The Unrepentant Cinephile

by Jason Coffman

  Galaxina, despite its many failures and shortcomings, is still likely to remain a cult curiosity. The allure of the “cursed star” story is too powerful to deny, and will always lead some people to seek out the film. However, the sad fact is that Galaxina is not good enough to stand on its own, apart from being a footnote in the story of a career cut short. Fans of Dorothy Stratten will certainly want to see it, but probably not more than once. Fans of bad sci-fi comedies and 80′s b-movie culture may stumble across it and learn of Stratten’s story from another angle. But it’s difficult to imagine anyone actively seeking out Galaxina and believing the film delivers what it promises. It’s a film that was actually contractually prevented from delivering “the goods,” and what’s left is a mess. A unique, sometimes interesting mess, but still a mess.

  The Gallows (2015)

  Originally published on Letterboxd 13 July 2015/27 October 2016

  (Note: I have combined my theatrical review of the film with a follow-up review after it was released on home video for this collection.)

  At this point I'm seriously wondering if American studios are producing and/or distributing "found footage" to desensitize younger viewers into believing cheap, ugly digital camera footage is an acceptable alternative to traditional narrative filmmaking so they can crank out more product with lower overhead. It seems like every time a new one of these things hits the theaters, the style gets even more removed from anything resembling a coherent point of view: The Gallows might open with a title card suggesting what follows is police evidence, but there's no actual attempt at establishing the barest minimum of "authentic" amateur footage. The only thing The Gallows really has going for it is that wherever they shot this thing is pretty creepy with all the lights out, for what it's worth.

  Also, I'm not sure how coincidental it is that The Gallows shares a very similar basic concept with Jerome Sable's recent slasher/musical Stage Fright (a cursed theater production is remounted, sparking new murders) and that the end result looks an awful lot like last year's Christian "found footage" horror movie The Lock-In (about a group of teenagers mysteriously locked in a dark church overnight by a demon-possessed porno mag), but WOW. This would have felt super derivative regardless, but having two such recent films that have such striking similarities makes The Gallows seem even more like a cynical, contemptuous cash-grab.

  All that said, I know what you're probably thinking: Why the hell would anyone voluntarily watch The Gallows on purpose again? Well, since the movie came out on home video, I've wanted to check out the original version of the film that convinced New Line Cinema and Blumhouse to invest in producing a more "pro" version for wide release. It's rare that we get this kind of peek behind the curtain, and I'm a sucker for it. One of my favorite DVD features of all time is the commentary on Darkness Falls in which director Jonathan Liebesman complains frankly about how studio interference and market testing rendered that film all but incoherent. It's pretty amazing.

  After watching the version of The Gallows produced independently by its writer/directors, I have to say I still have no idea why New Line and Blumhouse thought it would be worth remaking with a (slightly?) larger budget. The two versions of the film are nearly identical except for the recasting one of the four leads and a near-total lack of special effects in the original production. The kills were punched up with CG for the wide release version, and bizarrely they actually made main character Ryan even more of an asshole than he was in the original. I guess somehow they figured more bullying from the guy behind the camera for the first 20+ minutes would play better?

  The Blu-ray also features the directors' original concept trailer, which is actually very interesting. It does a great job of showing off the potential of the idea behind the film. The trailer that they cut after completing the original version of the film attempts to portray The Gallows as a film cut from actual footage from an unsolved police case, a profoundly unconvincing gimmick wisely dropped for New Line's theatrical release.

  Overall, I still think it was interesting to see this version of the film even if I think both versions are more or less equally awful. Here's hoping we someday get to see the original festival cut of Unfriended (screened under the title Cybernatural) to get another look at how studios polish low-budget indies for bigger release.

