Director Report Card: John Landis (2000)

17. Susan’s Plan

John Landis spent the entire nineties making one flop after another. While some of these bombs were arguably secret creative successes, many of them were just stinkers. Studio meddling and combative egos certainly played a role in some of those failures. Frustrated, especially by the experience of making “Blues Brothers 2000,” John Landis decided to go the independent route. After all, the independent scene had grown only more prominent in the nineties. He wrote a quirky, crime comedy himself and quickly got together the money to make it, along with a surprisingly stacked cast. This plan also ended up backfiring. “Susan's Plan” would play festivals  for several years, to mediocre responses, before finally being crapped onto the straight-to-video market in 2000 under the embarrassingly bad title of “Dying to Get Rich.”

As the title indicates, Susan does indeed have a plan. Recently separated from her husband Paul, Susan intends on killing him and collecting his substantial life insurance policy. Along with her boyfriend, Sam, she hires two imbeciles – Bill and Steve – to pull of the plan. They shoot Paul but he lives, ending up in the hospital. This complicates Susan's plan, causing a slutty friend to help seduce Paul's doctor and a psychotic biker to help complete the murder. Before too long, guilty consciences begin to rear up. Suspicion filters through the group and alliances become shaky.

Filmed in the late nineties, “Susan's Plan” came after “Pulp Fiction” spawned a whole horde of stylish, indie neo-noirs and quirky crime dramas. Landis wasn't setting out to parody flicks like “Destiny Turns on the Radio,” “Love and a .45,” “Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead,” or any number of other films. Instead, “Susan's Plan” is a goofy, weird, and low budget attempt to fit in with these films. The tangled plot filled with murder, criminals, and twisting perceptions of time mark it as a clear member of this wanna-be Tarantino genre. As for the low budget, that is apparent in the fact that most of the movie only takes place on a few plain, meagerly furbished sets. 

When the laughs come in “Susan's Plan” – which isn't too often – they are largely born out of the frustrations within the group. When you have a large group of characters taking part in the same plan, things quickly grow complicated. An early scene involves Sam, Bill and Steve having a misunderstand while talking on their car phones. Another mildly funny bit concerns a whole crowd of characters rushing around the hospital, trying to avoid multiple parties at the same time. Very occasionally, “Susan's Plan” will be able to mine the difficulty of getting people to listen or operate as a whole for decent laughs.

Inside of generating amusement, “Susan's Plan” seems stuck on several repetitive ideas. One idea the movie constantly returns to is a character imagining an outlandish scenario, which is then revealed to be a dream. It's a version of a gag Landis utilized much better in “An American Werewolf in London.” Including a moment containing a fantasy-within-a-fantasy, a direct quote of his earlier, better film. These reoccurring daydreams do serve a purpose in the story. The participants in this crime repeatedly imagine everything going wrong in the most graphic way, usually ending in someone's death. At one point, Betty – that's the slutty friend – even imagines Paul as a zombie dragging her down into the pool. All of this clearly points towards the guilt everyone feels for their involvement in this crime. Or the lingering tension in the air that they will get caught or end up dead. Yet “Susan's Plan” returning to this idea over and over again quickly drains it of any power to shock or intrigue.

The other idea “Susan's Plan” seems stuck on is random burst of ultra-violence. This is the main indicator that John Landis directed the film. His obsession with inserting scenes of graphic gore into comedies has always been weird and it's rarely been more tonally obtrusive than here. Characters die on-screen, usually in those fantasy scenes, in sudden and violent ways. Bullets to the head, strangulation, or throat slashing all occur with the swift brutality of a werewolf attack. Unlike in “American Werewolf in London,” where the sudden burst of violence served a purpose, here it just feels unnecessary and mean-spirited. There's no reason for a madcap comedy to feature this much blood and death. Considering how foolish the characters are, their repeated brutal deaths just make it seem like Landis hates all of them. This results in an overly nihilistic tone.

