Midnight Movie of the Week #50 - Blue Steel

Between Ron Silver's beard and Clancy "Kurrgan" Brown's perm, there's no reason you shouldn't love Blue Steel.  A creepily primal psychological thriller that stars Jamie Lee Curtis (the only scream queen that really matters, I say), Blue Steel is directed by recent Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow.  Bigelow also teamed up on the script with her Near Dark co-writer Eric Red (who was also responsible for The Hitcher), and the same quiet poetry that filled that rural horror runs through this urban police story.

Curtis takes the lead as Megan Turner, a rookie cop who tells her first partner that she became a cop because she wants to shoot people.  Moments later, she finds herself staring down a gun-toting robber (Tom Sizemore). As she shakes in fear, the viewer can tell that she's more vulnerable than she lets on.  But, the robber refuses to yield to a woman in blue...and is promptly shot repeatedly for his efforts.  Also present at the robbery is seemingly normal stock trader Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver, accompanied by his glorious beard), who spies the robber's fallen gun and promptly snatches it up, fleeing the scene unnoticed.

Since they don't find a gun at the scene, Megan's superiors (led by Stir of Echoes' Kevin Dunn and Highlander's Brown) assume that she's simply trigger happy - proving the point that you don't joke about shooting people when you're carrying something that can be used to shoot people.  Meanwhile, Hunt freakishly begins carving the bullets from his newly found 44 Magnum.  He soon wanders into the streets, ignores "DON'T WALK" signs at crosswalks, and then shoots the first person he comes across at close range - using a bullet that has Megan Turner's name etched into its casing.

Oh, and then he seeks out Megan and woos her with his beard and starts a creepy relationship with her.

That's the bizarre set up for Bigelow's film, which then spends most of its duration focusing on Eugene's total-freakin' gun-happy craziness and Megan's self-confident desire to be the strong woman. Megan's interactions with her parents reveal that her father has a general disinterest in women holding power, and we also learn that he beats Megan's mother (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest's Louise Fletcher).  So it's easy to see where Megan's desire to be strong comes from, yet only through Curtis' perfect posture and clenched jaw do we see how hard she's trying to do the right thing.  That's mostly because all of the men in the film seem to be doing their best to discredit her, with Brown's detective being the only exception.  I assume he's in touch with his feminine side; he does have a gigantic perm.

At the other end of the film is Silver's Eugene, who is Looney Tunes yet looks like the kind of powerful male figure that society doesn't doubt.  We can certainly see that he has violent fits and hears voices and occasionally wipes the blood of a prostitute all over his naked body, but he looks like a normal person to everyone inside the film.  Plus he has a serpent of a lawyer, played by the always great Richard Jenkins, who backs him up.  So he pretty much has a kind of diplomatic immunity that is reserved for athletes and politicians these days, despite his crimes and the growing evidence pointing to him.  At the same time it becomes evident that he doesn't really have a grasp on reality.  As Megan holds a gun to his head he simply tells her "You look beautiful...I like your bone structure."  Can you say "creeper"?

The film really stands our attention on end in the mid-film scene where Eugene reveals his true self to Curtis' Megan.  As he strips away his shell of normalcy before her eyes, he informs her that "you would do what I do if you knew yourself better".  To me, this statement resonates as the film's biggest question when we consider what we know about Megan.  She makes comments about wanting to shoot people and wanting to slam people's heads against walls - and we assume they're jokes.  But when she ends up doing those things as her pursuit of the devilish Mr. Silver prolongs, the film makes us strongly consider whether or not we too have undervalued Megan based on her gender.  Maybe she really has her own violent tendencies, her own mental concerns...and we just don't see them under her female exterior and her blue police outfit.

When placed against a quiet and surreal New York City backdrop, the cat and mouse game between Curtis and Silver becomes a psychological treat.  Bigelow offers the dilemma in slow-burn style - the film feels a lot longer than its 101 minute length - yet I find it very easy to get lost inside the creepy drama that it offers.  It allows me to find the little things, like a wide-eyed, rambling Silver lapping up a lone tear that runs down his face while Curtis points a gun at him, that make me think deeply about what at times seems to be a simple police drama.

And, there's Ron Silver's beard.  You can't beat that.

