Curabitur et lectus vitae purus tincidunt laoreet sit amet ac ipsum. Proin tincidunt mattis nisi a scelerisque. Aliquam placerat dapibus eros non ullamcorper. Integer interdum ullamcorper venenatis. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
Curabitur et lectus vitae purus tincidunt laoreet sit amet ac ipsum. Proin tincidunt mattis nisi a scelerisque. Aliquam placerat dapibus eros non ullamcorper. Integer interdum ullamcorper venenatis. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
Curabitur et lectus vitae purus tincidunt laoreet sit amet ac ipsum. Proin tincidunt mattis nisi a scelerisque. Aliquam placerat dapibus eros non ullamcorper. Integer interdum ullamcorper venenatis. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
Curabitur et lectus vitae purus tincidunt laoreet sit amet ac ipsum. Proin tincidunt mattis nisi a scelerisque. Aliquam placerat dapibus eros non ullamcorper. Integer interdum ullamcorper venenatis. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
Curabitur et lectus vitae purus tincidunt laoreet sit amet ac ipsum. Proin tincidunt mattis nisi a scelerisque. Aliquam placerat dapibus eros non ullamcorper. Integer interdum ullamcorper venenatis. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
Only now does it occur to me... that Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton were good 'ole boy soldier cronies back in 1983, three years before ALIENS.
Based on a novel by Pat Conroy that I read for a high school English class, THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE is set at a Citadel-esque military academy on the cusp of the Civil Rights era. Biehn and Paxton play a couple of classic asshole hazer bullies who usually torment the weakest of the new guys Paxton (far left) and Biehn (second from left) do their thing.
and enacting hardcore harassments, like turning the fat guy into Paxton's personal piggy bank.
Things take a turn for the worse when the school admits its first-ever black cadet, and Biehn and Paxton (along with a shadowy organization called "The Ten," that seems like a blend of the KKK and Yale's Skull and Bones) begin a torturous, drawn-out persecution of the black guy, who's only friend on campus is David Keith (unfortunately, not Keith David). Biehn chomps the scenery, trying to outdo Paxton's crazy face.
The culmination of all this is probably the scene where Paxton and Biehn sing with the full company of cadets and proceed in a behavior I can only describe as trying to "Out-Dixie" one another. Well done.
Also, Paxton is credited as "Wild" Bill Paxton. It's too bad that didn't stick! Anyway, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and one which continued in THE TERMINATOR (1984), ALIENS (1986), NAVY SEALS (1990), and TOMBSTONE (1993).
P.S. There's also a meaty character role (Colonel "Bear" Berrineau) for crotchety old man and cigar-chomping virtuoso Robert Prosky (GREMLINS 2, CHRISTINE). Always good to see ya, Mr. Prosky! CHOMP
Stars: 4 of 5. Running Time: 94 minutes. Notable Cast or Crew: Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (THE LOVELESS, THE HURT LOCKER, POINT BREAK). Written by Bigelow and Eric Red (THE HITCHER, BODY PARTS). Music by Tangerine Dream. Starring Adrian Pasdar (SOLARBABIES, TOP GUN), Jenny Wright (PINK FLOYD'S THE WALL; I, MADMAN), Lance Henriksen (ALIENS, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM), Bill Paxton (TRUE LIES, ALIENS), Tim Thomerson (DOLLMAN, TRANCERS), Joshua John Miller (TEEN WITCH, RIVER'S EDGE). Cinematography by Adam Greenberg (THE TERMINATOR, 10 TO MIDNIGHT, 3 MEN AND A BABY). Tag-line: "Killing you would be easy, they'd rather terrify you...forever." Best one-liner: "Caleb, those people back there, they wasn't normal. Normal folks, they don't spit out bullets when you shoot 'em, no sir." (Later paraphrased in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN.)
