Director Report Card: Danny Boyle (2007)

 

11. Sunshine

“Millions” did not receive much notice in the United States. For American fans of Danny Boyle, what felt like the real follow-up to “28 Days Later” wouldn't arrive until 2007. What made the film more anticipated by fans of Boyle's zombie thriller is that it was a continuation of many of those same partnerships. “Sunshine” emerged from a script by Alex Garland, marking his third collaboration with the director. Cillian Murphy would return as the leading man. Most exciting, the film would see the team that revitalized the zombie movie trying their hands at another stalwart genre: The science fiction epic. All of which is to say that “Sunshine” was highly anticipated upon release in 2007. For a lot of people, it must've lived up to the hype. In the years since, I've often seen “Sunshine” praised by my fellow film nerds. I, however, was so disappointed with the film when I first saw it, that it changed my whole opinion of its director. Has my opinion changed any in eighteen years?

Fifty years into the future, the entire planet Earth is facing a crisis like never before. Our sun is dying. The world is freezing. A space craft known as the Icarus was sent on a mission to reignite the fading star with a nuclear bomb. They failed, disappearing somewhere around Mercury. Now, a second mission is own its way, the last chance the world has for survival. Icarus II is captained by Kaneda, navigated by Trey, and piloted by Cassie. And the mission is not going well. Physicist Capa and engineer Mace are getting into fights. The oxygen garden manned by biologist Corazon is ignited by an intense ray of sunlight. Upon discovering the abandoned Icarus I, the team detours to gather the first bomb from this other vessel, giving themselves two chances to save Earth. Kaneda is killed, Trey has a mental breakdown, and the ship is not left with enough oxygen to complete the mission. They dock with Icarus I to find its crew incinerated within and an unworking bomb. An explosion follows, leading to the death of two more crew members. As the Icarus II carries its sole payload to the sun, more unexpected dangers will threaten a mission that seems increasingly hopeless. 

Garland would be inspired to write “Sunshine” after researching the inevitable heat death of the universe. The writer and director spent a year fine-tuning the script, going through over thirty drafts. Scientific advisors were hired to ensure that the movie was as plausible as possible. This included a professor of particle physics regularly giving the cast and crew lectures on the topic at hand. This makes “Sunshine” a clear example of what is called “hard sci-fi.” There is no fantastical technology like faster-than-light travel, teleportation, or hyper-sleep. No aliens or exotic theories are present. That didn't stop “Sunshine” from being picked apart by real world scientists. The death of our star is due to a Q-ball – a type of theoretical particle phenomenon that I'm definitely not smart enough to explain – being caught within our sun. That wouldn't be possible, apparently, nor could a single nuclear device reignite a dying star. Nevertheless, the film is still a lot more realistic than most movies about space travel and intergalactic disaster. 

As any astronaut or cosmologist or astrophysicist will tell you, space is big. The characters in “Sunshine” are utterly isolated from their friends and family at home, uncertain if their messages are even reaching them. They have been on this mission for years now, disconnected from what is happening on their frozen world. More than anything else, space is incredibly dangerous. This is the idea that “Sunshine” emphasizes the most. A minor miscalculation can cause a calamity. A stray ray of sunlight is enough to ignite the oxygen store within the shuttle. In other words, space sucks. The entire population of the planet Earth is counting on their success but the team is surrounded by peril at every turn. I don't know if there's anything “harder” in science fiction than emphasizing that space travel is insanely dangerous. 

A space mission being constantly beset by misfortune and calamity probably would've been enough to make a suitably dramatic film. Accordingly, “Sunshine” focuses its narrative entirely on the ship. We see very little of how the sun slowly dying has effected life on Earth. However, the script never lets us forget that saving Earth is the entire purpose of this mission. That creates an apocalypse that is ultimately a bit too conceptual to get your brain around. Obviously, we know resurrecting the sun to save all life on Earth is important... But it would've been nice if “Sunshine” showed us that a little more than it simply told us that. A film about the sun fading out, Earth slowly succumbing to increasing cold and unending winter, strikes me as a lot more interesting than a movie about the mission to reignite the sun. With the script so stubbornly refusing to give us a sense of what is at stakes here, it leaves “Sunshine's” narrative without much tension. 

There's another reason why I struggle with becoming invested in “Sunshine.” I don't care about any of these characters. The film has an ensemble cast of about eight characters, which doesn't seem like a lot. However, the script splits time between a few of them, never truly establishing a protagonist to center the audience. Frustratingly, few attempts are made to develop these characters beyond their role on the ship. Chris Evan's James Mace is an engineer and perpetually angry. Michelle Yeoh's Corazon cares a lot about her plants. Cliff Curtis' Searle has an eccentric fascination with sunlight. Most of the rest of the crew don't get that much development, Rose Byrne's Cassie merely being the pilot and Troy Garity's Harvey never emerging as anything more than the second-in-command. Only their positions on the ship, their names, and the various famous faces playing them distinguishes them.

The characters in “Sunshine” are so indistinct that I often have trouble remembering which one is which. The film often has them wearing bulky space suits that obscure their faces, making it harder to remember who is who. That is a big problem when almost the entire film is about slowly killing off the cast. “Sunshine” repeatedly reminds us how many people are on the Icarus II, how many are needed to complete the mission, and how much oxygen is left to support that number. With every additional accident and death, their chances for success diminishes further. Never mind that their odds of actually getting to the sun and reviving it are low to begin with. Understandly, being on a suicide mission to save the entire fucking solar system has left the entire crew in pretty grumpy moods. This means “Sunshine” starts out in a grim place, tonally, and only grows more fatalistic as it continues. When combined with characters that are difficult to be invested in, it makes the entire film feel like a miserable slog. 

“Sunshine” would see Boyle collaborating with cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler for the first time. Küchler was best known, at the time, for his work on documentations like “One Day in September” and low budget dramas like Lynne Ramsay's “Ratcatcher.” It was his fifth collaboration with editor Chris Gill, who had been cutting Boyle's films since “Strumpet” and was crucial in designing the frantic visual style of “28 Days Later.” Gill's quick cuts and Küchler's gritty style do not make for the smoothest combination. This might just be a me thing but I genuinely have a lot of trouble following “Sunshine” simply on a visual level. This might be because “Sunshine” is often focused on creating a claustrophobic atmosphere, sticking us inside the helmets of these space suits and the tight, dark corners of the ship. Or maybe I'm simply stupid or something. Either way, throughout this viewing, I often lost track of where the characters where, the lay-out of the ship, and the position of the vessel in relation to the vastness of the stars and planets around it. 

I'm referring simply to the basic look of the film. That doesn't include the flashy, stylized flourishes that Boyle, Küchler and Gill also include. Upon entering the Icarus I for the first time, split-second images of the deceased crew flash on-screen. That didn't effect my ability to follow the story. In fact, maybe it was a little cool. However, in its last third, “Sunshine” introduces an annoying visual quirk. Every time a particular character is on a scene, the images become washed-out, blurry, pulsating, and distorted. The idea is obviously to up the tension, making the villain seem as if he's effecting the reality around him. Unfortunately, it also makes the movie increasingly difficult to follow. The climax of “Sunshine” left me baffled to the point that I had to re-read the Wikipedia plot synopsis afterwards to understand what was going on. 