  Gas Pump Girls (1979)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 20 June 2012

  The MGM Limited Edition Collection just keeps cranking out the hidden gems, one of the latest being the 1979 comedy Gas Pump Girls. Unlike many of the films in the Limited Edition Collection, there has been a DVD release of Gas Pump Girls, but by all accounts the transfer on the previous release was an abysmal pan ‘n scan. This new transfer for the Limited Edition collection presents the film in its original 1.85 aspect ratio, likely made from a 35mm print of the film. It doesn’t look quite as clean as some of the other Limited Edition releases, but it’s definitely a vast improvement from the previous release of the film. So how does the film itself hold up?

  Pretty damned well, as it happens. June (Kristen Baker) and her friends are disrobed at their high school graduation ceremony as a prank by the Terrible Vultures, a biker trio with somewhat bad manners. Ditzy April (Sandy Johnson) admits to her friends that she enjoyed being topless in front of all her friends, family, and pretty much everyone else in town; shrewd man-eater Betty (Linda Lawrence) tells April not to let anyone know that she’s an exhibitionist and explains the workings of male and female relations, in which Jane (Leslie King) is totally inexperienced and January (Rikki Marin) seems already well-versed. When June’s Uncle Joe (Huntz Hall) has a mild heart attack, he can no longer run his tiny gas station, located right across the street from a station owned by oil conglomerate Pyramid. June enlists the help of her friends to get the gas station up and running again so Uncle Joe can resume work after he recovers.

  Too bad for them the Pyramid station is run by evil Mr. Friendly (Dave Shelley), who will stop at nothing to drive Joe’s out of business. Luckily, June is able to wrangle some help with the garage at Joe’s from her boyfriend Roger (Dennis Bowen) and his friends, and even gets the Terrible Vultures to take over Joe’s towing service. Soon it’s all-out war between Mr. Friendly and the Gas Pump Girls, although it would seem there would be room in the market for both a standard gas station and one where customers have to sit in a line while the employees disco dance between the cars waiting for service instead of actually doing any work. It’s not really spoiling anything to suggest that the chances of a happy ending for Joe’s are pretty good, but the actual ending of the film is a genuine surprise.

  Gas Pump Girls is a light, goofy teen sex comedy, and obviously doesn’t aspire to be anything more than that. On those terms, it’s a success, and worth seeking out. This is the sort of thing that would be regular programming on HBO late at night in the 80s, which should explain pretty much all anyone would need to know about Gas Pump Girls . It’s packed with disco music, tight shirts, tighter shorts, tube socks, and plenty of vehicle-related sexual innuendo. It may not exactly be a lost classic of the era, but it’s goofy fun, and it’s nice to finally have a good-looking transfer of it to watch.

  George: A Zombie Intervention (2009)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 4 October 2011

  There is certainly no lack of low-budget zombie films out there, and a good number of them fall into the crowded “zom-com” subgenre. Making a worthwhile zombie film is always a tricky proposition, and making a worthwhile zombie comedy is even more of a gamble. Most of these films manage to fail on multiple levels, either with poor writing, bad acting, seriously misjudged tone, etc. So it’s a genuine surprise when a shot-on-video zombie comedy comes along that gets so many of these things right and delivers a truly funny take on familiar material. George: A Zombie Intervention is one of these pleasant surprises, a goofy and gory comedy with a solid cast and sharp writing.

  The film opens with an educational “cartoon” explaining that zombies are a way of
life in the world George. As long as they stay out of sunlight, they can remain more or less intact and even continue to lead relatively normal lives. When they deteriorate enough to become brain dead, they become the more familiar dangerous flesh-eater kind of zombie. With this established, the film introduces Ben (Peter Stickles) and Francine (Shannon Hodson), the best friend and sister of a sad-sack zombie named George (Carlos Larkin). Worried that George has been eating people, Ben and Francine get together with George’s ex-girlfriend Sarah (Michelle Tomlinson) and “Professional Interventionist” Barbara (Lynn Lowry) to stage an intervention. Unfortunately, Sarah’s new boyfriend Steve (Eric Dean) tags along for “moral support,” and George’s friend Roger (Vincent Cusimano) has no idea what an intervention is and assumes it just means they’re getting together to party at George’s place.

