Ten Days of Terror!: The Witches

Film: The Witches
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop.

There are a lot of things to talk about with a film like The Witches. It’s such a strange combination of things I really enjoyed and things I genuinely hate in movies. In the plus column, it’s based on a story by Roald Dahl and it stars Anjelica Huston. On the other hand, it has some clear problems for anyone in the audience older than about nine. We’ll get to that, I assure you.

Because this is a Roald Dahl story, there are a few things you can guess going in. The first is that our main character will be a child. The second is that it’s likely that he’ll lose his parents pretty quickly. The third is that most of the adults are going to be evil, stupid, or both. All of this is exactly correct. While many of the adults in this film will be the witches of the title, aside from our main character’s parents (who will be killed off in the first few minutes) and his grandmother, the adults are going to be uniformly awful.

Moves Like Jagger

Film: Performance; Gimme Shelter
Format: DVDs from NetFlix on laptop.

Performance is not one film, but two. That these two films have the same characters and that one ends specifically when the other begins is of little importance. That the two films eventually meet and merge at the end, though, is of very great significance, and it’s equally significant that the two experiences placed under this single name are packaged as a single entity.

Let me explain. At the beginning, Performance is a fairly standard British crime drama. We’re introduced to Chas (James Fox), who works for a man named Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon). Chas is a foot soldier whose main job is intimidation. We get the sense that Chas is in it for both the money and the violence. The trouble starts when Harry decides to take over a bookie joint owned by a man named Joey Maddocks (Anthony Valentine). He expressly forbids Chas from being involved in the takeover because Chas and Joey have a rocky history.

Outback

Film: Walkabout
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

I haven’t ever attacked the watching of this list of films with much of a plan, or at least without much of a plan that’s looked more than a week or so ahead. I’ve tried to watch films from all genres and from all decades pretty consistently. I’ve also sort of kept track of the films I’m really interested in seeing and the ones that I dread. For the last three years, I’ve done my best to ration the films that really interest me and to force myself to do a couple of the scarier ones every month. The fact that I’ve disliked four of the last seven and want a better print of a fifth means it’s time for one I’ve been looking forward to seeing.

Walkabout is a story unlike any that I have seen. A man (John Meillon) takes his daughter (Jenny Agutter) and son (Luc Roeg, son of director Nicolas Roeg) for a drive out into the Australian Outback, driving into the heart of nowhere until the car is virtually out of gas. As his daughter puts together a picnic lunch, he consults what looks like geological information about the area. Then, quite suddenly, he pulls out a gun and attempts to kill his children. The kids run off, and he sets fire to the care and shoots himself in the head, leaving his children alone and in the middle of nowhere.

No Peeking

Film: Don’t Look Now
Format: DVD from NetFlix on far less kick-ass portable DVD player.

It will soon be time to retire the portable DVD player permanently. It still plays movies well enough, but the dead remote (and it’s not the battery) makes it far less functional than it could or should be. That, and it no longer holds much of a charge, something I’ve confirmed on several trials now. It’s kind of sad, really. I like the little player. I’m also just enough of a cheapskate to not really want to suffer the expense of buying another one. So I muddle through, using it at times in the vain hope that it will have somehow magically improved, and it never does. So, sad as it is, Don’t Look Now is likely to be the end of the line for its usefulness.

Then again, it seems additionally tragic to have its last film be something as dark as Don’t Look Now. In its own way, this is as dark a film as I have seen in a long time. I won’t pull a lot of punches here, because I do want to be clear with what exactly why this film is likely to elicit strong reactions in many people who see it. Five minutes in, and I was honestly ready to turn it off. Why? Because in the first film minutes of the film, the daughter of our principle characters, Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) and John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) drowns in a pond. I’ve seen kids die in films before, of course, but there was something very different about this. My reaction to this was extremely visceral. I don’t like seeing kids die in films, but here, it seemed like such a real thing that I didn’t want to keep watching.

Trippy

Film: The Man Who Fell to Earth
Format: DVD from Musser Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.


