CULT TV MOVIE REVIEW: Something Evil (1972)

It certainly seems to me that the magical alchemy of good made-for-tv horror movies involves one particular equation above all others: accomplishing a lot with very little. 

Exhibit A: the most memorable horror TV-movies of yesteryear, such as Duel (1971) Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973), Trilogy of Terror (1975), and Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) create moods of suffocating, overwhelming terror without necessarily showing viewers much by way of monsters, blood or other visual effects. 

Instead, in each of these productions the audience is strongly encouraged to identify with one "everyman" (or every-woman) character, and then watch as reality seems to slip further away from that protagonist and they descend into situations of the surreal or nightmarish. 

A salesman experiences supernatural road rage.  A woman battles a Zuni Fetish doll come inexplicably to life, and so forth. 

These stories are models of simplicity and efficiency, but each effort also boasts unexpected high impact due to brawny, virtuoso directorial flourishes.

Yet another TV-movie that epitomizes this brand of low-budget ingenuity and inventive spirit is 1972's Something Evil, directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Clouse.  This tele-film was made during the rise of Exorcist fever in the United States -- after the book's release and before the premiere of the movie -- and the plot line indeed seems familiar to fans of the Friedkin venture. 

But the point here isn't necessarily the originality of any specific narrative details. Rather, the point is how ably Spielberg manipulates film grammar to forge an overarching atmosphere of free-floating, amorphous dread.  There is something at evil at work in the film all right, but at various times, one might suggest that the "something evil" of the title is madness, family dysfunction, or demonic possession.

First aired in prime time on CBS in 1972, Something Evil concerns the Worden family as it moves into an old, recently vacated farmhouse in Pennsylvania Dutch country.  The patriarch of the family, Paul (Darren McGavin) is a TV ad-man and producer, who is often away in New York City.  His wife, Margery (Dennis) is an artist who stays at home and cares for the family's two children, Stevie (Johnny Whitaker) and young Laurie (Debbie and Sandy Lampert).

After the Wordens purchase the country home -- which is suspiciously decorated with supernatural pentacles -- Sandy begins to experience regrets about their move.  For one thing, a surly neighbor, Gehrmann (Jeff Corey) keeps ritualistically killing chickens in plain view of her bedroom window.  For another, Sandy frequently awakens in the night to the terrible sounds of a child crying.   

Another local, Harry Lincoln (Ralph Bellamy) informs Sandy that pentacles represent a form of protection against devils and demons, and that he himself believes in such devils.  In fact, Lincoln has made a study of them his hobby.  With Paul away in the city for longer and longer intervals, Sandy grows increasingly paranoid about the house, especially when two of Paul's employees die in a car "accident" after filming a commercial on the premises. 

Convinced she is becoming spiritually possessed, Sandy locks herself off from her children, only to realize -- at long last -- that she is not the target of the Devil's attacks at all...

Again, the story in Something Evil is one we've all likely seen before. A lonely housewife believes in the supernatural and insists on the supernatural while her "rational" husband refuses to join in and share a meaningful dialogue about it.    He's just worried about money.  "If we sell this house now, I'd take a terrible loss," he states at one point.   On a (very) superficial level, the narrative is similar to Rosemary's Baby, for instance.

Then, of course, there are the young children imperiled by demonic possession, and  local experts warning of a house's dark history with the mystical and supernatural.  These plot details suggest The Exorcist, The Haunting and other horror tales we all know and love.

Yet Something Evil is perfectly titled. There is indeed "something evil" at work in this horror story, some amorphous aspect of the diabolical, and Spielberg carefully refrains from showing the Evil Thing's presence or even its shape on Earth throughout the film.  Rather, the director rigorously crafts unsettling, almost surreal set-pieces that effectively tap into our shared, subconscious language of nightmares. 

For instance, twice in the tele-film Sandy detects a strange noise in the thick of the night.  Both times, the noise sounds like a cat crying at first.  Then, as it continues more loudly, we can discern it is the voice of a terrified human child, crying and whimpering incessantly.  Sandy follows this unnerving voice down a dark staircase, out into the night, and into an outbuilding, a garden shed.  She can find no source for the cries, and returns to bed.

The second night that Marge hears the sound, something more terrifying occurs.  She follows it to the garden shed a second time, and this time the voice appears to be emanating from a mason's jar filled with a thick red, gelatinous substance. 

