Film Review: STAY TUNED (1992, Peter Hyams)

Stars: 2.5 of 5.

Running Time: 88 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew:  John Ritter (THREE'S COMPANY, STEPHEN KING'S IT), Pam Dawber (Mindy on MORK AND MINDY), Jeffrey Jones (FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF, BEETLEJUICE, AMADEUS), Eugene Levy (BEST IN SHOW, WAITING FOR GUFFMAN), Erik King (STREET SMART, DEXTER), Don Calfa (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S), David Tom (PLEASANTVILLE), Heather McComb (APT PUPIL, ALL THE REAL GIRLS), a special appearance by Captain Lou Albano (WWF CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING, WISE GUYS), and Salt-N-Pepa as themselves.  Written by Tom S. Parker and Jim Jennewein (MAJOR LEAGUE II, THE FLINTSTONES '94, RICHIE RICH, GETTING EVEN WITH DAD).  Animation sequence supervised by Chuck Jones (LOONEY TUNES, MERRIE MELODIES, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT).  Directed and shot by Peter Hyams (TIMECOP, RUNNING SCARED, SUDDEN DEATH, 2010).

Tag-line:  "The Knables signed up for a cable system that's out of this world!"

Best one-liner:  "Kids, don't try this at home!"

Hoping to achieve the success of other broad sci-fi/comedy/fantasy crossover fare like HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS or SHORT CIRCUIT or WEIRD SCIENCE, STAY TUNED tells the tale of a demonic company ("Hell-o-Vision") who sucks consumers through their satellite dishes into a television purgatory

whereupon they bounce from show to twisted show, trying to stay alive amid a sea of lethal clichés.  If they fail, they're (apparently) sentenced to eternal damnation.

In a touch of inspired casting, our heroes are ex-sitcom stars (John Ritter of THREE'S COMPANY and Pam Dawber of MORK AND MINDY), and the major villain, "Spike," is played by Jeffrey Jones (Dean Rooney from FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF), who is exactly who should be playing the role of a pompous, channel-flipping demon.  The first choice for director was Tim Burton, but ultimately the job went to Peter Hyams, a director known for zany buddy cop flicks (RUNNING SCARED, BUSTING), Jupiter-related sci-fi (2010, OUTLAND), and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies (TIMECOP, SUDDEN DEATH).

STAY TUNED aims for caustic satire, but the end result is an uneven jumble of high-energy gags that are occasionally clever, but usually blockheaded.  (I don't know what I expected– it's from the mastermind writing team that brought us MAJOR LEAGUE II, THE FLINTSTONES '94, RICHIE RICH, and GETTING EVEN WITH DAD.)  I might even go as far as to say that it ends up feeling like a cross between MOONWALKER and VIDEODROME, only it's not nearly as amazing as that sounds (not even close).

It's still got a few good moments, though, so now I'm going to regale you with a list of:

12 THINGS I NEVER EXPECTED IN MY LIFE TO SEE, UNTIL SUDDENLY, WHILE WATCHING STAY TUNED, I SAW THEM:

#1.  Jeffrey Jones' disembodied head, cackling with glee, and launching itself at the viewer from inside the confines of an actual cable line.

#2.  Cap'n Lou Albano revving up a crowd for John Ritter tag-team action.

#3.  "THE EXORCISIST."



#4.  Jeffrey Jones spinnin' and scratchin' and groovin' and quick-mixin' as he DJs a party in a Salt-N-Pepa music video (!).

#5.  A Maxell commercial parody involving decapitation and calling itself MAX HELL.



#6.  "THREE MEN AND ROSEMARY'S BABY."

And I love that they got the detailing right on the satanic bassinet!

#7.  A STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION parody featuring Jeffrey Jones as multiple characters, including Worf, Data, and whoever is being depicted on that viewscreen:

(John Ritter is Picard.)

#8.  "DUANE'S UNDERWORLD."


A zombie parody of a Saturday Night Live sketch that is itself a parody of the very specific niche of rock n' roll-based cable access TV.  Whew!

#9.  "MY THREE SONS OF BITCHES."

#10.  I didn't get a screencap of it, but we do see the title screen of a show called "FRESH PRINCE OF DARKNESS."  I wonder if John Carpenter would be the director?

#11.  A fiendish, alternate dimensional version of THREE'S COMPANY that becomes John Ritter's worst nightmare.

(If the whole movie was this bizarre, I probably would consider it a masterpiece.)

#12.  The inspiration for CABIN IN THE WOODS?!

If you haven't seen CABIN IN THE WOODS (henceforth CITW), stop reading now.  

Though I half-expected it to rub me the wrong way, I really enjoyed CITW.  And now I also know that STAY TUNED was likely the basis for the whole endeavor.  This doesn't at all ruin my CITW experience, but I think there should possibly be an "inspired by" credit, or some acknowledgment to the film which preceded it.