I could give “Susan's Plan” the benefit of the doubt, that maybe it's suppose to be a dark comedy and the bloody deaths are all a part of that. But then how do you explain the rest of the comedy in this movie, which is often crude and juvenile? Such as the extended scene early on, where characters are trapped in a closet together and one of them repeatedly farts? Or the bickering old couple, trading Borscht Belt worthy dialogue, who are randomly inserted at a late point in the story? It's as if John Landis had an idea for a bloody crime flick but felt the need to make it funny. When he realized his own, weird sense of humor was severely off, he added broad, goofy gags like these. The tonal whiplash is real.

“Susan's Plan” is a vehicle for Natassaja Kinski, around the same time she was starring in schlock like “.com for Murder” or “The Day the World Ended.” Yet despite having her name in the title of the movie, Susan doesn't feel like the main character. The character ostensibly motivates the entire plot, by putting the scheme to murder Paul into action. Yet we never feel the connection between Susan and Paul, the two never sharing any scenes together. Other characters perform most of the important actions in the film. If Susan is suppose to be a master planner, she sure doesn't come off that way. Kinski's performance is weirdly low-energy.

Despite its obvious low budget, “Susan's Plan” has a cast full of recognizable names and faces. Furthering the weird tonal disconnect between the broad violence and the wackiness is how comically over-the-top much of the acting is. Lara Flynn Boyle plays Betty as a flighty, aggressively ditzy who uses her sexuality to get what she wants. In a traditional noir, she'd be a femme fatale but there's not much fatale about Boyle's goofy performance. Rob Schneider appears as Steve, one of the moronic would-be hitmen. He's doing his typical Rob Schneider thing, becoming increasingly dumb and child-like as he gets more frustrated. At least Michael Biehn is cast against type as Bill, the other idiot. You'd be hard pressed to see the usual tough guys Biehn plays in this deeply doofy character. Adrian Paul, of TV's “Highlander,” plays Paul like a cartoon character, totally clueless and with a big, toothy smile.

Of the comedic performances in the film, the best one is probably Thomas Haden Church. Church is relatively amusing as the doctor who Betty seduces, a man who seems to think of himself as an authority figure but is rendered utterly useless around a flirtatious young woman. The other solid performances in the film are the more serious examples. Billy Zane utilize some of his snobby charm as Susan's put-upon boyfriend. Most intriguing is Dan Aykroyd as Bob, the murderous biker called upon to finish the job. Seeing Aykroyd cast as a remorseless killer is certainly interesting. He acquits himself with this type of character quite well, being properly gruff and intimidating.

Throughout his career, John Landis' movies have frequently featured gratuitous nudity. I don't think there's any deeper meaning beneath this. The guy just likes to look at naked ladies. Somehow, it's never come off as creepy before “Susan's Plan.” Here, Landis' proclivity towards sex and boobs officially becomes uncomfortable. The movie features several sex scenes, few of which contribute to the plot, all of which are rather flatly shot. The  graphic humpery feels included more for its own sake, making the director come off as a dirty old man eager to oogle young bodies. It's yet another layer that makes “Susan's Plan” such an awkward, off-balance motion picture.

Another fucking weird thing about this movie is the score. The soundtrack is from Peter Bernstein, a composer who has largely worked in television and low budget genre films, like “Silent Rage” or “Hot Dog: The Movie.” Bernstein provides essentially one musical cue for “Susan's Plan,” which the movie then repeats endlessly. Normally, I'd blame this on Bernstein or the film's low budget. Except Landis did something similar in “Oscar,” hammering one short piece of music into the ground until the audience is utterly sick of it. Considering how repetitive the film's structure is, I'm honestly curious if the music acting similarly wasn't an intentional choice.

Ultimately, I'm really not sure what to make of “Susan's Plan.” As a comedy, it's not especially funny. As a crime film, it's plot is not especially engrossing. The gory violence once again comes off as mean-spirited. There's even a moment, early on, where a character says that, once you kill one person, killing another one is easy. Jesus, John Landis isn't making fun of his own history here, is he? I have no idea what the director's own motivation behind this one was but it's a low budget and tonally bizarre motion picture. This one, perhaps, deserved to be buried in the direct-to-video dump bin. [Grade: D]