie is about feel phony and calculated, self-serving strawmen constructed to score easy culture war points, rather than honest reflections of an imperfect real world. The one-note desperation of the messaging makes the film seem insecure about that very message; surely if they had real confidence in these themes, they would just tell a story and let the message emerge naturally from that, rather than stringing along a skeleton of a plot from a series of pre-planned talking points.

SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING: And unfortunately, it’s not like this is all going somewhere which will justify all the pedantic hand-holding. In fact, it’s not really going anywhere at all. The ending is just kind of small and dumb, and while certainly on-point for the movie’s theme (though no more or less than any other scene) I can’t help but notice that it doesn’t seem to square up too well with the movie that leads up to it. Turns out the big secret is: Brosnan’s narcissistic doctor has impregnated Lucy with his own sperm, and was never going to take her preference for a female child seriously. And I guess her husband was in on it, although he remains a completely murky character and I’m not sure exactly how involved he was in the whole thing. But that’s it, that’s the whole evil secret; there’s nothing supernatural going on, there’s barely even a conspiracy, just some sordid medical malpractice with rapey overtones. I guess she really was a big hallucinating baby after all? I don't see why Dr. Hindle’s self-promoting eugenics program would cause her to hallucinate and black out and shit. And what was up with the sinister safe her husband was hiding? Was that real, and if so, what was in it? Just, like, a letter that said, “I confess that I collaborated with my medical school professor to impregnate my wife with his sperm?” Obviously Lucy has been extremely ill-used, but this seems like awfully small potatoes to have, like, a complete mental breakdown over. I’m not even sure Dr. Hindle (and his sinister henchwoman, played by Gretchen Mol!) deserve to be savagely bludgeoned to death. He definitely needs to lose his medical license, get slapped with a bankrupting civil lawsuit, and probably spend some time in jail, but at the same time, just marching into his office and murdering him doesn’t feel like righteous vengeance so much as the movie anxiously assuring us that, darn it, it sure would smash that nasty ol’ patriarchy right up if only it could. It makes thematic sense more than it feels like it naturally arises out of anything in the story or character. In fact, it really feels most like something they reshot at the last minute when they decided they didn't like their original ending, something that sort of vaguely relates to the rest of the movie, but feels so arbitrary and disconnected that it’s hard to believe this was always where the filmmakers intended the story to go.** ( END SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING.

Anyway, it’s not all bad news; the movie looks great (Pogorzelski gets up to a lot of funny business with mirrors and lighting, probably mostly out of boredom) it has a solid score, and Glazer's expressive face --so great for comedy-- at least nails the nuanced emotions she experiences (over, and over, and over) again. And Brosnan, basically playing his character for velvet-tongued camp, is kind of a hoot. But yeah, "ROSEMARY'S BABY but clumsier and more pedantic and with a worse ending" is not really something the world was in desperate need of. Although it is nice to have a version which wasn't directed by a rapist.*** Oh yeah, right. That. Although I didn't like this movie much, let’s not forget that despite its clumsiness, the very fact of Roman Polanski's continued freedom does prove that it has something of a point. I just wish it were expressed with more verve (and more whammy) than this.

 Also, holy cow, I was going to make a joke in there about director John Lee referencing the 2002 They Might Be Giants song John Lee Supertaster. But then I found out the song actually is about this John Lee, who knew They Might Be Giants through his now-defunct band Muckafurgason! Woah, this movie is directed by John Lee Supertaster! Wild shit.

 

* Man, good thing ROSEMARY’S BABY doesn’t open with her looking at the devil-baby’s eyes and then flash back to “nine months ago,” huh? That would really suck.