The substance moves in the jar as if it is alive, as if the child's essence or soul is trapped inside.  Now, pretty clearly, this doesn't make a lot of "awake" or conscious sense, but it makes perfect nightmare sense.  It's irrational and yet wholly terrifying.  Amazing what a little food coloring and a mason's jar can achieve when utilized thoughtfully, isn't it? The discovery of the mason jar is just so weird, incongruous and unsettling that you can't quite shake the imagery.

To augment the idea of the shed as a source of something unspeakably evil, Spielberg often films his exterior sequences from a vantage point inside the structure, looking out into the surrounding yard.  This perspective accomplishes two things of consequence.  First, it restricts the available space of the characters visible in the frame.  The children are seen playing in the yard, but they are bracketed -- trapped, essentially -- by the arch of the doorway. 

Secondly, and perhaps even more significantly, this perspective suggests the notion that something is alive in the shed, and gazing out from inside it.  This could be the point-of-view shot of a devil or demon. The demonic jar and its contents, perhaps?

Another, almost throwaway moment is nearly as unnerving as these canny visual perspectives.  Late in the film, Paul is at work in the city, reviewing the commercial footage he shot at his home.  A technician enters his office only to show him something weird that inexplicably appears on the film, even on the negative.  It's a set of red, glowing eyes...inside one window frame. 

Again, we're not seeing a CGI demon, or even a man in a costume.  We're just seeing a phtographic still of eyes where none should be, and the effect is pretty shocking.

Finally, during the climax of Something Evil, Margery must reclaim the soul of her son, Stevie, who has become possessed.  Again, Spielberg selects a simple but effective shot to convey the demon's sense of power.  He positions the child in the center of the room -- but higher than any child could possibly stand -- and lets all hell break loose around this stationary force, meaning demonic wind, doors swinging open, etc.  The child's back is to the camera, so we can't see his face; can;t see what he actually looks like as an instrument of the Devil. 

Again, when we think of demonic possession we remember the incredible visual effects of The Exorcist: twisted heads and pea soup, namely.  With little budget to speak of, Spielberg instead implies the demon's power by positioning him like a pillar -- unmoving --- in the center of the frame; letting others react to his powerful presence.  Low-budget filmmakers today really ought to study Spielberg's excellent staging.  It's a virtual master's thesis in attaining high impact sans major special effects.  Instead, every really chilling moment in Something Evil is achieved through applied film grammar; through positional intimation, to coin a phrase.

In narrative terms Something Evil might be  interpreted as a story in which a  family is torn apart by a sensitive mother's increasing sense of alienation and isolation.  Margery physically strikes Stevie at one point, and then delivers a heart-wrenching speech in which she says, essentially, that she is leaving the family (children included), because she no longer trusts herself.  She might as well be an alcoholic, given the particulars of her dialogue, and her actions. 

Conjuring an evil force as the motivation for Mommy's bad behavior seems a perfect metaphor for childhood logic.  Mommy isn't herself.  There's "something evil" at work inside her.  Similarly, Stevie becomes "possessed" by something evil when Mother's love is no longer available.  Something else...something of a more sinister shade, steps in to fill that void.  Finally, Mom is told that "love is a powerful force" and re-asserts her role in the family.  But in some ways, the damage is already done.

Though in horror terms, Something Evil offers a pretty hoary, familiar storyline, it succeeds mainly because of Spielberg's staging.  By the time audiences get to Marge's second nocturnal visit to the garden shed -- and the sight of that oozing red gelatin in the mason jar -- Spielberg has us by the throat.  Then, the TV movie reaches a fever pitch of terror before ending on another unsettling visual:  The family car pulls away from the house of evil, but Stevie -- now free again -- sits backwards in the car, peering towards the camera (and the house), out the back window. 

If not demonic, Stevie's eyes certainly appear traumatized.  His positioning  (backwards, essentially, intimating the opposite of order) denies the film a clean restoration of  balance and of the natural world, and suggests that Stevie's family problems may just be beginning.  In other words, what's encoded here  under the supernatural veneer of Something Evil is the idea of how a family's dysfunction damages and destroys children.   Something evil happens to the Wordens.   Is it demons, or the specter of looming divorce?