You might have noticed I said “villain” above, in a story where the opposing force would seem to be a natural disaster and not an individual. With a little over thirty minutes left to go before end credits roll, “Sunshine” makes a massive narrative shift. Throughout most of the movie, I was under the impression that Boyle's main inspiration where grand, technical space exploration stories like “2001: A Space Odyssey” or “Silent Running.” Instead, it turns out that “Sunshine” was most obviously inspired by “Alien.” In its final act, the film suddenly introduces a villain. How he gets into the ship is left unexplained. How he continues to pursue the remaining characters seems difficult to determine. How he survives the wounds that turned him from a normal man and into a monster seems implausible. It is a big shift in the narrative that catches the audience off-guard.

And that could've worked. Sure. Bigger swings than that have proven compelling before. Boyle and Garland have made wild shifts in their films before, to varying levels of success. However, what “Sunshine” does after suddenly thrusting a visceral, physical threat into the story is rather baffling. This sci-fi thriller about the end of the world, for some reason, becomes a slasher movie. That's not an exaggeration. The last third is devoted to a hideously deformed villain, who rambles like a lunatic, working his way through the remaining cast and killing them one by one. Like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees before him, he repeatedly pops back up after seemingly being defeated, relentlessly following the final girl and survivor boy. He survives a number of injuries that would've killed any normal person, before finally perishing in a spectacularly gory fashion. Now, I love a good slasher movie. Truthfully, I love a lot of bad slasher movies too. There aren't too many subgenres I have more of a built-in affection for than a trashy, gory, body count flick. However, this sudden shift has always struck me as such a severe change in direction that it leaves “Sunshine” completely unmoored in its final act. 

“Sunshine” starting out as a very high-minded film concerned with highly technical scientific details, only to end up as a trashy genre exercise at the last minute is a trick that was always going to be hard to pull off. Unfortunately, “Sunshine” continues to operate as if it's a profound meditation on various serious topics even after becoming a murder spree. The villain is motivated by apparent visions from God, believing humanity is doomed and it is wrong to try and save us. This ties into the ideas throughout the film, of human spirit's ability to always find a goal that keeps us moving forward. It ends up feeling more like unearned pretensions than anything else. “Sunshine” motions at broader, philosophical themes without making any real statements about them. 
 

“Sunshine” was an expensive film to make, at least by the standards of the kind of movies Boyle was usually making up to that point. Andrew Macdonald had to cobble together the additional funds for the forty million dollar budget from a variety of sources. Ultimately, the film fell short of that goal at the box office. After making “Sunshine,” Danny Boyle said he was no longer interested in working in the science fiction genre, describing production as a “spiritually exhausting experience.” That would suggest that the entire process was not a satisfying ordeal for the director or producer. In time, however, “Sunshine” would win a a cult following. People seem to love it now. I guess I must remain the odd man out on this one. “Sunshine” has big ideas and an interestingly massive scope but the film repeatedly makes decisions that alienate me as it goes along. [Grade: C-]

RECENT WATCHES: 28 Weeks Later (2007)

“28 Days Later” was made for a meager budget of eight million dollars. At the international box office, it grossed over 82 million dollars. That's how horror movies are supposed to work, from a business perspective. Low investment, high return. Moreover, not capitalizing on the burst of interest in zombie media created by the first film would be a mistake, right? And how was anyone able to resist calling it “28 Weeks Later,” building on the easy naming structure present in the original? To put it simply, a sequel was inevitable. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland had already moved onto their next project though, committed to a sci-fi epic that would make it hard to work on a grimy zombie sequel. The search was on for a new creative team. Eventually, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo of Spanish language thriller “Intacto” would be chosen. A substantially bigger budget of 15 million dollars was provided to turn one gritty horror flick that had taken the world by storm into an on-going franchise.

196 days after the Rage Virus first breached containment in Great Britain, the situation seems to be under control. All of the infected have starved to death. NATO has taken control over the island, establishing a safe zone on the Isle of Dogs in an attempt to begin rebuilding. Among the survivors is Don, who feels immense guilt over leaving his wife, Alice, to die during the initial outbreak. In the safe zone, he is reunited with his children, Tommy and Andy. They have questions about their mother but he assures them she's gone. The two eventually sneak out of the containment area and discover this is a lie: Alice has survived due to a mysterious genetic immunity to the Rage Virus. She is still an asymptomatic carrier though, meaning she's quickly captured by the military. A medical officer named Scarlet believes a vaccine can be made from Alice's blood. However, Don sneaks into the lab and kisses his wife. The Rage Virus spreads to him and, very quickly, a full blown outbreak has consumed the safe zone. Under the care of a sympathetic sniper named Doyle, Scarlet and the two kids attempt to make it out of the quickly escalating chaos alive.

If no other theme emerged out of the later follow-ups to “Night of the Living Dead,” it's that authority will always use a crisis as an opportunity to seize more control. Unlike the unhinged soldiers and evil billionaires of Romero's later “Day” and “Land,” the military occupation in “28 Weeks Later” is well intended. They want to help people, rebuild a country torn apart by crisis and prevent any further outbreaks. However, being granted a level of leadership, even if it's with the best of intentions, still results in you peering down on everyone else from a dehumanizing angle. A largely pre-fame Idris Elba plays the U.S. general overlooking the operation on the Isle of Dogs. Once the virus starts to break out again, he doesn't take long at all to initiate a clean-sweep protocol. Soldiers are ordered to kill everything that moves, infected and not. The city is purged with a fire bombing. Before the end, the NATO forces are actively killing the people they have sworn to protect. If “28 Days Later” was an unintentional but utterly fitting reaction to the immediate chaos of a post-9/11 world, the sequel looks back on the reaction with a more skeptical eye. It sees military institutions trying to messily work out solutions with no eye towards the human lives caught in the middle. This is a clear criticism of the cluster-fuck response the U.S. government made in the wake of the attacks. I don't think the antagonistic soldiers here being American was any mistake. That makes “28 Weeks Later” the first War on Terror zombie movie, a critique of a system that is more concerned with restoring "order" than protecting people.

What made “28 Days Later” a little more special, beyond its novel approach to the zombie premise, was how it centered on some very human characters. The sequel sees no cast returning but does pull off a similar idea. Donald loved his wife and they cherished their kids together. In a world gone completely fucking nuts though, does the need to survive overcome questions of love? It did for Don and that guilt haunts him. The sequel makes a surprise turn midway through, when what had previously been the protagonist is turned into a Rage zombie. It's almost as if Don is being consumed by his own shame over abandoning his wife. Through the mayhem that follows, Tammy clings to Andy. She wants to protect her brother. Scarlet and Doyle emerge as older sibling figures of a sort too, looking out for the youngsters. All along, Don lurks in the background, almost as if he seeks to reunite his family even in his Rage-driven state. Like the military, he's an authority figure eager to restore control, in this case of the standard family unit of a father and his children. Meanwhile, the kids find a new family of sorts, based on empathy and compassion. I think the father's hang-ups and fears – excellently portrayed by Danny Boyle regular Robert Carlyle, who is also a fine rage zombie – could have been foreground a bit more. It's still an interesting theme to cook into your horror sequel.

