The Screengrab : joe eszterhas

The Screengrab's Top Ten Worst...Movies...Ever!!!! (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

5. INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)

Atlanta, July 4th weekend, 1996. I was in town to visit friends, celebrate the holiday, and check in on the progress of the centennial Olympic games. Finding myself downtown early one afternoon with nothing much to do, I ducked into a movie theater, which was showing the mega-hyped blockbuster Independence Day. I wasn’t expecting much; the cast was crammed with big-budget line-readers, and Roland Emmerich was already, by virtue of Universal Soldier, one of the worst directors in Hollywood. But I was just looking to kill a couple of hours until the bars opened; how bad, I reasoned, could it be? The answer turned out to be not only “incredibly bad”, but “one of the worst of all time”. Independence Day would have been bad enough even if it was nothing but what it appeared to be – an utterly witless sci-fi action movie that substituted explosions for plot, motivation, characterization, and anything else worth watching – but it added some of the most egregious stereotyping seen in films this side of the 1930s. In addition to the name actors – including Will Smith as a wisecracking fighter pilot, Bill Pullman as a Fightin’ President, Jeff Goldblum as a nerdy computer scientist, Judd Hirsch as a Jewish father straight out of a Julius Streicher publication, Randy Quaid as the crazy town drunk no one will believe, Margaret Colin as a ball-busting corporate hard-ass, Vivica Fox as a whore with a heart of gold, and Harvey Fierstein as a mincing queen – even the bit parts were insulting caricatures. After the alien motherships are brought down, we’re treated to such rare sights as bone-through-the-nose, booga-booga-shouting African tribesmen and gibbering, ululating Arabs who can’t be understood – at least, until a civilized British officer steps in to translate. (LP)

4. BATMAN & ROBIN (1997)

No matter how many awards he may win, or magazine covers he adorns, or starlets he beds, or good causes he spearheads, no one will ever let George Clooney forget he once wore the Bat-suit with the nipples. And that’s as it should be. It’s astounding to think Arnold Schwarzenegger was able to overcome the scandalous footage of himself in full Mr. Freeze drag, willingly uttering lines like “Da ice man cometh!” and still be elected governor of California. And while it’s nice that Joel Schumacher was finally able to achieve his lifelong dream of directing the Ice Capades, maybe someone should have pulled him aside and explained that this was actually supposed to be a Batman movie. Scientists have been unable to pinpoint with any exactitude the lowest moment of the Bat-franchise. Was it Robin surfing through the air, howling “Cowabunga!” or the close-up of Clooney’s bat-buttocks as he fastens his utility belt or Schwarzenegger leading his minions in a chorus of “He’s Mr. Snow-Miser”? To answer the question definitively would entail sitting through the entire movie again, and so far no one has been willing to take on the challenge. (SVD)

3. BATTLEFIELD EARTH (2000)

There are quite a few lessons to be learned from Battlefield Earth. L. Ron Hubbard wasn’t much of a fictional storyteller. The sight of John Travolta decked out in alien dreadlocks is not pleasant. And most important of all for aspiring directors, tilting the camera at a 45-degree angle for every other shot of a two-hour film is the quickest and most conclusive way to tip audiences off to your directorial ineptitude. (NS)

2. SHOWGIRLS (1995)

I posted the following about a year ago in our list "Girl DisemPowering: Nine Films That Didn't Do Feminism Any Favors," but I'd say it pretty much sums up why Showgirls ranked so high on our Top Ten list of all-time rankest films:

