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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS (1990)

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DIRECTED BY: Rick King

FEATURING: Corey Haim, Patricia Arquette, Christopher Collet, J. C. Quinn, Julius Harris, Devin Clark

PLOT: In a dystopian near-future where greed and widespread drug addiction have reduced the United States to third-world status, a cult of white-supremacist rollerbladers seeks to consolidate power; a lone skater, Griffin, infiltrates the gang to scuttle their operations and save his little brother.

Still from Prayer of the Rollerboys (1990)

COMMENTS: The brave new world of Prayer of the Rollerboys would seem to be a breeding ground for satire. The schools of the Ivy League have been carted off to Japan brick-by-brick. Mexican troops are repelling American immigrants at the border. Germany has conquered Poland once more, this time with its checkbook. Oh, and there’s rollerblading. Lots of rollerblading. But don’t laugh: screenwriter W. Peter Iliff (from whose pen Point Break and Varsity Blues will soon spring) wants you to be alarmed about even the most outlandish projections for America’s doomed future. There’s darkness coming, and only one thing can save us: Corey Haim.

Poor Corey. The prospective viewer of today might see the presence of the more tragic half of the Coreys in rollerblades as a guarantee of solid so-bad-it’s good entertainment. But it doesn’t turn out that way. It’s no secret masterpiece, but Prayer of the Rollerboys turns out to be a passable action flick, bringing low-budget grittiness and late-80s ethos to a familiar tale, with just a hint of eye-rolling over the near-future mise-en-scene.

After establishing his rollerblading bonafides in the opening credits, we properly meet Haim wearing a barbershop quartet’s striped jacket and boater and slinging an AK-47 for his job as a pizza delivery boy. (His boss: “If anybody messes with the van, [singing] kill ‘em.”) He’s trying to stay out of trouble and take care of his younger brother Miltie. Griffin’s just a good man in a bad world, you see; this world’s version of Marshal Will Kane.

There’s a lot out there to make him wary, like the vast amount of homelessness, the preponderance of populace-pleasing entertainments like nude women wrestling, and of course the narcotic du jour, an phosphorescent inhalant called “Mist.” But the biggest threat comes from the Rollerboys, an organized gang of skating thugs who deal Mist on the downlow while publicly sponsoring food drives and handing out their fascist literature to indoctrinate the masses. They occupy the Venn diagram intersection between Nazi Youth, the Proud Boys, New Kids on the Block, and the cast of Starlight Express. The film luxuriates in the sight of them cruising down the sidewalks of Venice Beach on their inlines, and the image of a dozen pretty rollerbladers decked out in flowing ecru trenchcoats and skating in a uniform flying-V is… well, not cool, exactly, but certainly memorable.

The film works best when it fully commits to the outlandishness of its premise. Griffin’s old grade school buddy Gary has grown up to lead the Rollerboys, and Christopher Collet gives it his all as a low-rent, roller-skating James Spader, a grinning crocodile who is fairly fit to burst into violence. (He even has a pet Komodo dragon to stroke malevolently.) No subtlety here; Gary’s plan to sterilize the population is literally called “the final solution.” His henchmen also bring the barely contained insanity, including Mark Pellegrino as a Jake Busey-wannabe strongman and the perpetually simmering Morgan Weisser, who even bites into an apple with repressed rage.

Against this, Haim does a creditable job, keeping an even keel as a guy who just wants to rollerblade in peace and now finds himself embroiled in chaos. He and Collet have genuine chemistry, engage in a rather effective fight scene, and bring authentic gravity to their final showdown. No, in our topsy-turvy world, the worst performance probably belongs to future Oscar-winner Patricia Arquette, zipping through the film in an admittedly weak role as an undercover cop in a series of joyfully ridiculous outfits (special consideration for her Dale Evans getup) and very little indication of the terrific acting career that lay ahead.