Danny Boyle made a very deliberate stylistic choice using grainy, shaky digital video in “28 Days Later.” A lot of lesser filmmakers thought this meant jerking the camera around and making sure everything looked like shit was a cheat code to creating a tense, scary movie. Sometimes, cinematographer Enrique Chediak – previously of “The Faculty” – seems to be slipping into that meaningless chaos. A couple of moment in the sequel are a little too jittery to follow. However, the film mostly does a good job of building upon the technique used in “Days.” In fact, the opening sequence, where the infected horde infiltrates and destroys the safety of Don's first shelter, keeps up-ing the intensity until a properly shaking climax. John Murphy's already iconic theme music from the first film is reprised here to great effect. The sequel attempts to replicate that thrilling sense of dread throughout. When Don becomes infected himself, it strikes that right balance of panic and emotion. A moment when shooting breaks out in the city or a hero sacrifices himself amid a poison gas attack does as well. However, shooting an extended sequence in the back-half largely through the night vision scope of a rifle was maybe not such a good idea.

The script essentially means “28 Weeks Later” is splitting its screen time between multiple story threads. Don, his kids, and the military personnel that become their guardians are all doing their own things throughout the first half. Somehow, this is successfully built upon and creates a nicely tense second part. The time is taken to humanize our heroes before truly throwing them into the shit. Mackintosh Muggleton and Imogen Poots, as Andy and Tammy, both manage to be rare examples of carefully acted child performers in a horror movie. Their sibling bond is especially warmly depicted. The viewer wants to protect these kids. That same instinct aligns us with Rose Byrne as Scarlet, who immediately develops a motherly side towards the youngster. Jeremy Renner is also well utilized as Doyle. I like how the sequel treats the soldiers as average guys simply doing a job, devoid of any misplaced rah-rah jingoism before going for a darker portrayal of those willing to follow any order. 

In general, "28 Weeks Later" has a sturdier structure and pacing than the original. It lacks some of the freshness and eeriness of Boyle's film, as sequels inevitably tend to. The bigger budget does allow for a far wider scope, with more elaborate action sequences involving the fire-bombing of the Isle of Dogs or a pretty cool stunt in which a horde of Rage zombies meet some helicopter blades. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo put together a worthy sequel, maintaining the visual connection to the original and expanding upon its ideas while standing alone as a solid horror flick in its own right. Those that claim “28 Weeks Later” is scarier than the film it sequelizes aren't entirely wrong though. The sequel does its damnedest to be a more tense and thrilling experience. I'd rank the two films as about equal, extremely well executed variation on a familiar post-apocalyptic situation. [7/10]

Director Report Card: Danny Boyle (2001)

 

9. 28 Days Later

 

Here's how the story is always told: After the international success of George A. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead," what quickly crystalized into the zombie movie had a boom period throughout the eighties. By the nineties, the flow of such films had trickled to a stop before totally disappearing by the end of the decade. Novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland, inspired by his love of Romero's classics, decided to write his own take on the premise at the start of the new millennium. His collaborator on "The Beach," Danny Boyle, loved the script and decided to direct it. "28 Days Later..." came out in 2002, was hailed by critics as the scariest movie in years, and would prompt a zombie revival. The resulting renewal of interest in shambling corpses would outlast previous flirtations with the sub-genre, becoming a sensation in the worlds of comics, television, and memes, moving thoroughly into the mainstream in the process. From this perspective, "28 Days Later" is easily among the most important horror movies of the 21st century thus far. This telling of the tale is not entirely true. The ever-mutable zombie was already popular in video games, which Garland credited with inspiring him to write "28 Days Later." Undead gut munchers never entirely went away and there's been much pedantic debate over whether Boyle and Garland's film technically qualifies as a zombie flick anyway. Either way, "28 Days Later" did have an immediate and obvious impact on the horror genre and cinema in general. Twenty-three years later, how does the film hold up?

Animal activities break into a laboratory and free chimpanzee test subjects, unaware that they are infected with what is known as the Rage Virus. The disease spreads through blood or saliva, transforming the infectee into a mindlessly violent killer within minutes. Less than a month after this event, London has already become devastated. That's when Jim awakens from a coma into a city that seems deserted, with no idea what happened. He quickly discovers the rage infected populace and is only saved by Selena, a survivor who is scavenging through the nearly abandoned London for food and supplies. The two soon meet up with Frank and his daughter Hannah, who have been hiding in their flat. Hearing radio messages from a military base in Manchester, the quartet begins the perilous journey towards what they hope is the last bastion of civilization. What they find is not what they hope for and the threat of the Rage-infected hordes are never far away. 

The opening images of "28 Days Later" are of violence, political strife, and mass executions. This is quickly revealed as footage one of the chimp test subjects is being forced to watch. Humans are monkeys too, of course, and this is the first sign of the themes the film is dealing with. "28 Days Later" presents a world in which order has been overturned. In a matter of days, society has collapsed and the majority of people in Great Britain have been reduced to screeching, homicidal maniacs. The social structures we count on to protect us, amenities as simple as running water and fresh food, have failed. The old world is dead and a new, terrifying one has risen in its place. And there's no going back. The September 11th terrorist attacks would occur while "28 Days Later" was filming. There was no way Garland, Boyle, and their team knew Earth was on the verge of entering a chaotic new century. Despite that, their film seems to perfectly capture the anxieties that would grip the globe soon enough. In "28 Days Later," no one can be trusted. Your closest friend or love one can turn into a vicious killer with little warning. Institutions like religion and the military have fallen towards squalor and authoritarianism. We fear our brother and are now ruled by paranoia and a base need to survive, everything around us shattering into chaos. It was an accurate reading of the international mood in the weeks and months following September, 2001. 

Boyle and Garland have assured us that they were inspired more by the fear of disease than societal collapse when conceiving "28 Days Later" though. In the two decades since the film's release, the world has suffered another paradigm shifting crisis. And COVID-19 spreads a lot easier than the Rage Virus does. The most striking and eerie sequences in “28 Days Later” remain the scenes of Jim exploring an eerily empty London. It's quiet, the streets devoid of people. Enough signs remain that people where once here but they are surely gone now. It's almost as if Jim has awaken into a world where everyone else has vanished. Many certainly observed that the shots of London here – captured, miraculously, early in the morning before people left for work – closely resembles the city during the 2020 lock-downs. As alien and unsettling as the images where in 2002, they are more unsettling now that we know how plausible such events truly are.