“Do you know what they call that useless piece of skin around a twat? A woman!” And that hilarious quip from strip club “comedienne” Henrietta “Mama” Bazoom pretty much sums up the philosophy towards women in this abortion of a cult classic by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven. Sure, I get it...this campy, overwrought drag show bitch-fest about amoral sex worker Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) is so bad it’s good! And we can all just laugh through the parts where Gina Ravera’s Molly (the only vaguely redeemable or recognizably human character in the movie, and a black woman to boot) gets brutally raped by a loathsome white rock star. (I love it when they act out that part in the drag queen version of the show at my favorite hipster bar!) Garish, ridiculous and aggressively stupid, Showgirls is hard for me to enjoy ironically, since it so clearly embraces and truly believes in its own fetid realpolitik Hollywood philosophy that love is a lie, “art” is whatever makes money, winning is everything, men are scumbags, women are worthless (especially if they’re not hot, naked and young), the world is a shithole, if you’re not clawing your way to the top every single minute (and/or don’t know how to properly pronounce the most expensive status symbol brand names) you’re a fool and a loser and deserve what you get. Yeccch. Showgirls ain't just misogynistic: it pretty much hates everyone. And the feeling is mutual. (AO)

And now, the Screengrab's #1 Worst Movie Of All Time...

1. BABY GENIUSES (1999)

Let's see...cynical, lowest-common-denominator high-concept plot that's pretty much summed up in the title? Check! Hacky script featuring way-past-their-expiration date pop culture catch phrases? Check! Depressing lead performance by an actress who deserves better but can't find any decent roles in Hollywood because she doesn't have the off-the-chart talent of, um, Kate Hudson? Check! All that, plus creepy baby fetish CGI and the directorial flourish of the auteur behind Porky's II: The Next Day and you've got the perfect movie to fit in a double feature with Ow! My Balls! The Motion Picture in the future Idiocracy multiplex that waits for us all. (AO)

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager, Andrew Osborne

Screengrab's Ultimate Exploitation Films!!!!!!! (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:00:00 GMT

SPUN (2002)

If not for the evidence of the YouTube clip above, I’d be willing to believe I simply hallucinated this sleazy little movie during a hot, sleepless night in the San Fernando Valley. For example, all during the recent Awards Season, I kept hearing about Mickey Rourke’s years in the wilderness when he couldn’t find work as an actor...and yet, there he is in 2002, playing crystal meth guru The Cook alongside slumming Young Hollywood types like Jason Schwartzman and Mena Suvari (as well as Debbie Harry and Eric Roberts, who apparently did something really terrible fifteen years ago). Not that this icky, hyper-pixilated film (which, according to my pal Wikipedia, holds the Guiness Record for most edits in a full-length motion picture) would have served as much of a heartwarming comeback vehicle for anyone involved. Every character is vile, from Schwartzman’s strung-out tweaker who keeps a naked stripper (played by a very brave or very masochistic actress named Chloe Hunter, who also played the naked stomach on the American Beauty poster...thanks again, Wikipedia!) chained spread-eagle on his bed for most of the movie...to Suvari, who method acts explosive diarrhea...to Patrick Fugit, sporting really, really gross acne...to an even more spastic than usual John Leguizamo, who seems to be jerking off vigorously into a sock in the aforementioned YouTube clip (though, thankfully, I don’t really have any vivid memories of that particular plot development). Which is not to say Spun is a bad movie, exactly...at least not in the sense of being poorly made. It's just bad.

SHOWGIRLS (1995)

It’s a testament to the eternal power of this truly bewildering big-budget sexploitation potboiler that even today, a lot of critics simply can’t figure out what to make of it. Oh, it’s not good – in fact, it’s insanely, jaw-droppingly bad. But how much of that badness is by design? After all, the director, Paul Verhoeven, is a talented filmmaker who has certainly suckered us in the past, delivering sly satire on American culture disguised as blockbuster entertainment in movies like Robocop and Starship Troopers. Then again, the writer is Joe Eszterhas, who has penned a lot of shitty movies like this with no apparent irony. The story of a cheap tramp who comes to Las Vegas in a quest to determine exactly how cheap and trampy she is willing to become, Showgirls features scenes that are so horrible that they can’t possibly be serious, but which are played so seriously that there’s no way they’re a joke. What to make of the scene where Nomi (played by Elizabeth Berkley, who goes the entire movie without ever exhibiting a single recognizably human behavior) angrily eats French fries and vomits in a parking lot out of sheer rage? What to make of the scene where she has sex with a floppy-haired, floppy-souled MacLachlan as if she’s trying to banish him to another dimension? What to make of the scene where she and Gina Gershon, who has clearly sized the whole movie up as a no-win situation, debate the merits of brown rice and vegetables? If Showgirls was made by a bunch of nobodies on a shoestring budget, it would at least be comprehensible, but the fact that it was made by Hollywood heavy hitters for a king’s ransom can only leave you wondering if it’s some kind of insanely good parody of a terrible movie, or something so mind-peelingly bad that it goes, like Nietzsche, beyond good and evil.