Once you get past the nightmare future of rampaging young white supremacists (all too believable) and full combat on skates (somewhat less so), there isn’t really anything wrong with Prayer of the Rollerboys. It’s derivative and a little silly, but the biggest problem is that the film is punching well above its weight. There are some intriguing ideas lurking in the movie: the allure of fascism, the impotence of our protectors, the weaponization of youth… but it’s all still riding on the shoulders of a Corey Haim rollerblading movie. It has to rehabilitate a teen heartthrob, create a credible future, call out the foibles of society, and do it all while embodying a youth culture that always seems to be just a step out of Hollywood’s reach. It would be a stretch for any movie to pull this all off. This is not the movie to do it.

Prayer of the Rollerboys isn’t bad enough to satisfy the snark-watchers, but not good enough to step out of the bin of forgotten B-movies. It does hint at an alternate universe where Corey Haim was able to realize his potential as an actor, and where we as a society anticipated the dangers of ceding power to pretty people who would co-opt it for nefarious purposes. Alas, in both cases, that stretches credulity just a shred too far.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The impact of screenwriter W Peter Iliff’s distinctly weird and intriguing premise is gradually eroded by the eventually unsurprising developments in its interestingly outlandish storyline and also by the over-familiarity of the usual, regulation futuristic setting of a chaotic, dystopian  tomorrow’s world.” – Derek Winnert, derekwinnert.com

(This movie was nominated for review by Lovecraft in Brooklyn, who says the film “features characters that somehow predict the modern alt-right.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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CAPSULE: A HAUNTED TURKISH BATHHOUSE (1975)

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DIRECTED BY: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi

FEATURING: Naomi Tani, , Tomoko Mayama, Misa Ohara,

PLOT: A prostitute reincarnates as a vengeful ghost cat to seek revenge on her abusive pimp husband.

Still from A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse (1975)

COMMENTS: A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse is the softcore/yakuza/melodrama/horror mashup obscurity you’ve been waiting for (if you’re the “you” in the above formulation, you’ll know it). This breathless nonsense hits its soapy plot points with ruthless economy as it rushes towards its demonic vengeance, with nothing to interrupt the flow except for gratuitous rape, torture, and sex scenes. The lavish sets and painted sunsets make it look as good as a mainstream film of the era, but make no mistake: this ain’t art, it’s overproof exploitation.

Japan’s 1957 ban on public prostitution supplies the initial plot hook, as brothel workers migrate from legal sex work to going undercover at a “Turkish bathhouse” serving as a front for prostitution. Only Yukino (Tani) refuses to make the switch, preferring to take this as an opportunity to retire and spend more time with her husband (and her black cat). Hubby (a scenery-chewing Murota) is no prize, however; he stages an elaborate ruse to fake a debt to the yakuza to convince Yukino to go back to work, then invites her virgin sister to live with the couple so he can rape her. He’s also somehow hiding the fact that he’s second in command at the brothel Yukino’s been working at for years, while simultaneously starting up an affair with the bathhouse madame and owner’s wife. After Yukino gets pregnant and refuses an abortion, he and the madame make sure she’s taken care of (in a very sick torture scene), walling up the corpse a la Poe. In the second act, Yukino’s disgraced sister shows up and goes undercover at the bathhouse looking for revenge, but when she proves the most popular courtesan, the other girls get jealous and decide to beat her, until Yukino’s cat flies (literally!) into the brawl to scratch up hooker faces. As you can see, there’s a lot of plot going on here, but nevertheless the script finds time about every ten minutes to squeeze in a scene of bathhouse girls lathered up with soap, rubbing their naked bodies over clients who mug for the camera with expressions of comical ecstasy. And so it goes until the third act, when the vengeful cat spirit finally arrives in all its Kabuki kitty glory, turning the final twenty minutes into an intense stalking scene (interrupted by only a single bubble bath sex romp). Having sliced up the evildoers with cat claws or burned them to a crisp, an angelic Yukino recedes into the painted sky. Roll credits.

Production values—the bright cinematography, imaginative camera angles, relatively extensive sets and costumes, and a screechy, psyched-out rock soundtrack—are vastly superior to what you would find in a Western sleaze movie. In the Japanese studio system, there was less of a budgetary distinction between, say, a historical drama and a raunchy “pink film.” With one studio (here Toiei) making both prestige and exploitation movies, productions shared casts, directors, crews, and sets; a stalwart like Taiji Tonoyama could act in an S&M-tinged pink movie like this in-between roles in films. This gives a quickie like Bathhouse an unusual aura of professionalism, for a movie that’s basically a wacky, hastily plotted romp designed to put butts in seats and boners in pants.