Let us stop back for a minute. People way too hung-up on details insist that the Rage infected populace, being neither revived corpses nor cannibals, do not qualify as zombies. This ignores that the term “zombie” has always covered a wide range of cinematic ghouls and can be generally applied to any faceless horde of attacking, diseased humanoids. These were not the first running zombies in film history. However, the Rage Virus certainly turbo-boosted what was previously thought of mostly as shuffling revenants. They are wild-eyed, baring teeth, covered with sweat and constantly oozing blood and spit. A crowd of them emerging out of the dark, running at full speed and with no desire beyond killing the first thing they get their hands on, is certainly a terrifying sight. The image of infected people, still running while ablaze or being peppered with gunfire, is about as visceral a threat as can be conceived. 

It does represent a reshuffling of what the zombie means as a cultural symbol. These are not slowly creeping reminders of our own mortality, as in Romero's classics. Instead, they are fast moving attackers. They brim with infection, spewing blood and leaking fluid from every pour. They announce their presence with screams and wails. Seemingly, they are everywhere, emerging from the shadows to attack. The infection spreads almost instantaneously too. The opening scene features a crazed chimpanzee attacking someone, setting up the parallel that the infected resembles primitive predecessors to human beings more than people themselves. The viewer's point-of-view is also aligned with this ape in the opening shot. All of us are only one small turn, the film seems to be saying, from turning into a raging monster. “28 Days Later” represents not so much a fear of disease or the grim inevitability of death but of people, as unpredictable beings whose veneer of civility can easily slip away and reveal the savage animal beneath. 
 

That's nothing new either. Among the many meanings that can be applied to the zombie as a concept is them representing the teething masses of faceless conformity about to consume the individual. Romero's films always made the point that the living are as dangerous, maybe more so, than the undead. The true antagonists of his “Living Dead” saga have always been the people inside. As in “Day of the Dead,” “28 Days Later” eventually has the military emerge as the true villains of this story. When Jim, Selene, and Hannah arrive at the military base, they are relieved. This is before they realize that the soldiers are running a tyrannical operation that disregards basic human rights. Especially of women, who they intend to reduce to breeding stock and sex slaves. As frightening as the Rage infectees are, we are afraid of them because they are us. We are afraid of other people and what they are capable of.

In other words, “28 Days Later” is making a similar point to what Boyle and Garland said with “The Beach.” It doesn't take a lot to turn people into savages. In fact, it's hard to shake the fear that barbarism is the default state of the human animal. In “The Beach,” this idea was turned on its head as an indictment of a privileged American's overly macho Rambo fantasies. In “28 Days Later,” it's employed much more literally. In the final act, after Selene and Hannah have been captured by the military types and the severity of what is happening here has been established, Jim is left outside the facility. He sneaks around and kills the guards, breaks in, attacks the bad guys, and rescues the girls. When he comes face to face with Selene, she mistakes him for one of the infected at first. This brings ideas of women having all too understandable fears of men to mind. It also unironically makes the protagonist seem like a bad-ass action hero, while vaguely gesturing at pseudo-profound ideas about whether the civilized man is actually civilized at all. 

This is why, perhaps, I've been reluctant to embrace “28 Days Later” to the degree that many other cultural critics have. In the years after the film's success, when the zombie genre would become a cottage industry of its own, stories of these type would quickly burn me out. This is not only because there were a lot of them. It's also because right-wing survivalist douche-bag types would co-opt the genre. The universal themes that made me a fan of zombie stories would be traded out for tales of how paranoid gun nuts could be total bad-ass if the structure of polite society wasn't there to hold them back. I don't think Garland and Boyle are telling a story like that in “28 Days Later.” That a group of far-left animal activist types are responsible for unleashing the virus on the world doesn't make a conservative reading of the material impossible but I doubt that was intended. 

Instead, “28 Days Later” also draws from “Day of the Triffids,” a classic of British sci-fi that predates “Night of the Living Dead.” That's a book that pioneered the idea of the “cozy apocalypse.” Indeed, there is something refreshing in the premise of discarding all the structure of the modern world. Of burning down the congested and complicated lives we have now and rebuilding something better from the ground up. That strain of DNA is present in the film. As perilous as Frank and Hannah's lives are, running out of water and resources, there is something comforting about hanging out in your apartment as the world falls down around you. A key sequence have the quartet breaking into a seemingly spotless grocery store. They almost dance around as they scoop up food and drink. It represents one of the few bright spots in an otherwise grim film. There's another scene where Frank drives his cab through the empty streets, in a way that comes across as a bit freeing. I don't want society to collapse and I don't think anybody sensible does either. However, as a fantasy, it does present some appealing opportunities. Who wouldn't want to race along an empty street without fear of collision or speed limits? Or just take whatever they want from a store without a worry about price?

What does separate “28 Days Later” from the far more reactionary zombie stories that followed is that the freedom of a world without rules isn't the sole reason these sequences bring an odd comfort to them. Instead, the film points out something almost optimistic. “28 Days Later” is a movie about how there's little separating people from brutally murderous animals. About how it wouldn't take much for society as we know it to fall apart into utter chaos. It isn't making a nihilistic statement about human nature though. Because kindness does exist in this world. Selene helps Jim. Slowly, while exploring the very green ruins of the English countryside, they develop an attraction to each other. Frank still loves and adores his daughter, doing everything he can to protect her. He welcomes the visitors with open arms. Yes, people can be awful. Yes, the world is a fucked-up place. Selene chops up her previous traveling partner the minute he gets infected. Jim has to beat an infected child to death to survive. That doesn't mean we have to discard all our good nature to survive. That's what truly separates us from the chimpanzees.

That somewhat conflicting idea, that the human animal contains both an endless capacity for cruelty and an ability to love and protect, probably would be a lot harder to buy without a prime cast. Luckily, “28 Days Later” does assemble a fine cast. Cillian Murphy was all but a complete unknown at the time, emerging more as a stage talent than a film one. He plays Jim as a relatable every man, a sensible and average guy thrust into an impossible situation and forced to survive. Naomie Harris, as Selene, strikes the viewer as a deeply practical person, beaten down by the awful circumstance she's in. She is not without a kinder heart within, that slowly reveals itself. Brendan Gleeson, meanwhile, is an utterly lovable teddy bear as Frank, projecting warmth and practicality in every scene... Until that formidable size is later used to make him a threatening physical presence once he's infected. Megan Burns is a sharp-witted young woman that the viewer immediately wants to protect. Simply put, we care about these characters. That's really important to making “28 Days Later” an effective movie.

 

Part of why the zombie format has found such widespread success in television and comics – serialized mediums, in other words – is because it presents a wide open world. Following a group of characters through a city turned upside down probably presents more opportunities for a continuing story than a self-contained one. You can feel this strain in “28 Days Later.” The first half of the film is its most effective. It's also something that can only be done for so long. Jim and Selene simply trying to survive and get through the city isn't much a structure. Finding the military signal, heading towards Manchester, and encountering further problems there imposes a more concrete structure on a slightly shapeless story. It's still not as energizing as that first half and a formless feeling still can't be totally defeated. That's most evident in the abrupt ending, the image literally freezing before we arrive at a weirdly disconnected conclusion. (The result of the filmmakers choosing between three alternate endings, none of which were exactly great.)