I'm sure a fair amount of you have seen NEAR DARK. For those who haven't, it's a two-fisted, shit-kickin' vampire Western that sort of combines all of my favorite things about THE LOST BOYS, Carpenter's VAMPIRES, and POINT BREAK. It slits your throat with a sharpened spur, sears your skin, and explodes in a grotesque display of vampiric immolation. Now, with that in mind, take a gander at the DVD re-release cover: Sweet God- my worst fears realized- NEAR DARK appropriated by the lily-livered aficionados of TWILIGHT, CGI, and unbridled airbrushing! But it doesn't matter– here's nine reasons why, even if it's remade and/or commandeered by these knuckleheads, NEAR DARK will still live on as an 80's genre classic:
#1. The vampires' mode of travel: a beat-up, nasty old Recreational Vehicle. There's no sugar-coating their nomadic, hand-to-fang, poverty-stricken existence. They cruise around in a pedophile-mobile with blacked-out windows cause they've got no other choice. No Gothic mansions, no Ann Ricey-TWILIGHTY-romanticized shenanigans- it's a daily struggle for survival that's closer to Buñuel's LAND WITHOUT BREAD or Marc Singer's DARK DAYS than some TRUE BLOOD wankfest. And the RV says it all.
#2. Hey, look, it's a James LeGros cameo! If you can't appreciate the simple joy of an unexpected LeGros appearance, maybe you don't deserve to enjoy NEAR DARK. And Bigelow even spares him in the midst of a vampire rampage, thus continuing to prove my theory that anybody and everybody worth their salt has a soft spot for LeGros.
#3. The Tangerine Dream score. While on the whole it's not one of their very best scores (like their work on THIEF, FLASHPOINT, or THE PARK IS MINE), certain tracks- like "Bus Station"- possess a certain, fleeting atmospheric quality, like an entrancing invitation to a dangerous fairy-tale world. In short, it's the kind of music that, even though it's looping endlessly on the DVD menu, oddly, it doesn't bother you. In fact, you're looking for an excuse not to start the movie, cause you'd kind of like to listen to Tangerine Dream for just a little longer if ya don't mind.
#4. Tim Thomerson. Undervalued. Underused. Under-recognized. And here in the kind of mainstream, stalwart, square-jawed, all-American farmer role he should have been booking more often. He's likeable, believable, and deserves to be a household name. And not just in Charles Band's household. Perhaps I exaggerate, but come on, let's hear it for Thomerson.
#5. Bill Paxton is loopier than a corkscrew. I think that the critical acclaim for a show such as BIG LOVE has made the world, to some extent, forget that Paxton made his name as one of the zaniest hombres this side of the Marx Brothers. "I hate 'em when they ain't been shaved!" he laments (as he slurps the blood from an unkempt, hirsute biker). He dances, he prances, he lacerates necks with a sharpened spur. He blows air kisses, blows people away with a six-gun, and shouts "Bullseye!" afterwards. Why a vampire would need to resort to firearms is anybody's guess, but Paxton makes it so you don't really care so long as he keeps twirlin' em and verbalizin' his smart-assed remarks. Something to ponder: are these the same pleather pants that reappear in BOXING HELENA?
"Finger-lickin' good!" he declares after a particularly fiendish bout of blood-drinking. Bravo, Paxton. Bravo.
#6. Joshua John Miller. AKA 'The Creepy Kid from RIVER'S EDGE and TEEN WITCH. Other than David Bennent, I'm unsure I can think of anyone more qualified to play the role of 'irascible, centuries old vampire trapped in a child's body.'
#7. Adam Greenberg's cinematography. Bigelow- via her then-paramour, James Cameron- had already got her hands on Paxton and Henriksen, so why not raid his DP, as well? Bigelow, originally a painter, has always been able to extract striking images from her cinematographers, and the magnificent visuals here are dusty, weather-beaten, and severe. And since I already mentioned that Bigelow was a painter, I'll also mention that her first studio was in an Off-Track Betting building. That's what NEAR DARK is, in a nutshell. Crude yet painterly visions transmitted directly from the scrap-paper and cigarette-butt strewn floors of an OTB. Print that in the paper.
#8. The way the vamps burn. More like the spontaneous combustion of a back-alley wino than a poetic end to an aristocratic villain, the slow-motion searing and flaying of skin and the blackening of their shabby, smoldering rags makes for quite a memorable, mesmerizing visual despite the grotesquery, even though I'm not sure if grotesquery is, in fact, a real word.
