Read The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen Online
Authors: Richard Crouse
The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen (8 page)
“Do Not See This Film Alone . . . or if You Have A Weak Heart!”
â Advertising tagline for Dementia 13
Roger Corman brags that he made hundreds of movies in Hollywood and never lost a dime. He made his first film in 1953 as a producer and screenwriter before taking over the directorial reins in 1955. His work is the stuff of legend. Most films were shot quickly, with the kind of money that wouldn't even cover the catering budget on a mainstream movie. Fast and dirty, he shot practically all of his films in under a week, and set a record in 1960 by shooting
The Little Shop of Horrors
in just two days and one night. Productions were run with military-like precision, and Corman's trademarks included efficiency, resourcefulness, and the ability to surround himself with hungry young filmmakers.
Over the years he discovered many of Hollywood's top talents: Martin Scorsese, Robert Towne, Jonathan Demme, John Sayles, James Cameron, Peter Bogdanovich, and Joe Dante are just a few of the directors who caught their first break working for Corman. “If there's a heaven, and if Roger Corman has any expectation of getting there,” said
Airplane
producer Jon Davidson, “what will open the gates for him is that he gave hundreds and hundreds of people a start.” Another of his protégés went on to direct some of the classic films of the 1970s.
Francis Ford Coppola began his career with Corman editing, writing, and looping English dialogue on a Russian science-fiction film so it would make sense to American audiences. At $90 a week Coppola was a bargain, and soon found himself behind the camera, shooting second-unit footage. “It was a fabulous opportunity for someone like me,” said Coppola. “It was better than money.”
Corman recognized Coppola's talent, and soon had him working on larger projects. He became the dialogue supervisor on
Haunted Palace
, running lines with Vincent Price, before being given the chance to make his first feature film.
Corman had been offered a script about a young American who becomes involved with a bullfighter and his wife in Spain. The bullfighting scenes would have been too complicated to shoot, so he adapted the story into a car-racing tale. “Race car driving, bullfighting,” said Corman, “same thing.” To cut costs he decided to shoot at the Grand Prix in Monte Carlo, rather than stage the race scenes themselves. Corman recruited Coppola to work as first assistant, grip, and soundman on the European shoot for
Young Racers
. Coppola knew that when Corman went to exotic locations he always shot a cheap second feature for release in drive-ins. While on location he asked Corman if he could borrow the camera, some staff, and equipment to make a psychological thriller. Corman wanted to see something on paper, so after a day's shooting on
Young Racer
, Coppola went back to his hotel and wrote “a Hitchcock-type ax murder sequence.”
Corman made some changes to the scene and gave the go-ahead, providing the rest of the script would be as interesting as that scene, and gave the neophyte director a budget of $20,000. Coppola had shot a couple of quickie nudie films before, but had never helmed a feature film. This was his foot in the door. Production on
Dementia 13
, as the script was now called, was to commence in Dublin at the end of the
Young Racers
shoot.
The film opens with an atmospheric sequence of a young married couple taking a rowboat ride. John informs his wife Louise (Luana Anders) that he doesn't love her and she will never receive any of his family's money. Upon delivering this unhappy news he drops dead of a heart attack. That could have been the end of the story, but hey, this is a horror film, so Louise forges a letter from John to convince his family that he has been suddenly called to America on business. She then goes to his ancestral home, Castle Haloran, to win over his family and find a way to line her pockets.
The creepiness factor gets kicked up a notch during Louise's visit with the family. Her efforts to brown-nose her way into a fortune go unnoticed by John's oddball mother (Ethne Dunn) and his two lame-brained brothers (William Campbell and Bart Parton), who seem more concerned with the fate of another family member, the dear departed Kathleen (Barbara Dowling). Secrets shroud her death, but it seems that years earlier she had accidentally drowned in the estate's pond. We soon discover there's a serial killer at work.
Family and guests start disappearing under mysterious circumstances, the killer's homicidal rage apparently triggered by his or her obsession with Kathleen. As the body count increases, so do the red herrings. The family's secrets are slowly exposed as the family doctor, Dr. Justin Caleb (Patrick Magee), starts assembling the facts about Kathleen's death.
