“It's a really complicated story,” Broomfield told Reel to Real in 2002. “It took me nearly six months to put this thing together. There are so many different layers to it. On its simplest level it is the story of two guys who started off as best friends. Biggie loved Tupac. Then they got into a rivalry and what happened is that over the years the rivalry was used as a means of explaining their deaths. What I found in making the film, talking to the members of the LAPD who were handling the murder investigation, is that this is in fact not the case.” Broomfield suggests several motives for the killings, but the point of the film is to chronicle his investigation — to present the facts and open a new dialogue about the culture of violence that is prevalent in hip hop — rather than pointing the finger at one guilty party.
I find Broomfield's approach highly entertaining, and while he veers off course occasionally — there is a long pointless sequence with an ex-girlfriend of two LAPD officers allegedly tied to Tupac's murder that hinges on the sex lives of the officers, not their criminal behavior — you have to admire his bravado in chasing down interviews in backrooms, prison yards, and anywhere the story takes him. “I think documentaries are about entertainment,” says Broomfield. “They've got to be really entertaining, but I don't think that means they can't be about something at the same time. In a way one is almost like a contemporary historian or diary keeper. It's great to take subjects that tell the audience about something that we're all a part of. I think Biggie and Tupac is as much about the way society sees hip hop and sees those people — whether it is the police force or the FBI or whatever as anything else — but at the same time it is a funny and entertaining film. I think that makes it accessible to a much bigger audience.”
In the film's final third there is an interview with Suge Knight, the head honcho at Death Row Records, a leading rap label. Knight was in prison at the time, and didn't want to do the interview, but through sheer persistence Broomfield got him on camera. You can sense the tension in the sequence. The camera is noticeably jittery, as though the camera operator was having an anxiety attack while shooting, and Broomfield is unusually subdued. Knight begins benignly enough with a “message for the kids” which slowly disintegrates into a hate-filled diatribe and death threat against rap artist Snoop Dogg. It is powerful footage, and worth the price of admission.
THE BRAVE ONE (1956)
“A story of love to make the blood race and the heart melt.”
— Advertising tagline for The Brave One
The Brave One puts a South American spin on the typical “boy and his dog” story. A lot of films have focused on young kids and their adventures with a favorite pet, but this may be a filmdom first — the pet in question is a bull. Based on a true story that took place in 1936 Spain, where a bull was pardoned and returned to its owner after a heroic performance in the bullring, the movie is set in Mexico. We meet young Leonardo (Michel Ray) who rescues a bull from certain death during a violent flood. A tight bond develops between the spirited boy and the animal, which he names Gitano. When the bull's ownership is disputed, Leo writes a letter to the former owner, who grants the young boy custody of the animal. Tragedy strikes when Leo's boss, the ranch owner, dies suddenly, and Gitano is auctioned off with the rest of the stock to fight in the Plaza de Mexico bullring.
Leo is determined to save his friend from death in the bullfighting arena and writes a letter to the President of Mexico asking for a pardon. Moved by the letter, the President grants the young boy's wish, but it is already too late: Gitano has been committed to face off with renowned matador Fermín Rivera (playing himself). Both warriors — man and beast — display bravery and brilliance in the ring, which leads to an exciting finale.
The Brave One has the best elements of a Disney film without the treacly sentiment. This is an uncomplicated but moving story, well told by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo (using the pen name Robert Rich) that will appeal to kids and adults alike.
BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF (2001)
“So tell me sire, do they speak of the beast in Paris?”
— Henri Sardis (Jean-Francois Stevenin)
Brotherhood of the Wolf is all over the place. It's a French Revolution/ horror/martial arts epic with style to burn, and makes up for the gaping holes in its story with sheer energy and sensory assault.