** END SPOILERS CONTINUE HERE: This sense that the whole ending got re-shot into vague nonsense is bolstered by what happens with the babies; returning home to her disgusting, unwanted male children, she walks them over to the window of her high-rise apartment and lets them float away, maybe vaguely playing off some of the Peter Pan motifs which have been lurking around. But holy shit, wow, she murders her own children! I’m not sure I’m on this lady’s side anymore! But wait, oh, ok, I guess that was just a fantasy because then it flashes back to her just handing them off to her weird husband and giving all three of them the boot. Still pretty harsh, but more to the point, now we just have two scenes in a row communicating the same basic rejection of her children, and I just don’t believe a writer, even a bad writer, would think that was necessary or wise. My guess is they originally ended with the window thing, which is at least kinda bold and crazy, but then chickened out when they realized that no audience, however pro-woman, was going to be happy seeing the protagonist send two babies to splatter on the concrete fifteen floors below, so they punted and tried to claim it was just a metaphor. But the fact that I don’t really know just emphasizes how muddled this all is.  END SPOILERS STOP

 

***As far as I know

The Exorcist III

 

The Exorcist III

Dir. William Peter Blatty

Written by William Peter Blatty

Starring George C. Scott, Jason Miller, Brad Dourif

 

THE EXORCIST was an enormous, unqualified success when it premiered in late 1973. A critical and popular darling, it grossed $441 million worldwide on a modest $12 million budget, became a cultural phenomenon, was the first horror film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, and remains a high-water mark for 70's genre cinema, and cinema at large. So of course the two people the studio sought out to direct the sequels were the only two people who were on record hating the original. I mean, that just makes sound creative and financial sense, frankly it would have been irresponsible to do anything else.

The first of those was John Boorman, who perpetrated THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977) on the world, and for that unforgivable act is forever damned. William Friedkin (who directed THE EXORCIST but was not initially interested in coming back for a sequel) was not coy about his feelings regarding that little misstep: “It's just a stupid mess made by a dumb guy – John Boorman by name, somebody who should be nameless, but in this case should be named. Scurrilous. A horrible picture." And Boorman probably didn’t feel any kinder to Friedkin’s movie: he had turned down the opportunity to direct THE EXORCIST, which he found "rather repulsive" and almost turned down the sequel too, saying, “‘I don't want to make a film about torturing a child’, which is how I saw the original film" before ultimately taking the job in order to create "a kind of riposte to the ugliness and darkness of The Exorcist – I wanted a film about journeys that was positive, about good, essentially." So yes, obviously you simply must hire the guy who hated the original and wanted the sequel to be a direct repudiation of one of the most popular and iconic movies of all time. It went about as well as you might expect. No wait, scratch that, I actually don’t think it would even be possible to expect anything to go as badly as it did. Humans, even the most pessimistic among us, simply don’t have the imaginative capacity to conceive of something as profoundly, insanely misguided as THE EXORCIST II until it arrives in front of us.

Suffice to say, with EXORCIST II a complete and unmitigated critical, popular, and commercial disaster, nobody was begging Boorman to come back again. So the studio cast about for the second-biggest EXORCIST hater they could locate, and found William Peter Blatty. Blatty, having written the bestselling novel that served as the basis for the original film, and having written the script and produced the film himself (with a great deal of creative input, including about casting), was about as deeply involved as anyone in the making of THE EXORCIST, and consequently wasn't entirely bearish on the finished film. But he nevertheless felt dissatisfied with the final result, especially after Friedkin trimmed 20 minutes for the final (122 minute) cut at the behest of the studio, after which, according to Friedkin, “Bill [Blatty] was vitriolic. He was harsh. He would denounce the picture." But not long after EXORCIST II, everyone’s temper seemed to have mellowed a bit, and Friedkin and Blatty were actively working on a sequel.