Mondo Macabro puts out another fine-looking, expensive-feeling disc. The main bonus here is a passionate commentary from film writer Samm Deighan, who provides a great deal of context and information about the Japanese industry, the players, and the history of the various subgenres colliding here (while also, I would say, overselling the movie as a serious artistic effort.) A couple of featurettes from Japanese cult movie historian Patrick Macias, one on horror at Toei Studios in general and one specifically devoted to A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse, further supplement Deighan’s extensive background information. About fifteen minutes of trailers, for Bathhouse and other sexy/violent Mondo Macabro titles, round out a presentation that makes for a satisfying night at the movies for those willing to overlook the violent misogyny inherent in the pink genre.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an outrageous horror-sex Toei production that packs more into 80 minutes than many viewers’ brains will be able to handle.”–Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital (Blu-ray)

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    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ONE SOLDIER (1999)

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    DIRECTED BY: Steven Wright

    FEATURING: Steven Wright, Sandi Carroll

    PLOT: A Civil War soldier looks back upon his life and contemplates the nature of human existence in the days leading up to his execution for murder.

    Still from One Soldier (1999)

    COMMENTS: For years, Steven Wright built his comedy empire on peerless one-liners that required 5 seconds to fully sink in and another 30 to stop laughing. Long before successors like Mitch Hedberg and Demetri Martin picked up the torch, Wright was unspooling hour-long sets built out of dozens upon dozens of jokes that lay like unexploded mines waiting to go off. It’s frankly all I can do to resist the temptation to just spend the whole review quoting him. (I’ll allow myself this one famous joke for the unacquainted: “I spilled spot remover on my dog… and now he’s gone.”) This earned him many opportunities to apply his hangdog stare and drier-than-the-Sahara monotone to a variety of projects as a supporting actor and voice artist, but there have been fewer opportunities to try to translate his voice as a writer to the screen. In 1988, he wrote, produced, and starred in “The Appointments of Dennis Jennings,” the tale of a hapless psychiatric patient that earned Wright that year’s Academy Award for live-action short. That success under his belt, he then waited 11 years to make another short, this time assuming the director’s mantle as well.

    The initial joke is that, even though his milieu is now the American Civil War, Steven Wright in a Union uniform is still Steven Wright. The elements are in place for a “Drunk History”-style collision of history and comedy, as mournful violins accompany Wright’s walks through an empty New England landscape. But when he launches into his narration in his classic disaffected drone, the subject matter is immediately more philosophical, touching on the inscrutability of life and the inevitability of death. Soon enough, his wife Becky joins in with her own reflection, and each hints that his fate may already be sealed. Essentially, “One Soldier” is like if “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” were a comedy sketch.

    Of course, Steven Wright can’t not be funny, or at least not indulge his quirkier side. Particularly as regards his fate, which he anticipates by plucking petals off a flower. Even his deepest musings are tinged with silliness, like his recollections of his job in the war, playing the concertina to soothe the nerves of the top brass. A heartwarming reunion with his wife is tempered somewhat by his insistence on wearing a harmonica, even during intimate moments. And there’s a comedian’s love of the absurd, best typified by this line of dialogue which is no less bizarre when heard in context: “When she said the number 25 in German, it drove me wild.”

    Wright’s soldier is a philosopher who hasn’t done the work and doesn’t have the language to describe the uncertainties he feels. That makes “One Soldier” a most unusual vanity project: it can’t carry the burden of the weighty issues it confronts, so it leans into that weakness. But there’s still something haunting that comes through, perhaps best exemplified by the film’s final thoughts: “First you don’t exist, then you exist, then you don’t exist. So this whole thing is just an interruption from not existing.” Steven Wright finds the comedy in the tragic notion that a person’s last thought on this earth is that he’s been thinking too much about the meaning of life.

