movie of the month

Movie of the Month: Babe 2 – Pig in the City (1998)

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Every month one of us makes the others watch a movie they’ve never seen before & we discuss it afterwards. This month Brandon made Britnee watch Babe 2: Pig in the City (1998).

Brandon: Nearly four decades into his beyond bizarre career as a director, George Miller recently wowed audiences by breathing new, absurdly energetic life into the long dead Mad Max franchise with the film Fury Road. When I reviewed Fury Road in June I echoed the praise of its “surprisingly satisfying feminist bent for something so thoroughly violent” and called it “one of the best action films released in years” & “an incredible technical feat stuffed to the gills with impressive practical stunts & confident art design”. Although the idea of a rebooted 80s franchise is generally a dreadful proposition these days, Miller was smart enough to throw out nearly everything he had already accomplished with Mad Max & start over with renewed enthusiasm, creating one of the defining films of his career. This shouldn’t be surprising, though, since Miller had already pulled off this very same trick twice before: once with The Road Warrior and, much more surprisingly, once with Babe 2: Pig in the City.

The first Babe film is a perfect, small-scale children’s media charmer in which a clever pig is raised by farm dogs to herd sheep, much to his delightful owner’s surprise. In the words of the farmer (played deftly by James Cromwell), “That’ll do.” Miller was a producer & screenwriter for the first film, leaving the director duties to a largely unknown Christopher Noonan. With the sequel Pig in the City, Miller takes over the director’s chair & furiously tosses the “That’ll do” attitude to the wayside. Pig in the City is a bizarre fever dream of a film, a terrifying spectacle populated by nightmarish clowns, talking animals, cops, pig people, and all sorts of various creeps & reprobates. Leaving the quiet farm of the first film far behind, Babe ventures into the cold bureaucracy & literal dog-eat-dog viciousness of the big city and through the sheer virtue of his pure little pig heart becomes the de facto leader of a small band of abandoned animals starving for affection . . . and a decent meal. The world Babe navigates here is cruel & unusual. An over-the-top set design & constant barrage of heartless obstacles never stops twisting the knife on just how out of his element & against the odds our little swine hero is in The Big City (a strange amalgamation of every big city imaginable contained in a single, impossible metropolis).

Britnee, I’m 28 years old and I’m petrified of this movie; I can’t possibly imagine what it’d be like if I had seen it 20 years ago, when I was in the range of what I assume the target audience would’ve been. Do any moments stand out to you as particularly nightmarish or does the entirety of Pig in the City just sort of all blur together as one extended scare?

Britnee: I watched the first Babe film in theaters back in 1995, so all I could remember was that it starred a talking pig that humans couldn’t understand. As a die-hard Charlotte’s Web fan, I didn’t get into the Babe craze all that much. This allowed me to watch Babe 2: Pig in the City with a fresh mind, and it was, in fact, a horrifying experience (in a good way). Pig in the City was such a strange film that I didn’t expect to be all that outlandish. Yes, it’s based on talking animals, but that’s not something unusual for children and family films. It’s everything else about the film that makes it a huge magical nightmare. The city streets’ whimsical buildings (sort of like Paris meets the Shire), the vulgar attitudes of the city’s animals, and the warped, bizarre human characters are examples of why this nightmare is so “magical.”

There were a couple of standout parts that were particularly terrifying for me, such as the farmer’s brutal near death experience in the well, the dirty old clown with his thieving gang of talking monkeys, and the junkyard dog hanging and drowning from a cobblestone bridge. The film was really like a mild horror film for adults that kids could enjoy as well.

Brandon, it seemed as though most of the humans in this film were more terrifying than the talking animals. What are your thoughts on that? What human character was the scariest?

Brandon: First of all, there’s a definite dichotomy the film’s trying to set up between the coldhearted big city people and the small town weirdos who “get it”. When the farmer’s wife first arrives in The City with Babe in tow, she’s met with the cold sting of bureaucracy. Mistaken for a drug dealer at the airport, she’s physically assaulted, misses her connecting flight, and is left stranded with nowhere to stay for days. To contrast the humorless big city folk that derail Mrs. Hoggett’s life, the movie also presents a network of colorful weirdos with small town backgrounds (and, often enough, pig-like snouts) who help her out by providing a safe haven for her & her animal while she’s stranded in The City . . . that is, until she’s arrested following a Rube Goldberg-esque mishap and finds herself once again trapped in the unforgiving entanglement of bureaucracy.

The thing is that both the big city folk & the network of weirdos are all disturbing in their own ways. There’s a *shudder* clown in the film that performs for the amusement of the deathly ill & an innkeeper that provides a safe haven for animals & pet owners in an unforgiving environment that are both technically sympathetic characters plot-wise, but look so strange & daunting that they’re a terror to behold. The entirety of Pig in the City has a child’s funhouse mirror POV that makes virtually all adults feel terrifying, whether they’re helpful or not. This child’s POV is even reflected in the wardrobe. The big city meanies are all dressed in drab greys, while the weirdos have a much more colorful palette, but both groups are horrifying in their own way. If I had to single out a most terrifying human character, I’d probably settle for a clown named Fugly, a part silently played by Mickey Rooney, as a default. The idea of Mickey Rooney in clown makeup is terrifying enough on its own, but as presented here, decorated with fire & confetti, it’s even worse than you’d expect. Fuck that clown.

Britnee, in a lot of ways the human characters in the film feel a lot less . . . human than the animals. This is especially apparent in the portrayal of a family of chimpanzees & their dignified orangutan leader Thelonius. Do you think Thelonius was a “good guy” or a “bad guy” within the film, or was his role more complicated than that? How does the question of his character’s goodness or badness compare/contrast with the oversimplified morality of other members of the cast, both human & animal?

Britnee: Thelonius was so strange. At times, I had difficulty deciding if he was good or evil, and to be honest, most of my memory about Thelonius in the beginning of the film is a bit fuzzy. It wasn’t until the latter half of the film that I really started to pay attention to him. I don’t think he was ever a “bad guy,” but more of a self-absorbed grump. I think that he was a “good guy” all along, he was just stuck in a crappy situation and his inner goodness didn’t show until the latter half of the film. One scene that is so vivid in my mind is when the animals are attempting to sneak out of the pound/laboratory. The animals finally get the chance to escape to safety, but Thelonius makes them wait for him to get dressed. As he slowly puts on his fancy attire, he ruins their getaway plan. I wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be a funny scene or if this was to show how egotistical Thelonius was. He doesn’t really shine through as a “good guy” until he saves the life of a baby chimp at the chaotic gala.