I’m honestly a little unclear on when exactly this began. Blatty (who, I gather from various interviews I’ve read for this review, has a tendency to tell different stories at different times) claims in this interview that “It took me that long to think of a follow up to the original story. That's why I didn't do [Exorcist II],” which means that at least as late as 1977, he hadn’t planned on writing a sequel at all. By the late 70’s, he was presumably working on his directorial debut, THE NINTH CONFIGURATION (which was based on his 1966 novel with the magnificent title of Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane) which premiered in 1980. So I suspect it wouldn’t be until the early 80’s that he began working in earnest on an EXORCIST follow-up, first pitching the idea to Friedkin as a film, and then, after the project languished for awhile in Development Hell, publishing it as the novel Legion in 1983. But sources differ on the exact timing of all this; In this interview Blatty says that he considers The Exorcist, The Ninth Configuration and Legion to be a trilogy of sorts – and the fact that he places them in that order (despite The Ninth Configuration being based on a novel that precedes all of them) suggests to me that he’s referring to the film version rather than the book, and that therefor Legion came into being sometimes after 1980. On the other hand, this Bloodydisgusting article claims that Blatty “originally wrote the screenplay for a film that was called Legion right after the release of THE EXORCIST,” but that Friedkin passed and the job went to Boorman. This strikes me as unlikely – if the studio already had a finished script, or even a story outline, from the original author, why would they hire some other guy (first playwright William Goodhart, then Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg) to write a whole new concept from scratch? This article from TheSpool claims that Blatty’s pitch to Friedkin happened “at the same time” that EXORCIST II was being loathed at the box office but still making enough of a profit that future sequels seemed feasible.

So I don’t know. But at any rate, all sources seem to agree that sometime after the original EXORCIST, and probably after the misery of EXORCIST II, Blatty wrote a script for an EXORCIST follow-up called LEGION, and that he took it first to Friedkin, who was initially enthusiastic about the concept but later left the project over creative differences. Frustrated by the lack of progress, Blatty eventually turned his screenplay into a novel, which he published as Legion in 1983, and which did well enough to get Hollywood interested in an adaptation. Tantalizingly, most sources also mention one further detail: that after re-adapting his novel into a screenplay, Blatty approached John Carpenter to direct, and that Carpenter was interested before he eventually bowed out after concluding that Blatty was going to be a complete control freak about this and should really just direct it himself. Knowing that John Carpenter almost directed an EXORCIST sequel and then did MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN (1992) instead might incline one to dwell on what we missed out on.* But actually Blatty, directing for the second and final time (a decade after THE NINTH CONFIGURATION) proves himself a surprisingly strong director, giving it a distinct tone and some impressively well-staged sequences. Like Clive Barker directing HELLRAISER, it just seems like Blatty intuitively understood --right off the bat-- what he wanted and how to bring his distinct literary voice to the big screen.

The distinct voice is what jumps out first. The movie is moody and uneasy, but flecked with little notes of offbeat comedy. There's an early sequence featuring the supernatural desecration of a church which mirrors a similar sequence in THE EXORCIST, except this time we get a series of comic "reaction shots" of a statue of Jesus, who changes his expression to shock and displeasure. It is at this point that one might recall that Blatty began his screenwriting career as writer of farce (he co-wrote A SHOT IN THE DARK, among other comedies, often for Blake Edwards). But there's nothing else quite so silly as that in the film; mostly, the streak of comedy manifests itself in the idiosyncratic protagonist Lt. Kinderman (played by a very game George C. Scott, taking over the role from THE EXORCIST's much more sedate Lee J. Cobb, who had died in 1976**). Kinderman is a curious and intriguing character. I don't know if I've ever seen another quite like him. He's a hard-boiled cop, but has a tendency to fly off the handle and rant about unexpected topics. In what is certainly the best scene in the film, and perhaps any scene in any film, Scott, at his absolute George C. Scottiest, delivers an impassioned monologue about a carp that's currently living in his bathtub on the way to a dinner plate. He seems downright unhinged, but Scott also has a merry twinkle in his eye as if he's reveling in the discomfort he's eliciting. The net result is that we're never quite sure how much of his apparent instability is genuine and how much is a private comedy show for a very old fart who enjoys causing a scene.

