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Apocryphally Weird

56*. TOMMY (1975)

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“The Old Testament teems with prophecies of the Messiah, but nowhere is it intimated that that Messiah is to stand as a God to be worshiped. He is to bring peace on earth, to build up the waste places–to comfort the broken-hearted, but nowhere is he spoken of as a deity.”—Olympia Brown

DIRECTED BY: Ken Russell

FEATURING: Roger Daltrey, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, , , Jack Nicholson, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Barry Winch

PLOT: Tommy witnesses the murder of his WWII fighter-pilot father at the hands of his mother and step-father, who demand silence. The boy obliges, becoming wholly unresponsive to stimuli, aside from touch. When Tommy happens upon a pinball machine in a junkyard, he soon rockets to fame and messianic adulation from rebellious youths countrywide.

Still from Tommy (1975)

BACKGROUND:

  • The Who’s Tommy hit number two on the UK charts, going Gold within four months. Ken Russell did not care much for the music, but was intrigued by the ideas explored in the double album.
  • Russell’s Tommy was a box-office smash, garnering two Academy Award nominations (for Best Actress and Best Score).
  • George Lucas was slated to direct Tommy but opted instead to develop his own film, American Graffiti.
  • Every pinball machine featured in the film predates the original album’s release date of 1969.
  • Elton John refused the role of “Pinball Wizard” until he was promised the oversized Doc Marten boots worn by the character.
  • Mick Jagger, Tiny Tim, and were considered for the role of the Acid Queen before Tina Turner was signed on.
  • Every actor performs their own vocals—some more capably than others.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: At the height of his powers—and that would include the year of Tommy‘s release—Ken Russell made nothing but indelible images. But for stylistic and thematic reasons (not to mention sheer poetic excess), Tommy’s ordeal as he is installed within a syringe-imbued iron maiden during Tina Turner’s blow-out performance takes at least as much of the cake as any of the other wonders blaring on the screen.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Chrome-twinkling sex drug and rock ‘n’ roll body cage; a flood of beans fit for a queen

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The Who provide the blaring wall of sound, Ken Russell’s crew manifest the blazing visuals, and a crack squad of heavy-hitter, top-of-their-game actors provide impressively calibrated bombastic characters, making for an audio-visual adventure that giddily drags you through a bonanza of immoderation. All somehow within the bounds of a “PG” rating.

Trailer for Tommy (1975)

COMMENTS: When you have a narrative that is as flimsy as it is outlandish, one way to make it work is cover it with lights, champagne, Continue reading 56*. TOMMY (1975) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME (1985)

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DIRECTED BY:  George Miller, George Ogilvie

FEATURING: Mel Gibson,

PLOT:  Loner and reluctant hero Mad Max wanders out of the desert and into a crossroads of post-apocalyptic vice known as Bartertown, and later discovers a colony of innocent children in a peaceful oasis who believe him to be a messiah.

Still from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: If costuming alone could earn a film a place on the list of the 366 weirdest films of all time, then Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome‘s raggedy punk centurions and Tina Turner’s post-aerobic post-apocalyptic fashions would easily qualify it. Thunderdome is also the weirdest of the Mad Max series because of its emphasis on new post-civilization rituals: for example, the bizarre legal system of Bartertown, administered by a philosophical hunchback Magistrate of Ceremonies, where tort disputes are resolved by gladiatorial battles and a breach of contract results in a random punishment spun from a wheel of fortune. But, even though Thunderdome is the oddest of the trilogy, it’s still basically just a creative Western dressed up with sci-fi trappings; it’s weird by summer blockbuster standards, but fails to sneak across the mass appeal genre-piece border.

COMMENTS:  The “Mad Max” series was the most inventive sci-fi/action hybrid of the 1980s, one which sparked a brief but fun post-apocalyptic cycle (which produced a few genuinely weird low-budget Mad Max knockoffs). Each Mad Max film inhabited the same fascinating universe, a world of scarce resources, shaky alliances, and dying machines held together with spit and twine, but each was very different in tone. All are recommended. The original Mad Max was a dark, character-driven revenge drama that gained a cult following.  Mad Max 2, more commonly known as The Road Warrior, was a rollicking action piece that caught lightning in a bottle and inspired Hollywood to pump money into a sequel. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was… well, it was what happens when the series gets a big head and tries to be a summer blockbuster.

The Tina Turner pop song that plays over the opening credits is shamelessly anachronistic and completely inappropriate for a Max movie, but it sets the tone of confused priorities that defines Thunderdome. The movie flits uncomfortably between the exaggerated, radioactive Casablanca of Bartertown and the brave new Lord of the Flies meets Peter Pan world of the children’s tribe. It’s also a movie that recycles and steals from other movies. Popular elements from the Road Warrior are reused here. The feral child has been transformed into an horde of tribal ragamuffins, Bruce Spence from Warrior reappears as a pilot (the character may be the same one from the previous movie; it’s never explained), and the finale is a shameless remake of Warrior‘s climax with a train substituting for the tanker. There are also blatant references to Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns, and the children’s mangled language (“Time counts and keeps countin’, and we knows now finding the trick of what’s been and lost ain’t no easy ride”) is reminiscent of the made-up nasdat cant of A Clockwork Orange. Maybe this reusing of old bits and pieces is appropriate in a movie about an emerging society being built on the ruins of another. The overall effect is a movie that’s jumbled and uncentered, more than a bit loopy, but still lots of fun. That overall goofiness, combined with the unique ramshackle look of the punk-barbarian world nearly, but not quite, tilts Thunderdome into the weird zone.

Rumors of a fourth Max movie have been circulating for over twenty years now, and continue as strong as ever. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a movie that strains at the leash of the possible, a movie of great visionary wonders.”–Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times (contemporaneous)

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome [Blu-ray]

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome [Blu-ray]
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