These are the positive and negative qualities of “28 Days Later.” It has a story full of big ideas, some more simplistic than others. It has a story that verges towards the shapeless yet is most effective when not enforcing a structure upon itself. The cast is lovable but ultimately reduced to players in a familiar set-up. None of this addresses what the critics were saying in 2002. That “28 Days Later” was the scariest movie of the year, if not all time. No film benefits from hype like that. Which is not to say that “28 Days Later” doesn't bring some intensity your way. The “fast zombie” as a trope would quickly be badly abused by less talented directors. That doesn't change that the Infected are a terrifying threat, red-eyed and spewing blood and always aggressive. The scenes where they leap through glass doors or barred windows, attacking suddenly and violently, sure are a shock. Moreover, John Murphy's score keeps the heart pumping throughout, building tension during a number of key sequence. Boyle doesn't operate in cheap jump scares and is instead seeking to create a mood where chaos can strike at any moment. He largely succeeds.

Much was written, at the time, about the decision to shoot “28 Days Later” on digital video. That makes the little-seen “Strumpet” and “Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise” clear predecessors. The grainy and gritty visuals do contribute a kind of immediacy to the film. It adds extra starkness to the shots of an abandoned London. It contributes to a sense that we, the viewer, are as much dragged along by these events as the characters are. During the best moments, Anthony Dod Mantle's cinematography also brings an incredible sense of motion with it. A frantic point-of-view shot racing around the outside of a wall or attached to the point of a jet are two examples. I do miss the preciseness of the cinematography seen in “Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave” though, as effective as the digital harshness on display here is. 

To answer the question I posed above: Does “28 Days Later” hold up? Its images are still eerie and effecting. It still has some big ideas that hit in new and unsettling ways now. The cast is strong, the soundtrack is great, and there are several banger sequences. I maintain the same criticism that I had for it in 2002, that the narrative could have been a bit sturdier and that some of the concept it plays with are messier than others. I don't think it's the scariest movie ever or the best horror film of the century. However, it's hard to deny that the film gave the zombie premise a much needed shot in the arm. Moreover, I'm not sure anyone but Danny Boyle and his team could have made the film as effective as it is. Taken apart from its oversized shadow, this does remain a brutal bit of post-apocalpytic horror. [Grade: B+]

Director Report Card: Danny Boyle (2000)

 

6. The Beach
 

The box office and critical failure of “A Life Less Ordinary” did not wipe out the success of Danny Boyle's first two theatrical features. His working relationship with screenwriter John Hodge, producer Andrew MacDonald, and editor Masahiro Hirakubo would all continue. This is what allowed Boyle and MacDonald to pick up the rights to a novel from an up-and-coming novelist named Alex Garland. They acquired the rights to his book “The Beach” before it went into wide publication and became a hit. However, perhaps the mistakes made with “A Life Less Ordinary” suggested that changes did indeed need to be made. By this point, Hollywood had caught up with Boyle's prior successes and came calling. 20th Century Fox promised to bankroll “The Beach” if Boyle agreed to have Leonardo DiCaprio star. Boyle took that deal, alienating his first choice and favorite leading man Ewan McGregor, leading to a schism between the two that wouldn't heal for years. 

Way back in the year 2000, however, I didn't know any of that shit. At the time, I had no idea who Danny Boyle was and, once I became a budding movie nerd, was surprised to discover the guy who made “Trainspotting” also made “The Beach.” Because this was the first Leonardo DiCaprio movie to come out following the unstoppable cultural juggernaut that was “Titanic.” Unsurprisingly, the studio would go all in on this, largely selling “The Beach” based on DiCaprio's newfound star power and status as a teenage heart throb. As a twelve year old boy in 2000, it was my duty to think Leo was nothing but a vapid pretty boy, a grossly overrated newcomer with no talent beyond his youthful good looks. Jealousy was no doubt a factor in this common reaction at the time, as well as a general macho adolescent dismissal of anything deemed too much for “girls.” History has vindicated Leo fans, of course, DiCaprio having long ago proven his real movie star chops and becoming a lasting screen presence. History has not been as kind to “The Beach,” though it has slowly been reappraised as better than the disappointing reputation it received at the start of the new millennium. 

Richard is a young American who has come to Thailand in search of the same thing many people head to Thailand for: Sun, sex, and sensation outside his previously cloistered existence. However, he soon finds the thrills of Bangkok disappointingly pedestrian. What does catch his attention is Francoise, the pretty French girl in the hotel room with her boyfriend next door. He also notices an eccentric Scotsman calling himself Daffy. The man presents Richard with a local legend, of an untouched beach hidden from civilization, and gives him a map supposedly leading to this location. Afterwards, Daffy kills himself. Teaming up with the French couple, Richard sets out to find this island paradise. They do uncover a perfect, secluded piece of beach front property... But they aren't alone. Armed drug dealers control one half of the island while the other half belongs to a bohemian community. They are a self-sufficient village led by a woman named Sal that lives in peace with the jungle. Richard and his friends are the first new arrivals they've had in a long time and they are, somewhat reluctantly, let into the group. However, anything this pristine is doomed to be corrupted eventually. 

Early on and multiple times throughout, the secluded island setting of “The Beach” is compared to the Garden of Eden. At first, it seems to be a similarly idyllic location. The commune lives in seeming peace and harmony with each other and the natural world. They have no need for the pleasures and so-called conveniences of the outside world. They live off the land and want to keep it that way. The only way this paradise can survive is because it's a secret. Richard's intrusion seems destined to lead to the beach's downfall. He brings the corruption of the modern world into this world lost to time. Considering the villagers give him and Sal a long list of modern amenities to bring back to the island from the mainland, the suggestion is that these influences are already well at work here. The eventual exile from paradise deliberately references the Eden story, furthering the idea that “The Beach” is a story about the inevitability of a fall from innocence. The child-like frolicking in the consequences-free Garden will always come before a stumble towards adulthood and finding your place in the wider world. 

It seems that way but I don't think think that's what “The Beach” is really about. In Garland's novel, the main character is English. Re-casting the character as an American might have been a compromise with the studio but it adds a whole other, far more interesting layer to the material. Richard doesn't find anything all that impressive in Thailand. He finds a congested city full of people watching TV. Specially American television shows, like “The Simpsons.” The American experiment has already spread to, and corrupted, this corner of the globe. The beach represents a place free of the vile influence of capitalism and American exceptionalism. At least until Richard bumbles into it, acting like he deserves access to this natural paradise as much as anybody else. A moral about the creeping hand of Imperialism would certainly still make sense with a British main character. However, making the hero American and aligning the downfall of the peaceful community with the vulgarian excess of the American lifestyle makes for a far more pointed message. 