Dementia 13
isn't Coppola's great, lost masterpiece. It is, however, a great example of the Corman school of filmmaking. Coppola learned to keep the story and visuals vigorous, a lesson that would later inform his best work â
The Godfather
,
The Conversation
, and
Apocalypse Now
.
Technically, Coppola makes the best of what must have been limited resources. The tension of the film is enhanced with the startling use of music. Ronald Stein provided a classic horror score, which is particularly effective in a bedroom scene where Louise is rummaging through Kathleen's clothes. Effective lighting further compounds the feeling of dread.
Coppola's work with the actors shows that his best days as a director are still to come. Patrick Magee (who would later appear as the wheelchair bound writer in
A Clockwork Orange
) is convincing as the doctor, building an acerbic and untrustworthy character that is fun to watch. Others don't fare as well, especially William Campbell as brother Richard. Campbell seems unable to control himself, threatening at times to literally chew the furniture. The rest of the cast is serviceable, but with only three days to shoot, the actors didn't exactly have a lot of time to explore their characters' motivations.
Dementia 13
is sometimes cited as the first slasher film, and while it does contain elements of the genre (the first-ever decapitation by ax on screen; a mysterious masked murderer in the woods) it has more meat on its bones. Coppola plays it by ear, inserting ghastly violence to spice up an already eerie Agatha Christie-like riddle.
Dementia 13
was a milestone for Coppola on several levels. It was his first legitimate feature film, it made money, and he met his wife Eleanor Neil on the set.
“What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.”
â Casares (Federico Luppi)
The ghost in Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's beautiful tale of the supernatural owes more to films like
The Haunting
than to the malicious spirits that inhabited
Poltergeist
. Santi, the sad spirit of
The Devil's Backbone
needs to tell his story to the living so he can find peace and exact his revenge.
The film is set in 1939, near the end of the blood-spattered Spanish Civil War, when General Franco's right-wing Nationalists are about to crush the left-wing Republican forces. The story is built around the curiosity of Carlos (Fernando Tielve), a 12-year-old boy delivered to a remote orphanage after his Republican war hero father is killed. Carlos is uneasy in his new surroundings, despite the concern shown to him by the head mistress Varmen (Marisa Paredes) and the kindly Professor Casares (Federico Luppi). The youngster resolves a conflict with the orphanage bully, but finds a more determined foe in Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega), the aggressive groundskeeper. Jacinto strikes out violently when any of the students dares go near a deep well, located in the orphanage's storage room.
Human enemies are one thing, but Carlos is also troubled by the ghost of Santi (Junio Valverde), a former student, who visits him at night with the ominous message, “Many of you will die.” The ghost's prophecy seems likely to come to fruition, as Franco's troops get closer by the moment. Step by step Carlos untangles the story of Santi, discovering the details of his brutal death and the mystery of the well.
“I think the ghost serves as a horrifying but ultimately pitiful reminder,” del Toro told
Film Freak Central
. “That's why the ghost in the movie breaks the cardinal rule in horror films: less is more. I tried to show the ghost as much as I could in the film so that by the end you're not fearing the dead so much as the treachery of the living. It starts as a ghost story, but it's meant to be a war story with a ghost in it. If you read the seminal gothic romances there are huge elements of melodrama with a supernatural strand running through them â but they're much more than just the accumulation of, say, 25 supernatural occurrences or something. Look at a beautiful Gothic romance like
Wuthering Heights
â it opens and closes like a strange ghost story, but ghosts are not the main thrust of the story.”
Guillermo takes his time with the story, letting the feeling of anxiety and dread build slowly, layering the atmosphere with thick slices of mystery and the supernatural. That, coupled with one of the best-realized screen ghosts of recent memory, makes this movie both unsettling and worthwhile.
“That's bullshit. You just bullshitted NASA!”
â Ross “Mitch” Mitchell (Kevin Harrington)
On July 19, 1969, the world witnessed one of the greatest technological triumphs of all time: man setting foot on the moon. Director Rob Sitch and his partners, a creative team of writers, producers, and directors who call themselves Working Dog, were inspired to write
The Dish
after realizing the sheer magnitude of the events of that day. Six hundred million people watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and for one night the world was united in front of their TV sets. The Melbourne-based production company found a little-known Australian connection to the story and wrote a semi-fictional account of the role a small town played in the Apollo 11 moon landing.
