50 Years Ago: Futureworld (1976)

A key character in Futureworld (1975) informs another character that the problem at Delos -- the amusement park of the future -- is "the memory" of the nightmarish events that occurred in Western World, or for viewer purposes, the harrowing events of the great sci-fi movie Westworld (1973).

The very same problem might be ascribed to this less-than-satisfactory cinematic sequel directed by Richard T. Heffron and starring Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner.  In short, it just doesn't live up to the original, action-packed experience of Westworld.

Though it is rewarding and ambitious that this AIP, Samuel Z. Arkoff sequel heads off into new story territory rather than aping the formula or plot-line of the previous film, Futureworld still suffers dramatically from a lack of forward momentum, and a slow-moving, obvious narrative.  

In short, it takes this movie roughly 83 minutes to get to the plot point that audiences have already reached much sooner, and that is that the robots at Delos have taken over the park, and are producing robot duplicates of world leaders and opinion makers.   

Today the amusement park...tomorrow the world.

Since the two lead actors in the film are playing ace newspaper and TV reporters, you'd expect them to put two and two together a lot sooner than they actually do.   But no, they can't even detect a robot close-up, face-to-face in the Delos mission control room.  

Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein, this Browning (Fonda) and Ballard (Danner).

Worse, Futureworld spends an inordinate amount of the film's running time in the underground bowels of Delos, apparently really the Intercontinental Airport in Huston.  Whatever the precise location, it looks like an endless, over sized boiler room, and after a while all the scenes set there look interchangeable and play as deadly dull.

"In Futureworld, nothing can go wrong..."

Some time after the violent events at Western World, the Delos board of directors holds a briefing to announce the re-launch of the $1,200-a-day amusement park.  

The company has committed 1.5 billion dollars to replace the malfunctioning equipment, and executives claim that the new Delos is "fail safe."

International Media Corporation sends reporter Chuck Browning (Peter Fonda)  to investigate the new Delos.  Browning is eager to take the assignment because an informant just recently contacted him about a "big" story at the park and then was found murdered, with news-clippings clutched in his hand.  

Tracy Ballard (Blythe Danner) a TV newswoman with an audience of fifty-five million viewers is none-too-pleased that Browning will be tagging along at Delos, but she and Chuck quickly develop a flirtatious and competitive relationship.

Once at Delos, the reporters visit "Futureworld," a new theme park to go alongside Roman World, Medieval World, and the now-defunct Western World.   After their arrival, the reporters board a rocket simulation, visit a space station, spar with robot boxers, and otherwise enjoy the space age sights and sounds of the luxury resort.  A Delos executive named Duffy (Arthur Hill) escorts the duo on a tour of the Delos facility, and Chuck sneaks off to see if he can discover the truth behind the smooth-running facade.

What Chuck and Tracy soon learn with the help of an employee named Harry (Stuart Margolin) and his android buddy, Clark, is that Delos has been producing duplicates of all the big-wig, high-roller visitors, from Russian generals to Iranian oil magnates.   Ballard and Browning themselves are to be duplicated by the robots, who believe that "the human being is a very unstable, irrational, violent animal" and that mankind will destroy the Earth "before the end of the decade."

Before escaping Delos, Tracy must face down a robot double of herself in the abandoned Westworld, while Chuck battles his own malevolent doppelganger in Futureworld.

"Once you make it with a robot, you don't want anyone else..."

All movies are a reflection of their cultural context, and Futureworld is no exception.  

Coming soon after the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation, this movie headlines  two "hero journalists" -- again, think Woodward and Bernstein -- as they uncover a far-reaching conspiracy and essentially save the world as we know it.  In other words, this movie comes from an age in which we had respected journalists (not "lame-stream" media), and believed that these truth-seekers could successfully stand-up to City Hall.  

The other cultural or historical context at work here is one that a blog reader Indianhoop insightfully suggested to me in a comment on my original review of Westworld way back in 2011.  I had asked the question "why were the mid-1970s obsessed with robots who could have sex, and duplicate other human functions?  

In particular, I was thinking of movies such as Westworld, Futureworld, The Stepford Wives and TV characters such as The Bionic Woman's fembots.  Indianhoop suggested that the women's rights issues and battles of the 1970s (Roe v. Wade, Title IX, the ERA, etc.) were at the crux of the issue, and I believe Indianhoop is correct. In the mid-1970s, women were stepping out of so-called "traditional roles" and countenancing more economic and reproductive freedom than in any decade before.  The reaction by men -- if genre movies are any guidepost -- seemed to be downright fear.  

Without women to lord it over, I guess, human robots were considered next in line for domestic servitude. After all, machines follow orders, don't step outside of their programming, and can fake orgasms brilliantly...at least if Stepford Wives is any indication.

