52 Pick-Up # 27 – Wise Blood (1979)

Okay, I think that's the last of the fireworks. Time to get back to work.

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up. It feels weird to still be explaining this at halfway into the year, but as a courtesy for any late arrivals, this is my year long project as an incentive to keep writing something weekly and going through some films that have not seen before.

Last time here, luck of the draw meant I spent the week of 4th of July with a Canadian folk horror movie that explored some of the complicated issues regarding colonialism and pacifism. For anyone who was wondering why I didn't go with something American, I hear you – and I've got just the thing this week, though whether you'll like it or not may vary.

This is one where I will start by saying, I had a misconception of this movie going in. Further, that misconception was what intrigued me to watch it. Having now seen it, I'm actually not upset that I was wrong – the outcome I got here still made for an intriguing watch. If anything, it might have gone darker than what I was expecting.

Which makes one of the more roundabout ways I've introduced a movie for this project, but I'll explain further just how I misread John Huston's Wise Blood shortly.

This actually will dovetail nicely with what has become the de facto 'pitch' part of these writeups. For the longest time, my main association of this movie was that it had a young Brad Dourif in a dark comedy playing what was, for all purposes, a preacher. Initially I took this to mean he was an overt grifter, separating the religious from their money in a full pantomime of that old time religion.

I had the right character type, but the wrong actor, and how Dourif ties into that is much more interesting.

Adapted from the Flannery O'Connor novel of the same name, Dourif plays veteran Hazel Motes returning to his home town after his service is concluded. After coming back to find his home abandoned and dilapidated, he sets off to find a new path for himself. This leads him into several adventures, including a friendly, if naive zookeeper (Dan Shor), a gladhanding promoter (Ned Beatty) and sidewalk preacher Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton) and his daughter Lily (Amy Wright.) At first, Hazel's stance towards the Hawks is only lightly antagonistic, not having any patience for Asa's act. This changes after he moves in with them and becomes more keenly aware of just how much of Asa's persona is fabricated. Disgusted and disillusioned, Hazel begins trying to push his own belief movement – the Church of Truth Without Christ. 

As presented, the idea is not designed to antagonize, but merely out of Hazel's sincere feelings after his time in the war and from seeing the theater of religion up close – both from Asa and, in flashbacks, from his grandfather (voiced by director Huston.) Of course, Hazel's sincerity soon meets its match as people around him start trying to play his movement just like any other, be it in Shor's Enoch trying to find Hazel a new messiah figure despite the stated ethos otherwise or Beatty's Hoover trying to turn the whole thing into a moneymaking endeavor. 

As much as this is longer than some of my previous 'pitch' summaries, this still only touches about half the plot and only a handful of the individuals Hazel crosses paths with in his journeys. Which is pretty impressive because the movie never really feels overstuffed or drawn out. It moves at a good clip and each of the encounters stacks on the increasingly taxed Hazel, which is a great showing for Dourif and a good opportunity to remind that this was a man whose first break into cinema got him an Oscar nomination. While he found a welcome (and quite entertaining) place in genre work, this was a guy who came out of the gate swinging as a dramatic actor at first.

I bring that up both as a general beat of praise for him as well as the fact that his performance is a big part of why this movie works for me, especially given this movie is ultimately a dark comedy. I know it's a regular spot for me, but I can find myself picturing a lesser version of this movie – one where Hazel is a broader character, angrier, or so tightly wound that we get a breakdown on the level of the infamous Frank Grimes from The Simpsons. If I'm being fair, there's probably even directors and/or actors who could make that balance work and work well. Even having said that, I like the way Huston and Dourif take this. Dourif's Hazel is a buttoned up, guarded individual from the jump (as the movie demonstrates early on with how little information he chooses to divulge from his time in the war, actively keeping it to the barest of bare minimums). As he meets people, he tries to remain distant and aloof as a baseline, only really starting to act otherwise when people get too close or are simply too much for him. Even his moments of anger come with a degree of restraint (and, let's be fair, this is Brad Dourif here – if they wanted this movie to have big anger moments, he could deliver those and leave a smoking crater in the aftermath.)