    “One Soldier” is available as a bonus feature on “When the Leaves Blow Away,” a recording of a one-hour Wright stand-up set from 2007.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “It is a fine blend of deep theological ponderings, modern Zen koans, and comic schtick. Like Wright’s live stand-up, the film’s slow pace and ponderous subject matter have a rather hypnotic effect, drawing one into the skewed reality of Wright’s brilliant mind.” – J. C. Shakespeare, Austin Chronicle (contemporaneous)

    (This movie was nominated for review by RobinHoodsun, who mused “it was very very weird and it left me with a starnge feeling lol.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

    Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ONLY GOD FORGIVES (2013)

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    DIRECTED BY: Nicolas Winding Refn

    FEATURING: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm, Yayaying Rhatha Phongam

    PLOT: An expatriate American drug smuggler in Bangkok becomes enmeshed in an escalating cycle of violence following the murder of his brother, with increasing pressure from his revenge-minded mother and a persistent sword-wielding cop.

    Still from Only God Forgives (2013)

    COMMENTS: The power of success is immense. For the filmmaker who receives acclaim for their work, the decision about what to do next marks a decision point of unusual gravity. Is this a time to pursue a longed-for passion project? A call to double down on the styles and tropes that first merited attention? A surrender to the siren call of mass entertainment? The choice speaks to a director’s very soul.

    So it says a lot about Nicolas Winding Refn that, hot off the success of Drive, he went all in on a moody, bloody, glacially paced meditation on vengeance and justice. Refn renews his commitment to evocative visuals, bathing a dark and seedy Bangkok with stark contrasts of red and blue and framing his actors with an eye to capturing their place in the universe. But he does all this in service of a story that marinates in grimness, where everyone starts out bad and only gets worse, if they change at all. Refn’s response to success seems to be to hit back at the very things that brought it.

    Refn displays a remarkable commitment to not doing anything that feels like the next logical choice. For a film predicated upon the twin impulses of sex and violence, he refuses to do anything that could be misconstrued as pandering to the baser desires of the audience. When he shows sex, it’s isolated and unsatisfying to everyone involved. When he shows violence, it is brutal. He frequently withholds the direct impact of this violence, but when he does let it show, he is unrelenting. In the most vivid example, a character actually tells people in the room to close their eyes and watch nothing while a scene of torture methodically unfolds. It could be a command to the audience.

    This perverse contrariness extends to the performances of his actors. Gosling walks about in a perpetual state of resigned exhaustion, barely speaking (IMDb reports that he has 17 lines of dialogue in the entire film; this seems accurate) and appearing beleaguered and helpless even when he has clear agency. His counterpart, Pansringarm, is equally taciturn, but at least blessed with the certainty that he is in the right and backed with the force of the sword that always mysteriously seems to be at hand. At least he has karaoke to give him some release; the film frequently cuts away to what looks like a cheaply decorated wedding hall to give the policeman a chance to serenade a roomful of his underlings with a plaintive musical number. Maybe that’s why, when the two men finally square up for a brawl, Gosling fails to lay so much as a finger on his opponent. If only he’d sung.

    Kristin Scott Thomas, on the other hand, seems to be joining us from another movie entirely. Arriving with bottle-blonde hair, leopard prints, and a hardcore devotion to vulgarity and crudeness, her nightmare mom feels like a breath of fresh air simply because of the change in energy. She is consistently emasculating with Gosling, utterly brutal toward his pretend girlfriend (she’s not entirely wrong, but, you know, social niceties), and openly dismissive of everyone else. Perhaps everything you need to know about her is contained in her much-quoted response to the news that her late son had raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl (and this after having been denied his previous requests to have sex with a 14-year-old girl and then the club owner’s own daughter): “Well, I’m sure he had his reasons.” An argument could be made that every bad thing that happens in Only God Forgives is directly attributable to her, which may just be more evidence of Refn’s agenda.

