Saturday, April 27, 2013

Remember Last Night? (1935)

Director: James Whale                                    Writers: Harry Clork & Doris Malloy
Film Score: Franz Waxman                             Cinematography: Joseph A. Valentine
Starring: Robert Young, Constance Cummings, Edward Arnold & Reginald Denny

A non-horror outing for director James Whale at Universal, Remember Last Night? seems to begin as an attempt at screwball comedy but comes off as more of a bad mash-up of the RKO Astaire and Rogers pictures, and the Thin Man series at MGM. The plot concerns a group of wealthy couples participating in a progressive dinner, only this time the banquet is booze. Their reckless abandon and destructiveness harkens back to the 1920s jazz era more than it does a celebration of Prohibition’s repeal. After a group of thugs appear and talk about kidnapping one of the party, the film turns into a murder mystery when one of the guests is found dead in bed. The title refers to the fact that the mystery is so difficult to solve because none of participants can remember what they did the night before.

The set is huge, an opulent mansion owned by the deceased, and Whale uses it effectively, especially on traveling shots that move from room to room. There is also an interesting hypnosis scene in which Young remembers everyone going for a swim in the pool, with one of the women, a towel around her shoulders, saying, “I’m Dracula’s daughter,” a year before that film was made. But there is very little Whale to be found here, save that of the extreme close-ups he’s known for. Unfortunately, there are also some scenes that are difficult to watch, one being the destruction that the partygoers revel in. It’s hard to imagine Depression era audiences relating to this at all, much less seeing it as entertainment. Even worse, however, is the song performed by the party in blackface masks, complete with racist minstrel jokes and dialect. It’s not one of Whale’s better moments.

Another Whale trademark is the use of some notable character actors, among them Arthur Treacher, who began his film career playing a butler and never really recovered from it. Whale regular E.E. Clive plays the coroner’s photographer, and a couple of castaways from King Kong are also featured, Frank Reicher and Robert Armstrong. This was Whale’s first film after the successful Bride of Frankenstein, but once the Laemmle’s were forced to sell the studio the new management at Universal was uninterested in his non-horror films at the same time that Whale had completely lost interest in the genre that made him famous, and his relationship with the company became strained thereafter.

At the end of the day, the picture is really a failure. Not only the behavior of the characters, but the characters themselves are unlikable. Young and Cummings are rude and abusive, and have none of the charm of William Powell and Myrna Loy in The Thin Man. Edward Arnold is far too over the top in his gruff district attorney role, and his detective Edward Brophy is nearly unwatchable as the stupid cop. The brilliant Franz Waxman’s score is sparingly used and even that is fairly generic, especially considering the magnificence of his score for Bride of Frankenstein. Whale is said to have like the film, but he must have been one of the few. Remember Last Night? is ultimately a film best left forgotten.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Boxing Helena (1993)

Director: Jennifer Chambers Lynch                   Writer: Jennifer Chambers Lynch
Film Score: Graeme Revell                              Cinematography: Frank Byers
Starring: Julian Sands, Sherilyn Fenn, Bill Paxton and Kurtwood Smith

Julian Sands is NOT a good actor, period. For some reason his role in A Room with a View worked for him, his spaced-out lack of facial expression was just what the part needed and made him an overnight sensation. But everything since has sucked. You look at his face and you don’t know what he’s thinking. He has all the animation of a department store mannequin. It’s that bad. In the late eighties he was a hot commodity and starred in dozens of films, but by the early nineties he had been relegated to mostly mediocre horror and suspense films, and since then has languished, justifiably so, on television. Boxing Helena is a case in point.

I had heard the name of the film at the time, but never had the opportunity to see it. Watching it recently it’s clear the film is simply a sexually charged version of Stephen King’s Misery, or if you want to go back even further, The Collector by John Fowles, although I’m sure there are hundreds of stories with a similar captive theme. This one suffers primarily from its reliance on Sands to create a credible protagonist, which he doesn’t have the skills to do. Casting him as the simpering, spurned lover is ludicrous. At least in his malevolent parts his blank expression brings a shred of believability. Here we’re supposed to believe that he is tortured in his desire for Sherilyn Fenn, but we get absolutely nothing from him emotionally. He looks like as if he’s just “pretending” and doing an incredibly bad job of it.

Fenn, who had her start in television, was good in Gary Sinise’s Of Mice and Men and scored roles in a few films after this before returning to the small screen. But she is given nothing to do here, except be a bitch. After attending a party that Sands has set up just so she’ll be in attendance, she becomes fed up with his stalking and manipulation. Walking away from his house in a huff, she is suddenly hit by a car. He brings her back to his home and, brilliant surgeon that we’re supposed to believe he is, he uses his medical skills to keep her imprisoned with him until she submits. Sigh. Bill Paxton is wasted as a horny player, as is Kurtwood Smith playing a doctor and Art Garfunkel as the improbable friend of Sands. The whole thing is weird, and not in a good way.

This was writer-director Jennifer Chambers Lynch’s directorial debut, and she tanked so badly that she didn’t get another film project for fifteen years. She was attempting to draw on the same kind of mysterious obsession present in the work of her father, David Lynch, but with her incredibly weak script and even worse actors the project was doomed from the start. Parts of it are little more than soft-core porn, the rest is very un-suspenseful suspense, and the ending is utterly abysmal. Ultimately Boxing Helena, while trying to be edgy and provocative, simply winds up flat, an unentertaining waste of time.