It was much easier to determine the good and evil elements of the human characters, but as for the animals, it wasn’t as much of a walk in the park. The human characters had no depth, so it was easy to determine who was “bad” and who was “good.” The animal characters were much more confusing, like Thelonius. The wheelchair pup and a couple of other animals at the hotel were pretty rude, and the street animals were pretty heartless (especially that horrible pink poodle); however, they are all viewed as “good” when compared to the humans.

Brandon, I’m having a hard time with remembering details about all of the animals because the amount of important animal characters was a bit overwhelming. Do you feel that the film focused on too many animal characters? Would the film be better with a tighter focus on only a couple of animals?

Brandon: I actually think it’s the depth of the animal cast that makes this film so rewatchable. I’ll admit that on the first run through, I was a little overwhelmed by the endless parade of personalities. There’s the wheelchair bound Jack Russell, the queer dog couple in the matching sweaters, the operatic room of cats, the reformed bully bull terrier, the tragic Southern belle poodle, the Steven Wright-voiced chimp that strangely reminded me of Michael Shannon for no apparent reason, and the list goes on. The thing is, though, that as exhausting as this list can be in the abstract, the movie deftly makes time for each character to have their “moment”. The Jack Russell terrier has his brief trip to the afterlife. The bull terrier has a turnaround in personality after Babe saves his hide. The queer couple literally comes out of the closet during a police raid, etc. I feel like Thelonius was the most well-developed animal personality in the film in that he had so many moments like this that complicated his character, but the rest of the animal cast helped color the world around him that the movie would be all-too-thin without.

The difference between our views on this aspect might be that I found the animal characters much more empathetic than you seemed to. I think it’s interesting, for instance, that you call the pink poodle character heartless, when I think of her as a tragic Blanche DuBois type whose heart is way too big, if anything. Also, the “gag” where Thelonius’ need to dress before escaping the lab didn’t play for me like a jab at his ego that had made him out to be a cold-hearted figure earlier in the film. It was more or a quietly sad deflation of his dignity to me & helped flesh out just how much pained effort he was putting into keep his chimp & clown family together. I think that’s a lot of what Miller was aiming to say with the film. Each animal may seem cruel or selfish on the surface, but they’re all disenfranchised & down on their luck, essentially fighting over scraps (like a stolen jar of candy, for instance) for survival. It isn’t until Babe teaches them that if they’re kind to one another & learn to share their scraps evenly as a community they all have a better chance of survival that the animals let their defensive guards down & start being kind to one another.

Britnee, how effective do you think Miller’s message about the importance of community over the strength of the individual was in Pig in the City? Do you think the alternating scary & goofy strangeness of the film completely overshadowed the film’s message of the importance of solidarity?

Britnee: Honestly, I think the film’s bizarre nature definitely overshadowed any sort of message that Miller was attempting to put out. Even during scenes where the animals began to be more compassionate, I couldn’t help but focus on all of the twisted happenings. You’ve seen this film multiple times, and I think this could be a reason as to why our opinions differ. Because the film’s strangeness was so overwhelming, I had a difficult time paying attention to anything else. Watching Pig in the City for a second time would probably change a lot of my current thoughts about the film.

You do make an interesting point about how the animal characters were struggling to survive, and Babe was a beacon of light in their hard knock lives. Actually, I don’t think I ever noticed how great Babe was until now. He was just a little pig leaving his simple farm life for the very first time, and even though he was put into tons of terrifying and unfortunate situations, he remained brave. His courage and compassion had an impact on just about every character, and this is more than apparent in the film’s final scenes. Of all the great pigs in film, I think Babe is up there with the best of them.

Lagniappe

Brandon: Although George Miller is generally associated with the wanton mayhem of the Mad Max franchise, Pig in the City isn’t nearly as out of touch with the rest of his catalog as you’d expect. There are traces of many of his films lingering in this one, from the bungee chord battle of Beyond Thunderdome to the surreal balloon drop of The Witches of Eastwick to the childish goofery & political ponderings of the Happy Feet films. I’ve slowly come to realize that Pig in the City is far from an outlier in Miller’s career, but more of a gateway film that serves as an unlikely combination of all of his achievements in one aggressively strange package.

Britnee: After reflecting on this Swampchat, I believe there is a lot of heart in this film that I ignorantly overlooked, which is why I really need and want to watch Babe 2: Pig in the City again. It seems that this movie has a reputation for being a little too dark to be considered a children’s film, but I think that it’s a perfect film for children. Real life is nothing like a fairytale, and sometimes you have to make the most of your situation and create your own happy ending. That’s a message that people of all ages can benefit from.

Upcoming Movies of the Month
September: Britnee presents The Boyfriend School (1990)
October: Erin presents Innocent Blood (1992)

-The Swampflix Crew

The Mystery Behind the Highway to Hell (1991) Soundtrack

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As I previously mentioned in the Highway to Hell Swampchat, the film’s soundtrack is bananas, and I’ve never heard anything quite like it. The best way to describe the sound is r&b vocals with 80’s pop/rock music, but the vocals are more like soulful grunts instead of actual words. The group responsible for all of this insanity is Hidden Faces, and this group is just as mysterious as their music. Researching Hidden Faces wasn’t so easy because there’s virtually nothing out there about this group, but I was able to find some interesting information.

Frank Fitzpatrick founded Hidden Faces in 1989, and the group strictly did soundtracks and scores for movies. Highway to Hell, Nuns on the Run, Breaking the Rules, Friday, Under the Hula Moon, The Player’s Club, and Soul Man are all films that feature Hidden Faces tunes. Nuns on the Run seems fantastic, so I have Hidden Faces to thank for bringing it to my attention. In the film, Eric Idle is a criminal disguised as a nun, and that’s all it took for it to make it onto my watchlist. Come to think of it, the only film that I’ve seen from this eclectic film collection is Friday, and if I recall correctly, the music was totally different from the music in Highway to Hell. I guess that’s common for artists in the film score/soundtrack business. Unfortunately, Hidden Faces called it quits in the late 90s, so it’s doubtful that they’ll be doing any movie soundtracks again.

It turns out that Hidden Faces has a connection to New Orleans, though. Not only is Fitzpatrick a songwriter, producer, and certified yoga instructor, he is also a major social entrepreneur that raised funds and awareness for Hurricane Katrina victims. In particular, he produced a song called “Be On Our Way” with Van Hunt, Supervision, Buku Wise, and Hidden Faces for the film Hurricane Season, a film that follows the story of John Ehret High School’s basketball championship journey post-Katrina. All of the proceeds made by the song were donated to the Make It Right Foundation.

I’m actually pretty surprised to find that Hidden Faces is more than just a growling man and a drum machine. They actually have a very interesting history that’s much lengthier than I expected. This is all the more reason to pay close attention to film credits, even the ones in horrible movies.