SHAOLIN MASTER KILLER (1978)

Also known as Shao Lin San Shi Liu Fang, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, The Master Killer, and about a half-dozen other titles, this is the movie that made a huge star out of Hong Kong kung fu actor Gordon Liu, and led indirectly to the founding of the Wu-Tang Clan. (If you can, pick up the DVD version released by the Weinstein’s Dragon Dynasty company, with astonishingly geeky audio commentary by the RZA!) Before anyone started taking wushu movies seriously, they were generally meant to be exploitative grindhouse fare for urban audiences, as evidenced by their former moniker, “chop-socky flicks”. But Shaolin Master Killer was one of the first wave of post-Bruce Lee wushu epics that started to tip off critics that maybe there was something genuinely worthwhile happening in these punch-‘em-ups. The plot couldn’t be simpler: during the oppressive Manchu dynasty, a young man enters the Shaolin temple to learn kung fu, and, after passing the grueling training exercises required of a monk, uses his martial arts expertise to pursue the secular goal of freeing his people from tyranny. But even with the thin plot, there’s some great acting going on (Shaolin Master Killer features appearances by some of the greatest Hong Kong character actors of the day), and, of course, lots of the most exciting fight scenes ever put on film. You can tell what you’re in for before the movie even starts: its opening credits feature one of the most thrilling sequences in the history of wushu cinema, with the charismatic and emotional Liu performing exciting moves as the soundtrack blares, of all things, a bit of incidental music from the score to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

GOD TOLD ME TO (1976)

For some four decades, the writer-producer-director Larry Cohen has been a never-ending Roman candle of feverish activity, spitting out one punchy, high-concept idea for horror, sci-fi, and action movies and TV series after another and dressing them up with political conceits and crackpot notions that might have been filched from pamphlets found in a Greyhound men's room. His efforts are consistently undermined by low budgets, sloppy execution, and his own sledgehammer touch, but at least he's given us a filmography that can make you wonder what it might look like if its maker had been blessed with resources and talent. This bizarre take on the end-of-the-world religious-horror theme that the big studios were mining with big-budget junk like The Omen is perhaps his most tantalizing project, which means that it's the one that is most plaintively calling out to be remade by somebody who could really do justice to its sick, sick heart. People without past histories of violent criminal behavior are suddenly flipping out all over New York City, committing murders and signing off with the explanation, "God told me to." (One of the killers is a cop played by Andy Kaufman, in his film debut.) The paranoid set-up is juicy and disturbing enough to give you the willies even without Cohen's climactic twist, which basically suggests that Jesus was the product of rape by an extraterrestrial.

IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971)

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, there was a subterranean wave of so-called “Christploitation” movies coming out of the American south – cheaply made, often gory and tawdry tales of sensationalist sin, usually with more than a bit of Apocalyptic flavor. A number of these made their way to the Southern Baptist church of my youth, and by far the most demented of these was If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?. Directed by Christploitation superstar Ron Ormond and based on a sermon by the wonderfully named Rev. Estus W. Pirkle, a Tim Kazurinsky lookalike who appears in the film reading in his hysterical hillbilly squeak, the movie posits itself as a dire warning. If America does not undergo a massive church revival in the next few years, Pirkle bleats, it will surely signal the beginning of an invasion by Communist forces that will spell the end of Christianity as we know it. That’s only the beginning: as a fallen churchwoman overacts madly in the pews, Pirkle and Ormond paint a woozy picture of the nightmarish future America under Soviet rule. People are forced to stomp all over a glossy portrait of Jesus! Those who do not renounce their faith are beheaded, machinegunned, or forced to have bamboo rods jammed into their ears until they vomit! Schoolchildren will be compelled to pray to Fidel Castro for free candy! Featuring a no-star cast of locals from Pirkle’s church portraying badly dressed commisars, and a Communist invasion force so ill-equipped that they drive their victims around in a beat-up old pickup truck, If Footmen Tire You is really something to behold. To 11-year-old me, it was terrifying; to anyone grown up enough to see it for what it is, it’s utterly laughable.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four & Six...and don't say we didn't warn you!!!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: Johnny Depp, Household Pet