That restraint is the part of this performance that really makes this whole thing work for me, specifically regarding Hazel's church movement. The way Dourif plays Hazel, his movement reads as one born not of cynicism, but of sincerity. This is a man who genuinely believes that shedding a lot of the more explicitly supernatural trappings of religion could help improve people's lives. As much as the movie lines it up that this could have been him expressly trying to get revenge on Asa, he's speaking of his views with an interest in reaching people, and becoming ever more disillusioned and disgusted as people either miss the point or actively try to game it in defiance of what he's trying to achieve.

The result makes for a more subdued comedy, but also a much blacker one, as Hazel watches his well intended idea get wrestled from him and realizes there is no one he can really count on.

At this point, I have to take a moment to admit something: I haven't read any Flannery O'Connor to this point. I'm not sure how much of this is baked into O'Connor's work and how much was worked in by Huston. Having said that, if this is what O'Connor's style tends towards, this has me wanting to seek out her work. There is something very engaging about something that is, in many ways, very dark and nihilistic but also doesn't feel oppressive about it that helps make the comedy of this work.

So, to circle back to the start – this wasn't the movie I expected going in, but I still quite enjoyed what I got just the same.

And with that, July rolls on.

For those who have been enjoying the times shuffle results in wild tone shifts, oh, have I got a treat for you. Where are we going after John Huston's dark comedy about belief and human nature? Somewhere a little faster.

Or at lot faster.

A LOT a lot faster.

See you next week for Takeshi Koike's balls-to-the-wall sci-fi racing passion project Redline.

Till then.

King-Sized Halloween – Graveyard Shift (1990) - This Episode Was NOT Endorsed by OSHA

I warned you this joke would be coming back.

Welcome back for the first entry in this October's curated run – the 1990 movie Graveyard Shift, adapted from the story of the same name.

But first, a prelude.

After all, Night Shift is a collection of twenty stories, only about half of which have graced feature films. I don't wish to do a disservice to those that haven't made the proverbial big leagues (and in some of these cases, now want to seek out the Dollar Baby adaptations for later.) Plus, I'm already committed to rereading the whole collection anyway, so before we dive into the movie, let's have a quick discussion of the story that came before it, Jerusalem's Lot.

[A note before we go any further – I'm angling to run this month in the order the stories are featured in the collection. As some of you may already be aware, this will create a discrepancy down the line thanks to an anthology movie double dipping. I will be breaking from the order for that point, but otherwise, I'm sticking to the order as arranged.]

Jerusalem's Lot – Let me start this with an admission – at the time I first read this book, I was around 14 years old. I put this out there as my way of saying that, at that time, I really hadn't come across anything in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft's work. As a result, this story hit and slid off of me the first time out. Between the mythos, the journal narratives and the heavy emphasis on the creeping dread and mystery, I really didn't vibe with this as much as what came after. Revisiting it, I've come around to it a lot more. Looking at this one in the theme of feature adaptations, this is a story that feels like it has enough meat on its bones to make a solid 90-100 minute film without needing too much padding or extrapolation. It makes me both curious and apprehensive knowing they instead turned this into a television series (Chapelwaite). I might give that a shot at some point, but for now, I'll leave it as this story was a pleasant surprise on this revisit. A heavily atmospheric slow-burn with its roots in Lovecraft, that, this time around, came out as one of my favorites. 

Now then, on to our main title for this entry - Graveyard Shift.

I know marketing tends to favor hype over fact
But damn, that tagline is writing a REALLY big check to cash.

As I stated above, I can see the makings of a feature movie in Jerusalem's Lot. I had a much harder time of thinking the same for Graveyard Shift.

Don't get me wrong - this isn't a bad story. I enjoyed it as a good down-and-dirty early King short. But it's also one that it's hard to picture someone reading and coming away from thinking “There's a great picture in this!” Save for the fact this was made at the time where Stephen King's name alone was a selling point, anyway.  

For those not familiar, the story concerns a group of luckless workers tasked with cleaning out the subterranean levels of a textile mill over a holiday weekend. What starts as a miserable slog hosing down water rotted supplies and all manner of decay takes a turn as they descend lower and discover the assorted vermin that have made this their home. To just call them rats is a touch misleading.