For more on July’s Movie of the Month, Ate De Jong’s 1991 action comedy Highway to Hell, check out our Swampchat discussion of the film, our look at De Jong’s other (more successful) 1991 cult classic Drop Dead Fred, and last week’s query of exactly why Jerry Stiller’s entire family appeared in the film (their only full-family appearance outside The Independent).

-Britnee Lombas

Highway to Hell (1991): A Stiller Family Affair

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I know that we lightly touched on the fact that both Ben and Jerry Stiller made appearances in our discussion of July’s Movie of the Month, Highway to Hell, but I recently found out that two other members of the Stiller family were in the film: Ann Meara (Jerry’s wife/Ben’s mother) and Amy Stiller (Jerry’s daughter/Ben’s sister). The family members have appeared in multiple films with one another (Heavy Weights, Zoolander, etc.), but I can’t think of any other film that has four Stillers in it at the same time. What exactly happened here? Did Jerry beg the casting crew to allow his wife and kids to tag along? Was Jerry even the first member casted? Highway to Hell has a special connection to the bizarre Stiller family, and I’m determined to find out why.

Ben Stiller was given not one, but two small roles in Highway to Hell: a demented fry cook at Hell’s only diner (Pluto’s) and Attila the Hun. I have to say, this really shows off his versatility as an actor. Prior to this film, he had a pretty short acting resumé with a couple of minor television/film appearances, so I think it’s safe to say that Ben wasn’t the first of the Stiller’s to join the Highway to Hell cast. The same goes for Amy. She only appeared in a couple of movies prior to her forgettable performance as Cleopatra in Highway to Hell.

Now, Ma and Pa Stiller are a completely different story. Jerry Stiller and Ann Meara both had lengthy careers as comedians at this point, and after all, Highway to Hell was a horror/comedy. In the film, Jerry is a cop that sits in Pluto’s waiting for a cup of coffee he will never get, and Ann is the diner’s waitress that will never fill up his cup. It was like one of their classic skits on the The Ed Sullivan Show, except it was terrible and not really funny.

My official conclusion is that Jerry and Ann’s career as variety show comedians and sitcom stars was dwindling down. They needed money and their kids needed acting experience, and lucky for them, Highway to Hell needed cheap actors. It was probably like some sort of buy one et one free deal. Sadly, the film was a flop and no fame or fortune was attained by the Stiller clan.

For more on July’s Movie of the Month, Ate De Jong’s 1991 action comedy Highway to Hell, check out our Swampchat discussion of the film & last week’s look at De Jong’s other (more successful) 1991 cult classic Drop Dead Fred.

-Britnee Lombas

The Same Year Ate de Jong Directed the Would-Be Cult Classic Highway to Hell (1991), He Also Directed the Actual Cult Classic Drop Dead Fred (1991)

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During our discussion of July’s Movie of the Month, the straight-to-cable oddity Highway to Hell, Britnee pointed me to the director Ate de Jong’s IMDb page to take note of his long list of wartime melodramas, which all seemed really out of place considering the movie we were discussing at the time. While I was browsing his catalog, I discovered something even stranger. The very same year de Jong directed Highway to Hell, he also released his only other American title, the rambunctious Rik Mayall imaginary friend comedy Drop Dead Fred. Although I had yet to see Drop Dead Fred at the time, I knew it had a fairly positive reputation among people in my age range, so it was strange to discover that the closest that film’s director ever got to striking gold twice was with Highway to Hell. 1991 must’ve been a very strange year for de Jong, emotionally & professionally.

Having now actually watched Drop Dead Fred, it’s fairly easy to see traces of Highway to Hell‘s aesthetic lurking in the film. The protagonist, played by the always-lovely Phoebe Cates, is an overgrown child who, after losing her job, her car, and her marriage in a single afternoon, reunites with her childhood imaginary friend, the titular Fred. Fred is pure id. He subscribes to a Looney Tunes sense of physics, calls his non-imaginary friend “Snot Face” & her overbearing mother “Mega Bitch”, and generally has a five year old’s sense of impulse control & desire to destroy everything in his path. A lot of the visual goofery that makes Highway to Hell a fascinating fiasco is present here in Fred’s antics & in the morally criminal hellscape that surrounds Phoebe Cate’s childlike protagonist. Just like with the pure-of-heart pizza delivery boy who saves the day in Highway to Hell, Fred’s friend-in-need is too good for this wicked world of evil ex-husbands & Mega Bitch mothers. The difference is that she has a little bit of destructive mischief on her side, trying to get her to stand up for herself, while Highway to Hell‘s protagonist just had that little kid who refused to turn heel (to borrow a pro wrestling term) & misbehave.

In addition to a general sense of melancholy & helplessness, that’s something about childhood that Drop Dead Fred gets right that Highway to Hell misses out on completely. Children are destructive little shits, at least occasionally, so it was frustrating to watch the little moppet in Highway to Hell to keep his cool & show no signs of evil, despite his pedigree as a literal Hell Child. Drop Dead Fred is smart to acknowledge the mischievous (as well as the gloomy) side of children as soon as the first seen. When the protagonist is introduced as a small child she responds to a bedtime story meant to teach her the value of being “a good little girl” with the retort “What a pile of shit!” She’s not wrong.

Both Highway to Hell & Drop Dead Fred have a childlike way of looking at the world & both have an endearing way of mixing slapstick silliness with pitch-black humor. The differences in their achievements (besides the sublimely silly performance by much-missed Rik Mayall as Fred) can be attributed almost entirely to the writing. If Highway to Hell were a little more thoughtful, a little more nuanced in its dialogue the way it was in its set design, Ate de Jong could’ve had two resounding successes on his hands in 1991. Hell, he could’ve probably kept making silly black comedies forever, instead of fading into wartime melodrama obscurity. I know I’d still be watching, at least.

For more on July’s Movie of the Month, Ate De Jong’s 1991 action comedy Highway to Hell, check out our Swampchat discussion of the film.

-Brandon Ledet

Movie of the Month: Highway to Hell (1991)

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Every month one of us makes the other two watch a movie they’ve never seen before & we discuss it afterwards. This month Britnee made Brandon watch Highway to Hell (1991).

Britnee: “Where the toll is your soul,” and “If there’s one thing worse than dying and going to Hell, it’s not dying—and going to Hell,” are two taglines that grace the cover of my ratty old VHS copy of Ate de Jong’s Highway to Hell, and they both make it blatantly obvious that this is going to be a very “special” movie. I saw Highway to Hell for the first time over 10 years ago as a late night feature film on some cable network I can’t remember, and I just couldn’t get it out of my mind. This was more than just another typically mindless “bad” movie; it was a smart “bad” movie. The way elements of comedy, horror, adventure, and romance mixed into one magnificent, unforgettable film was brilliant, and it’s a crying shame that Highway to Hell never got the spotlight it so rightly deserves. At least it has some time to shine as my selection for July’s Movie of the Month.