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Don’t tell the newly pious Joe Eszterhas, but his old partner in crime Paul Verhoeven is in talks to direct another erotic thriller. Variety says the untitled script by Wendy Miller “centers on a college intern who finds himself trapped in a dangerous affair with the boss’s wife. Project is described as Risky Business meets Fatal Attraction.” So…Fatal Business? Risky Attraction?

What is the terrifying secret of The Steam Experiment? I certainly can’t wait to find out, as Val Kilmer, Armand Assante and Eric Roberts team up for the indie suspense thriller. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the plot concerns “six people trapped and terrorized in an urban Turkish bathhouse.” Just imagine being trapped in a bathhouse with Val Kilmer, Armand Assante and Eric Roberts and you can already smell the suspense.

Johnny Depp reunites with Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) for the animated feature Rango. Per Variety, “Depp will voice the lead character, a household pet that goes on an adventure to discover its true self.” Really, that’s what it says – a household pet. As if revealing whether he’s a dog or cat or gerbil would be giving too much away.

Related:
Saint Joe: "Showgirls" Writer Finds Jesus
Depp vs. Murray: Dueling Gonzos

Unwatchable #73: “Fascination”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

It’s time for another Unwatchable substitution. As regular readers of this column may recall, occasionally there is an entry on the IMDb Bottom 100 that I am unable to lay my eyes on. Usually it’s a foreign film despised in its own country but unknown and unavailable in mine. That’s the case with number 73 on the list – that is, the list I’m working from, which I downloaded back in April – the 2004 German film Daniel - Der Zauberer. I do wish I could have found this one, the plot of which is described thusly on IMDb: “Evil assassins want to kill Daniel Kublbock, the third runner up for the German Idols.” Alas, my efforts fell short, but we can at least enjoy the trailer together:

Anyway, in the event a film from my version of the list is unavailable, I go to the current version of the Bottom 100 list and select the first available entry that does not appear on my version. In this case it’s the erotic thriller Fascination, which many of you may have missed, given its $9,018 opening weekend in January 2005. No decimal points are missing there – the movie took in a little over nine grand on its way to a robust final tally of $16,066. It’s become a hacky staple of film criticism to note that most erotic thrillers are neither erotic nor thrilling, but hackery is definitely called for in this case. Fascination plays like something Joe Eszterhas would come up with if he was writing for Skinemax instead of Jesus Christ.

Wealthy Patrick Doherty (David Naughton) lives with wife Maureen (Jacqueline Bisset) on an exotic island paradise. It’s an idyllic existence until the day he goes for a swim and gashes his head open on a reef. Son Scott (played by a plank of driftwood called Adam Garcia) returns for Patrick’s funeral, and learns he and his mother have inherited the estate. Only a few weeks later, Maureen returns from a cruise engaged to the Euro-sleazy Oliver Vance (Stuart Wilson). Scott isn’t thrilled with this development, but he is happy to meet Vance’s daughter Kelly (Alice Evans), a British Gina Gershon with whom he is soon having acrobatic sex.

Oh, the sex. Your Screengrab pals recently participated in the Nerve/IFC 50 Worst Sex Scenes in Cinema list, and if only one of us had seen Fascination at the time, it would have qualified twice over. The first liaison between Scott and Kelly takes place on a slanted corrugated tin roof in a photogenic rainstorm that comes out of nowhere. Just when you’re thinking, “Gee, looks like fun, but also a good way to fall to your death,” Scott and Kelly slip and nearly fall to their deaths. Their next session takes a place alongside Showgirls and The Color of Night in the pantheon of laughable pool sex, as Kelly nearly drowns Scott between her legs while entertaining visions of an underwater car accident. Hey kids, how about taking that action somewhere safer, like a bedroom or the deck of an aircraft carrier? There’s also some icky father-daughter stuff between Vance and Kelly, but most of that is mercifully left to our imagination.