Before you call me crazy, consider the set-up:  poor archetypal schmucks are taken to a demonic arena to be sacrificed via cliché for the amusement of dark gods.  The ritual is orchestrated by demonic middle-management in a command center that resembles a high-tech office with lots of monitors, and so on.

There is a new, logical, go-getting black guy (here, DEXTER's Erik King, in CITW it's Brian White) to whom they must explain the process:

They monitor the progress of the other contestants–  here, an old lady is being killed in Tokyo by a Will Vinton-esque Godzilla–

which recalls the alternate city monsters in CITW, like the RINGU girl in Japan and the giant ape in Buenos Aires.

As the film progresses, the archetype of "The Fool" (Ritter in STAY TUNED and Fran Kranz in CITW) continues to thwart the plans of the demonic middle management, threatening to upend their organization,

and by the film's end, we've seen a deluge of nearly every cliché in the book planted in a new context (from TV in STAY TUNED, from horror movies in CITW).  So there you go:  a mostly mediocre fantasy comedy from 1992 ends up being responsible for the best horror movie of 2012?

Two and a half stars.

–Sean Gill

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Film Review: THE NIGHT FLIER (1997, Mark Pavia)

Stars: 4 of 5.

Running Time: 93 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew:  Based on the short story by Stephen King.  Starring Miguel Ferrer (TWIN PEAKS, ROBOCOP, TRAFFIC, son of José Ferrer, cousin of George Clooney), Julie Entwhistle (IN AND OUT), Dan Monahan (PORKY'S, PORKY'S II: THE NEXT DAY), Michael H. Moss (ROBOCOP 3, PASSENGER 57).  Produced by Richard P. Rubenstein (DAWN OF THE DEAD, CREEPSHOW, TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE).  Makeup and special effects by Greg Nicotero (ARMY OF DARKNESS, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, THE WALKING DEAD, KILL BILL, DEADWOOD), Howard Berger (THE MIST, THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, EVIL DEAD II, THE FACULTY, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS), and Robert Kurtzman (PREDATOR, HOUSE III, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, SCREAM).

Tag-line:  "Evil has a flight plan."

Best one-liner:  "Never believe what you publish, and never publish what you believe."

While it does lay claim to a small cult following, THE NIGHT FLIER is nonetheless a relatively overlooked work when it comes to the Stephen King film canon.  Is it a masterpiece?  No.  But it's a fun, gory thriller in the vein (no pun intended) of a long-form TALES FROM THE CRYPT or an X-FILES "Monster of the Week" episode that's held together with a strong, nuanced portrayal by snarky character actor extraordinaire, Miguel Ferrer.

Pictured: snarky character actor extraordinaire Miguel Ferrer.

Back in my review of THE DEAD ZONE, I wrote about the King character of "Richard Dees," a sleazoid reporter for a rag mag named "INSIDE VIEW," who makes appearances in THE DEAD ZONE novel and the short story "The Night Flier" (from the NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES collection).  Dees is an absurd caricature of "the amoral newspaperman," combining the privacy-invasions of the paparazzi with the hilarious, outright dishonesty of THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER.

He's the sort of man who says "never print what you believe, and never believe what you print," the original yellow journalist.  However, despite his outward lack of principles, you genuinely like him... sort of like every character Miguel Ferrer has ever brought to life!

Anyway, Ferrer's Dees is the protagonist of THE NIGHT FLIER, and he's seen here following a shadowy, cloaked figure who may or may not be a genuine vampire, an alleged blood-sucker who has adapted to modern times, jumping around from rural town to town overnight in a Cessna Skymaster, signing in as "Dwight Renfield" (alluding to Dwight Frye, the wonderful character actor who portrayed Renfield in the 1931 DRACULA), leaving behind unsolved murders, and always vanishing without a trace.

Part detective thriller, part morality tale, and part vampire horror, here's eight reasons why you ought to buckle up and take to the unfriendly skies with THE NIGHT FLIER, where evil has a flight plan, etc., etc....


#1.  The exquisite dickery of Miguel Ferrer.


A lot of movies have characters who are callous, hardened individuals whose gruff exteriors mask hearts of gold.  In the end, it is revealed that they always kept people at an arm's length because they really just needed some love and were afraid of rejection.  Conversely, the deeper meaning here is that Miguel Ferrer's Rick Dees keeps people at an arm's length because he despises them.

He may be a chain-smoking, heavy-drinking misanthrope, but by God, he's our chain-smoking, heavy-drinking misanthrope!

Piloting his own Cessna, Ferrer's Dees chases the Night Flier across the country, kickin' back with his Ray-Bans, dictating to a tape recorder, and looking down with disdain at the ant-sized people below.  Well done.