It is easy to figure out why “The Beach” would appeal to Danny Boyle and John Hodge. This is, in many ways, a similar story to “Trainspotting.” The film doesn't feature quite as much voice over as that motion picture but Richard does have a running inner monologue, mirroring the perspective of Garland's book. The similarities don't end there. Like Mark Renton, Richard is an overgrown boy who is entirely selfish in his motivations. He only ever speaks in terms of what this world can offer him. He seeks out the island because he wants to experience these pleasures. He naturally assumes he belongs in this community. When an another islander gets injured by a shark and slowly develops a lingering sickness, Richard's narration describes the dying man as an annoyance to everyone here. Notably, that does not extend to the kinder villagers who stay with the sick man and take care of him. Around the same time, Richard refers to the beach as nothing more than another vacation resort. He sees this world as a buffet made for his benefit, never considering that Sal and the others are very serious about this way of life. 

Much like another immature man-child from a Boyle film, Alex in “Shallow Grave,” he repeatedly refers to what happens here as a “game.” He seems to think everyone is playing this “game” when it's blatantly obvious that he's the only person making that comparison. This is directly linked with the video games – specifically “Rampage,” a game about monsters destroying stuff – he's seen playing throughout, a different form of mindless entertainment subbing in for the game shows Boyle previously used as a symbol of vapid, populist drivel. It's noted that holding a controller is what his hands are more accustomed too than the hard labor of growing his own food. These people have lives, having created a carefully balanced equilibrium here. Richard – a name that can be shortened to Dick, it must be noted – throws that balance off with his mere presence. He doesn't see it that way. Though the ending seems to hint at this large adult boy growing into a more mature man, it's a lot easier to believe that this guy's days of being a jerk, butting his way into places where he doesn't belong and insisting it's his, are far from over. 

In the many years since “The Beach,” Leonardo DiCaprio has played a number of entitled monsters that rampage through the world like unhindered ids. Honestly, compared to the vile greed and stupidity of Jordan Belfort, Calvin Candie, or Ernest Burkhart, Richard doesn't seem so bad. At least he has the excuse of being young. However, the role does show that DiCaprio, even this early into his superstar phase, was eager to play with his own image. As Richard, Leo shouts, swears, and panics in-between self-serious meditation that take place mostly within his own mind. Richard is an asshole, Leo plays him like an asshole, but the character certainly doesn't think he's an asshole. That's the power of a performance, making it a more meaningful indictment of this kind of self-aggrandizing entitlement. DiCaptrio was a long whiles off from being the grizzled screen presence he is now but he already understood that this was the mode that best served his abilities. (Notably, DiCaprio made this movie instead of the adaptation of “American Psycho” he was supposed to star in instead. For the first time, I honestly think he actually might have made a compelling Patrick Bateman.)

If you missed the obvious attitudes “The Beach” is criticizing, the film makes it more blatant as it goes along. After his selfish ways are exposed, Richard is temporarily exiled from the village and into a watch tower position. He quickly starts to become detached from reality, imagining himself in a video game or as a red bandana wearing, John Rambo-like figure. DiCaprio emerges from the shadows, a bit like Martin Sheen in “Apocalypse Now” too. In other words, he imagines himself as a world-weary, hyper-capable bad-ass. That's the case after he kills a shark, the boy quickly re-imagining the encounter as an act of bravery on his behalf and not happenstance. When he sees a dead body in the first act, he dismisses it as less real than what he's seen in the movie. However, Richard's bravado lasts only as long as he doesn't come face-to-face with someone actually violently dying. At that point, the illusion of action hero stardom are dashed and he's reduced to a blubbering boy once again. Almost as if he day-dreams about a life he actually has zero preparation or understanding off, further connecting with the film's themes of western entitlement. 

Naturally, Richard also believes himself entitled to sex and romance. In Garland's book, Richard's attraction to Francoise remains totally one-sided. It's a boyhood crush, another sign of his arrested adolescence. At the insistence of studio execs, probably hopeful to appeal to those who flocked to “Titanic” because of its love story, a romantic subplot was inserted into the film. At least this alteration similarly feeds into the story's themes. When Sal makes herself sexually available to Richard, he naturally goes right for it. He lies to Francoise on the island about the affair, another blatant example of what a cad this guy is. While it probably would've made more sense to keep the romance strictly to the imaginary category, it does give Guilaume Canet and Tilda Swinton – both excellent – a lot more to do. Swinton's ethereal appearance and commanding presence is well utilized as Sal while Canet's beauty and naivety makes her an ideal dream girl for the hero to fall in love with.

While the studio mandated romantic subplot at least fits into the film to some degree, the quasi-happy ending the money people similarly demanded is far less effective. One can only assume that a story like this is not going to end well for anyone. The heavily-armed marijuana farmers on the other half of the island clarify that they are, like most of the third world residents at the mercy of American imperialism, simple craftsman trying to take care of their families. They live here and all the white folks are interloper, all of them expelled from this Eden by the end. It might not surprised you to hear that Garland's source material had a far more downbeat conclusion. If Boyle's “The Beach” had ended five minutes before the credits, it certainly would've been logical. Instead, a hopeful final scene is tacked on. No, it doesn't fit the proceeding story nor match up with the thematic concerns. 

While Boyle and his team where clearly ready and willing to work with the Hollywood execs on this one, this still feels much more like a picture form the director of “Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave” than “A Life Less Ordinary.” As in his drug-fueled epic, Boyle allows for a number of elaborate fantasy sequences. This includes Leo being inserted into a Nintendo 64-style video game when imagining his adventure, another Vietnam War movie style daydream with notably bloodless violence, a talking shark, and a starry vision of the girl he's enamored of. This is paired with some hyperactive camera movements – a monkey point-of-view shot while running through the pot field being a good example – and some stylishly edited montages introducing the various inhabitants of the community. As you've come to expect by now, “The Beach” also has a catchy soundtrack full of carefully chosen Britpop and electronic needle drops. “The Beach” also features a very pretty score from Angelo Badalamenti, whose sweeping and dream-like main theme recalls the “Twin Peaks” intro a little bit.
 

Since the globe was gripped by LeoMania in the year 2000, “The Beach” was naturally a box office success. It grossed nearly a hundred million times more than its budget. I seem to recall that the critical reaction to the movie, upon release, was fairly muted. It was generally seen as a step down from the novel and a bit unfocused and muddled. (Which suggests a lot of those same critics didn't see “A Life Less Ordinary,” which makes “The Beach” seem positively concise in its focus and ideas.) Which aren't totally unfair criticism. However, the movie's themes of American entitlement encroaching on natural paradises – especially those fueled by libido-driven masculine urges – have only gotten more relevant in the years since. In a horribly ironic example of art imitating life, the production of “The Beach” ended up destroying the actual idyllic Thai island the story is set on. Which is another example of real life putting a little too fine a point upon the subtext, if you ask me. I don't think “The Beach” was worth the destruction of an actual natural paradise but I do think it's an interesting film. [Grade: B]

 

Halloween 2022: October 13th

Men (2022)

With two beguiling, critically acclaimed movies for A24 under his belt, Alex Garland reteaming with the studio for a third time was met with much anticipation among the Letterboxd/Film Twitter set. With the vague title of “Men,” details on the project were kept mysterious for a while until Garland revealed this was his entry into the ever-popular folk horror revival. However, upon release earlier this year, “Men” was not discussed in the context of its folkloric conventions. Instead, it was derided as another movie that claims to take down “toxic masculinity” mostly by showing men terrorizing women. In light of recent news, perhaps a lot of people are tired of seeing the details of misogyny regurgitated yet again. Nevertheless, “Men” has found defenders and, of course, I had to judge it for myself.