Nevertheless, while Blatty is obviously doing something tonally different from Friedkin’s icy, bleak take on the original, it is still a horror film, and in many ways a damn good one. It follows Kinderman (a fairly minor character in the original movie), who, since the days of the Regan MacNeil's exorcism, has gotten involved with the case of a serial killer called “The Gemini”*** (Brad Dourif, CHILD’S PLAY) and is troubled immensely when victims demonstrating his exact MO begin to reappear. Bad enough that the killer’s back, after all, but even worse because the killer is supposed to be dead, and the crime scenes all have different fingerprints on them, despite the lockstep similarity in method. And even worse than that when it starts to become clear that the victims all have a (pretty tangential) link to The Regan MacNeil case. Plus, there’s a guy in the mental institution at the hospital who happens to look exactly like the long-deceased Father Karras (Jason Miller, THE NINTH CONFIGURATION). You know, this actually seems like the kind of situation which would be better suited for an THE EXORCIST than a hard-boiled cop. Fortunately, Kinderman, though not exactly a religiously religious man, is spiritually open-minded enough that he doesn’t shrink from more exotic explanations for these crimes, and before long he’s interviewing the mystery man known as “Patient X” (in the novel, the much cheerier “Tommy Sunshine”!) and probably wondering how in the hell you prosecute a case where (SPOILERS) the killers are possessed by a guy who’s possessed by a serial killer who’s possessed by a demon. Kinda a possession turducken situation. I guess, like, start with a conspiracy charge and go from there?

Scott’s willingness to be constantly one second away from some sort of furious freak-out fits the material well: as you might have deduced from the previous paragraph, it’s slightly exaggerated, sometimes to the point of comedy (as with a heavenly dream where Scott sees an Angelic Fabio and Patrick Ewing [!]), sometimes to the point of disturbing grotesqueness (as with an uncomfortably spot-on Spider-Man impression from a cackling old lady). And the other actors are on board with the off-kilter plot and tone Blatty seems to be shooting for. You’ll be glad to know that Brad Dourif is not about to be out-freakout’d by George C. Scott, and that Jason Miller (who sat out EXORCIST II to the point that they do a soft retcon to remove him from the flashback exorcism scenes!) is a welcome presence and does a lot to tie this third sequel to the original EXORCIST by the mere fact of his being there (the links are otherwise pretty tangential). It all works pretty well, maintaining a distinct tone, telling an odd but comprehensible story, spicing things up with the occasional bit of horror whammy.

It is, in fact, exactly those moments of horror whammy which elevate this from “surprising not shitty considering the circumstances” to “wait, this is actually great, maybe?” Though Blatty cannot hope to recapture the soul-deep horror crucible of the original EXORCIST, he manages to stage a handful of truly exceptional horror beats which ensure that there’s some genuine menace lurking even through the most offbeat scenes here. I do not consider it hyperbole to suggest that the famous late-night nurse sequence (you know the one I mean) is up there with the absolute best-executed coil-and-release shock scares in all horror, and although nothing else in the movie comes close to that, having even one scene that delivers such a wallop makes for a movie that can't be lightly dismissed. It does stumble slightly when it finally arrives at the inevitable exorcism finale, which can't help but invite unflattering comparisons to the greatest-of-all-time original. But even here it's far from an embarrassment. The climax doesn't quite come together, but it's still a ferocious and estimable example of the form.

Which is especially impressive, considering it was not the original ending, and was forced on Blatty at the last minute by the studio, after the movie had already been shot. Legion the novel, as well as the original script, had no final exorcism scene, and no Exorcist character. And in fact, if Blatty had his way, it wouldn’t have been titled THE EXORCIST III; he still considered LEGION to be the correct title. But a franchise is a franchise, and despite the well-poisoning that EXORCIST II had done, the suits insisted on the title, and once that happened (according to Blatty) the secretary of producer James Robinson convinced him that they couldn’t have an EXORCIST movie which contained no exorcism. Which is, you know, not an entirely absurd point, but probably something you want to work out at a point before the film has been completely shot. This being Hollywood, of course, that’s exactly when the suits intervened and demanded a new ending, as well as more narrative links to the original EXORCIST. Blatty balked, stalled, but ultimately decided that if he didn’t do it himself, they’d just fire him and hire some other hack to do their dirty work, so he dutifully went back and shot new material which radically altered the film to fit a new studio-mandated exorcism-delivering climax.