#2.  Ferrer's boss, Dan Monahan (PORKY'S actor and fusion of Jeffrey Combs and Charles Martin Smith), insists that he's perfect for this particular job because he's "good with the hicks."


This of course recalls Ferrer's legendary role on TWIN PEAKS as FBI Agent Albert Rosenfield, a man who hated yokels with even more fervor than Richard Dees, and a man who frequently unleashed incredibly verbose bon mots such as the following:

"Mr. Horne, I realize that your position in this fair community pretty well guarantees venality, insincerity, and a rather irritating method of expressing yourself. Stupidity, however, is not necessarily a inherent trait, therefore, please listen closely. You can have a funeral any old time. You dig a hole, you plant a coffin. I, however, cannot perform these tests next year, next month, next week or tomorrow - I must perform them now. I've got a lot of cutting and pasting to do, gentlemen, so why don't you please return to your porch rockers and resume whittling. "

It's too bad that all that TWIN PEAKS season 3 talk ended up being hogwash, because I dearly would have loved to see Miguel Ferrer come back as Albert Rosenfield and do his snobbish thing.  Anyway, let's get back on topic–


#3.  Poor man's Audrey Horne.

Continuing the TWIN PEAKS-ian chain of logic, I must note that the female lead here, Julie Entwhistle, is sort of a poor man's Audrey Horne, as depicted by these conveniently chosen screenshots.

 Julie Entwhistle inside a closet.


 Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) inside a closet.

 The role she's playing (as an occasional victim and occasional foil) is not present in the original short story, but I get that they wanted to add some more female characters.  Also of note is that Julie Entwhistle only ever appeared in one other film (as "Student" in IN AND OUT) which was also in 1997.  Weird.


#4. Stephen King references galore.

This is truly for the SK nerds out there.  At one point, Julie Entwhistle's character is looking at a wall of old, framed INSIDE VIEW covers.  Each of them, only on screen for a few seconds, references a different Stephen King novel or short story:


"Satanic Shopkeeper Sells Gory Goodies"  = NEEDFUL THINGS  and "Naked Demons Leveled My Lawn"  = THE LAWNMOWER MAN


"The Ultimate Killer Diet!  Gypsy Curse Flayed at Lawyer's Flesh!"  = THINNER


"Headless Lamaze Leads to Successful Birth"  = THE BREATHING METHOD and "Springfield Jack Strikes Again" = STRAWBERRY SPRING

There's also "Kiddie Cultists in Kansas Worship Creepy Voodoo God!" in reference to CHILDREN OF THE CORN.  Furthermore, at one point, Ferrer's character discusses a school teacher who murdered some demonic five-year-olds (a reference to the Bradbury-esque King short, "Suffer the Little Children"), and he visits an airfield in Derry, Maine (the home of IT and INSOMNIA).

Finally, he visits Wilmington, North Carolina, which has now become the filmic equivalent of Derry or Castle Rock, Maine for Stephen King adaptations ever since CAT'S EYE, FIRESTARTER, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, and SILVER BULLET were filmed there, thanks to Dino de Laurentiis' studio being located in Wilmington.  So, whew.  I hope that's enough Stephen King references for you.


#5.  Expressionistic flourish.


There's a terrific black and white sequence that takes a little from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and tonally prefigures THE MIST!


#6.  Practical effects.

The legendary Berger, Kurtzman, and Nicotero are on the job (see some of their credits above), and they're having a helluva lotta fun.  I'm obviously not going to show you the best stuff, or the monster himself– you'll have to see the movie for that.  But let's take a moment to salute practical effects in THE NIGHT FLIER, which, in 1997, could have easily been replaced by terrible TV-worthy CGI.


#7.  A vampire that orders a Bloody Mary.

As he hunts the vampire, Ferrer receives several warnings to cease and desist his investigation.   My favorite comes in a local bar when a shadowy man orders him a drink and disappears.  The drink, obviously, is a Bloody Mary and the napkin has a message in red marker:  "STOP NOW."  A:  I love that the vampire actually ordered a Bloody Mary, because, of course.  B:  I love that the vampire was considerate enough to buy Ferrer a drink.  I mean, he could've just dropped the napkin on his lap or something.


#8.  The reveal of the vampire.  (I'm going to remain relatively spoiler-free here, and I'm definitely not going to spoil what the vampire looks like, despite the fact that it's an amazingly well-done makeup effect and has already been plastered all over the DVD case and the disc art and the menu screens and most of the posters.)

The first part is copied, nearly verbatim, from the short story– a wonderfully suspenseful scene where our hero sees a stream of blood flowing from an invisible source into a urinal, reflected in a bathroom mirror.


The inability to turn around and see the actual creature builds a kind of dreamlike tension that reaches a minor state of perfection. [ Also, this begs the question, is the vampire from the "popped-collar zone?"  (See #3 in my DEAD ZONE review.)]