Very loosely based on the legend of the Beast of Gevaudan, a mysterious creature that terrorized a rural area of France in 1764, Brotherhood of the Wolf begins its loopy journey in the closing moments of the French Revolution. To solve the mystery of the beast, who had attacked more than 60 women and children and was widely believed to be of colossal size, the king of France dispatched two investigators to the precipitous central area of France. Each member of the envoy brings special talents to uncover the mystery: Mani (Mark Dacascos), an Iroquois scout, not only has martial arts moves that would make Bruce Lee green with envy, but can also talk to trees! Expedition leader Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan) comes to believe that the creature exists, though he surmises it is being manipulated by man.
At a dinner Fronsac meets Jean-Francois (Vincent Cassel) and his sister Marianne (Emile Dequenne). They are local gentry, and a blossoming relationship between the rough-and-tumble Fronsac and the demure Marianne causes a rift with those close to the king. Matters become even more complicated when Fronsac becomes involved with Sylvia (Monica Bellucci), a beautiful prostitute with some dangerous habits. When the king's lieutenant falsely claims to have killed the murderous Beast of Gevaudan, Fronsac arranges one last hunt using Mani's shaman techniques to track the murderous monster.
Director Christophe Gans packs every moment of Brotherhood of the Wolf with either bone-crunching action (imagine if John Woo had directed Dangerous Liaisons), crazy audio/visual effects, or busy scenes involving beautiful people. Though Gans knows how to amuse the eye, he isn't much of a storyteller; but Brotherhood of the Wolf is so entertaining that we'll forgive him just this once.
BUBBA HO-TEP (2002)
“Mr. President, we're going to have to kick some mummy butt.”
— Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell)
Since The King took his final earthly tumble from the throne at Graceland in 1977, there have been many Elvis sightings. He's been spotted ordering a Whopper at a Burger King in Kalamazoo, Michigan; riding in a Cadillac in his hometown of Memphis; and dozens of Web sites chronicle the king of rock and roll's rather hectic schedule in the afterlife.
Self-proclaimed champion “Mojo storyteller” Joe R. Lansdale added a new and unlikely chapter to the folklore surrounding Elvis's post-August 1977 activities in the form of a novella of speculative fiction called “Bubba Ho-Tep.” It's a wild story about an aging Elvis and an Egyptian mummy that was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in 1994.
Director Don Coscarelli discovered the story the following year. “I was in a genre bookstore down in Los Angeles. I was looking around for something fun to read,” Coscarelli told Reel to Real in 2002. “I asked the guy behind the counter for something good, and he said, ‘You should look at this Joe Lansdale, his books always have a high body count.' That sounds cool, I thought. He gave me one that I liked quite a bit, and I actually became a fan. I started reading all of Joe's stuff, and it turns out he lives down in East Texas, so I called him up. He invited me to come down there, and I visited with him. We were talking about some different kinds of projects. He had [written] a crazy film called The Job and also a great horror western called Dead in the West which would make a fun picture, but nothing ever came of it.
“A couple of years later I found this anthology of some of his short stories and I was looking through the dust jacket and it said, ‘Elvis versus the Mummy.' I said, ‘That's a cool idea,' and that's what really attracted me. Then I found that it was so much more layered and deeper and wonderful in its own way. I thought this is something that would make an interesting movie.” Coscarelli set aside the Phantasm series of movies he had been churning out for a decade and adapted the “true” story of
what happened to Elvis for the screen.
B-movie hero Bruce Campbell wears a ton of makeup to play the elderly Elvis, a resident in a Texas old age home. The story is that Elvis switched identities with an Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff, just after the 1968 comeback special. Unfortunately he missed his chance to switch back before Haff died, and ended up broke and in the rest home. There he befriended an old African-American man (Ossie Davis) who believes he is President John F. Kennedy. Together they battle an evil soul-sucking Egyptian entity that has been terrorizing the home.
“It was the weirdest script I had ever read,” Campbell told Reel to Real in 2002. “It certainly jumped out. A lot of the crap you get is such miserable dreck, and I've been in a lot of miserable dreck so I can smell them when they're coming. Bubba was different. It had a different stink on it.”