Charlie (Chad Lowe) and Rachel (Kristy Swanson) are young, dumb, and totally in love. As the two lovebirds are on their way to elope in Las Vegas, Rachel gets kidnapped by Hellcop (a cop from Hell). Charlie journeys to Hell to save his soon-to-be bride from the devil himself. When one thinks of Hell, usually the image of a dark, underground lair full of goblins and flames is what comes to mind, but the Hell in Highway to Hell is a hot, endless desert with a sparse population (Ben Stiller, Jerry Stiller, Lita Ford, and Gilbert Gottfried all make appearances as citizens of Hell). The concept of Hell in this film is very interesting because the individuals that are in Hell each have a different experience. Some are stuck performing annoying everyday tasks for eternity, some are in a biker gang, some are chopped up in a huge wood chipper, etc.

Brandon, what are your thoughts on Hell in this film? Was de Jong attempting to send out some sort of message with the symbolism in Hell or was it all just campy fun?

Brandon: I think it’s best not to reach too deep for symbolism in this one. As I’m sure you could tell from our screening, I don’t think I was quite as jazzed about the film as you are, but there most certainly is something special about it, even as a late-night basic cable oddity. Hell, especially as a late-night basic cable oddity. I think in a lot of ways we had the perfect Highway to Hell experience. Watching a tattered VHS copy of the movie on a tiny TV, past my bedtime & with a couple of beers, feels like the ideal atmosphere for this film, tracking issues & all. I feel like if it had actually received a proper theater release, it would be a widely reviled flop that would have an unfair amount of people listing it as one of the worst films ever. As a basic cable gem that never made the leap to DVD, it sidestepped a lot of the ridicule and is mostly known only by those who herald it as a minor cult classic.

The reason I don’t think that too much stock should go into the movie’s symbolism is that the script is its most shallow element. There are occasional brilliant moments, (the sex demon scene & Jerry Stiller’s eternally suffering cop who desperately wants a cup of coffee that ain’t coming both come to mind), but for the most part the film doesn’t have a lot to say. There are so many missed opportunities in the plot & the absence of memorable one-liners that it’s difficult to put too much faith into what the movie’s visual symbolism is supposed to represent. The practical, not-fun answer to why a movie set in Hell was shot in the desert is probably that it’s super cheap to film in the desert, as opposed to building a set from scratch. However, I do believe the set design is what distinguishes the film from lesser late-night fare. Considering that Highway to Hell was obviously produced on a shoestring budget, it’s honestly incredible what the film pulled off visually. The art department really gave it their all here, building such an impressively hand-made & lived-in hellscape that it’s both totally understandable & a total shame that the script couldn’t keep up. That disparity makes it really tempting to look into the film’s imagery for some kind of symbolism or grand metaphor, but I just don’t think that anything’s actually there.

Britnee, do you also feel that the film’s impressive visual intensity & lackluster screenwriting were at war with one another? Could you picture the film’s reception & legacy having a greater impact if its script were a little tighter, or is there another missing element at play here?

Britnee: I agree that there’s a definite imbalance between the film’s script and visuals. Personally, I think it’s a good thing because it’s part of what makes the film so amazingly terrible. However, stepping away from my biased opinion, a better script would have bumped up this movie a bit and made it likeable to a broader audience. Maybe it would be good enough to be on DVD!  What’s sad is that there was enough money in the film’s budget for awesome visual effects and a decent script. According to IMDB, the film had an estimated budget of $9,000,000, which is totally shocking. I think that the film’s producers were just a little too excited about the film’s handful of special effects and spent all their time and money on them. I’m not going to hate on them because if I had a $9,000,000 budget for a film about Hell, I would do all sorts of stupid stuff with that money.

Come to think about it, I bet it was pretty expensive to get Gilbert Gottfried, Jerry Stiller, and Lita Ford to make such smallappearances. I didn’t mention Ben Stiller because he wasn’t really famous at this point; he was just tagging along with his dad. A good chunk of that budget probably went to these useless cameos.

Brandon, did you find the celebrity appearances to be rather annoying and unnecessary? Like Gilbert Gottfried as Hitler?

Brandon: It varies depending on the cameo. Gilbert Gottfried & Lita Ford got by basically on their mere presence, but honestly just the basic idea of Gottfriend playing Hitler is still funny enough to me now that an empty appearance in that costume feels worth it. And as I said earlier, Jerry Stiller desperately pleading for a cup of coffee for eternity was one of the highlights of the film. His son Ben wasn’t so bad as the befuddled grill cook either. The problem with the script wasn’t necessarily that it wasn’t playing with a full deck. There was a lot of potential in the plot scenarios & celebrity cameos. They just never were employed for a greater, cohesive whole, but instead were left to survive on their own merit as individual moments, seemingly disconnected.

For instance, consider the little kid our doofus of a hero saves from the Satanic Mechanic. What the Hell (to steal a bad joke from a bad movie) was up with that little kid? From the moment he’s introduced as an innocent moppet from Hell, everything in the script screams for him to eventually reveal himself as an evil demon, but it never comes to be. He’s exactly what he presents himself as: a hilariously trite little tyke with nothing but positive things to say about the hero. Much like with Kristy Swanson’s non-entity of a love-interest, the little kid is basically just waiting around to be saved by the bland everyman hero. This adds a lot of camp value to his performance, which had become one of my favorite elements in play by the end of the film, but it does point to a script that has no idea what to do with everything it brought to the table . . . except for to blow it up in the desert.

Britnee, speaking of saving women & children and blowing things up in the desert, you first suggested we watch this film because it reminded you of the Mad Max franchise and I’d like to hear more of your thoughts on that connection before we wrap it up. Also, do you have any thoughts on the Totally Not Evil Moppet the protagonist befriends in Hell? I think I’m warming up to that little booger.

Britnee: One of the reasons that I chose Highway to Hell for Movie of the Month was because Mad Max: Fury Road was getting ready to hit theaters, and I thought it would be interesting to discuss a film that was obviously influenced by Mad Max movies. Hellcop, the motorcycle gang, the super-secret tricked out car, and the numerous car chases on dusty desert roads are just a few things in Highway to Hell that mirror Mad Max. This brings me back to my first question about the reasoning behind Hell being an empty desert. Yes, there was probably no symbolism with Hell being a desert and it was easy on the budget, but I’m just now realizing that this could just be the result of an influence from the Mad Max films.