  Once the intervention begins, things quickly go south: George is anything but receptive to his friends’ concerns, and before long a traveling salesman (Adam Fox) ends up dead– and then undead– in George’s basement, a pair of Mormon missionaries show up, Roger passes out on the couch after inviting some strippers over, and Francine can’t stop baking. As the bodies pile up and George’s friends try to figure out what’s going on, it becomes clear that someone other than George is knocking off the house guests, and that everyone has some secrets of their own that they would rather keep under wraps. What started out as an intervention becomes a fight for survival, or at least a fight to not get eaten and then have to hang out in George’s basement all the time.

  The main asset that George: A Zombie Intervention has going for it is a great cast. Lynn Lowry– yes, the same Lynn Lowry from Romero’s The Crazies, Cronenberg’s Shivers, and Metzger’s Score– is particularly hilarious as the inept intervention specialist, but everybody gets some choice lines and gives a great performance. There are even a pair of impeccably selected cameo appearances near the end that act as a cherry on top. First-time feature writer/director J.T. Seaton has delivered as solid a low-budget debut as you could possibly ask for, and Breaking Glass Pictures scored a hit in picking it up for release.

  A Ghost Story (2017)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 14 July 2017

  David Lowery’s 2013 feature Ain’t Them Bodies Saints earned its fair share of comparisons to Terrence Malick, and Disney’s choice to have Lowery helm the Pete’s Dragon remake seemed odd on the surface. It seemed even more strange given Lowery’s other film work as an editor on Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine (2012), Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color (2013), and as editor and cinematographer on Kris Swanberg’s Empire Builder (2014), all even less “mainstream” than Lowery’s own 2013 breakout film. Pete’s Dragon was warmly received by critics for its soulful and grounded take on its fantastical story, but as well-regarded as Lowery’s previous two directorial efforts were, they could hardly have prepared audiences for his latest film. A Ghost Story is an astonishingly assured and inventive film that hangs on one audacious key directorial choice that pays off in ways that are difficult to imagine even from watching the film’s trailer. The Malick comparisons may still pop up, but this film shows Lowery striking off into territory very much his own.

  A married couple is preparing to move out of their home. The husband (Casey Affleck) is reluctant to leave, and his wife (Rooney Mara) doesn’t really understand why. Shortly before the move, the husband is killed in a car accident. In the hospital after the wife sees his body for the last time, he gets up, now a mute ghost that resembles a child’s drawing of one: a long, white sheet with two black eyeholes. The ghost makes its way back to the house and observes the wife as she grieves and continues to pack up the house for an eventual move. It has a passing relationship with another ghost in the house next door, the only other entity with whom it can directly communicate. As time accelerates, the ghost remains tied to the place where the house was, unable to move on but processing the loss of its life and love on a timeline that spans centuries into the future and the past.

  At its heart A Ghost Story is a very simple, straightforward story about loss, grief, and acceptance. It happens to be such a story in which the central character is a ghost for whom time works much differently for those around it. Presenting the character as a childlike conception of a “ghost” was a dangerous gamble, but one that is undeniably inspired and whose execution is as powerful as it is simple. Removing most of the component parts of a character performance–facial expressions, tone and inflection of dialogue, all but the most basic physical gestures–makes the ghost identifiable to any viewer. It doesn’t matter that the ghost is the spirit of a man, just as it doesn’t matter that the audience never knows who the spirit in the neighboring house was before it was a similarly sheeted entity. Anyone who has experienced significant loss can understand what the ghosts are going through even if we can’t see their face or hear their voice.

