Television Review: WILD PALMS (1993, Kathryn Bigelow, Keith Gordon, Peter Hewitt, & Phil Joanou)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 300 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (STRANGE DAYS, NEAR DARK), Phil Joanou (THREE O'CLOCK HIGH, ENTROPY), Peter Hewitt (BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY, THE BORROWERS), & Keith Gordon (THE CHOCOLATE WAR, WAKING THE DEAD). Written by Bruce Wagner (NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET III: DREAM WARRIORS, SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS), based off of his comic strip of the same name. Produced by Oliver Stone, Bruce Wagner, and Michael Rauch (POINT BREAK, SUPERMAN, LIVE AND LET DIE). Music by Ryuchi Sakamoto (MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE, THE LAST EMPEROR). Starring James Belushi (THE PRINCIPAL, HOMER & EDDIE), Dana Delany (LIGHT SLEEPER, TOMBSTONE), Robert Loggia (LOST HIGHWAY, SCARFACE), Kim Cattrall (MANNEQUIN, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA), Angie Dickinson (THE KILLERS, BIG BAD MAMA), Ernie Hudson (GHOSTBUSTERS, THE CROW), Bebe Neuwirth (THE FACULTY, GREEN CARD), Nick Mancuso (UNDER SIEGE, STINGRAY), David Warner (TIME BANDITS, THE OMEN), Ben Savage (BOY MEETS WORLD, LITTLE MONSTERS), Bob Gunton (DEMOLITION MAN, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION), Brad Dourif (CHILD'S PLAY, WISE BLOOD), François Chau (Dr. Chang on LOST, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE), Charles Hallahan (THE THING, VISION QUEST).
Tag-line: "Your reality is their business."
Best one-liner: "Babylon has fallen. Let's boogie!"

WILD PALMS is a lurid soap opera, an epic Greek tragedy, and a mesmerizing techno-prophecy, mingled and wired into a jerry-built cyber-apparatus posing as a mini-series. Audiences weren't ready for this in 1993, and they're not ready for it now.




It presents a world in transition– religions, corporations, and governments gradually coalesce into a single body; human brains, oversaturated with sheer data, begin to lose their capacity for an emotional response; pop cultural references become out only 'shared experience' as a society- and our only means of expression. The concept of childhood becomes meaningless- if you want a shot at becoming apuppet master instead of just a puppet, you'd better burst forth from the womb and hit the ground running.

It's the little details that lend the series' vision of the future verisimilitude– male formal wear has reverted to the Nineteenth Century, sixties rock is back in style (the rights to all these songs must have cost a fortune!), and digital fixes (consisting of a steady diet of images) have become the addiction-of-the-month. The brainchild of Robert Wagner, Oliver Stone, and Michael Rauch, and featuring direction from Kathryn Bigelow and Phil Joanou , among others, the series draws equal doses of inspiration from of William Gibson (who appears in a cameo!), TWIN PEAKS, Sophocles, and the Church of Scientology- and somehow emerges with singular, unexpected vision and actual emotional stakes.

The cast is a marvelous, chilling ensemble– James Belushi lends a dazed weight to the proceedings as our overwhelmed hero; a suave Kim Cattrall is done up like Audrey Horne;

Belushi chats with Audrey Horn– I mean, Kim Cattrall.

Robert Loggia exudes teeth-baring vehemence (“They’re trying TO RAPE ME, Harry!”);

Robert Loggia provokes yet another pants-shitting.

a likable Ernie Hudson hallucinates cathedrals, a soothing David Warner sprays Uzi fire; a somber, bedridden Brad Dourif wears a (virtual) powdered wig;

David Warner comforts Brad Dourif.

a bitchy Angie Dickinson delivers believable beatdowns worthy of Joan Crawford;

Angie Dickinson takes it to the next level.

and a pre- BOY MEETS WORLD Ben Savage is a gleeful, sociopathic kiddie. The icing on the cake is a Ryuichi Sakamoto score which you’ll at first deem corny, then magical, and ultimately, bewitchingly, poetic. WILD PALMS is some of the boldest, most expressionistic work television has ever offered and I must wholeheartedly recommend it.


-Sean Gill

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Film Review: NEAR DARK (1987, Kathryn Bigelow)

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.

Four stars.

-Sean Gill

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