The Totally Not Evil Moppet (aka Adam) was an over-exaggerated version of an average innocent child, and I agree that he seems like an evil demon in disguise. Plus, he was pretty much the devil’s adopted son, so it makes sense for him to be demonic. Every time his squeaky little voice screams “Charlie!” I cringe, waiting for his teeth to get sharp. His big dopey eyes and stringy hair doesn’t make it much better. What really cracks me up about this kid is that he doesn’t seem to have that big of a problem living in Hell and having the Satanic Mechanic as a father. He was probably a demon child all along, befriending Charlie in order to get his assistance to escape Hell and wreak havoc on the living. Ate de Jong, where is Highway to Hell 2: Adam’s on the Loose?

Brandon, speaking of Ate de Jong, I recently checked out his filmography, and it’s interesting to say the least. He’s anaward-winning Dutch filmmaker, and the majority of his films are on the more serious side and completely opposite of Highway to Hell. What are your thoughts on this? Can you think of any other directors that have failed when going outside their comfort zone?

Brandon: Honestly, when I first saw Ate de Jong’s name appear in the opening credits I assumed it was a fake alias, as if Lynch or Cronenberg had taken a quick made-for-TV paycheck project to fund something more worthwhile. It definitely surprises me that de Jong has such an extensive list of credits on his IMDb page, with a lot of titles in the wartime melodrama genre. What’s even more surprising is that the same year Highway to Hell was released de Jong also helmed the cult comedy Drop Dead Fred. I’ve personally never seen Drop Dead Fred but it does have a pretty positive reputation among folks in our age range and it is somewhat of a surprise that de Jong’s only other American title (as far as I can tell) was a big budget action comedy that never made it past basic cable.

As far as directors failing outside of their usual genres go, it’s hard for me not to think of the recent record-breaking blockbuster Jurassic World as an example, if not only because the wound is so fresh. The director, Colin Trevorrow’s first feature was a small-scale, entertaining sci-fi romance called Safety Not Guaranteed. Jumping from that humble, but admirable beginning directly into an outrageously expensive action film was a mistake for Trevorrow’s growth as an artist (but not for the growth of his bank account) that left him looking a little foolish in my eye. Ate de Jong was seemingly in similar too-big-studio-for-his-britches water with Highway to Hell, as was the inspiration you cited, George Miller, when he made Beyond Thunderdome. When making large scale action movies like this it doesn’t really matter how incredible your visuals or action choreography are if a large number of people involved in the script-writing process are just going to spoil the goodwill.

Lagniappe:

Brandon: I do feel like I was a little unfair to Highway to Hell, which does have its occasional charms as a hidden gem. Now that I know what the film’s limitations are & the fact that the Adam character is most definitely not a demon child, but something much more terrifying (an actual child) I feel like I would enjoy it much more on a second viewing. If nothing else I’d love to spend more time with the mutant sex demon. There was a whole lotta weirdness packed into that all-too-brief scene. Too bad the movie’s difficult to get your hands on, since I’m fairly certain the only home video copy that exists in the world is Britnee’s ratty VHS.

Britnee:  I forgot to mention that AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” does not play at any point in the movie. I think this is super funny because when I tell people about this flick, the first they usually say is “Did someone seriously make a movie based on that song?” Sadly, Highway to Hell wasn’t cool enough for the song to be in the movie, but there’s some of the strangest songs I’ve ever heard on the soundtrack. Some unknown band called Hidden Faces did the music for the film, and the singer sounds like he’s singing through his butt. Just one of the many fun things that can be found in Highway to Hell. God I love this movie.

Upcoming Movie of the Months:
August: Brandon presents Babe 2: Pig in the City (1998)
September: Britnee presents The Boyfriend School (1990)

-The Swampflix Crew

The Disparate Ground Covered by John Lithgow’s Collaborations with Brian De Palma

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I made a lot of noise last week about the disparate halves of actor John Travolta’s choices in roles, noting that the two sides of his career can be conveniently summed up by his turns in the political thrillers Swordfish & Blow Out. Another actor from June’s Movie of the Month, 1981’s political thriller Blow Out, John Lithgow has made a similar career out of splitting his time between expertly nuanced roles like his turn in Kinsey & over-the-top villains in less respectable crowd favorites like Footloose, Cliffhanger, and Ricochet. The difference between Lithgow & Travolta is that Travolta’s acting can waver from high art to low trash depending on the film, but Lithgow is nothing if not consistent. No matter what film he’s starring in, Lithgow gives the production an incredible sense of levity, seemingly committing himself wholeheartedly in an equal, measured approach to the task at hand.

In his two collaborations with director Brian De Palma, Blow Out & Raising Cain, Lithgow was given plenty of space to display his unwavering enthusiasm for his craft. In Blow Out, Lithgow excels as a violent, sociopathic assassin that dominates the film’s central threat. In Raising Cain, De Palma asks Lithgow to run wild, playing several different characters each more eccentric than the last. A psychological thriller about a child psychologist gone completely off the rails, Raising Cain is far from the tight, controlled political thriller offered in Blow Out. Lithgow commits to both films equally, though, bringing the same cold intensity he used to elevate Blow Out to flesh out the sketchy at best Raising Cain, a ludicrous thriller that asks a whole lot of him, all of which he gives selflessly.

If you’re looking to see how a little, tastefully-applied Lithgow can go a long away, Blow Out is certainly the movie for you. If you want to see how that same element can be used for over-the-top, tawdry camp, Raising Cain is the better option. Due to Lithgow’s consistent acting style, his presence is more of a tool than a variable. In his two collaborations with Lithgow, De Palma has used the actor for very disparate effects that both exemplifies the types of roles Lithgow is typically used for & the range of quality & tone De Palma reaches for in his films. As a double feature, Raising Cain & Blow Out reveal a lot about the nature of the director & the actor both and raises questions about exactly why they haven’t worked together more often.

For more on June’s Movie of the Month, 1981’s Blow Out, visit our Swampchat , this look at Berberian Sound Studio’s sound-obsessed roots in the film, and last week’s comparison of the movie with John Travolta’s other political thriller, Swordfish.

-Brandon Ledet

Travolta’s Glorious Heights & Hopelessly Trashy Depths in Blow Out (1981) & Swordfish (2001)

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John Travolta has had a very strange career, alternating from working with acclaimed outsider directors like Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction & Brian De Palma in Blow Out to working on huge piles of hot garbage like Battlefield Earth & The Devil’s Rain. Strange as it is, this dichotomy isn’t entirely unique & can more or less be summed up as The Nic Cage Career Model. Travolta’s talents & natural charisma are immense, but often confusingly wasted on the trashiest of trash cinema. Travolta himself even solidified the Cage connection by essentially playing Cage at his hammiest in the ludicrously over-the-top action thriller Face/Off.