I often wonder what networks executives were thinking about, green lighting such terrifying tv-movies for family audiences in the 1970s.  And then I realize that on paper, Something Evil probably didn't appear too traumatic.  Just another, run-of-the-mill demon possession story.  But when Steven Spielberg entered the picture, the director lifted the material.  He took Something Evil from the realm of the routine and the familiar to the plateau of authentic...well...kinder trauma.

And we should really thank him for a job extraordinarily well done.

Sci-Fi Wisdom of the Week:

"Live fast, fight well and have a beautiful ending."

- Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

The Cult-TV Faces of: The Reporter

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CULT MOVIE REVIEW: F.A.Q.: Frequently Asked Questions (2004)

"You do not need to trouble your thoughts.  You do not need to remember the past.  Failure would be inevitable."

- Words from "The Sisterhood of Meta- Control" in F.A.Q: Frequently Asked Questions (2004).

In Carlo Atane's independently-made low-budget 2004 feature,  FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions, Europe has become a super-matriarchy and one that "grows stronger every day."

For the men of Europe, this is not necessarily a positive development. 

The less-fair sex is revealed on state-sponsored television programs to consist either of irrational war-mongers or obese, giggling monstrosities. 

And worse, men and women are no longer permitted direct physical contact of any type in this dystopian future.  Sexual intercourse is a thing of the past.  Illegal Internet porn is all the rage.

"You live in a clean society.  Avoid physical contact," urges the State in ubiquitous  loudspeaker announcements.

It's not just the nature of man that the Sisterhood of Meta-Control seeks to control and eliminate, but all of nature itself.  "Nature has been abolished," notes one character in the film, and in France of the Sisterhood, only the Pyranees Nature Reserve remains.  Soon, it too will be destroyed by the Matriarchy, along with the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower's offense? 

It symbolizes the phallus, and therefore must necessarily fall victim to what one agent of the Sisterhood terms "architectural castration."  Late in the film, we see the monument and historical landmark destroyed.  The message: there is no past.  There is just the endurance of the Sisterhood.

A bit slow-moving, even at 82-minutes, and not always well-rendered, F.A.Q. is one of the few science fiction films to come out of Spain in recent years.  The film boasts a cheap, digital look, with poorly achieved green screen effects (especially one lengthy scene in front of the Eiffel Tower).  Furthermore, the brooding, lugubrious characters don't exactly enhance the audience's sense of identification with this fictional world.  F.A.Q. is a movie of many startling ideas -- perhaps too many -- but the story is not shaped or molded in a coherent way, which gives film a pretentious and occasionally unintentionally comic feel.

Everything living is lethal

The totalitarian-minded edicts and acts of the Sisterhood are just one piece of F.A.Q.'s odd, ponderous, tapestry.

In human terms, the film tells the tale of a man named Nono (Xavier Tort), and the woman he serves, a scientist named Angeline (Anne Celine Auche). They share a mutual physical attraction that neither one really dares to enunciate or express, at least in this repressive world.

When Nono -- a sound specialist - records the sounds of Angeline's heart beating, her less-than-romantic reply to his overture is only a callous: "your intentions are ethically unclean."

Two men from the resistance -- in the porn industry, no less -- visit Nono and attempt to recruit him to record the sounds of nature before Nature itself is destroyed.  The dissidents hope to store the recorded sounds in an archive for some future generation. 

Nono has no comment about this task or his role, but continues his work, nonetheless.   There is some talk about Nono being "special" because he can see beyond the reality of the Matriarchy, into another reality all-together.  In some ways, he seems an idiot-savant, and is mostly silent.  Others impress their perceptions of Nono upon him, but he generally shows little reaction to any provocation.

Later, after Angeline dies from exposure to lentils at the Nature Reserve (!), Nono wanders onto a porno movie shoot, and inadvertently draws the forces of the Sisterhood to the scene.  Both Nono and the resistance fighters/pornographers are captured and tried before the State in what is likely the film's most powerful scene.   In a darkened room, before a brick wall, the accused stand in a line and are made to beg for their lives, and announce how they could effectively punish themselves rather than face the punishment of the State.  One prisoner offers to immolate himself before the end of the year.  Another offers to open his own belly with a spoon, before the next year. 

When one prisoner cannot decide how he should punish himself, the State steps in, obligingly.  The man will have his testicles fed to red ants.