Midnight Movie of the Week #48 - The Entity

I know this will sound silly, but lately I've been  experiencing some strange phenomena.  For the last two or three weeks there have been several times when I'm in bed, trying to fall asleep, and the door to my bedroom starts shaking as if some very weak force is trying to beat down the door.  I live alone and have no pets (RIP  to my beloved fish, Catherine Betta Jones), so I know there's nothing there...but the door rattles anyway.  I figure it's probably just a combination of the upstairs neighbors' movement and my building being an ancient hellhole (structurally, not spiritually), but it continues to happen even when I can't hear movement above me.  And part of me kind of thinks it's something like The Entity.

Yes, The Entity.  That 1983 chiller in which Barbara Hershey - she who melted the heart of Gene Hackman's Coach Norman Dale in the undefeatable classic Hoosiers - is terrorized and repeatedly raped by an unseen force.  It sounds ridiculous, but that's really what the film boils down to.  There are lots of hauntings and poltergeists and such in films that are out there, but this is the one in which Barbara Hershey gets raped a lot.  (Random Fact: Despite how silly it sounds, the film is based on the real accounts of a woman who claims to have gone through a similar ordeal in 1976, and family members have stated that the film is relatively accurate in portraying what they perceived.)

As I seem to be doing my best to diminish the film's plot, you might think that The Entity is an exploitative mess; the kind of film I would recommend only due to factors like ridiculousness and cheesiness.  I guess that's partially true - the film is full of ridiculous things like the overbearing score and the actor that plays Hershey's mongoloid eldest son.  I had kind of dismissed the film on these grounds as a younger Mike, but a recent revisit has me thinking a little more about the whole thing.

The largest factor in this dramatic reconsideration is Hershey's performance as our lead character, Carla Moran.  A single mother (Subtle reminder to join on FMWL's Mothers of Horror fun!) with children from two different fathers who can't seem to catch a break, Carla could easily have been portrayed as a whiny, terrified invalid by other actresses.  What Hershey does in the role reaches a fine balance by showing her terror and still empowering her as a strong-willed woman against the world.  She deals with a slew of different people from doctors (led by the awesome Ron Silver and his marvelous beard/hair combo) to researchers who don't know how to deal with the entity, and does so with as much grace is possible while repeatedly being victimized by something no one else believes in.

As Carla deals with these people, there are plenty of uncomfortable issues that come up.  Silver's Dr. Sneiderman wants to look into her past relationships while his colleagues blame masturbation.  At one point, it's even suggested that her oldest son - who the Doc calls a "good looking young man", despite the fact he's got a weird head - is somehow involved in her sexual dilemma.  Carla's sexual desires are a key part of her journey, and a surprise mid-film attack in which she receives more pleasure than she expects leaves her more terrified than ever.  The script, by Dark Night of the Scarecrow director Frank De Felitta, really fleshes out the character's plight as she deals with the intrusive side of her abuser.  And when this focus on human psychology combines with Hershey's strong presence (Seriously, I just love her) in the lead, The Entity overcomes most of its silly problems.

Since we're discussing a movie consisting of many rapes, it's worth noting that the film isn't very brutal by today's standards.  For the time, however, The Entity was a controversy.  20th Century Fox produced the film in 1981, but didn't release it in America until February of 1983 due to the content.  (I'm not sure what exactly changed during those two years to make shapeless rape acceptable, but I'm grateful it changed.) The effects involved include a latex "body double" for a couple of the most invasive scenes, and we certainly get a full shot of what Ms. Hershey's Stepford-self would look like naked.  It's no surprise that the great Stan Winston was involved in creating some of the film's effects, because they're effective and quite practical.  The effects wouldn't work without Hershey working along side them, however, which is another example of how she carries the film.

(Random Fact: A video game based on The Entity was made for the Atari in 1983, but never released.  I can't even begin to imagine how that game would have worked.)

At 125 minutes The Entity might just be the longest horror movie ever made (OK, slight exaggeration), and there are some lulls in the action.  But amidst all the silliness and the pounding music and that weirdly shaped son, there's Hershey and Silver being ridiculously human at the heart of the film.  As the film uses this grasp on humanity, there are plenty of moments that provoke both strong fear and intelligent thought during Carla's ordeal.  Despite all the times I want to laugh at it - including a final line from the entity that is unintentional comedy gold - I find myself consistently loving The Entity a little more with age.  It's a one of a kind horror film that only could exist at the crossroads of the '70s and '80s, and I think any fan of that era in horror should find it compelling in some way.