#9. Lance Henriksen. Gaunt, heavily scarred, possessing a wicked rat-tail, and at one point explaining that he's a Civil War veteran ("I fought for the South. We lost."), Henriksen is, as always, scary good. "Your skin is as soft as a preacher's belly," he can be heard to declare with the sort of impassive malevolence that defines his performance. His character, Jesse Hooker, is a sort of 'bottom line' kinda guy. He's not evil per se (although, uh, it is insinuated that he set the Great Chicago Fire of 1871), he just happens to look out for number one in such a way that he leaves a trail of massacred innocents and general sleazy vampire wreckage in his wake, wherever he goes, whenever he goes. He also cheekily spits up the bullets he's been shot with and uses them to taunt his adversaries. Lance Henriksen: certainly deserving a place in the vampire hall-of-fame.
Stars: 4.5 of 5. Running Time: 92 minutes. Notable Cast or Crew: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong (TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE, CHAINDANCE), Alyssa Milano (DOUBLE DRAGON, POISON IVY 2), Vernon Wells (WEIRD SCIENCE, KING OF THE ANTS), David Patrick Kelly (WILD AT HEART, THE WARRIORS), Bill Duke (ACTION JACKSON, PREDATOR, THE LIMEY), Dan Hedaya (BLOOD SIMPLE, THE HUNGER, MULHOLLAND DR.), James Olson (AMITYVILLE II, RAGTIME), and a very special appearance by Bill Paxton. Music by James Horner (48 HRS., TITANIC). Cast by Jackie Burch, clearly one of the best casting directors of all time (THE BREAKFAST CLUB, SIXTEEN CANDLES, D.C. CAB, PREDATOR, DIE HARD, THE RUNNING MAN). Cinematography by Matthew F. Leonetti (EXTREME PREJUDICE, FAST FORWARD, POLTERGEIST). Tag-lines: "Let's party!" Best one-liner: See review.
Now this is a difficult task I have before me: what can one write about COMMANDO which has not already been writ in the annals of cinema history? I believe that COMMANDO has universal appeal. There's truly something for everyone in COMMANDO. Yet not everyone is willing to sit down and check themselves out some COMMANDO. Thusly, there are many people- the sorts of people who wouldn't immediately recognize DPK as the universal abbreviation for David Patrick Kelly- that aren't giving COMMANDO a fair shake. So I shall put forth the solution to a perennial problem: how to vault COMMANDO from its position as a beer n' nachos slugfest to something that even the Cabernet Sauvignon crowd could enjoy? Well here ya go: a list of 7 low-brow and 8 high-brow happenings in COMMANDO- the best of both worlds. Hopefully, I can win over some hearts and minds. I'll begin with the low-brow because that's exactly the sort of no-class pandering you'd expect of this site:
LOW-BROW HIGHLIGHTS OF COMMANDO:
1. RDC. Or, for the uninitiated, Rae Dawn Chong. I like Rae Dawn Chong. I like Rae Dawn Chong a lot. When Ironside needed a go-to lady in CHAINDANCE, who did he pick? Rae Dawn Chong. When C. Thomas Howell was pretending to be black in SOUL MAN, whom did he romance? Rae Dawn Chong. When James Remar needed some luvin' after getting freaked out by gargoyles in TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE, who did he shack up with? Rae Dawn Chong. All these great minds can't be wrong about Chong. Anyway, she's pretty horrible in this movie. She's kind of the Kate Capshaw/Willie Scott of COMMANDO. I don't know why I started with this one. Hell, I don't know why I'm telling you this, period. Anyway, somebody must've liked it, or else they wouldn't have told her to be really annoying for the duration. Which only proves my point: this theoretical person who likes screechingly vocal, nettlesome female leads is dissimilar to me in almost every regard. And yet the both of us can find common ground in COMMANDO!
2. I really miss these kinds of mall elevators. They used to be in every movie. Well, they at least used to be in RUNNING SCARED.
3. The emphasis on sweaty Arnie pec-shaking as legions of men wearing mustaches constructed from felt purchased at Jo-Ann Fabrics are gunned down in a wanton display of gratuitous violence.