Anyway, the film nails the final moments of the short story, and then continues for a few minutes more, straight into TALES OF THE CRYPT/TWILIGHT ZONE-style coda.  Though I thought the short story ended perfectly, I don't really mind the extension here– I mean, this is a story about a Cessna-piloting vampire– the filmmakers should be able to take a few liberties now and again.

YAHHHHHHH

Four stars.

–Sean Gill

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Film Review: CAPE FEAR (1991, Martin Scorsese)

Stars: 4 of 5.

Running Time: 128 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew:  Nick Nolte (EXTREME PREJUDICE, FAREWELL TO THE KING), Jessica Lange (THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE '81, TITUS), Robert De Niro (RAGING BULL, THE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE), Joe Don Baker (THE OUTFIT, THE NATURAL, WALKING TALL), Juliette Lewis (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, STRANGE DAYS), Illeana Douglas (GOODFELLAS, GHOST WORLD), and Fred Dalton Thompson (real-life failed presidential candidate, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER).  Cameo appearances by Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck, and Martin Balsam (PSYCHO, DEATH WISH 3).  New screenplay by Wesley Strick (ARACHNOPHOBIA, WOLF).  Cinematography by Freddie Francis (THE ELEPHANT MAN, DUNE).  Non-original music by Bernard Herrmann.  Herrmann score adapted by Elmer Bernstein (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, GHOSTBUSTERS). Credits sequence by Saul Bass.  Uncredited executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall. 

Tag-line: "There is nothing in the dark that isn't in the light.  Except fear.  Cape Fear."  (emphasis added)

Best one-liner:  "Counselor!"

Alright, folks.  CAPE FEAR '91 has kind of a bad reputation.  Now, Scorsese went all out:  I think he thought this was going to be his "Hitchcock" film.  He even updated the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack and had Saul Bass (!) do the credits sequence.

As it turns out, it ain't Hitchcock, but let me put it in perspective.  You know that clichéd high school yearbook quote, "Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars?"  I think a slightly modified version of that can apply here.  I surmise:  "Shoot for Hitchcock('s moon-shaped belly), even if you miss, you'll land among the De Palmas."  And that's exactly what this feels like– a mid-range De Palma film!  And there are much worse things to be– because I happen to love mid-range De Palma (BODY DOUBLE, DRESSED TO KILL, RAISING CAIN, etc.) .

So without further adieu, and though I do prefer the original, here are seven quick reasons why CAPE FEAR '91 is a place worth visiting:

#1.  The inverse cameos.  CAPE FEAR '91 brings back three of the principals from CAPE FEAR '62, and in strange bizarro versions.
 
First, we have 'ol Rumple Eyes himself, Bob Mitchum, helping the Nick Nolte character protect himself from De Niro's version of the original Mitchum role.  Whew.


Then, we have Gregory Peck as an apparently evil version of Atticus Finch, defending De Niro from Nick Nolte's version of the original Peck role.  Damn!

Finally, we have Martin Balsam playing the judge who sides with De Niro, because he hates "vigilante justice."  Now, I know that's not true– given that I've seen him mow down legions of gang members with WWII-era machine gun in DEATH WISH 3.

#2.  Joe Don Baker drinking a combination of Pepto-Bismol and Jim Beam for the duration of the film.

If that doesn't warm your heart, then I personally forbid you from ever again watching a Joe Don Baker movie.

#3.  De Niro makin' creepy phone calls in gravity boots. 

Because... 1991.

#4.  The "clinging to the underbelly of a rapidly moving vehicle for several hours" plot twist, which feels EXACTLY like something that'd be in a De Palma film. 
  

#5.  Ditto on "murderous De Niro in drag."
 
It's really one of those strange performances where you can't quite tell if he's phoning it in or not.  There's often a fine line between "bad" acting and "genius" acting (see: the career of Steve Railsback, for example), and I kinda can't tell if this is a performance of nuanced intensity, or if it's a practical joke on the audience.  Either way, I love it.

#6.  Continuing in this vein:  in 1991, nearly one hundred years of motion picture history culminated in the subtle beauty of Robert De Niro singing a line of Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now"

while offering a joint to orthodonitia-encrusted teenage Juliette Lewis:

Truly fantastic.

#7.  Nick Nolte crazy-face!

I've discussed this in-depth before, but there are few things more frighteningly exhilarating than seeing a crazy-faced Nick Nolte in his native habitat.

SWEET DREAMS, KIDDIES!


P.S.  It always struck me as bizarre that the theatrical poster's placement (see above) of the torn photo and De Niro's creepy gaze build a subliminal image of a keyhole, especially since I can't recall keyholes being relevant to the plot whatsoever.  Thoughts?

–Sean Gill

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