Well, so much for the eroticism – onto the thrills. It turns out that Scott’s saintly pop Patrick had a Chappaquiddick in his past, and as becomes clear long before it is tortuously revealed onscreen, the secretary who drowned in his car was Kelly’s mother. It also happens that Patrick’s death was no accident, as a toxicology report confirms he had Maureen’s sleep medication in his system. So who is behind Patrick’s death? Maureen? Vance? Kelly? All three?

To find out the truth, you have to get through the scene where Vance tries to blow up Maureen in a cabin and gets himself trapped inside. Then the scene where Kelly goes to his hospital bed and kills him by disconnecting his breathing tube. Then the scene where Scott goes to his hospital room to find out the truth about Kelly, and the nurse shows up just in time to catch him with the disconnected tube in his hands, and the cops arrest him for murder. Then the scene where Kelly confesses that she’s not really Vance’s daughter and Scott is, for some reason, released from custody. I did make it through all these scenes, and was rewarded with Kelly and Scott enjoying one more sweaty fuck, this one immediately following a car crash she causes. Honestly, this dumbass deserves her.

Previously on Unwatchable:
74. You Got Served
75. The Last Sign
76. Kickboxer 3: The Art of War
77. BloodRayne 2: Deliverance
78. The Quick and the Undead

Saint Joe: “Showgirls” Writer Finds Jesus

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

In a twist that’s just about as predictable as anything out of his screenplays, former master of glossy cinematic sleaze Joe Eszterhas has undergone a spiritual conversion. You remember Joe from the rollicking ’90s, when he penned such odes to depravity as Basic Instinct, Sliver, Jade and of course, the legendary Showgirls. But time marched on without ol’ Joe, who saw his anomalous coming-of-age tale Telling Lies in America and his off-target Hollywood satire An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn turn into limp box office flops. His oft-threatened magnum opus Sacred Cows, a political fable about a presidential hopeful getting caught fucking a cow, somehow failed to materialize.

Eszterhas has his own sacred cows now, as he reveals in his new book Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith. As he tells the Toledo Blade, it all started in the summer of 2001 when “Mr. Eszterhas was diagnosed with throat cancer. Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic removed 80 percent of his larynx, put a tracheotomy tube in his throat, and told him he must quit drinking and smoking immediately. At age 56, after a lifetime of wild living, Mr. Eszterhas knew it would be a struggle to change his ways.”

Eszterhas found Jesus and become a regular Sunday churchgoer, carrying the cross down the aisle “wearing jeans and Rolling Stones T-shirts when he does it,” so we know he’s still a badass – just a badass for Christ. Indeed, it sounds like the tough guy bluster is still alive and well as “Mr. Eszterhas writes bluntly of his disgust for priests who are pedophiles and bishops who have covered up for them. He and [wife] Naomi decided they could not, in good conscience, donate a dime to the church because of the clerical sexual abuse scandal. He also writes about the inner turmoil he felt when he took his boys to catechism classes or other church events and kept a protective eye on them the whole time, making sure they were never alone with a priest. And he complains about priests' homilies being boring and pointless.”

So this isn’t exactly a Billy Graham primer, but what really raises the bile is when Eszterhas complains “that Hollywood still doesn't do the kinds of faith-based and family-value entertainment that people are desperate to see.” I guess we can expect him to give back all the money he made writing his special brand of family-value entertainment, since he’s already made it clear he’s not giving it to the church.