4. Occasionally in an action movie, they'll show the same explosion twice, from different angles, for dramatic effect. Sometimes they'll show it three times, perhaps alternating shutter speeds or frame rates to give it that DAYUM SHIT IS BLOWIN' UP sparkle. Once in a blue moon, they'll even show an explosion four times, cause they just couldn't resist. Well, in COMMANDO, the same explosion is shown nine times. Don't take my word for it, either:
5. One-liners, one-liners, one-liners. I know you've heard them all before, from "Don't disturb my friend, he's dead tired" to "BULLLLLLLL-SHIT!!!" My personal favorite is probably the head-scratchingly homoerotic, "John, I'm not going to shoot you between the eyes. I'm going to shoot you between the balls!" Regardless, I don't think that I can quite emphasize enough how many one-liners are used in COMMANDO. Look at this graph which compares the number of successful one-liners used in COMMANDO to the number of successful one-liners used in everyday life. The numbers are staggering. I also appreciate that three thousand years of dramatic writing from Aeschylus to Shakespeare to Eugene O'Neill found culmination in 1985 with the following exchange: FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE! *click* Fuck YOU, asshole!
6. Arnold flinging a phone booth containing a frightened David Patrick Kelly!
7. An axe-low-blow!?
Alright, before I get off track and we lose too many brain cells:
HIGH-BROW HIGHLIGHTS OF COMMANDO:
1. So many random windows in COMMANDO have artsy, Vittorio Storaro/Dario Argento/Bernard Bertolucci-style colorful backlighting. Didn't expect that in COMMANDO, did you? Well, COMMANDO is full of surprises.
2. I've been working, on and off, on this sort of existential science-fiction film called BLACK HOLE ADVENTURE. It attempts to merge the youthful whimsy and 80's-tastical-ness of those old CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE novels with the crushing pessimism and random tragedies of adulthood, and it's all wrapped in a package that's half ROBOT MONSTER and half SPACE ACADEMY. I only mention this, because I discovered that David Patrick Kelly is somehow wearing BLACK HOLE ADVENTURE. That out-of-this-world suit! The scratchy, woolen needlework! All tied together with a pair of Spicoli's checkered surf shoes from FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH! A-plus, DPK. An A-plus.
3. Hedaya's ponderous jowls. Hedaya's shaggy, caterpillar-esque eyebrows. Hedaya's deeply cleft chin. Hedaya's sunken, terrifying eyes. Hedaya's five o'clock shadow. Hedaya's unnervingly fleecy chest hair, always threatening to crawl out of his shirt and onto YOU. All of these disparate elements converge to form Dan Hedaya.
4. BOOM- out of nowhere- Paxton. He only gets like three lines in a throwaway role as an air-traffic controller, but I still say even just ten seconds of Paxton is ten seconds of class.
5. The COMMANDO font. Busy, but not too busy. Colorful, but not too colorful. Kinda sporty, but kinda militaristic. Framed elegantly by parallel horizontal lines. I could go on.
6. The opening montage of Schwarzenegger and daughter Alyssa Milano which seems to borrow equally from Leni Riefenstahl propaganda, contemporary political advertisements, the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
7. The void in Bill Duke's eyes. Even for the film fan who has seen it all, there's something sincerely uncanny about Bill Duke's deadpan stare. Most of filmdom's great psychos- from Lon Chaney to Dwight Frye to Anthony Perkins to Crispin Glover- have an active glint in their eye, a quivering eyebrow, a narrowed eyelid. Not Bill Duke. Bill Duke looks into your soul, confident that neither he nor you even have one. Then he says that he likes the price of your Cadillac and runs you down with it.
8. James Horner's score. Ever since I got my hands on a copy, I've had nothing but steel drums and discordant wailin' sax stuck in my craw. Now, it may be a total rip-off of Horner's previous score for 48 HRS., but at least this time the tropical locale provides a bona fide excuse for the steel drum action. This is a throbbing, pulsating, hard-driving score that never lets up, never quits, never stops with its firm jams and unyielding grooves.
In all, COMMANDO is the tale of a man who so loves his daughter, Chenny, that he blasts, low-balls, and blows away a ton of dudes so that he can get to a fictitious Latin-American country, change into a Speedo, row to shore, change back into commando clothes, blow away some more dudes, take off his shirt, and finally face off in a steam room with the leather-pantsed, chainmail-sweater-wearing bastard who has wronged him.
Four and a half stars. Make sure, uh, nobody gets poked in the eye or whatever.