Perhaps the best way to experience the full range of Travolta’s full range of immense talent & laughable awfulness is in a double feature of June’s Movie of the Month, the 1981 political thriller Blow Out & Swordfish, a hopelessly trashy political thriller that arrived thirty years later & much worse for wear. Besides Travolta’s role & the political thriller genre connection, Swordfish & Blow Out both attempt meta-commentary about the nature of film itself. Blow Out accomplishes this slyly through depictions of a film of a car accident being reconstructed step by step, sound first. Swordfish, on the other hand, clumsily announces that it’s talking about movies by allowing Travolta’s central villain to deconstruct the intricacies of Dog Day Afternoon in the very first scene. Inviting viewers to conjure up memories of a much better film doesn’t do Swordfish any favors. Neither does watching Travolta’s performance in context of Blow Out.

In Blow Out, Travolta plays a befuddled everyman sound technician who’s in over his head when he gets dragged into a world of political intrigue. In Swordfish, he’s an evil Derek Zoolander-type with a terrible haircut who’s main business is political intrigue. The interesting thing about watching Blow Out  & Swordfish back to back is that they not only exemplify the heights & depths of Travolta’s talents & hamming, but they also validate & demonize those two dueling halves of his career. In Blow Out, we’re treated to Good Travolta, who just wants to tell the world the truth about a car accident because he feels like they have a right to know. In Swordfish, the much less savory Bad Travolta robs banks & forces hackers to operate at gunpoint while receiving oral sex just to see what they’re made of.

Blow Out is a perfectly constructed political thriller from the director of classics like Scarface & Carrie. Swordfish is a disgustingly crass fusion of The Matrix & Pulp Fiction sensibilities, laden with some of the worst CGI I’ve ever seen in a film, and directed by the dude who gave the world the Nic Cage Gone in Sixty Seconds remake. In tandem, both films share very little common ground, but do a competent job of capturing the totality of John Travolta’s varied career as an actor. As per usual, Good (Travolta) triumphs over Evil (Travolta) here and Blow Out is an objectively much better film, but to truly appreciate Travolta’s career as an actor in its totality you do have to roll around in the trash every now & then and he is hilariously dedicated to the cause in the grotesquely idiotic Swordfish.

For more on June’s Movie of the Month, 1981’s Blow Out, visit our Swampchat & last week’s look at Berberian Sound Studio’s sound-obsessed roots in the film.

Berberian Sound Studio’s (2013) Sound-Obsessed Roots in Blow Out (1981)

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During our Swampchat discussion of June’s Movie of the Month, the Brian De Palma political thriller Blow Out, I pointed out that “Blow Out is in some ways a movie about making movies, but more specifically it’s a movie about how essential sound is to film. It boils the medium down to one of its more intangible elements. In that way it’s much more unique than a lot of other movies about movies, arriving more than three decades before the film it most closely resembles in this approach (that I can recall, anyway), Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio.” The entire time I was watching Blow Out I was aching to revisit Peter Strickland’s oddly engaging Berberian Sound Studio to see how the two films compare. It turns out that while Blow Out distills the process of making movies into a single element, recording sound, Berberian Sound Studio breaks it down even further until there is nothing left. De Palma used sound recording as an anchoring element for a story that had great impact outside the world of film-making, a world tainted by serial murders & political intrigue. Strickland’s film, on the other hand, rarely allowed the audience to leave the recording booth & gets lost in its own sound-obsession.

Although they are working within separate genres with their own respective aims & are separated by three decades of film-making, it’s not at all difficult to draw a connection between the two works. First of all, they’re connected by their basic movie-within-a-movie structure. In Blow Out, Travolta’s sound technician protagonist is working on a cheap slasher film for which he cannot find an actress with the perfect scream to match a brutal shower stabbing. When asked if he ever works on good films, Travolta responds “No, just bad ones.” The befuddled sound technician in Berberian (expertly played by character actor Tobey Jones), on the other hand, is hired for an Itallian giallo film called The Equestrian Vortex that also gradually proves itself to be a tawdry, violent horror film (although the director insists they’re making art). We’ve explored the giallo lineage of slasher films before in our discussions of former Movie of the Month Blood & Black Lace, but the connection is rarely as clear as it is in the comparison here. While Travolta is looking for a single scream to accompany his cheap slasher movie (when he’s not investigating assassinations in his free time), Berberian Sound Studio depicts countless micro-searches for the exact same thing. The exact sound of a neck being sliced or a witch’s hair being yanked from the scalp or even the standard damsel’s death rattle are all meticulously sought after here. Berberian depicts a wizardly crew of demented Gallaghers smashing melons, pulling turnip roots, and tormenting actresses to capture the perfect sounds for what amounts to a slightly artier version of the trash that Travolta’s is mindlessly cranking out in Blow Out.

However, as stated, the films do have disparate aims for their respective sound obsessions. Blow Out uses sound as a doorway to a world outside the recording booth. It’s a dangerous world, but it’s an exterior one where big, important things are happening. Berberian Sound Studio, in contrast, becomes psychedelically insular. It not only gets lost in the recording booth, but also in the idea of sound itself. There’s so much horror & dissociation in the sound techniques employed in the film that it reaches an otherworldly state of mind that mimics the broken psyche of Bergman’s Persona just as much as anything it echoes from De Palma’s film. When you watch Berberian on Netflix with the closed captions enabled, the screen is filled with ludicrously long lists of sound descriptions desperately trying to keep up with every aural element in play. Early in the film a character ominously warns/promises, “A new world of sound awaits you. A world that requires all your magic powers.” It’s doubtful that the protagonist or most of the audience took him as literally as he meant it, but Berberian really is a lot more interested in the magic of sound than the more technically-minded Blow Out.

If I had to boil down the difference between the two films, I’d simply point out that Travolta’s protagonist spends most of his run time trying to piece together a crime scene & to capture a maniac killer, while Jones’ character is trying to get reimbursed for an airline ticket & to hold onto his basic sanity. De Palma’s approach weaponized sound to strengthen his political thriller’s arsenal. For Strickland, sound wasn’t a powerful tool; it was the entire point. The movies do share an impressive amount  of overlap, though, especially in Blow Out’s early, growling winds & in both film’s audiophile obsession with analog equipment. It’s difficult to imagine either film could be set in 2015 without being changed drastically. It’s doubtful that either film would mean much of anything once digital equipment removed a lot of the incidental sound from recording booths. The clacking & whirring of film projectors and tape recorders are essentially the two films’ lifeblood. Even the sound of the instruments that capture & display images are essential to cinema in these two films’ worldview. That’s the kind of synesthesia we’re working with here: there’s a sound even to the imagery. Blow Out just happens to use this attention to sound to open a door, while Berberian chooses to lock itself in the dark & swallow the key. They’re both overwhelmingly successful in their respective endeavors.

For more on June’s Movie of the Month, 1981’s Blow Out, visit last week’s Swampchat on the film.