Nono is spared such a grim fate by the State itself, which suspects that he must possess some latent talent since the resistance movement was so interested in recruiting him.  Nono is taken to the Home of the State's Number Three, and offered a life of luxury and safety should he submit to the Matriarchy's will and share what he knows of this reality "beyond" the Matriarchy. 

As before, Nono has no comment, and his silence is interpreted by his new masters as resistance.

The ending of the film involves Nono seeing Angeline again, on an Internet porno movie this time, and then walking -- literally -- into that reality, and kissing her passionately.   This coda could be read as a metaphor for life after death; as a self-reflexive acknowledgement that all the faces in the film inhabit two realities (their own, and that of the actors making the movie) or perhaps it is simply commentary on the necessity of physical connection in human travails; and such contact only occur in the pornography of this particular dystopia.  Frankly, your guess is as good as mine.

While watching the film, my wife had some suspicion that F.A.Q. was making a misogynist argument; showing how bad things could be under female domination.  I can see precisely why she felt that way, but I didn't entirely agree.  I think the point of the movie is that when any singular force (sexual, religious, or governmental) gains total control over life, corruption is inevitable and inescapable. In this case, that single force just happens to be female in composition.  But certainly, the final scenes reveal how the members of the Sisterhood live, and suggest an overt and inarguable level of hypocrisy.  The women of the Sisterhood of Meta-Control don't abide by their own edicts, and Number Three, at least, hints at her immense pleasure in the sexual activity her party denies to others.

F.A.Q. is not without some fine qualities, but the film is ultimately less-than-successful because it blends too casually its literal story with the metaphorical point the director hopes to make.  Now, I'm all for subtext and metaphor in film.  Indeed, the art form is perfectly suited for the expression of such metaphors. Yet metaphor also requires a special kind of dedication and attention on the part of an artist.   

It's just as infuriating, in other words, to end F.A.Q. with a shot of the actor playing Nono on the film's studio set, walking away from a blue screen, as it is to end Skyline (2010) nearly mid-breath, in the hopes of making a sequel.  Neither ending satisfies, because neither ending resolves the narrative organically and honestly; in terms of the characters' actual experiences.

If Nono is just Xavier Tort acting in a dystopic movie, then the plight of Nono is made less important, less vital a concern.  If there is a ready escape to this grim "reality," then there is no "Meta-Control" at all, because the Matriarchy can be escaped at any time. See my point? 

I would have preferred to actually see Nono executed, then re-discover Angeline, rather than watch him simply slip seamlessly from one reality to the next, as if this has always been a a viable option for the character.  The ending as it stands reeks of post-modern game playing, and resolves nothing of the film's storyline.

There are games and then there's storytelling, and F.A.Q. moves away from satisfactory storytelling in its last act, to the detriment of the whole enterprise.  This is a low budget film, and I don't begrudge the film the weak effects, the limited settings, or any other overt sign of cheapness.  Those are all things that can be overlooked easily when a director is engaged with his material and ideas. 

What I dislike, rather, in F.A.Q. is the director's choice to so powerfully set up a dystopian reality, and then, capriciously, abandon it in an ending that, on a literal level, undercuts the previous eighty minutes.  I don't know that the science fiction film is the right vehicle for a post-modern ending that reminds us we're all just watching a movie.  The purpose of the genre film is transport us to that other reality in the most effective way  imaginable and make is seem plausible, believable and, yes, possible.

F.A.Q. goes to some length to paint a grim picture of a totalitarian matriarchy, but then decides it would rather be about the self-reflexivity of movies as an art-form.  That's a distraction, a sleight of hand, not a valid ending. 

The most frequently asked question about this 2004 sci-fi movie might just be: what the heck happened to the movie's last act?

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Turkey Shoot (1981)

A wicked blast of unadulterated exploitation film making, the Australian 1981 flick Turkey Shoot saw release in the United States in 1983 as Escape 2000.  

But no matter the title the movie travels under, Turkey Shoot remains a high-energy and gonzo roller-coaster ride.  If it isn't exactly quality entertainment (and it isn't), Turkey Shoot nonetheless remains that  cherished brand of  movie you can't take your eyes off of, for fear of missing the next over-the-top, bad taste moment. 