Some of that material includes a not-especially-well-integrated subplot about a character named “Father Morning” (Nicol Williamson, who had previously worked with John Boorman, of all people, on EXCALIBUR), a priest who never meets Lt. Kinderman or any of the other characters until the climax, but who we occasionally observe sitting around silently, obviously waiting for his chance to do some hardcore exorcizing. Not ideal from a storytelling perspective, but fortunately the movie is hazy and strange enough that these scenes don’t feel disastrously out of place; we’ve trusted Blatty for a lot of weird stuff throughout the movie, and we trust that this seemingly unrelated character is important in some way, which he indeed turns out to be (in fact, he makes for a respectable red herring while we wait, a character strange and nebulous enough to make a suitable alternative suspect to “Patient X”). Against all odds, the new material manages to sit alongside the original storyline –if not neatly—at least comfortably.

But that is nothing compared to the biggest change imposed by the studio: in an effort to further link this movie to THE EXORCIST, they demanded Blatty bring Jason Miller back as Father Karras. Yes! Amazingly, Miller was not going to be in the movie at all until the last-minute reshoots, despite the fact that Brad Dourif is supposed to be playing a guy who looks just like and may be some kind of reincarnation or resurrection of Damien Karras. Why did Blatty not just approach Miller from the beginning? I can find no official first-hand explanation, although I read that in the DVD commentary Dourif explains that Miller’s alcoholism (of which I can also find no other documented evidence) had left him unable to do the kind of wordy monologuing that Blatty had in mind. At any rate, Dourif had already finished his performance by the time Miller came on board, and rather than entirely replace him, Blatty had the insane/brilliant idea of keeping both performances. So sometimes we see Miller, sometimes we see Dourif – which makes sense in a possession movie! In fact, it’s sort of maybe really great; Miller makes no effort whatsoever to mimic Dourif’s go-for-broke mega-acting, and it creates a real live-wire, multi-layer explosiveness to the character. Sometimes we see Miller, sitting placidly with just a shadow of a malicious smirk on his face, and then in a blink of an eye we’ll switch to a bug-eyed, shrieking and spitting Dourif, and then back, never quite sure which part of this, if any, is “real.” And with apologies to Blatty, the suits were right that having Miller back links the thing much more robustly to the original EXORCIST, which was perhaps not strictly necessary, but it helps lend this dubious third sequel some credibility and tactile connection to its forbearer. A good example of how maybe the suits were not entirely wrong, or if they were entirely wrong at least Blatty was nimble enough to make their absurd demands nestle comfortably into his world, if not quite his vision.

I’d obviously be interested in seeing Blatty’s original cut, and now it’s possible –there’s a semi-complete “director’s cut” on the 2016 Shout! Factory Blu-ray release (albeit with much of the footage taken from low-quality sources, and some never recovered). But frankly I’m pretty enamored with the theatrical version already. Even the studio-mandated exorcism scene is packed full of shocking imagery and provocative theology, and I think I’d miss it if it was gone altogether. The movie feels a little overcooked in places, but between Scott's eccentric and frisky performance, the offbeat tone, and some solid and occasionally bravura horror beats, it also feels dense and surprising and rewarding. All in all, a startlingly strong showing which I feel has been unfairly pilloried with all the other misbegotten EXORCIST sequels. Not bad for a screenwriter and novelist making only his second (and, sadly, final!) film. And considering the dismal reputation and equally tormented production of every other EXORCIST sequel, I’d say it’s damn close to a miracle that this came out so well. Blatty claimed that EXORCIST III is about the “problem of evil” – ie, why a kind, loving, omnipotent god permits evil to exist. I’m not sure the movie exactly answers that question, but I can relate – I have similar questions about the proliferation of miserable franchise sequels. Every once in awhile, though, good does triumph over evil, and a genuinely good horror sequel sneaks its way past all the perils that beset such projects and ends up on-screen. I’m not sure that proves the existence of a kind, loving God, but it sure doesn’t hurt the case.

