Werth: Good day, Wise!
Wise: Hi, Werth. I assume you're going to tell me why you're wearing a cape and tights.
Werth: Certainly, good citizen. Today the film The Avengers is opening in theaters, and I feel like I'm part of the team!
Wise: Really? Is your team headquarters the backroom at Marie's Crisis?
Werth: If the rest of my team were here, they would berate you in song.
Wise: Comic book fans everywhere are agog at seeing The Avengers, in part, because some of their favorite Marvel heroes are banding together to form a team to fight off evildoers.
Werth: But teams don't have to be made up of comic book super heroes to cause agog-ery. One of my favorite teamwork movies is Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's dark French fantasy City of Lost Children (1995).
In a strangely futuristic/retro dystopian seaport town a group of one-eyed, part-mechanical cultists called Cyclops are sneaking through dark alleys stealing children for the dream experiments of mad scientist Krank (Daniel Emilforth).
Wise: You lost me at French.
Werth: The Cyclops steal the wrong kid, however, when they kidnap young munch-aholic Denree (Joseph Lucien) from his brother, street circus strongman One (Ron Perlman making his French teacher proud).
One teams up with a group of underage pickpockets led by the lovely Miette (Judith Vittet), a drug-addled flea-circus master (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), and an underwater hoarder known as The Diver (Dominique Pinon) to rescue young Denree from the ocean rig where Krank is trying to steal young children's dreams to make himself younger.
Wise: Don't tell Joan Rivers that, or children will start to go missing in this country.
Werth: Adding in a midget wife, a flock of clones and a talking brain in a fishtank, the story is obviously overly complicated—but what makes this film a must-see are Caro and Pierre-Jeunet's astounding visuals.
Like their previous outing, 1991's Delicatessen, the directors create a dark, dingy world of rusting iron and rotting wood filled with strange characters that, if they aren't already in a circus, belong in one. But the imaginative choices they use to bring delight and whimsy to this landscape are truly cinematic art.
Krank's Santa Claus dream turned nightmare, a pair of Siamese twin sisters called the Octopus (Genevieve Brunet and Odille Mallet) cooking dinner with precision choreography, and the epic journey of a small flea across the city are all witty and disturbing feasts for the eyes.
And of course I must mention the other visionary member of the design team, Jean-Paul Gaultier, whose nautical-themed costumes in vivid, distressed colors give a special zing to the industrial-Gothic production design. While the amazing visuals may at times overwhelm the film, the rag-tag group of rescuers of City of Lost Children is still a team I want to be on.
Wise: Of course not all rag-tag bands of adventurers accomplish their goals, and even those that do are sometimes driven even further apart. In The Searchers (1956), director John Ford assembles his usual bag of tricks—iconic landscapes, granite-faced actors, cowboys, Indians, and revenge—but builds a bitter tale of racism, sexual violence, and betrayal.
Werth: God, I love this movie.
Wise: John Wayne stars as Ethan Edwards, Confederate veteran of the Civil War, who returns to his brother's Texas ranch after a long and mysterious absence.
Soon after, the neighborhood men are lured into chasing a cattle rustler only to discover that the ranch has been attacked by Comanches, the buildings burned, and the family murdered. Only the two daughters appear to have survived, although kidnapped by the marauders.
Setting out to avenge his family and rescue his nieces, Edwards is joined by his brother's foster son Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), a cadre of Texas Rangers led by the Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnston Clayton (Ward Bond playing both comic and stentorian), his elder niece's fiancé, and the local idiot Mose Harper (Hank Worden).
Werth: Every good Western needs a local idiot.
Wise: Things get off to a rough start only to get even worse when the posse is ambushed by the outlaws they are seeking. After a series of gun battles, arguments, and mounting desertion, only Ethan and Martin are left on the trail, and their already strained relationship deteriorates even more as Ethan's hatred for Native Americans begins to fester, especially toward Martin's Cherokee heritage, and even toward the niece he is seeking.
After years on the trail (plus a tip from Clara Bow's cinematic It beau Antonio Moreno playing a Spanish gentleman), they finally find the remaining niece (Natalie Wood), only she seems reluctant to return to her family.
Werth: It would be hard to give up a glamorous life of feathers, turquoise and buckskin.
Wise: Ethan and Martin return to the ranch in defeat, barging in on the wedding of Martin's childhood sweetheart Laurie (Vera Miles), who gave up carrying a torch for him and decided to marry a guitar-playing rube instead.
Werth: You know it's a good western when the local idiot is joined by a guitar-playing rube.
Wise: Especially when Mose reappears with a clue that ignites a climactic gun battle and ultimately allows everything to return to order.
But it's not a classic happy ending. Ford and his cinematographer Winton C. Hoch designed the film so there are no easy sympathies: the stereotypically villainous Indians are revealed to be noble, and the gung ho hero is really a cad. The Searchers uses all of the Hollywood Western clichés to paint a morally ambiguous panorama of the Old West.
Werth: So I have your cape and tights here so that we can be a movie gabbing super hero team.
Wise: Why don't I just agree to join you again next week for more Film Gab without the costume?
Werth: You sure? These tights really make butts look good.
Wise: Join me and the local idiot next week for more Film Gab.
Werth: And the cape is very slimming...
Werth: So, Wise.
Wise: Yes, Werth?