Directed capably by Brian Trenchard-Smith, Turkey Shoot stars Steve Railsback and Olivia Hussey as death camp denizens dwelling  in a futuristic, fascist version of Australia.  Over the opening credits, the film utilizes stock footage of urban riots, looting, and protests (in split-screen, no less) to transmit the idea of a Nazi-like take-over of Down Under.  Turkey Shoot is thus a dystopian film about a modern totalitarian state, one replete with intense surveillance, plus "re-education" and "behavior modification" for those who don't conform to society.

The last half of the film involves the titular turkey shoot as a death camp warden -- named after a certain former British prime minister --- and several Nazi-like VIPs hunt down the film's imperiled heroes in the wild. As the hunt ensues, no sensibilities are spared, and the film lovingly showcases intense gore and violence, all with tongue-planted firmly in cheek. 

The first act of  Turkey Shoot, a cavalcade of human rights indignities set inside the death camp, is actually far superior to the film's last half involving the hunt, and it lovingly layers outrage upon outrage.  In short, the events at the death camp successfully capture the attention (and blood lust) as "deviants" and "traitors" attempt to steer clear of the sadistic guards and their cretinous ilk. 

Though splendidly and colorfully photographed, the last half of the film settles into a more repetitive action groove, and except for the high impact moments of gory violence, fails to live up to Turkey Shoot's intriguing premise.  The movie even cops out with an unbelievable, happy ending (and a pro-revolution quotation from H.G. Wells), although it is clear from the action involved that the dissidents would not survive the day in this particular culture

"The Ultimate Solution: Kill them all!"

As Turkey Shoot begins, the film cuts to a black van as it pulls into Death Camp 47, and leaves behind three new arrivals.

First there's Paul (Railsback), a freedom radio talker who believes that "we have the right to be ourselves." 

Then there's lovely Rita Daniels (Lynda Stoner), who stands accused of being a "whore." 

And finally, we meet the demure Christie Walters (Hussey), arrested after a misunderstanding with an officer in a jewelry store.  We understand quickly that Chris will have to toughen up if she is to endure life in the camp, and Rita gives her this exact advice.

Soon, Campmaster Thatcher (Michael Craig) greets the new inmates and relates to them the rules and mottos of this "Great Society:"  

"Freedom is obedience," he insists, "Obedience is work.  And work is life." 

It is Thatcher's job to make certain of the imprisoned denizens' "unquestioning acceptance of every order given by the State."  He will stop at nothing to break his wards, and return to them to the Great Society as model citizens.

After a scene set in the co-ed showers (ahem.), and then the near-rape of Chris, Thatcher asks his very important camp guests, the effete Mallory (Noel Ferrier), the Alexis-Carrington look-alike and dress-alike, Jennifer (Carmen Duncan), and the sadistic Tito (Michael Petrovitch) to choose their quarry for the upcoming turkey shoot.  Mallory chooses Chris; Jennifer chooses Rita; Tito chooses a rat-like inmate, Dodge (John Ley) and Thatcher selects his two most worrisome inmates, the hulking Griff (Bill Young) and the unbreakable Paul.

One at a time, the selected inmates are let loose into the wild, and then pursued, relentlessly, by their personal hunters.  In the end, the hunt goes awry, and one hunter and several guards are killed.  Paul and Chris take over a hunting vehicle and return to Camp 47 to free the inmates.

Little do they know that the Australian Air Force has orders to destroy the entire Camp should it fall into enemy hands...

'Disobedience is treason, treason is a crime, crime will be punished!'

Turkey Shoot isn't exactly a serious, artistic statement about how it feels to live in a neo-Nazi-styled totalitarian state.  Rather, the film is about grossing out and debauching the audience as much as possible via a series of bloody confrontations and violent set-pieces.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, really. 

Accordingly then, Turkey Shoot's villains are all played as hissable, two-dimensional Nazi movie stereotypes: as elitist, scoffing murderers who take extreme joy in lording it over and humiliating other human beings.   One inventive, if horrible scene involves the giant prison guards using an inmate and two tanks of gasoline for an impromptu game of soccer.

In short order the film also nearly forces fellatio upon poor Hussey's character, then sees her almost raped by a vicious guard...until she angrily zips up his manhood in his pants zipper.

After these egregious and unsavory moments, the film inexplicably introduces a WTF character named Alph (Steve Rackman), a mentally-impaired, inhuman monster who looks like the unholy love child of Mr. Hyde and Dr. Moreau's humanimals and who obeys all of Tito's commands without question. 