Appendix A: Cameos from people you probably do not expect to be in THE EXORCIST III, ranked in ascending order of improbability:

1.      Pre-fame Kevin Corrigan

2.      Pre-fame Samuel L. Jackson (one line, dubbed by someone else)

3.      “young” Larry King

4.      NBA great Patrick Ewing

5.      Fabio

6.      Former US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

Appendix B: Dialogue used in metal songs: I gather that some Gemini Killer dialogue is used as the introduction to the Children of Bodom songs "Follow the Reaper" and "Taste of My Scythe". The Cryptopsy song "Crown of Horns" also “employs a roar and dialogue heard in Cell 11.” So that’s legit.



* But never fear, David Gordon Green, who got to be the New John Carpenter with his HALLOWEEN sequel trilogy, is also signed to direct an EXORCIST sequel trilogy, so in a way it'll be a chance to see what a Carpenter EXORCIST would have been like, except nothing like that.

 

** It would be the first of two times that Scott would take over a role originated by Cobb: the second would be in 1997, when he played Juror #3 in a remake of TWELVE ANGRY MEN (Cobb played the role in the 1957 version) directed by, of all people, William Friedkin.

 

*** The “Zodiac killer” made reference to THE EXORCIST in a letter, which he called “the best saterical comidy [sic] that I have ever seen.” Since Blatty leaned a little heavier on comedy in his subsequent horror movies, I’m going to go ahead and assume that naming his fictional serial killer “The Gemini” is an affectionate tribute to the guy who gave him the idea. Later, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer would express his own appreciation for THE EXORCIST III. From Wikipedia: “The film became a focal point of the trial of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Detectives testified that Dahmer claimed to identify with the Gemini Killer and would play the film for some of his victims before killing them. Dahmer's final attempted victim, Tracy Edwards, testified that Dahmer would rock back and forth while chanting at various times and that he especially enjoyed a sequence with a possessed Karras. Dahmer went so far as to purchase yellow contact lenses to more resemble Miller, as well as to emulate another film character he admired, Emperor Palpatine from Return of the Jedi.” Proving that above all other things, serial killers are giant fucking dorks.

 

Taste The Blood Of Dracula

 

Taste The Blood Of Dracula (1970)

Dir. Peter Sasdy

Written by Anthony Hinds (under the named “John Elder” and theoretically based on one character created by Bram Stoker

Starring Christopher Lee, Linda Hayden, Geoffrey Keen, John Carson, Pater Sallis

There are only so many vintage Hammer Studios movies, and since I've now seen the vast majority of them, I've been trying to parcel out the DRACULAs once a year to make them last. In this way, I hope to gradually, over many years, convince myself that Hammer movies were actually never that good to begin with and it's no big deal that there aren't any more new ones, because the thing the series is perhaps most known for is perfectly charting the arc of Hammer’s rise and fall, from the bold highs in the late 50’s to the dismal, misguided wretchedness of its final years before it closed its doors for good* following its final film production in 1979.