-Brandon Ledet

Movie of the Month: Blow Out (1981)

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Every month one of us makes the other two watch a movie they’ve never seen before & we discuss it afterwards. This month James made Britnee & Brandon watch Blow Out (1981).

James: Brian De Palma’s political thriller Blow Out is our May Movie of the Month and I’m pretty stoked to revisit this hidden gem from one of my all-time favorite directors. Based on the 1966 film Blow Up about a fashion photographer who accidentally films a murder, Blow Out tweaks that premise, focusing on Jack Terry, a sound engineer for B horror movies, who gets entangled in a conspiracy after capturing the audio of a fatal car crash that kills a presidential candidate.

Putting his stylistic chops on full display, De Palma doesn’t pull any punches. Split screens, long tracking shots, dizzying angles; Hitchcock would be proud. It’s mind boggling that even with a star studded cast (including John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, and Dennis Franz) and gushing reviews from critics, Blow Out was a box office flop when it premiered in 1981. That’s a shame because everyone gives great performances, especially Lithgow as a cold blooded psychopath (what else) and Travolta as the sound engineer always looking for “the perfect scream”. Thankfully, Blow Out has gained popularity through the years and earned a reputation as a quintessential De Palma. I think it’s his best film.

What really blew me away re-watching Blow Out was how strongly the film holds up as a homage to the medium of film itself. It is a movie about making movies. As Jack puts together the audio and video of the fatal wreck, we are viewing the process of film making itself, the melding of sight and sound.

Brandon, do you feel like I do about Blow Out being a “movie about making movies”? Do you think this is why De Palma chose to focus on a movie sound engineer instead of a fashion photographer?

Brandon: I did find that approach interesting here, because normally films will interact with their own medium by showing members of a theater audience. This is even true in horror films, such as the monsters-break-the-fourth-wall classics Demons & The Ring or the throwaway gag in Gremlins where an entire theatrical audience is made of unruly, cackling monsters. There’s a little bit of audience-acknowledgement in the opening minutes of Blow Out, which features a few men in a screening room enjoying a hilariously tawdry, violent slasher movie. It adds whole other layer of specificity that the men are actually working on the film they’re watching, specifically on its sound effects. As James just noted, it’s not interacting with film as a medium from a consumer’s point of view, but rather from an active participant’s. Of course, the movie maker’s perspective isn’t entirely unique either, but the sound engineer angle has a very precise specificity to it, since most films about filmmakers would approach the story from the perspective of a writer or a director. It gets even more specific from there, given that these are men that only make cheap slasher flicks. At one point a character asks Jack if he works on “big” movies and he responds, “No. Just bad ones.”

That specificity turns out to be a very important distinction, especially the sound engineer detail. As James points out, Travolta’s protagonist, Jack, spends most of Blow Out’s run time attempting to construct a film version of a car crash he witnessed. Although film is a mostly visual medium, it’s Jack’s work with sound that dominates this process. He obsesses over the audio recording of the crash that he captured, using it as a cornerstone in his reconstruction of the crime scene. Yes, Blow Out is in some ways a movie about making movies, but more specifically it’s a movie about how essential sound is to film. It boils the medium down to one of its more intangible elements. In that way it’s much more unique than a lot of other movies about movies, arriving more than three decades before the film it most closely resembles in this approach (that I can recall, anyway), Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio.

Britnee, how do you think De Palma’s focus on sound in Blow Out shaped the film as a final product? Did its sound obsession have a big effect on you as a viewer, as opposed to how you normally watch movies?

Britnee: De Palma’s focus on sound really makes Blow Out a standout film and turns what could’ve been a run-of-the-mill thriller into a milestone in cinema. Of course, there are many other elements that make this film unique, but I think its obsession with sound is really what differentiated it from others. I have watched quite a few movies in my lifetime, but I’ve never come across or heard of a film that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the importance of sound in movies. Prior to viewing Blow Out, I never gave much thought to any of the sounds that occur during a movie, and now that I’ve seen the film, it’s all that I think about. In the final scene of Blow Out, Jack uses the screams from Sally’s murder for the bad movie he’s working on (his “perfect scream”), and I found this to be very unsettling. When I now hear a scream in a movie, I can’t help but think of the possibility of it being from an actual murder. What if there are psychotic sound technicians that go around killing people for authentic screams? It’s just something to think about.

The film’s camerawork is definitely something that stood out to me as well. Many of the angles were creative and voyeuristic with similarities to those in Blood and Black Lace, but there were a few that were way over the top, almost to the point of being ridiculous. The one that stands out the most to me is the merry-go-round shot that occurs in the scene where Jack is searching through his studio like a mad man looking for the missing tape. The camera must have spun around 100 times without stopping. It was like being on a Tilt-A-Whirl but not in a good way. Other than his theme park inspired camerashots, there were many others that were very innovative and enjoyable.

James, what are your feelings about De Palma’s imaginative cinematography? Were some of the shots a little absurd? Were they necessary for the film’s success?

James: A self-professed De Palma devotee, I love his unique approach to cinematography but I can understand how some viewers might scratch their heads at his more show-offy, “I went to film school” shots in Blow Out. Like the long tracking shot at the beginning of his1998 film Snake Eyes, many of these grandiose shots aren’t necessary, definitely a little absurd, but totally awesome. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have ejoyed Blow Out nearly as much if it didn’t included close up of owls and dizzying trips around Jack’s office. It reminds me of previous Movie of the Month directors like Mario Bava and Ken Russell who seem to take a similar delight in playing with their audience’s perspective

On a different note, I have to bring up the ending to Blow Out. As I addressed in my first question, Blow Out did not perform well in the bow office, and I wonder if the film’s bleak ending was the reason. With Jon Lithgow in full on psychopath mode and the Fourth of July festivities in full swing, we assume that that Jack will reach the girl in time but De Palma pulls the rug out from under us and the backrop of patriotism and freedom takes on a more ominous tone. Is this punishment for Jack’s participation in exploitation films? Is it a statement on American politics?

Brandon, what are your thoughts on Blow Out‘s ending? Why do you think De Palma chose to end the film in such an unconventional, bleak manner?

Brandon: I think the movie’s pessimistic conclusion is best understood in the context of De Palma’s status as one of the voices of New Hollywood. New Hollywood was already at least a decade old by Blow Out’s release, often cited as beginning with the release of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie & Clyde in 1967, but De Palma’s aesthetic & tone was very much rooted in the movement. In addition to other genre-defining traits, notable New Hollywood films like Easy Rider, Chinatown, The French Connection, and Harold & Maude had a tendency to subvert audience’s expectations by concluding on bleak & unresolved notes. I suppose the idea was that this approach was more realistic & honest because conflicts in “real” life don’t always end on the definitive & upbeat terms that often accompanied more escapist Old Hollywood fare.