Now remember, this is supposed to be a dystopian film about a fascist Australia and a "most dangerous game"-style hunt, not a strange fantasy featuring mutants and other fanciful creatures.  But whatever, the monstrous, hirsute Alph shows up on the scene and, eventually, gets bisected by a bulldozer bucket (but not before he dines on one of Dodge's amputated toes).

The hits just keep on coming in Turkey Shoot as Chris slices off a guard's hands with a machete, and Paul shoots one of the evil hunters in the testicle before leaving him to be burned alive in a rural field. 

Finally, in perhaps the film's most surprising and nutty moment, we get to Jennifer, a hunter who prefers to use explosive bows and arrows in her games.  Jennifer attacks Rita as the beautiful inmate is frolicking in a river, and then reveals her true nature.  Jennifer is not just a sadistic hunter, you see...but a sadistic lesbian hunter!  She rolls her tongue promisingly at Rita, and then the movie cuts to quickly another scene.

Again and again, Turkey Shoot goes boldly for broke, makes distinctly odd creative choices, and proves itself absolutely entertaining in a very lowbrow kind of way.  The film really falters in that last act, however.  There is a scene of impressive, all-out warfare at the camp, with explosions popping every minute.  But then the planes are scrambled, and you expect the film to have a dark ending, in keeping with its premise and execution.

But nope, the planes depart, the prisoners are freed, and Railsback and Hussey share a sentimental hug, and then a climactic freeze frame, to the above-mentioned Wells quote.  How long, after that valedictory freeze-frame, one wonders, will the rebels survive?  It's a cheesy and dishonest ending to an otherwise very droll, very wicked, very bloody exploitation piece.

But for the first half of the film, Turkey Shoot doesn't hit a single wrong, or tasteful note.  The dialogue is sharp, and occasionally laugh-out loud funny.  For instance, one Nazi villain observes that watching the Camp surveillance monitors "beats the hell out of network television."

Another comment by these happy fascists also bears repeating: "Excess is what makes life worth living."

I'd amend that quote only slightly in assessing Turkey Shoot.  "Excessive movies also (and only sometimes) make life worth living."

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Quintet (1979)

In the year 1979, director Robert Altman (1925-2006) teamed with star Paul Newman (1925-2008) to present one of the bleakest post-apocalyptic and dystopian cinematic visions ever forged, the wintry Quintet. 

Set well into a fictional future ice age of devastating "global cooling," Quintet was not received warmly by either film critics or audiences at the time of the film's theatrical release, and that perception has remained largely unchanged today.  Indeed, Quintet is not an easy or particularly fun film to experience.  The narrative moves at an almost glacial pace and the action features long periods of bracing, uncomfortable silence. 

In addition to these qualities, Altman's feature boasts a kind of overt "icy" visual palette, with out-of-focus "cold" atmosphere encroaching visibly on the four corners of the frame.  This unique, misty canvas is actually an ideal reflection of the film's existential crisis: that mankind is being suffocated spiritually and physically by the re-glaciation of all corners of the planet.

For some viewers, this misty, frost-bitten visual presentation will add immeasurably to the creeping sense of bleakness and claustrophobia Altman toils so assiduously to generate.  For others, the effect may only serve to annoy or even distance one from the action on-screen.

Yet Quintet is a film worthy of patience, one crafted with real dedication, and with seemingly no consideration for commercial interests.  The film is not merely bleak, it is intentionally, irrevocably hopeless.  It goes out of its way, actually, to kill off "hope" in the first act.   With cutthroat efficiency, Quintet depicts a world where the word "friend" has been replaced with the word "alliance," and then goes even further than that.  In most post-apocalyptic movies, there is some opportunity for characters to escape, locate a sanctuary, or carve out at least some slice of small happiness. But without apology or explanation, Quintet asks audiences to countenance a future world in which there is no escape route, and each new day is just one cycle closer to inevitable extinction.

Another way to describe this artistic but difficult genre film: it's an intriguing place to visit, but you certainly would not want to live there.

"I Broke No Rules!"

As Quintet commences, a middle-aged seal hunter, Essex (Newman) and his young companion, the pregnant, innocent Vivia (Brigitte Fossey), make for a northern city, one of the last hubs of human civilization following a global cooling phenomenon that has turned all the Earth to inhospitable ice. 