Werth: It's Friday the 13th and it's got me thinking about all the cursed movies out there.
Wise: I know, why doesn't Kate Hudson just disappear?
Werth: Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of unlucky films that seem to predict the deaths of their stars.
Wise: You mean like the John Wayne starring bio-pic of Genghis Khan, The Conqueror, where a flash flood nearly drowned the entire crew and those that survived were all at risk for cancer because they filmed the picture downwind of a nuclear testing site?
Werth: Right. Because the fact that John Wayne and Susan Hayward were lifetime smokers had nothing to do with them dying from cancer.
My favorite cursed movie is famous outside of its unluckiness. Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) can rightly be called iconic in its defining of the teen movie genre of the '50's. James Dean in his trademark red jacket spoke to an entire generation (and many after) of the teenage angst that roils beneath the surface of high schoolers who don't fit in to society's well-ordered cliques.
Wise: It was Bully for the '50's set.
Werth: Dean is Jim Stark, the new kid on the block who opens the film by being dragged into a police station drunk on Easter Night. Also waiting for their parents after being picked up by the fuzz for various infractions are Judy (Natalie Wood) and John (Sal Mineo). While their interaction in this first scene is limited, these three lives will connect to one another to become the core of the film, symbolizing a lost generation raised after the war in an American society that was obsessed with class and conflicted about the definitions of gender roles.
Wise: I would be conflicted, too, if my mom looked like Rosie the Riveter.
Werth: Each of these young actors brings something unique to the screen. Wood is beautiful, sexy, and hurting—a daddy's girl whose daddy couldn't care less. Mineo is heartbreaking as the yearning young man whose gaze at John is impossible to be read as anything other than pure desire.
It's surprising to see such an obvious depiction of gay love in a movie from this era—but since the love that dare not speak its name is never mentioned—it evaded the Production Code and gives the film a tragic unrequited romance.
Wise: This kind of thing just doesn't happen on Gossip Girl.
Werth: And, of course, there's Dean. Much has been made of Dean's acting and screen presence in the three films he starred in. His short life has given a prominence to his performances that while interesting, were probably more indicators of the actor he would become than fully-realized roles. Dean had an innate sensitivity—a volatile energy that could explode in anger or charm. This restless quality, this uncertainty of how he would react was nurtured by his Method training and is fascinating to watch. But it is unrefined.
With Dean, you can sometimes see the wheels turning. There are moments when he seems to emulate Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift who, by '55, had already started the screen-acting revolution that Dean desperately wanted to be part of. But in watching Dean it is exciting to see a young actor on the verge of discovery, sadly a discovery that would never come to full fruition.
Wise: Here comes the cursed part.
Werth: All of Rebel's main cast passed away in an untimely manner. Dean was killed in a car accident during the production of Giant in 1955, Mineo was stabbed to death outside his West Hollywood apartment in 1976, and Wood drowned near Santa Catalina Island in a still disputed case in 1981. Watching the movie is eerie—seeing these three young actors discovering their talents and knowing that each would meet tragic ends. But with iconic scenes like the chicken run and the apocalyptic Griffith Observatory planetarium show, Rebel has much more to offer than mere macabre fascination. It is a smart critique of American society and family that resonates across time... and into a Paula Abdul video.
Wise: In The Crow, Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and his fiancée Shelly are brutally beaten and murdered on the eve of their Halloween wedding, which also happens to be Devil's Night when all the Detroit-area gangs flood the streets to terrorize the inhabitants and incite widespread mayhem.
Werth: Beats t.p. and soaping windows.
Wise: A year later, a mysterious crow lands on Eric's grave and summons Eric from the dead. Returning to the scene of the crime, Eric vows revenge on his murderers.
Lucky for him, this blackbird resurrection has made him indestructible, and after donning a sleek black, crime-fighting ensemble and make-up patterned on his girlfriend's old porcelain harlequin mask—
Werth: Because nothing is scarier than looking like a French clown.
Wise: He sets out to exact revenge with the help of Sarah, the guttersnipe neighbor girl with a junkie mom and a heart of gold, and Sergeant Albrecht (Ernie Hudson), the cop who investigated the crime. A savage vengeance ensues—including the blood-thirsty eye-gouging of Bai Ling, the sexy, lisping 90's grunge version of Fu Manchu—and only after Eric has dealt comeuppance to each of his foes is he able to return peacefully to the grave.
Werth: Bai Ling makes me want to gouge out my eyes.
Wise: The Crow is famous for the accidental death of its star from an accidental gunshot wound a week before filming completed, but the real curse of the film seems to be the long list of stars who have participated in the increasingly bleak and direct-to-video sequels: Kirsten Dunst, Edward Furlong, Tara Reid, David Boreanaz, Eric Mabius—
Werth: That is a long and lackluster list.
Wise: And I'm not even finished: Danny Trejo, Fred Ward and Dennis Hopper all lent their talents to descendents of The Crow. Which kind of makes sense since the film was a success at the box office and with many critics, and seems to have been an important stop in the transformation of comic book-inspired movies from the candy-colored pop of the Richard Donner helmed Superman films to the grittier, more stylized fare that floods the multiplexes today.
Werth: So, Wise, do you think you're brave enough to handle our own mini film festival of cursed movies?
Wise: I'll only curse you if we're not back next week for more Film Gab.