“
The Dish
is the story of people basically thrown into the deep end,” says Rob Sitch. “These three scientists who spend their lives doing fairly routine, humdrum work out of an astronomical installation in the middle of New South Wales suddenly have the opportunity of greatness thrust upon them, a chance to be responsible for broadcasting pictures of the greatest television event of the 20th century.”
The action takes place in Parkes, a rural town whose only distinction is that it houses the largest radio telescope in the southern hemisphere. nasa has commandeered the telescope as a back-up to their prime receiver in Goldstone, California. When an unexpected flight schedule change renders the Californian telescope useless, nasa relies on the Parkes satellite dish to track the whereabouts of Apollo 11, and to broadcast images of the trip and moonwalk. The 1000-ton radio telescope is roughly the size of a football field and is located in a sheep paddock.
The small staff is prepared for the momentous broadcast and are very aware of their unique place in history, but tensions run high as a nasa representative (Patrick Warburton) butts heads with the Aussie scientists. Cliff Buxton (Sam Neill), the “dishmaster,” is knowledgeable and helpful, but joyless since the death of his wife a year earlier. Mitch (Kevin Harrington) is a hothead and Glenn (Tom Long) comically yearns for the sandwich girl. This motley crew is responsible for keeping Houston in touch with the spacecraft and linking the broadcast signal from outer space to Australia and the rest of the world.
Of course, even the best-laid plans can go wrong, and during a power outage Mitch temporarily loses sight of Apollo 11. The staff, including nasa representative Al Burnett, must work together to cover up the mistake and preserve Parkes' civic pride.
The Dish
manages to co-opt a story that is universally seen as American and put a nice, original spin on it. Instead of focusing on the moonwalk, Sitch takes a more human approach and centers the story on the characters. In a Hollywood film there would be stirring music, technology galore, and a nagging sense of being manipulated into feeling patriotic. In Sitch's film, by the time we get to the actual event we're not thinking about the “giant leap for mankind,” but rather the simple steps taken by Buxton, Mitch, and Glenn that made the broadcast possible. It's a human story, and one told with a great deal of heart.
“The Apollo 11 mission ultimately became something that was not about rockets at all,” says Sitch. “Instead, it transcended those television pictures live from the moon. It became about the human spirit soaring.
The Dish
celebrates achievement and striving for greatness. Those themes are universal and timeless and worth celebrating.”
Sam Neill is the film's anchor. As Cliff Buxton he shows many sides of his character's personality. While the story of his wife's passing threatens to weigh the movie down with melodrama, Neill skillfully sidesteps any mawkish behavior, instead showing us a man with great courage and intelligence who occasionally slips into a veil of sadness. It is a quiet but fully realized performance.
On
Seinfeld
Patrick Warburton played Puddy, a thickheaded suitor of Jerry's ex-girlfriend Elaine. His monotone voice and lumbering good looks made that role unforgettable, so unforgettable that I thought I might have a hard time accepting him in another part. In
The Dish
he leaves Puddy behind to become the “ugly American,” a know-it-all who has the good sense to realize that he doesn't know it all and must rely on the expertise of the small-town scientists. It's a nicely handled role, and one that shows his range as an actor.
Supporting roles are well cast, and generally used for comic effect. Taylor Kane is hilarious as the overzealous Rudi the security guard, who spends most of his time shooing away curious sheep from the telescope. Roy Billing and Genevieve Mooy bring Mayor Bob McIntyre and his wife Maisie to life, playing them for laughs, but like the entire tone of this movie they giggle
with
the characters, not at them.
The humor in
The Dish
flows from situations and character quirks, and doesn't seem forced. In one of the movie's funniest moments the local band greets the American contingent at the town hall with a surprising version of the American anthem. It's laugh-out-loud funny, but not mean-spirited like so many modern comedies.
Rent
The Dish
on dvd or vhs, and if you like the gentle humor and character-driven story check out Working Dog's previous film
The Castle
, about a man who takes on city hall and wins.