Essex seeks out his long-estranged brother, Francha (Thomas Hill) inside the ruined city, and learns that he is involved in a "Tournament," a game of Quintet, but with a few interesting and deadly additions. 

In the traditional game of Quintet, five players attempt to move their pieces across a five-sided board and to finish off the other four players, following a "killing order" list.  When four competitors are vanquished, the survivor then must fight "the sixth man," another player who has been waiting the duration of the game in "limbo," the space between the sides.  

This extremely popular board game fits in with a new philosophical view, a quasi-religion that has gained adherents in this post-apocalyptic world without sustenance, without meaningful work, and without purpose.  In particular, the five sides of the Quintet board represent the five stages of life: the pain of birth, the labor of maturing, the guilt of living, the terror of aging, and the finality of death. 

But in the space between these five sides -- in the limbo -- there is a sixth stage of existence.  It is an empty, black void that represents "total madness" and the awareness of a consuming nothingness.  A preacher inside the city, St. Christopher (Vittorio Gassman) calls this sixth space the void that both precedes human life and the void that succeeds such life. 

By understanding and accepting this void, he suggests, the people who dwell in this New Ice Age should "cherish the interruption;" cherish the icy misery they face each and every day.  In other words, a slow death in an icy hell is infinitely preferable to the eternity of oblivion that book-ends our existence.  At least in the frozen new Ice Age, man can feel and think and breathe.

When an overly-competitive Quintet player named Redstone  rolls a deadly explosive into Francha's home quarters and murders both Essex's brother and the delightful, youthful, Vivia, Essex realizes that the players in this Quintet tournament have forsaken the niceties of the board.  This is now a game played with real lives, and in the real five sectors of this old, half-destroyed metropolis.  Each of five players (plus a shadowy sixth man...) are attempting to kill each other and thus "win" the tournament.

Angry and confused, Essex joins the game, posing as Redstone.  He checks into the  Hotel Electra and soon meets the referee for the tournament, the flamboyant Grigor (Fernando Rey).  Grigor wishes he could play in the tournament himself rather than merely "interpreting" the rules for the other players.  He sees Essex -- an impostor -- as one fresh way to spice up the tournament, and therefore allows Essex to move freely about, encountering the other "players:" the foolish Goldstar (David Langton), the ambitious Deuca (Nina Van Pallandt), and the seemingly helpful, if remote, Ambrosia (Bibi Andersson). 

It is Ambrosia who warns Essex that the most dangerous opponent in the game is actually St. Christopher, a man who runs a religious mission espousing his world view and who believes wholeheartedly in the philosophy of Quintet. 

As the players begin to die -- murdered by one another -- Essex seeks to understand the game even as his very existence is threatened.  He is, perhaps, taken aback when he learns the identity of the invisible "sixth man" in this particular game...

I am not here to help or regard.  I am here to interpret the rules.

The underlying idea for Quintet's post-apocalyptic world arises out of the scientific and media history of the 1970s. 

In the early years of the disco decade, scientists began to become aware of a cooling trend on Earth, one that existed between the years 1945 and 1975, roughly.  Popular news outlets jumped on the idea that a new ice age could be dawning, replete with a re-glaciation of the planet. 

In summer of 1974, TIME magazine featured an article called "Another Ice Age," and worried about a "global climactic upheaval" as the "interglacial period" that had nurtured and nourished mankind for all his history came to an abrupt end.  In 1975, Newsweek followed-up with an equally alarming article called "The Cooling World."  A hot seller at book-vendors in the same era was called The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of a New Ice Age.

Quintet is set in a world where Mother Nature herself has literally turned a cold shoulder to mankind, and our cities, roads, railroads and grassy fields are buried under un-ending layers of frigid ice.  Altman's film opens and closes with exterior views of white-on-white eternity as human figures wander into and out of view, respectively.  The white-on-white opening and closing shots of the film mirror the existentialist, nihilistic philosophy of the Quintet board game: the film's action occurs in the "interlude" between the twin abysses, before-birth, and after-death.

Enhancing the sense of grim, unrelenting hopelessness, Quintet introduces us to the character of Vivia, a charming, child-like girl who approaches every new vista in the half-buried city with a sense of innocent wonder.  Vivia is younger than any other survivor, perhaps the youngest of all the humans left alive on Earth, and she is pregnant.  Her pregnancy -- like her very personhood -- carries our one hope for the future; that mankind can somehow carry on and survive in the face of an enveloping Ice Age.  Even Vivia's name suggests life itself, derived from the Latin verb, vivere, meaning "to live."