In some respects, this has similar elements to Jerusalem's Lot - a small cast, a fixed location, and a heavy sense of atmosphere. It's where the two go from there that differs, however. Jerusalem's Lot has its story in how deep the narrative rabbit hole goes for its protagonist as he uncovers the troubled past of his ancestral home. By comparison, the cleanup crew of Graveyard Shift just venture deeper into subterranean decay and the mutated creatures therein..

In the right hands, this would have the potential to make an awesome short film played to the page. A solid, atmospheric, mean-spirited dive into deeper and deeper dark, both in the building itself and in our protagonist's nature. As a feature length endeavor, it calls for a lot of extrapolation to get it up to a marketable run time.

In that regard, I give Ralph Singleton's 1990 adaptation this - it has good instincts in what areas to build out the story. He chooses to expand on things like establishing the not-your-typical rodent infestation early on, the overall corrupt nature of the mill's manager, and further establishing the protagonist as an outsider with all the hostility that brings with it.

On paper, these are good directions to want to go in. Sadly, they don't pan out in the actual execution.

If I had to sum up the biggest problem in this movie in a single word, it would be ‘forgettable.’ It's not an especially egregious watch - I didn't come away from it feeling like I had wasted my time or was angry with the poor quality. Which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that the movie didn't really leave me feeling much of anything for the bulk of its runtime.

To be fair and try to highlight some good, there are some bits I would consider as making some impact, if not for the reasons they hoped for. 

Though if I'm being completely fair,
Brad Dourif is one of those actors who could make
reading the phone book an interesting experience.

At the top of that list is Brad Dourif - a supporting actor here but easily the biggest star power - as an exterminator written just for the movie. The character on its own isn't an especially fleshed out or engaging figure. In fact, the role is an almost cartoonish cliche that would have been an embarrassment with a lesser actor. Instead, Dourif takes this exterminator whose basically your over the top unstable Vietnam vet stereotype and makes it watchable by playing it at a constant 11.

As fun as Dourif is, most of the rest of the cast leave nowhere near the same impression, sadly. The one other who comes coming close is Stephen Macht, whose corrupt manager has one finger constantly twirling his mustache with every single line read. It kind of makes me feel bad for David Andrew's stoic protagonist, who simply blends in, lacking either the darkness of his original character or a heroic appeal of a more traditional movie lead.

You know what? I take it back.
He doesn't need the finger twirling it,
with some of his line reads, this stache twirls itself.

Which ultimately undercuts the potential in the idea of expanded story - the elements used to make those expansions don't really leave you wanting more of this world. In fact, the actual work under the mill that is the focus of the story is relegated to the final third, making it an utter slog to get there.

As much as I want to say patience is rewarded, even after getting through said slog, the payoff is unrewarding. On page, the descent into the mill is dark, dank, and the increasingly more primal, both in terms of the location and the mutated rodents that reside there. King paint a picture that you can imagine to the point of almost envisioning touch and small in how damp and gruesome it is. In the finished film, it all just feels dimly lit and cheap. That goes for both the set design and the creature work

Reading up on the production of this just adds to the frustration. There were a few attempts at this film starting from initially getting the rights from King on the set of Maximum Overdrive (which, given the allegations of King's state while filming, doesn't speak well for that greenlight.) The first attempt fell through and it led to a next attempt building on the old script and a sense of the budget being whittled down with each go. That there was an initial attempt at this with effects work by Tom Savini makes the unremarkable creature work in the finished version even more of a let down.

I keep telling myself to judge the movie for what it is,
not what I want it to be. But man, for a design was already
underwhelmed by, knowing we could have had Savini
creatures is just insult to injury.

A let down. As much as I feel bad using that term here, it's really the one that feels the most appropriate here. As I said before, I didn't come away from this amused or even angry as much as just…there.
Not the most thrilling way to start things up, I admit. At least I was pleasantly surprised by the revisit to Jerusalem's Lot, and the original story for Graveyard Shift was enjoyable.

I promise, the films will overall pick up from here. This next one is…I'm not gonna claim great, but it's certainly going to be more interesting.
Plus, the next slate includes a story I am pleased to say is still a favorite in this collection.
Till then.