Related:
Sharon Stone Bares All For Paul Verhoeven
Girl DisemPowering: Nine Films That Didn't Do Feminism Any Favors (Part Two)

Girl DisemPowering: Nine Films That Didn't Do Feminism Any Favors (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:45:00 GMT

SHOWGIRLS (1995)

“Do you know what they call that useless piece of skin around a twat? A woman!” And that hilarious quip from strip club “comedienne” Henrietta “Mama” Bazoom pretty much sums up the philosophy towards women in this abortion of a cult classic by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven. Sure, I get it...this campy, overwrought drag show bitch-fest about amoral sex worker Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) is so bad it’s good! And we can all just laugh through the parts where Gina Ravera’s Molly (the only vaguely redeemable or recognizably human character in the movie, and a black woman to boot) gets brutally raped by a loathsome white rock star. (I love it when they act out that part in the drag queen version of the show at my favorite hipster bar!) Garish, ridiculous and aggressively stupid, Showgirls is hard for me to enjoy ironically, since it so clearly embraces and truly believes in its own fetid realpolitik Hollywood philosophy that love is a lie, “art” is whatever makes money, winning is everything, men are scumbags, women are worthless (especially if they’re not hot, naked and young), the world is a shithole, if you’re not clawing your way to the top every single minute (and/or don’t know how to properly pronounce the most expensive status symbol brand names) you’re a fool and a loser and deserve what you get. Yeccch. Showgirls ain't just misogynistic: it pretty much hates everyone. And the feeling is mutual.

INDECENT PROPOSAL (1993)

If Demi Moore is, or was, a star, it's not because she's talented (she can't act a lick) or because people like her (a lot of them don't) but because she manages, just through her very presence, to convey the impression that denying her the attention she craves might have consequences that are just too dire to contemplate. Like Madonna at her least interesting and most hard to take, she seems to be all about ambition for its own sake, but possessed of a steely, confrontational gaze that says: You will take me seriously. Although others will prefer to honor her for her services to American literature in The Scarlet Letter, Indecent Proposal may be the definitive Demi Moore movie statement. Here, she takes up where the Material Girl left off in the '80s; Madonna demonstrated that pure commercialism was hip, and this movie gives Moore the chance to show that a woman can assert herself and take control of her life by whoring herself out. When we first meet her, she's totally in thrall to her boyfriend, Woody Harrelson -- his dreams (of making a haul gambling in Vegas to fuel his doomed business venture) are all that matter. But after Harrelson craps out, she agrees to gazillionaire geezer Robert Redford's offer that she sleep with him for a million dollars. Harrelson, who wants the money but also wants some credit for feeling bad about it, ends up basically serving as her pimp, but when she's had it with his whining she makes it clear to him that this was her decision -- she's her pimp. And she's right -- although Harrelson has been her one true love and her ennobling reason for accepting the offer, once he goes into his snit, she has reason to dump him, which she does, thus conveniently giving Daddy Warbucks his opening to step up and sweep her off her feet. Then, because Redford, apparently a big Cheers fan, can't stand to see Woody Harrelson feeling suicidal -- and also, maybe, because the young poor guys whose girlfriends dragged them to this movie would tear out the theater seats if Moore stayed with the old, rich guy -- Redford ennobles himself by gracefully doing a far, far better thing than he has ever done before and giving her back to Harrelson. Moore agrees, somehow failing to notice that she's not just continuing to define herself by which guy she's with, but letting the guys dictate which one of them that will be. Not that I'd want to have to choose myself if I were her; Harrelson has never come across as goofier, and the awestruck, glamour-lighting treatment that Redford is given here just tends to emphasize how much his sun-kissed visage was starting to look like the bottom of a potato chip bag.

KISSES FOR MY PRESIDENT (1964)

In this election year, let us spare a moment's reflection for the sacrifices made by those who came before us, like whoever had to sit through Kisses for My President, a Great Society-era comedy in which a woman -- Polly Bergen -- becomes president of this great land, an idea that at the time must have seemed considerably more far-fetched than anything in the Warren Commission Report. Bergen's Leslie McCloud wasn't the first pretend woman president in American movies -- that honor may fall to the nameless character played by Ernestine Barrier in the 1953 Project Moonbase, which was set in 1970 -- and she may not even be the most pathetic. (Tip your hat to Loretta Swit's President Adams in Whoops Apocalypse.) But she may have been the most retrograde, a sad example of a would-be world leader overtaken by events on the home front. Although Bergen is actually a decisive, effective commander in a dangerous, confused and (this being a 1964 Hollywood comedy) kooky world, she has to fight to stay focused on her job because her husband, Fred MacMurray, is having a twenty-four-seven hissy fit about how unmanning it is to be the First Gentleman. Fred finally solves his problem by getting Bergen pregnant, forcing her to step down so that Dick Cheney can become president. Special prosecutors have been appointed over less.