Harper retreats to a scenic estate in the English countryside. She’s haunted by the death of her husband. He fell from the roof of their building, following a violent argument they had about his threats of suicide in response to her wanting a divorce. Harper needs time to clear her head. Instead, her quiet vacation in the country is quickly disrupted by a naked man following her in the woods and standing in her yard. In the hours afterwards, she has more and more frightening encounters with other men, ranging from a teenage boy and the town vicar. Stranger yet, there’s something similar about all of them.

From one perspective, what “Men” sets out to say could not be more obvious. Everywhere Harper goes, she encounters one form of misogyny or another. The groundskeeper at the estate seems friendly at first but makes a bizarre comment about how Harper should be careful of what she flushes down the toilet, a clearly uncomfortable reference to tampons. Later, he switches from addressing her as “miss” – an untethered woman – to “missus” – an extension of a man. The little boy calls her a bitch. The male cops prove themselves useless by releasing the stalker, the nude man whose mere presence violates the peaceful country side, after arresting him. The town vicar seems sympathetic at first, before he accuses Harper of driving her late husband to suicide. He reappears later to outright accuse Harper of inflaming his lust, strictly because she’s female. Garland’s decision to have all these men played by the same actor – Rory Kinnear in various make-ups, including having his face deep-faked onto a young boy’s body – makes it clear that all these figures represent all different types of men, each of them united in their hatred of women. Thus, Harper becomes an everywoman and the film is a metaphor for the varying types of sexist abuse women must endure every day.

One could perhaps make the argument that nobody needs to be reminded of this fact, that pretty much every woman everywhere deals with horrible men constantly, least of all right now. Yet Garland’s film is made deeper thanks to the depths of its visual symbolism and the way he links this to English mythology. The males that stalk Harper are repeatedly connected with the Green Man, a figure of nature, rebirth, and fertility. Harper, meanwhile, is connected with the Sheela na gig, the very obviously female character of English mythology. It's notable that the man first appears while Harper stands in a very yonic tunnel. Which is also connected with a rotten deer carcass, furthering the link to the natural world. The characters are set-up as archetypal examples of male and female, locked in a conflict that dates back to ancient times. They are like the Horned God and Mother Goddess of modern paganism – the Green Man grows horns of a sort by the end – in conflict with one another in a world where the power of the masculine deity is overgrown, reflected in the bright foliage all around Harper. 

Garland playfully litters the film with other symbols too. Upon arriving in the country side, Harper plucks a peach from a tree, obviously setting up an Adam and Eve motif. (And further suggesting this battle of the sexes has waged since the beginning of time.) At one point, a bird crashes into the house and is put out of its misery by Kinear. By the way, a "broken bird" is a term for a tragic female character. If the point wasn't clear enough, the dead bird is later decorated with a Marilyn Monroe mask, pop culture's most enduring broken bird. The men of the film consider a woman like Harper "damaged goods" that must be put out of her misery. While Garland stops shy of including any actual sexual assault in the movie, he includes multiple instances of the predatory man inserting a finger or limb through gaps or slots. And, like the final girls of "Men, Women, and Chainsaw," Harper responds by bisecting his hand, turning a protruding masculine appendage into a split-down-the-middle feminine one. This foreshadows the implication of castration that concludes the film.  

I suppose it's inevitable that "Men" functions more as an art house freak-out than simply a horror movie. But I do think the movie does stand on its own as simply a visual/audio experience. Rob Hardy's cinematography is gorgeous, with the overwhelming greens of the forest making Harper seem further isolated. When combined with a dreamy and creepy score, it helps create a potent horror atmosphere. There are several strong, scary scenes here. Such as the titular man running at Harper from the darkness or an intense sequence involving a car. Sealing the deal is a pair of satisfying performance from Kinnear, disturbingly uncanny in every scene, and Jessie Buckley, a resilient heroine. 

I get it if you find all of the above utterly pretentious. Or if you don't think Garland's English major wankery with mythological symbols and ideas justifies another story that defines a female lead strictly in relation to the trauma men cause her. For me, personally, "Men's" atmosphere of surreal malevolence and interesting use and subversion of classical symbols sucked me. It's not until the final minutes when the movie falls into a series of grotesque images that are harder to justify. If "Men" is later reevaluated in years to come or remembered as a misfire within the context of Garland's directorial career remains to be seen. However, I found its approach compelling and its freakiness suitably unsettling. [7/10]

Antropophagus (1980)

When it comes to Italian horror, I am well-versed in the work of the masters. I've seen most of Argento, Bava, and Soavi's films. I'm familiar with Fulci and Deodato. But what about the directors whose reputations as “masters” are debatable at best? What of the trashmen, who flooded cinemas with low-budget garbage when the globe was most hungry for cannibals, zombies, and black-glove wearing killers? What about Joe D'Amato? D'Amato worked in nearly every role in the Italian film industry, under numerous pseudonyms. As a director, he was prolific, leaping across multiple genres. (Including lengthy stints directing hardcore pornography.) Of his many depraved movies, the most notorious is “Antropophagus.” The cannibal/slasher hybrid was perceived as so sickening by the British government that it became one of the reviled Video Nasties, those horror films deemed obscene and banned. Of course, this just solidified “Antropophagus'” place in trash-horror history. The movie is beloved among a certain breed of fan to this day.

“Antropophagus” stars and was co-written by George Eastman (also credited under multiple names in various capacities), the famously tall spaghetti western star and frequent D'Amato collaborator. He plays a man who is lost at sea with his wife and son, whom he cannibalizes to survive. Gone mad, he washes up on an obscure Greek island. There, he develops a hideously deformed face and devours anyone unlucky enough to cross his path. A group of tourists arrive on the same island, with plans for a pleasant vacation. A Tarot card reading warns of danger but they go ahead anyway. Soon enough, they encounter the misshapen man-eater, who proceeds to slowly hunt and kill them all. 

Despite its infamy, "Antropophagus” – known under a dozen different titles – is mostly one of those tedious Eurosleaze horror films devoted to people wandering around various locations, sometimes while shouting the names of other characters. You'd think the premise of "people stranded on island with cannibalistic murderer" would be simple enough but the script is junked up with unnecessary subplots and backstory. Not that the film makes much narrative sense anyway, as there's little rhyme or reason for most of the action. People do stuff for hard-to-define reasons. The shoot shifts randomly between night and day. Spatial relation between the various locations is rarely established. The majority of cast members are indistinct enough to be basically indistinguishable from each other. The score is the typical synth bleeping and blooping that you'd expect from the time and place.