We're not there yet, though. TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA is definitely well past the point of diminishing returns for the franchise, but not a complete waste yet. That point is on the horizon, though. You can feel them getting a little desperate already. For starters, this one (technically the fifth Hammer DRACULA film, but who's counting?) feels decidedly more contemporary than its predecessors, with some handheld camera, a little hip camera experimentation (there's a "heartbeat" effect where the camera zooms in and out), and some swinging youth culture stuff (a blue-hair punk chick who dances with a snake in a exotic boudoir run by a mincing gay guy). It's not ruinously bad yet, but you can certainly see the hopeless attempt to chase the youth market into whatever the head honchos at Hammer believed to be the latest trend was at the moment. And you can certainly see it already not working. That has an immediate deleterious effect, if only a small one in this case: the hipper it's attempting to be, the less gothic and atmospheric it is, and the result is a film quite a bit blander-looking than the previous entries, and little able to, or interested in, conjuring any real striking images.

A lack of luxurious gothic atmosphere isn’t necessarily a death blow, but if you were counting on a finely-honed unshakably gripping plot to save it, well, I appreciate your optimism this late in the game, but at some point optimism becomes denial. So it is no surprise that the story again feels pretty blatantly slapdash. It takes way too long to get going (Dracula doesn't appear until 45 minutes in, absent the recycled footage from the end of DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE that opens the thing) and if you want to actually see Dracula DO stuff, ho ho, yeah, by this point Lee wasn't going to do anything more strenuous than stand there looking haughty and vaguely annoyed. But at least there's a fresh hook this time: three venal businessmen (Goeffrey Keen [Bond's boss 1977-1987], Pater Sallis [The voice of Wallace in Wallace and Gromit[!!]], John Carson [PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES]), sold on a HELLRAISER-type come-on that reviving Dracula is the ultimate rush, do in fact revive him only to discover that not only do they not have raging hard-ons as promised, but now there's a killer vampire (Dracula) after them (this is the kind of thing we used to have to deal with all the time before Viagra). So then they have to cover their tracks, unaware that Drac is stalking them and recruiting their teenage daughters (most notably Linda Hayden, BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW, THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL) to use against them.

This premise at least has the spice of being vaguely sleazy and disreputable (there's a whorehouse visit early on which was probably pretty scandalous for the time, particularly the blue-haired snake-dancer and the openly gay-coded "madam," though today it just looks rather cheap and desperate) but the problem is that the three businessmen never really emerge as interesting characters. Sure, their motive is clear enough: when the simple, old-fashioned transgressive pleasure of hanging out in an opulent cathouse become stale, they turn for advice to instigator Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE), a man even more more debauched than themselves. They're ready for headier fare, and think he might be able to suggest some (his immediate go-to is "let's revive Dracula!' and they immediately see the wisdom in this). Fair enough, but these dudes just never seem perverse enough to get so easily sold on this plan. They go from sitting around (fully clothed) with half-nude women to wanting to drink human blood and sell their soul to Satan within the course of a supper, and I just don’t quite buy it. Particularly since Bates is not exactly an irresistibly seductive salesman; more like the smuggest, richest D&D nerd you've ever met. Apparently the original plan was to let poor whiny Christopher Lee off the hook for this one, and just have Bates turn into a vampire and continue the series. This would make a lot more sense narratively, since as it stands it’s rather odd that Courtley shows up to initiate this boondoogle and then vanishes from the plot and then for some reason Dracula shows up to get revenge for him, even though they’ve never met. But Bates is simply grating and foppish – a character you definitely hate, but not in a fun way—so I, for one, am glad they chickened out and dragged Lee back for yet another miserable outing (and, presumably, yet another addition on his house).  

Anyway, the central premise with the three business pervs just never quite adds up. We either needed to understand the utter depths of these men's corruption, or we needed to see some kind of folly which pushes them further than they'd ordinarily be willing to go -- them egging each other on or something. Having them be just regular gross old dudes who are definitely assholes but probably not really villains feels like a missed opportunity to leverage some actual drama out of this scenario; they feel purely like a plot device, rather than actual characters who behave in a way we understand and which has its own internally compelling drama. They (SPOILERS) don't even die in a dramatically meaningful order -- the guy we start with, who seems like the ringleader, dies first, leaving us with his far-less-developed companions, who then also die without really developing in any way. It's a workable setup, but it never quite gets around to working, because we never really get a good sense of who these dumbasses are. They could be filthy villains who get what’s coming to them, or they could be sympathetic, flawed old fools who must pay a steep price for their moral transgressions; either one would work, but the movie doesn’t settle on either course, and consequently just leaves any sense of narrative drama sitting there on the table, untouched.