LEGALLY BLONDE (2001)

Call it last-wave feminism: it has a target market, not a constituency, and they’re the kind of women who don’t even like to use that particular f-word. It’s the feminism of sorority girls with trust funds and breast implants, the feminism of drunk girls making out with each other in main-drag bars. It’s the feminism of marrying up, of buying at full price, of a career as a means not to equality, but to superiority: and Legally Blonde is its favorite movie. The 2001 fish-in-the-wrong-brand-of-bottled-water comedy made a fortune, and turned Reese Witherspoon into a major star; but beyond that, it inspired a legion of imitators that all followed a now-familiar formula. Nice was the new smart, fashionable was the new educated, and rich was the new liberated. It’s easy enough to brush off Witherspoon’s Elle Woods as simply another iteration of the classical comedic underdog, but that only works until you consider the fact that her underdog is rich, well-dressed, trendy and drop-dead gorgeous. She enrolls in Harvard Law School (and is accepted with insulting ease) more or less to spite her equally wealthy, handsome ex-boyfriend, and the movie’s idea of conflict is simply pitting her against a variety of snobbery slightly different than the one she’s used to. The girl power championed by Legally Blonde is the power to wear a push-up bra with pride, and to blend the power of crass nouveau wealth with that of elite establishment power. Sound like any president you know?

Click here for Part One of Girl DisemPowerment.

Or click here for Part One and Part Two of Chick Hits: The Girl Power Top Ten

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Yesterday's Hits: Fatal Attraction (1987, Adrian Lyne)

Paul Clark — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Whenever I describe the idea of Yesterday’s Hits to someone who’s never read the column, I’m often asked, “why write about movies that aren’t popular anymore?” There are a number of reasons, but one of the biggest has always been a kind of anthropological fascination with the movies to which earlier generations gravitated. In some cases, the reasons behind the films’ blockbuster status are simple- because they craved good special effects, or because the stars were popular at the time. But in some cases, it goes deeper than that, because the film taps into a certain zeitgeist that makes it a must see. Simply put, it’s the right film at the right time. One example of this is Fatal Attraction.

What made Fatal Attraction a hit?: The 1980s were a profitable period for R-rated movies, and one of the prime beneficiaries of this was the erotic thriller genre. But while most movies of this kind were fairly disreputable, Fatal Attraction was different- a classy project pairing bankable leading man Michael Douglas with three-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close. Because of its pedigree, Fatal Attraction was able to attract a bigger audience than most films of the kind, becoming the second-biggest hit of 1987.

However, the film’s success was bigger than box-office grosses, with its title entering the popular lexicon. This was due in no small part to the way its screenplay (penned by James Dearden) tapped into two major issues of the day. First, after the advent of feminism, there was a certain degree of anxiety among many men about these newly independent and sexually powerful women, exemplified in the film by Glenn Close’s Alex. But also important- although less explicit in the film- was the sudden fear of sex which was caused by the discovery of AIDS earlier in the decade. Suddenly, the casual sex of the sixties and seventies carried with it deadly consequences. These two factors combined to make Fatal Attraction a topic of national conversation, with the film garnering six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Not bad for a project that had repeatedly been dismissed as a ripoff of Play Misty for Me and passed on by almost twenty filmmakers, including Brian DePalma and John Carpenter.

What happened?: While Fatal Attraction transcended the genre to which it ostensibly belonged, its box-office performance paved the way for an explosion of erotic thrillers, few of which were remotely as good, and almost none of which were as respectable. Most of the films that were made in its wake were sleazy and shameless, with filmmakers like screenwriter Joe Eszterhas aiming to outdo each other for kinky sexuality and elaborate deaths. In addition, there was a rise in direct-to-video erotic thrillers at the end of the eighties, occasioned in part by the home-video success of Fatal Attraction. For both of these reasons, and others besides, the erotic thriller genre had largely become a parody of itself even before Carl Reiner made his dire spoof Fatal Instinct in 1993.