  In addition to the almost primal emotions evoked by the ghost’s appearance, Lowery and cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo shot the film in the boxy 1.33:1 “Academy ratio” with rounded edges recalling old photographs or slides. This adds another almost subconscious invocation of nostalgia as well as provides a visual echo of the constricted space in which the action of the film takes place. Similarly, the opening act consists largely of lengthy single takes lingering on individual moments in the lives of the living characters. The structure of the film mimics the perception of its main character’s perception of time, as well as that of anyone over a certain age–as the story progresses, time passes more and more quickly. Moments of lesser significance disappear as stretches of time make up less of one’s life in total. Stretch that concept out to centuries and decades can pass between cuts. Every choice feeds into the concepts at the center of the film, giving A Ghost Story not just an undeniable emotional power but a dazzling technical virtuosity.

  Lowery’s move from meditative drama to “children’s” fantasy with Pete’s Dragon was something of a part of the recent trend of major studios taking big gambles on “indie” directors such as Colin Trevorrow (who jumped from Safety Not Guaranteed to Jurassic World) and Jordan Vogt-Roberts (director of The Kings of Summer and Kong: Skull Island). How these bets pay off is anybody’s guess: Trevorrow followed up Jurassic World with the staggeringly misguided and bizarre The Book of Henry before he moves on to Star Wars: Episode IX. It’s difficult not to be excited about the idea of where Lowery might go from here if he is able to make a similar directorial career alternating major studio pictures with smaller projects that allow him more autonomy. After A Ghost Story, it’s clear Lowery is a hugely talented filmmaker with a truly unique vision. Put simply, this is destined to be one of the absolute best films of the year.

  Ghostbusters (2016)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 15 July 2016

  Ghostbusters has probably generated more think pieces than any other blockbuster in recent history, which is especially impressive since it wasn’t actually released until now. As frustrating as it has been to be constantly inundated with what everybody thinks about a movie that wasn’t even out yet, it makes sense. This new Ghostbusters exists at the intersection of a number of difficult and uncomfortable subjects regarding film and fandom. It follows that every person out there with a keyboard and the ability to form sentences would want to weigh in on it. Now that the film is out in wide release, a new wave of writing is set to roll in from across the spectrum of possible responses. It’s finally out, and now we have to deal with it. The big question is whether or not the film (or any big studio blockbuster) deserves the amount of effort that has gone into all those deeply considered pieces about how Paul Feig and his all-female crew of Ghostbusters have carried the torch or tarnished the legacy of the 1984 film.

  Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is up for tenure at the prestigious university where she teaches physics, but she discovers her former friend and research partner Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) has published the book about the paranormal they wrote together years earlier when a man com
es looking for help regarding a haunting. Erin goes to confront Abby and finds that Abby has continued her paranormal research with mad genius engineer Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon). Erin reluctantly joins the two women on their investigation and they get concrete proof that ghosts exist, and soon the trio are teaming up to continue their research together. They hire a dim-witted secretary named Kevin (Chris Hemsworth) and are soon joined by Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), a former MTA employee and self-taught expert on New York history. As supernatural encounters spike, the newly-christened Ghostbusters realize the events are being orchestrated by someone with sinister intentions. With the mayor’s office and Homeland Security out to discredit them, the Ghostbusters have to find out who they’re up against and stop a paranormal apocalypse.

  The biggest departure from the original film, obviously, is that this time around the team is all female. That has been the most controversial aspect of the film in the run-up to its release, but given director Paul Feig’s track record, it seemed like a natural fit. Feig scored a huge hit with Bridesmaids in 2011 and has proven himself to be adept at this sort of ensemble comedy. Unfortunately, Feig’s approach does not work with the material this time. The film has an impressive roster of talent, but Feig’s style of shooting–getting numerous takes of everything and cutting together what’s funny–causes the characters to get lost in a story with this many moving parts. Of all the characters in the film, only Kate McKinnon’s Holtzmann makes any kind of lasting impression. McKinnon is flat-out brilliant here, and it’s tempting to recommend the film based on her hilariously bizarre characterization alone. The rest of the cast has precious little to do between gags to establish their characters as actual people. This goes double for the film’s villain, whose intentions and motivations are never addressed at all.