Blue Steel. Kathryn Bigelow. 1990. ⚁

[twenty minutes pass]

So this is a fantasy movie? A copy kills an armed guy in the middle of robbing a store… and she gets shit for it? I mean, even getting mildly questioned about killing somebody is apparently very unusual.

I guess the Bigelow/fascist complex stuff started very early and the criticisms after Zero Dark Thirty were just behind the curve?

[twenty minutes pass]

The guy playing the other cop is possibly the most annoying actor ever? He seems to be doing some sort of fake Brooklyn accent?

The entire movie is kinda bad. The over-the-top psycho performance from whatisname is just tedious. Who cares? Talking to a god, smearing himself in blood… it’s boring as fuck.

[twenty minutes pass]

So she gets the killer, but they had to let him go because of technicalities (or because the cop was boinking the suspect). Otherwise how can the cop go rogue and have to kill the psychotic killer?

The script on this movie is so paint-by-numbers that I’m now seriously regretting buying all these movies (co-)written by Eric Red.

So now I’m wondering what people thought of this piece of crap.

Oh! Hm. OK, it that few people like this movie, perhaps it’s better than I thought.

*refocus*

[the end]

Sorry, I had SPOILERS hoped for some kind of twist here. Like… the protagonist being insane and just imagining the whole thing, and that the bearded guy was innocent.

But, not, what you see it what you get: A totally standard, stupid movie about a psychotic serial killer, and the cop that has to break the rules to get him.

Cohen and Tate. Eric Red. 1988. ⚁

So this is Red’s first movie as a director. After the success of Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (which he co-wrote), it’s no wonder he landed a directing gig. So what’s going on here, then?

[half an hour passes]

Oh, this is so… different… from The Hitcher. Instead of a guy running away from a psychotic murderer, involving a lot of car chases and killing, we have … a boy … running away from two psychotic murderers, involving a lot of car chases and killing.

HOW DOES RED COME UP WITH THESE THINGS!!!

[twenty minutes pass]

The main problem here is that this movie is just kinda boring.

The kid playing the er kid is awful, but Adam Baldwin is convincingly psycho (perhaps that’s just his real personality?) and Scheider is a pro. Together they’re… just kinda middling?

[the end]

So the Home Alone bits (where the kid schemes and stuff) liven things up a bit, but it’s still a slog. It’s just 90 minutes, but it feels so much longer. The scene where they kill the family, for instance, is padded out with what feels like minutes of the woman pleading (and she’s the only female character? so that’s really weird), and the repetetive structure of the film, where nothing so much progresses as it just … goes on and on.

Oh, I’m watching the “making of”, and there was originally even more pleading when they killed the single female character.

*sigh*

The Hitcher. Robert Harmon. 1986. ⚃

I’ve been watching so many good movies lately, I felt it was time for some trash. But hopefully good trash. Also, as part of getting reacquainted with the “American Gothic” mini-sorta-genre, I watched Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark a few weeks back… and that movie was written by Eric Red, which reminded me that he was hot shit for about two weeks back then, but I’d never sought out his movies.

So here we are: The start of an Eric Red mini marathon, with his first major movie. Which is one I did see back in the 80s! In the movie theatre even! I’m amazed that it got distributed, because:

It’s a Cannon production, only perhaps surpassed by Golan-Globus in ability to churn out cheap action movies.

… Oh, I see I was slightly confused: Golan-Globus bought Cannon, which makes sense. And Cannon released a bunch of proper indie movies, like Cassavetes’ Love Streams. Huh.

Anyway!

[half an hour passes]

Man, this is such a nightmare. Spiralling ever into worse spots, but with glimmers of hope that just makes the next descent the more horrible.

It really is a great script, and it looks like this was a cheap movie to make. Rutger Hauer is amazing as a sheer malevolent force.

But that said, there’s a lot here that just doesn’t make much sense — mostly to do with the kid withholding information all the time instead of just blabbering to everybody he meets about the serial killer. “THERE”S A SERIAL KILLER! HE LOOKS JUST LIKE RUTGER HAUER!!!!” That’s get everybody’s attention. Instead he… mopes.

[the end]

Scary, dude.

There was just one scene that I thought I remembered: Rutger Hauer getting pulled apart by some trucks. That was wrong — it’s instead the scene where they fridge the lead’s girlfriend as part of his Hero Journey Into Becoming A Killer To Take Revenge, which is disappointing.

Here’s that most creditable of all critiques: TV Guide.

Or Roger Ebert:

And the Leigh character’s death – she is tied hand and foot between two giant trucks and pulled in two – is so grotesquely out of proportion with the main business of this movie that it suggests a deep sickness at the screenplay stage.

[…]

But on its own terms, this movie is diseased and corrupt.

Definitely:

In his review for The Globe and Mail, Jay Scott described the film as a “slasher movie about gay panic, a nasty piece of homophobic angst for the age of AIDS”.

Wow. It bombed! So it wasn’t for its age after all? My copy is a very nice one from Germany:

With a booklet and everything. Perhaps it was a success in Germany?