I think De Palma goes even a step further than some of his peers in this case by falsely promising a grandiose, happy conclusion. When Travolta’s protagonist Jack first rushes to save the day, he disruptively drives directly into a Liberty Day parade in a grand gesture that normally would end with him victorious & Lithgow’s antagonist in jail. Instead, he crashes & burns. Literally. The “happy ending” subversion in Blow Out is so deliberate & well-teased that it plays like a hilarious prank before it takes an even darker turn. Despite the violence & grim political intrigue of the film’s story, De Palma still found a way to let his darkly playful sense of humor shine through.

Britnee, were there any other ways you found Blow Out oddly humorous outside the slasher-movie & hero-saves-the-day fake-outs that began & closed the film? What made you laugh in-between those moments?

Britnee: There was a whole lot to laugh at between the opening and closing of the film. While Blow Out was a serious thriller, there were a good bit of ridiculous moments and scenes that got a few chuckles out of me. Particularly, the scene when Jack first meets Sally in the hospital. Sally basically has a concussion after being in a fatal car crash, but Jack is so set on dragging her out of her hospital bed and getting her to a bar. He does succeed with getting her out of the hospital while she’s still in need of medical attention, but ends up having a hard time getting her to the bar for a couple of drinks (go figure). As Brandon mentioned previously, De Palma does have a dark sense of humor, and this is a pretty good example of it. Also, I’m just now realizing that the lovers in Blow Out, Jack and Sally, just so happen to share the same name as the famous couple from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Interesting.

Most of the other comical occurrences in the film were minor, but still pretty damn hilarious. Jack’s over-the-top dramatic facial expressions, Sally’s quirky dialogue, and Manny Karp’s dirty wife-beater really stick out in my mind as little things that were humorous in the film.

Lagniappe

Brandon: One thing I think that has gotten somewhat lost in the mix here is the performance by Nancy Allen as Sally. Known to most as “That Lady from Robocop” and known to Blow Out director Brian De Palma at the time of filming Blow Out as “My Wife” (feel free to read that in the Borat vernacular if you need to), is an actress who doesn’t necessarily get a chance to shine often. She’s extremely charming here as the love-interest-who-isn’t-quite-what-she-seems noir archetype, recalling performances like Dotty in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure & the secretary from Twin Peaks. It’s not entirely surprising that Allen’s performance is overwhelmed by the likes of John Travolta, John Lithgow, and the impressively sleazy Dennis Franz, but I do feel like deserves more recognition for bringing a certain heart, authenticity, and (as Britnee mentioned) humor to a film that may have felt like a (exceedingly technically proficient) cold cinematic exercise without her.

Britnee: Blow Out is such an unrecognized treasure. What I liked the most about this movie were the many twists and turns that occurred from beginning to end. After the first half-hour or so, I thought that I had the film figured out; an average Joe solves a murder and gets the girl in the end. It turns out that I’m a terrible guesser.

James: Blow Out is essential De Palma and arguably his masterwork. With its mix of intrigue, nail biting suspense, and dark humor, the film transcends genres and feels as fresh as it must have in 1981. Showcasing De Palma’s formidable skill behind the camera, Blow Out is also a great homage to the process of film making from a modern master.

Upcoming Movie of the Months:
July: Britnee presents Highway to Hell (1991)
August: Brandon presents Babe: Pig in the City (1998)

-The Swampflix Crew

The Threat of Masculine Entitlement in Crimes of Passion (1984)

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In our coverage of Ken Russell’s acidic sex farce Crimes of Passion, there’s been a very essential bait & switch that we have not yet touched upon. In our Swampchat discussion of the film we claimed that its central message was almost entirely restricted to the simple idea that monogamy = bad. Upon further reflection, I think that might be a little disingenuous, as it doesn’t entirely account for the relationships formed between the film’s three central characters: fashion-designer-by-day-prostitute-by-night Joanna Crane/China Blue, adulterous private investigator Bobby Grady, and type-casted-Anthony-Perkins-psycho Rev. Peter Shayne. When viewed as a group, this unlikely trio reveals that Russell had a little more on his mind than just tearing down heterosexual monogamy through satirical pop music & tawdry sex jokes. He also had another target in mind: masculine romantic entitlement.

If you’re going to make the case that monogamy is not the film’s main villainous conflict (although it almost certainly is), that leaves Anthony Perkins’ reverend, with his amyl nitrite-fueled sermons & killer vibrators, to fill the role as antagonist. Indeed, Reverend Peter Shayne does fill the role of blood-thirsty villain quite well, acting almost as a sex-obsessed Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. In his obsessive stalking of sex worker China Blue, Rev. Shayne invades her personal space, questions her self-esteem & moral fortitude, and although he doesn’t know her beyond a few brief encounters, claims that he knows her more than anyone else, going so far as to say “I am you.” The subversion at work here is that Rev. Shayne is not the same as China Blue, as he suggests, but rather is the same as Bobby Grady. Bobby also invades Joanna’s personal space, spying on her at work & showing up unwanted at her apartment, just as the reverend does. He calls into question her self-worth & sense of morality, shaming her into leaving the sex trade, something she clearly has fun doing. He even claims that the two of them belong together after one passionate, but brief sexual tryst that instantly sours their relationship. Despite what the Rev. Shayne suggests, he is not the same as China Blue. He’s just a more honest & straight-forward Bobby Grady. While Shayne poses his obsession with China Blue as religious piety, Grady conceals his own emotional manipulation & sense of entitlement under the guise of “true love”. Either way you slice it, they’re the same threat to her self-worth & happiness.

The thing is that the Blue-Grady-Shayne love triangle is not a separate conflict from Crimes of Passion’s fear of the evils of monogamy. In fact, it’s just a more honed-in aspect of the same idea. The reason that heterosexual monogamy is bad (according to the film anyway), is that entitled, inflated, fragile male egos like Rev. Shayne’s & Bobby Grady’s are not content to merely spend time & connect with the Joanna Cranes & China Blues of the world. Instead, they feel a need to possess & claim them for their own individual purposes. Two sides of the same monster, Shayne & Grady are the idea of masculine romance personified & skewered. There is a feminine side to the Crimes of Passion’s monogamy-bashing, like in Mrs. Grady’s eternal grumpiness & Joanna’s self-hatred, but it’s the masculine possessiveness of Shayne & Grady that turn something as sweet & fun as sex into something sour & destructive. In other words, their passion for China Blue is a crime in itself.

For more on May’s Movie of the Month, 1984’s Crimes of Passion, visit our Swampchat, our list of tawdry sex jokes from the film, and last week’s note on the film’s maddeningly repetitive soundtrack.

-Brandon Ledet