Does Fatal Attraction still work?: Mostly, yes. For a movie of this kind, Fatal Attraction is pretty low-key for most of its duration. Dearden and director Adrian Lyne take time to properly establish the film’s characters and story rather than simply barreling through to the sex and violence. From the beginning, the film portrays Dan Gallagher’s (Douglas) life in detail- his beautiful wife Beth (Anne Archer), his little girl, his job as a high-powered lawyer, and his close friendships. It’s not until after we see what his everyday life is like that the film throws Alex into the mix, which allows us to see what he has before he does something that could cause him to lose it.

It’s because of this that the casting of Douglas is crucial. Most big stars of the period specialized in uncomplicated heroes, but Douglas was the exception, often playing flawed yuppie types with a dark side. Fatal Attraction gave him the one of his best roles, as a decent man who is almost done in by his arrogance- he cheats on his wife because he knows he’ll have fun, and he figures he’ll never get caught anyway, so where’s the harm? But of course, he does.

Also important is Close’s performance as Alex, who’s crazy all right, but also says some things that make a good amount of sense. After Dan unceremoniously dumps her, she calls him on it, saying he treats her like “some slut you can just bang a couple of times and throw in the garbage.” After she finds out she’s pregnant, she seeks him out and demands that he “accept his responsibilities.” Alex has her share of problems- she’s suicidal, for one thing- but most of her actions in the film’s first half are actually pretty reasonable. She’s been wronged, she’s pissed, and now she will. Not. Be. Ignored.

The first hour or so of Fatal Attraction works so well as a morality play, with Dan trying to figure out how to shake off Alex while dealing with his own guilt and keeping the truth from his wife, that it’s sort of disappointing when it moves into more traditional thriller territory. Some of the film’s most famous sequences- the boiled bunny, the kidnapping- still pack a punch, but they don’t fit very well with what came before. Mostly though, it feels too easy to turn Alex into a psycho. By making her a villain, it provides an easy opportunity for Dan to emerge as a hero working in the interest of protecting his family and saving his marriage. Compared to what came before, it’s far too tidy.

Especially damaging is the film’s climactic scene, in which Alex brandishes a butcher knife and tries to murder Beth. In Dearden’s original ending, Alex committed suicide in a manner that made it appear Dan had killed her, which led to him being arrested for her murder. However, after disastrous test screenings, the studio shot the new ending, which tested much better. But while turning Alex into a knife-wielding slasher helped the film’s box office, it hurt it quality-wise. With its original ending, not only do all of the Madame Butterfly references suddenly make sense, but the film becomes far more about Dan having to deal with the consequences of his affair and less about providing clear-cut violent catharsis for the audience. Sadly, a move like this is all too typical of Hollywood- so short-sighted that they’ll gladly torpedo a future classic in the interest of making the movie more bankable today. Of course, this is what made Fatal Attraction so ideal for Yesterday’s Hits. Funny how that worked out, isn’t it?

Trailer Review: Deception

Paul Clark — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Most thrillers today feel curiously neutered, with studios' demands for PG-13 entertainment making it difficult for directors to inject too much sex into their films. Deception feels like a throwback to the early-90s heyday of the erotic thriller subgenre, when it almost certainly would have been penned by Joe Eszterhas and starred Michael Douglas. As bad as most of those movies where, they had a trashy yet glossy allure to them, which makes it all the more disappointing that Deception comes across as fairly bland by comparison, with the role that would've been played by Sharon Stone or Demi Moore now falling to... Michelle Williams? Even with its female-friendly leading men Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor, I can't imagine this really scoring with audiences (especially with that generic-sounding title). On the other hand, I imagine it'll have a solid second life on late-night pay cable. Who knows, I may even catch it there. If I hear there's T&A, that is.