If this is the case, what does this Video Nasty owe its notoriety and cult following to? Well, mostly two scenes of outrageously improbable gore. If you're reading this, you already know what they are. Eastman yanks a pregnant woman's fetus out and munches on it. Later, after being disemboweled, he uses his dying breath to chow down on his own guts. While unforgettable in their own way, the numerous times I've read about these scenes made them sound way more fucked-up than they are in execution. The former scene is shot with a slow-mo artiness, that keeps most of the actual ripping and munching off-screen. The latter is more graphic but the film ends abruptly right afterwards, creating chuckles instead of vomiting. Despite the creative vileness of those two gags, the rest of the movie's gore is actually pretty mild. I'm talking your standard cleaver hacking and throat biting. A decapitated head is laughably fake and Eastman's make-up looks pretty silly.

Even if "Antropophagus" is a largely tedious experience, I'll admit there are a couple of times when the movie almost works for me. There is a certain ambiance, unique to eighties Italian horror slime like this, that can be appealing. When a thunder storm is raging outside, and a shirtless guy is walking around a spooky old castle, that scratches a certain itch. So does a woman plummeting through a spiral staircase with a noose around her neck. Or a candelabra smashing into a mirror in spectacular slow-motion. I don't know why the bloody, screaming lady emerges from a barrel of wine. Or why people walk into a bat-filled catacomb populated by chewed-up corpses. Still, it's kind of cool, in the dumb-ass way motion pictures like this are. Yes, there's unintentional laughs too. Such as Eastman's unconvincingly dubbed screams of agony or a woman's name being endlessly repeated during a foot chase.

Standard jump-scares, meandering stalk-and-slash scenes, and a painfully drawn out first act also contribute to this being a largely snore-inducing movie. Yet you are unlikely to forget the movie's most disreputable parts. Considering most exploitation schlock filling drive-ins and grindhouses around this time were lucky to have one unforgettably sick moment, maybe “Antropophagus” having two is all we can expect of it. The movie's gruesomeness made it popular enough to spawn a semi-sequel called “Absurd,” also known under many alternate titles, that was also banned in various countries. That one is more of a direct “Halloween” rip-off and is, by most recollections, more competently made... But with fewer memorable evisceration. Which, considering the reasons we watch these movies, makes it hard to say if it's an improvement or not. As for D'Amato's incoherent original, you're probably better served watching a compilation of its most taboo moments than sitting through the whole thing. [5/10]

Amazing Stories: Hell Toupee

Yes, I'm watching this episode of “Amazing Stories” strictly because “The Simpsons” ripped it off for one of their later “Treehouse of Horror” segments. Novice defense attorney Harry Ballentine is in the unenviable position of defending Murray Bernstein: A man who went on a killing spree that targeted lawyers. Harry discovers that the very bald Murray was wearing a new toupee when he committed the murders. Around the same time, another bald man in a rug goes on a similar rampage. Harry soon figures out that it's the toupee itself, a living and crawling creature, that compels its hosts to kill lawyers offering “reasonable rates.” 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, “Hell Toupee” represents “Amazing Stories” in one of its goofier modes. The comedic tone is manic more-or-less from the get-go. Tony Kienitz' performance as Harry leans far too heavily on the nervous side. I do like how excited he gets about proving his case, just to be laughed at by everyone around him. Cindy Morgan is totally wasted as Harry's female assistant, who inexplicably has a crush on him. The highlight of the episode is definitely the climax set at what is seemingly a sellers' convention for toupees. It features a bizarre display of historical figures in toupees and concludes with a balding strong man with an axe being taken over by the demonic rug. Of course, there's a ridiculous “Or is it?” style ending.

The episode definitely needed to focus more on full-force surrealism like that or attempt a more subtle mix. While the premise of a parasitic toupee that inflicts its murderous impulses on its owner is ripe for absurd horror, this one is played for pure comedy. (“The Simpsons'” version is actually far grislier.) In fact, no origin or motivation is ever provided for the hairpiece's supernatural abilities or specific homicidal desires, which is unexpected. All of this just goes to show me, once again, that the command of tone director Irvin Kerschner showed on “The Empire Strikes Back” was difficult for him to replicate. I do like the central special effect of this episode though: The toupee itself, a squirming and creeping little creature that giggles wickedly to itself as it sets out to cause evil. Definitely needed more of that. [6/10]

The Munsters: Love Comes to Mockingbird Heights / Mummy Munster

"Love Comes to Mockingbird Heights" begins with a large crate full of gold coins, a shipment Uncle Gilbert is asking the family to watch over, coming to Mockingbird Heights. The banker sent to inspect the $180,000 payday is Alan Benson, who is immediately charmed by Marilyn. He seems determined to pursue her romantically, not even being put off by the family's trappings, but that's because he's a swindler after the money. "Mummy Munster" begins with Herman promising to pick up Marilyn from a school trip to the museum. He gets there late, after taking an experimental sleeping pill Grandpa has designed. The pill kicks in just as he's exploring the new Egyptian wing, falling asleep inside a sarcophagus and being mistaken for a priceless mummy. 

The first of these two is heavy on the clownish slapstick this show excels at. The scene where Lily and Grandpa attempt to accelerate Alan's seduction of Marilyn goes amusingly off-the-rails. Only this show could start a scene with a goofy chicken soup joke and end it with a self-playing organ bursting into flames. There's some goofiness involving Herman running around the house, which features a great line-reading from Gwynne. The finale also builds in amusingly silly ways, with Alan exiting the show in an especially absurd manner. At this point, I honestly feel bad for Marilyn. She has to put up with her family calling her plain all the time and the only guys that like her are crooks. But at least her aunt and uncle love her and it's that familial sweetness that really brings me back to this show.

Of course, this episode is most famous for the appearance of Uncle Gilbert, who directly identifies himself as the Creature from the Black Lagoon before the end. It's interesting that this show would play the youngest of Universal's monsters as an elderly uncle. It's also obvious that Bud Westmore just stuck a mask on some poor actor, whose eyes and lips are visible through the Gillman get-up. Nevertheless, who could resist another one of the classic monsters joining "The Munsters'" family? It's simply too perfect. 

"Mummy Munster," disappointingly, doesn't see another classic monster joining the Munsters fold. However, it's still a pretty funny episode. Obviously, the point of this entire contrive scenario is the scene of Herman waking up in the sarcophagus and scaring a very confused guard. The episode keeps building on that idea, having the museum curator become convinced Lily has stolen the mummy and putting an unconscious again Herman in the back of a cop car. Exactly the kind of silliness we expect from this program. As always, the cast can be counted on to elevate the material. Yvonne De Carlo gets a big laugh when she reacts with outrage to the suggestion she married a mummy. I also like the scene where Grandpa bribed Herman to take the second pill with a promise of candy, which pays off nicely a few minutes later. [Love Comes to Mockingbird Heights: 7/10 / Mummy Munster: 7/10]