Sometimes people appear to be born to play a particular role. Sometimes, this is simply because of a long association with a style or type. It’s difficult to imagine someone else playing Indiana Jones, for instance, so someone other than Humphrey Bogart playing Sam Spade. Other times, it seems like the role was written with a specific person in mind. Such is the case with the role of Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth. There cannot be another person better suited for this role than David Bowie.

Newton is an alien who has come to Earth in search of water. His world is dying, and he has been sent to make enough money to rescue his own world. Bowie himself is so otherworldly in appearance that not much needs to be done to make him perfect for the role. With his slow, careful gait, mismatched eyes, almost disturbing thin frame, and shocking red hair, he is instantly evident and out of place everywhere he goes.

The first thing we really see of Newton, he is selling a gold ring for $20, a ring he claims he got from his wife. It looks like a moment of desperation, and it is followed by a much worse one—Newton scoops up water with a tin can from what looks like run-off from an industrial site and drinks it. As he does, he pulls out a massive roll of bills and a huge collection of identical gold rings.

Newton has arrived on Earth with a massive collection of new inventions—nine basic patents according to his new lawyer Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry), which should be worth more than $300 million within a few years. As we learn of Newton’s impending fortune, we also get glimpses of a man who will become a major player in this story, a chemistry professor named Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn). Bryce, as we see in a mildly disturbing montage, is more interested in bedding young undergraduates than doing much else. He is, however, intrigued by a new company called World Enterprises, headed by the reclusive Thomas Jerome Newton.

The fourth player in this little drama is Mary-Lou (Candy Clark). A former housekeeper in a New Mexico hotel, it is she who first sees how truly fragile Newton really is. An elevator ride in the hotel knocks Newton flat and she gets him into his room, takes care of him, and introduces him to the pleasures of a large glass of Beefeater’s gin. (While it’s never really spoken aloud in the film, much of Newton’s implied fragility and much of what Bowie does in terms of movement throughout the film is because of much lower gravity on his home world. It’s a subtle and impressive piece of acting from a debut performance.)

The story of a man coming from another world to save his own planet might make an interesting story, but it almost certainly needs more. So, there’s more here. Newton’s goal is to save his own world, which we see in flashback and visions is a desolate world nearly destroyed. But it is a goal that he cannot, does not, and will not realize, not because of the difficulty or problems, but because of his own failings. Newton becomes a man unable to move on, unable to act in any meaningful way. The job of saving his world becomes simply too much for him, and he sinks into what essentially feels like ennui with no possible way out. Newton is so crushed by the weight of his worlds, he cannot continue.

And it’s both literal and figurative weight. From his home world, the fate of his wife, children, and people depend on his returning with water. On Earth, the oppressive gravity breaks him down physically, wearing him out, and both weights are impossible for him to break away from. Newton is tragic because of this, and pathetic as well. Of course it doesn't help that he is easy prey for ruthless and vicious businessmen (particularly Bernie Casey) blinded by their own greed.

Thus we have the name of both the film and the book it was based on. Newton did literally fall to Earth from the heavens. He also “fell” in the sense that from the high perch of his technology and generated cash, his life essentially comes to nothing.

Not everything is specifically what you might expect here. Science fiction films tend to have a lot more in the way of laser battles with aliens, spaceships zooming around Pluto, and obvious bad guys for the hero to battle in a climactic sequence. Not so much here. This is an existential drama. Newton fills up his life with booze and a bank of televisions, overloading him with sensory experience in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy his inner demons.

There’s also a surprising amount of sex, including gooey alien sex on Newton’s homeworld. I’m no prude, but I’m not sure I was entirely ready for a naked, sweaty Rip Torn cavorting with a coed. There’s an image that will stay with a person, a little nightmare fuel to disturb one’s sleep. Only slightly more disturbing is the gooey alien sex and Candy Clark literally peeing herself when she sees Newton’s true alien form.

Why to watch The Man Who Fell to Earth: Pain, hope, misery, and existentialism with a sexy science fiction coating.
Why not to watch: More artsy than most science fiction fans want their alien stories.