    Viewers were notoriously split when Only God Forgives came out. Audiences at Cannes responded with a mix of applause and booing. The critics’ score at Rotten Tomatoes is around 40%, just below middling but with enough raves to merit further review. Rex Reed hysterically labeled it “unquestioningly in the top five” of the worst movies ever made, which given his intense dislike for anything with even a hint of quirk should makes us think more charitably about this particular film (although we must take his assessment seriously, as he himself earned consideration for the list with the lone film in which he himself starred). Honestly, it’s easy to understand everyone’s confusion. The film is uncommonly well-made but extremely hollow and off-putting in its content. And there’s every evidence that this is exactly what Refn intends; love it or hate it, that’s exactly what he wants from you. It’s a strange ambition, but no one can say he didn’t earn it. After all, it’s not your forgiveness he wants.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “But as gorgeous as the film’s world and imagery look, Refn’s frustratingly slow pacing and wildly uneven tone are very off-putting; this film is throttled by the eccentricities of its creator. There are probably dozens of films that Refn and Co. are drawing inspiration from, but the references and/or homages are so esoteric it’s hard to estimate the number of people who would actually get them… The tone is a constant mismatch of high-brow film art and low-brow grindhouse-style violence that never  coalesces into a discernible point. It’s everything arthouse haters mean when they talk about films that are ‘weird for the sake of being weird.'”–Kofi Outlaw, Screen Rant (contemporaneous)

    (This movie was nominated for review by “a”. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

    Capsules

    CAPSULE: SKINAMARINK (2022)

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    DIRECTED BY: Kyle Edward Ball

    FEATURING: Dali Rose Tetreault, Lucas Paul, Ross Paul, Jamie Hill

    PLOT: Young Kevin and Kaylee find themselves in the house alone late at night, hearing bumps, seeing poltergeist activity, and eventually conversing with unseen voices.

    Still from Skinamarink (2022)

    COMMENTS: Everything you’ve heard about Skinamarink is true. Yes, it is made up of often-silent, oddly-framed, static-fogged shots of doors, lamps, and Legos. The sparse dialogue is occasionally inaudible. Items move mysteriously and gravity is briefly reversed, but the liveliest action comes from public domain cartoons. There are no clear explanations, and some of the information we do receive is contradictory. It’s boring, and it’s mesmerizing, and it’s tedious, and it’s terrifying. Even its most ardent defenders will likely concede that, at 100 minutes, it’s unjustifiably long. It may be best conceptualized as unedited, jumbled security camera footage from a child’s nightmare.

    Skinamrink defies analysis. It puts you into the point of view of a child dealing with a nighttime world that’s simultaneously familiar and strange, your mind coping with your lack of understanding by filling in details. As much as any film we’ve ever reviewed, Skinamarink invites you to create your own narrative, whether you view it as a supernatural haunting, a metaphor for abuse, or simply a feature length immersion in childhood fears. If you’re looking for clues, perhaps pay attention to the first line of clearly spoken dialogue, which occurs twelve minutes in—although even that nugget of information is capable of multiple interpretations.

    I can’t unconditionally recommend Skinamrink, but I can’t deny its power, either. As with all experimental cinema, your results will vary in proportion to your disposition, your patience, and the amount of work and imagination you’re willing to put into it. I will say that, if you’re not frightened off by excessive minimalism and the idea of murky visions, whispered conversations, and twisted nostalgia for a time when you were frightened of the boogeyman and monsters under your bed appeals to you, then you should definitely seek out Skinamarink.

    Skinamarink got an unlikely theatrical run for a microbudget film, generating good word of mouth, bad word of mouth, and bitter arguments among horror fans. Though falling well short of inciting a Blair Witch style audience mania, it’s safe to assume the project has more than earned back its $15,000 budget.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “The point of view that the camera shows is, seemingly, sometimes that of one or the other of the children, but the skewing and fragmentation of perspective suggests an attempt to recover the unworldliness and incomprehension of early childhood, the fragmentary incoherence of children’s experience, even the psychoanalytic substitution of heavily cathected and weirdly dominant minor objects or visions to stand in for much more momentous ones… Yet the movie’s horrors and uncanny aspects mostly remain at the theoretical level… The images appear to be the tip of an iceberg, but there’s no iceberg beneath them.”–Richard Brody, The New Yorker (contemporaneous)