When Vivia -- life herself -- is wantonly murdered in Quintet's first act, all hope for a positive future is utterly destroyed.  Essex may survive for a time, but it is not accurate to suggest that he really "lives."  His life becomes devoted to Quintet; towards understanding the brand of death that took away his companion and his child; and the very future itself. 

The murderer, Redstone, who killed both Vivia and her unborn child has no moral response to Essex's pursuit.  After killing a room-ful of innocents as well as his quarry (Francha), Redstone can only offer the worthless, pitiful caveat, "I broke no rules."  If life and death are just part of a game, and murder is part of the rules, then perhaps he's right.

Virtually every character Altman introduces audiences to in Quintet clearly lives with the expectation that the world is coming to an end for the human race.  "Hope is an obsolete word," one character notes truthfully.  Even the film's final punctuation, Grigor's explanation about the "prize" if you win the Quintet Tournament, is woefully grim.  Specifically, there is no cash reward, no cache of food, not even a warm jacket at the end of this game of death. 

No, the winning "prize" to this death game is that you live to fight another day; you survive in a hopeless world for one more cycle, at least.  That's the apotheosis of spirituality that these humans strive to achieve: one more day of misery, alive, before inevitably returning to the abyss of nothingness. 

At the end of the film, Essex pointedly attempts to refute this kind of nihilist thinking, saying he prefers to hope for something better up north.  But even this forced, vocal expression of hope is a sham.  The next shot -- Quintet's final, lingering image -- finds Essex marching away into the white-on-white, snow-covered distance. He eventually disappears, gone in the haze, and the end credits roll.  Essex may believe he has hope; but the abyss nonetheless swallows him in the end; as it swallows everyone.

In depicting a future world where there is as little humanity as there is warmth, Quintet ultimately proves distancing on an emotional level.   Paul Newman plays his character's emotions close-to-the-vest, going for a minimalist approach that denies us any significant level of understanding or sympathy.  We want to watch him fall apart; to mourn with him over the death of the future.  We want to watch him get even; watch him kill his enemies.  But Newman's impressive, balanced performance permits no such easy solace; Essex carries his pain inside.

Even the murder and chase scenes in Quintet lack suspense (as critic Vincent Canby noted in The New York Times), but again, that seems to -- oddly -- fit the film's tenor. This world is so miserable and the character motivations so opaque, that we feel no thrill at either Essex's victory, or at St. Christopher's defeat.  Our blood has run as cold as the landscape.  The chill is so strong that while watching Quintet we begin to lose our capacity to feel for the characters, just as they have lost the capacity to empathize or sympathize with their fellow man.

The most human and affecting moment in Quintet occurs shortly after Vivia's death.  By this point, Altman has staged multiple shots of dog packs eating human corpses, unbothered by the city goers.  The dogs hungrily lick spilled blood out of the ice, and not a single human being attempts to stop the animals from feasting on such remains. 

But the grieving Essex returns to his brother's quarters and takes the corpse of his companion, Vivia (who was also carrying his child) and at great physical labor carries her  body across the vast, open ice plain.  The dog packs nip at his heels the whole way, but  Essex finally reaches a freezing river, and disposes of Vivia's corpse there.  We watch as her body disappears beneath the placid surface, and recognize this is an infinitely preferable end than the one society would otherwise have granted  for her, as -- again literally -- dog food.  And again, we don't see Essex break down or cry, or swear vengeance. 

He just watches the body sink, and moves on.

It's tough -- and yes, uncomfortable -- to buy into a world where human life means so little that the bodies of loved ones are regularly left as food for scavengers, yet Quintet proves impressive on at least an intellectual level, perhaps because of its uncompromising nature.  The bleak film plays in some ways like a bizarre Western, with a stranger arriving in a frontier town and becoming involved in a shoot-out contest, or some such thing, should such a comparison serve to contextualize the film for the wary. 

So it's a challenge to "enjoy" Quintet, but as one character in the film trenchantly notes, "you never understand the scheme until you are part of the scheme."    In other words, if you hunker down and truly commit to Altman's uncompromising vision for Quintet, you may come, in some cerebral fashion at least, to appreciate the terrifying and lonely world he shows you here.