Which is a problem, because they're as close as we're going to get to any kind of main characters, leaving a big hole where the film’s conflict should be. Lee is in maybe 15 minutes of footage total, and the standard-issue Hammer Pretty White Boys don't even know what's going on until the very end (even though the lead HPWB, Paul,** played by Anthony Corlan, is certainly less bland and more pretty than most. Woah, he plays one of the Nazis in RAIDERS!), so although they're on hand to save the day (since Hammer was certainly not going to let the women save themselves) they're basically nonentities. The young ladies fare better (and Hayden is at least a little spunky and distinct-looking, with her sad eyes and soft features); getting recruited to do most of Dracula's dirty work like a satanic Charlie's Angels looks like a fun gig, but of course they don't exactly have an arc either. I do kind of like the tragic dimension of their desire to please an openly disinterested "Master," which plays into the climax at least a little and definitely illustrates just what a dick Dracula is. But it's pretty half-formed, another idea -- like the pervert business guys-- which feels like it could have made for an interesting dramatic core had the script decided to delve into it a little rather than haul it out strictly as a plot device.

That all leaves TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA altogether too shapeless and unfocused to hit like it ought to, though by the end it gets vicious and nihilistic enough (SPOILERS - nearly everyone dies; no redemption for these pervy business dudes I guess!) that it works up a little bit of spunk. But just when it seems like it’s kicking in, it suffers another disappointing anti-climax, which really seems to be a theme with this series, perhaps in an attempt to be faithful to the weird anticlimax of the original Dracula novel.*** (SPOILERS AHEAD) Sure, they probably weren't going to top the Count’s impalement-by-cross from the last movie, but the way he dies THIS time (imagines a church, passes out and dies all by himself, without anyone doing anything) is probably his second-lamest death, after that time he just slipped on the ice and drowned. This is, like, the fourth time he's died like a chump seemingly within hours of being laboriously revived. Just how bad can he really be?

Oh yeah, I guess we saw with that lame Lord Courtley character just how lame the villains in this universe are capable of being, so maybe we should count our blessings that at least it’s still Christopher Lee taking the fall. TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (which, I should say, is a surprisingly accurate title; that’s how they revive the bastard!) isn’t nearly the bottom of the barrel, although it may well be the tipping point where the bad starts to outweigh the good. See you next year when we discover how much worse we can get!

RIPPER REPORT: Michael Ripper plays a pretty funny police inspector who does not seem particularly motivated to, you know, inspect anything, despite his condescending demeanor. Good stuff!

*Although I enjoy seeing the name on-screen again, the 2010’s Hammer revival is obviously not the same thing, though it produced at least a few worthy horror flicks.

 

** Weird that this is the second DRACULA in a row to feature a Hammer Pretty White Boy named Paul. Is this supposed to be the same character? I see no evidence that this is the case, but I also don’t see how writer Anthony Hinds (as “John Elder”) could have missed the fact that he gave the protagonist in both films –just two years apart!—the same name! Strange stuff.

 

*** Though the fact that Hammer improves upon that climax immeasurably in HORROR OF DRACULA makes it clear they’re capable of doing better when they bother to try.

HAMMER’S DRACULA SERIES:

1: THE HORROR OF DRACULA (1958)

2: THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)

3: DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966)

4: DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968)

5: TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (1970)

6: SCARS OF DRACULA (1970)

7: DRACULA A.D. 1972 (1972)

8: THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA (1973)

9: THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES (1974)

(see also: Hammer’s FRANKENSTEIN series)