Campbell understands different. Finding cult fame as Ash in the Evil Dead movies, he has forged a career doing B-movies and in the process gathered a fiercely loyal fan base. Despite his reputation as a B-actor, Campbell is not to be underrated. He literally brings Elvis to life as a cranky, horny old man. “An Elvis impersonator came and I worked with him, but he quit after an hour,” says Campbell. “He said, ‘You're worthless. It's not going to work. I'm the one with the real talent.' I said, ‘Yeah, who's playing Elvis and who's the fake Elvis? Who's playing him — me or you, pal?'” Despite the falling out with the Elvis expert, Campbell's portrayal of The King is reverential. Campbell cites the heavy makeup, fat suit, and the fact that he was hunched over a walker as the building blocks to creating the Elvis character. “The rest was just dicking around,” he laughs. Veteran actor Ossie Davis is thoroughly believable as the deluded Jack, and is a perfect foil for Campbell's Elvis.
The premise is a startlingly original one for a film, and while over-the-top, has large dollops of humanity spread throughout. As the dynamic duo battle evil, they are making the most of their final years. These guys may be old, bad-tempered, and slightly crazy, but they can still make a difference. Bubba Ho-Tep is actually more entertaining and exciting than most Elvis movies, and should earn an enthusiastic “Thank you, thankyouverymuch,” from open-minded fans of The King.
CANE TOADS: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY (1988)
“When one species of cane beetle is in the cane fields, it just doesn't come in contact with the ground and we know that cane toads can't fly.”
— Dr. Ingram
Who would have thought a documentary about the cane toad infestation in Australia could be this much fun? Made in 1987 by documentarian Mark Lewis, the film is a cautionary tale about introducing non-native species to a fragile environment.
In 1935, 100 cane toads were brought in from Hawaii to Queensland, Australia, to battle the cane grub, a nasty little critter that was destroying the sugar-cane crop. Bad planning, as it turns out, because the cane toads didn't have a taste for the grubs and instead began procreating constantly. Just 50 years after they were introduced, these sex-crazed amphibians had spread from the initial nine farms to cover almost 250,000 square miles.
Equipped with two venom pouches behind their heads that shoot deadly poison, the toads have no natural predators; they can defend themselves against insects, birds, and mice all the way up to dogs, cats, and even humans who don't handle them properly. They are unstoppable. Queensland became overrun with these (I have to say it) horny toads that lay tens of thousands of eggs a year.
Lewis presents the facts, but washes them down with more humor than Marlin Perkins could ever muster on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Much of the comedy is derived from clever crosscutting between the citizens of Queensland, who have adopted the toad as a mascot, and the anti-toad faction, the scientists, who hate the little creatures. Lewis adds to this a series of real and staged shots that inspire dread and hilarity simultaneously. In one such scene a motorist witnesses the relentless sex drive of the male toad. Driving down a country road, the man stops when he sees a male toad mating with a female. Quite natural, except that she is roadkill, squashed pancake flat. The “What the hell???” look on the driver's face alone is worth the entire movie. In another scene a local displays his prowess in hunting the tiny toads . . . with his van. He swerves through a country road, flattening them under his wheels. Because the toads puff up when they sense danger, they make a loud popping sound when run over. Lewis can't boast that no animals were hurt during the making of his film, but this scene, and the ensuing loud bursts, do inspire some giggles.
The staged scenes are just as effective. Taking his cue from classic horror films, Lewis shoots several sequences from the point of view of the villain. The “toad cam” sequences are amusing as the wicked amphibians hippity hop toward their prey, in particular the one where they sneak up on a man in the shower singing a tune called “Queensland Toads.” The single most disturbing scene involves a four-year-old girl playing with “Dairy Queen,” her pet cane toad. She makes it dance and rubs its tummy, blissfully unaware of the lethal tendencies of her living toy. Lewis heightens the surreal goings-on by adding the lilting strains of a folk song about loving the cane toad “warts and all.”
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History is an exploration into not only the biology of nature, but also human nature, as we learn that many of the locals have grown to love and admire these pesky creatures. Never preachy, but not without scientific merit, Cane Toads is the funniest nature documentary to date.
CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962)
“We didn't set out to make a classic. We just wanted to make a movie that would make a little money . . .”
— Cinematographer Maurice Prather
The success of The Blair Witch Project in 1999 took everyone by surprise. A no-budget, black-and-white horror film, it packed a punch with atmospherics and unexpected thrills. Almost 40 years earlier, another micro-budgeted movie, Carnival of Souls, breathed the same air, giving us a fear-inspiring story that relied on psychological terror rather than high-tech special effects.
Colorado-born producer/director Herk Harvey was born into a working-class family and christened with the unlikely name Harvey Harvey. Always fascinated with show business, he majored in theater at Kansas University, cutting his teeth acting and directing stage productions. In the late '50s he turned to film, working with the Centron Corporation of Lawrence, Kansas, a company specializing in educational and industrial films. Hired as an actor, he appeared in many short subjects before taking a job behind the camera as a director.
The idea for Carnival of Souls was born in 1961 during a road trip through Utah. Harvey had just finished shooting an industrial film in California, and while driving home to Kansas he passed Saltair, an abandoned amusement park located near the Great Salt Lake. “It was the weirdest place I'd ever seen,” he later said. Once a popular resort, the grand structure was now in ruins, but it lit up Harvey's imagination, and he sensed it would be a good location to shoot a film. Harvey had aspired to directing features, especially now that another industrial filmmaker, Robert Altman, had recently made the jump to the big screen with The Delinquents, shot in Kansas City.
Harvey discussed the idea of shooting a feature with John Clifford, a friend from Centron. Clifford was an author with a western novel to his credit. They brainstormed, and in two months Clifford had a completed script.
Clifford's script begins with a drag race between a carload of young women and some testosterone-charged guys. The race ends badly and the women crash, plunging into a deep river. Hours later, as the police drag the river for bodies in vain, Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) appears, dazed but unhurt. She remembers nothing of the accident, and is viewed as a miracle woman, someone who defied death. She tries to lead a normal life, accepting a job as a church organist in Utah. As she pieces her life together, strange things start to happen. She loses touch with reality, able to see people who cannot see or hear her. A ghostly figure (played by Herk Harvey) plagues her, even though no one else will admit to seeing the phantom. What exactly is this hallucination?
The story is simple, if not completely original. Lucille Fletcher, wife of Psycho composer Bernard Hermann, had written a script called The Hitchhiker, which was performed on the radio by the Mercury Theatre and starred Orson Welles. There are vague similarities between The Hitchhiker and Clifford's script. In Fletcher's story a motorist who had previously been in a car accident driving across the country repeatedly encounters the same hitchhiker after a car accident.
The connections to The Hitchhiker are clear (both Mary Henry and Fletcher's motorist see ghosts after surviving a trauma), although Clifford adds some elements that set it apart from Fletcher's radio play. This time the main character is a woman, who slips in and out of a supernatural state of non-being. Also, Clifford's Mary is a cold, distant character, a break from the stereotypical sympathetic horror movie heroine. The story may have familiar elements, but Clifford's handling of the material elevates a run-of-the-mill trifle into a nightmare of paranoid delusion. Its refusal to provide cut-and-dried answers leaves the viewer uneasy.
While Clifford was penning the screenplay, Harvey set out to raise the modest budget through private investors. He pieced together $17,000, a modest sum, even in the early '60s. With no money in the budget to pay actors, an amateur cast was assembled, and Harvey took a three-week leave of absence from Centron to shoot the film.
When it came to cutting corners on the set of Carnival of Souls, Harvey used some tricks he'd learned while shooting industrials. With no money for special effects, save for some wavy lines that appear between plains of existence, some ingenuity was required. In one scene a ghostly face appears on a car window. Today the effect could easily be accomplished with computer imagery, but in 1962 Harvey and cinematographer Maurice Prather came up with a much simpler solution. “We did it with a mirror,” says Prather.
The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen Page 4