Ironically, one fact that so dramatically undercuts Futureworld is the writing of the lead female character, Tracy Ballard.  This is a  dedicated woman who has risen to the top of her profession (think Barbara Walters in the 1970s) and who commands a vast worldwide audience.  And yet Ballard spends most of the film as an arm ornament for Peter Fonda, alternately poo-pooing his theories or screaming in terror.  Ballard initiates no investigation on her own, and shows not the slightest bit of interest or curiosity in learning the truth about Delos.

Lois Lane, she ain't.  

Despite what was going on in America at the time, what we really have in the Tracy Ballard character is a good old fashioned damsel-in-distress, dressed up in disco-decade, women's lib clothing.   Ultimately, she's kind of laughable, and almost wholly incidental to the narrative.

That's not Futureworld's only letdown either.  Late in the film, robot duplicates of Chuck and Tracy are produced, and sent out to hunt down "the originals."  All throughout the film, the robots of Delos have been portrayed as unemotional creatures who obey orders and programming, but have no overt "human" countenance.  

Well, wouldn't you know it, Fonda and Danner both play these robot duplicates as devilish, sinister characters, who seem to take tremendous, sadistic pleasure in destroying their human prototypes.  

Why are these robots -- all of the sudden -- out-and-out evil?  Aren't they just fulfilling their programming?  Even when The Gunslinger went on a rampage in Westworld, he wasn't cackling with malevolent glee.  That's what made him scary: he was an implacable foe with a neutral countenance.  We were able to project our human fears upon his relatively blank visage, but he was no two-dimensional mustache-twirler.

Another major scene in Futureworld is simply baffling.  Duffy escorts Ballard to a "dream chamber" where she can go to sleep and Browning can watch her dreams unfold on a video monitor that resembles Spock's library computer on Star Trek.   

Almost immediately, Ballard dreams of the Gunslinger (Yul Brynner) from Westworld, but not as a terrifying predator or foe, but rather as a "fantasy lover."

In the dream, the Gunslinger appears out of nowhere and rescues Ballard from doctors in red-jumpsuits who are pursuing her.  The Gunslinger shoots them down, and then lassos Ballard in slow-motion...and beds her.

So, why is Tracy Ballard -- TV newswoman extraordinaire -- dreaming of the Delos Gunslinger as a fantasy lover?  Not a single word in the screenplay indicates she even has specific knowledge of the rogue robot cowboy.  But assuming she did have such knowledge, why would Ballard's dreaming mind spontaneously turn the murderous Gunslinger into a fantasy sex partner?

Maybe I'm being obtuse, but I just don't get it.

I know that my wife thinks Yul Brynner is hot, but come on.  Would you dream of bedding a  mass murderer?  And a robotic one at that? This entire, incongruous scene feels like an excuse to shoehorn Brynner into the proceedings.  It's a bizarre and confusing interlude, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the film.   The moment wherein Brynner lassos Danner with an animated pink lasso is just...well, embarrassing.  It's great to see Brynner back in his iconic role, looking as fit and menacing as ever, but his presence adds nothing to the movie.

I've read various reviews of this film over the years indicating that there is "high tension" here, but I certainly didn't feel that way.  Unlike Westworld, which moved with drive, humor and purpose, Futureworld meanders  around for about an hour-and-a-half minutes, then spends the last fifteen minutes tying up loose ends.  There's almost no real tension, since Delos employees allow Browning and Ballard to look around, and the 400 robot series is programmed to ignore visitors in their midst.

I also find it unfortunate that Futureworld wastes so much time in the bowels of the amusement park rather than exploring the Futureworld setting.  This is a place of "space safaris," holographic chess (presaging Star Wars by two years...) and skiing on the "ice slopes of Mars."  Wouldn't you rather see some of that, instead of endless boiler rooms?

But the trenchant point here concerns fantasy...and the fantasy experience.  Westworld was about living in a fantasy world of violence and sex, and discovering it isn't such a fantasy after all.  The film didn't hammer you over the head with that theme.  Rather, it had a nice, droll sense of humor about the whole thing.

Futureworld ignores this idea (and the sense of humor) entirely in favor of its very dry conspiracy about lookalike robots...and boiler rooms.

Or as Tracy Ballard declares at one point in this interminable movie, walking through  yet another industrial-looking chamber, "This is about as exciting as a visit to the waterworks."

Yep.  This movie went to Futureworld and all the audience gets is a dumb T-shirt.

Abnormal Fixation wins BEST WEB SERIES at Best Hollywood Day Short Film Festival

 

Guest Post: Obsession (2026)

Obsession: A Disquieting Commentary on a Popular Trope

Guest Post by Jonas Schwartz-Owen

Remember those beloved ’80s teen comedies, where Lloyd Dobler blares his boombox outside his ex-girlfriend’s window despite her breaking up with him, or the geek has sex with a passed-out prom queen? Hilarity ensues - until the hangover of hindsight kicks in and we realize these “charming” moments were never funny, never charming, and definitely not forgivable.

Curry Barker’s runaway hit Obsession drags those moments back into the light and reconstructs them for what they always were: stalking, assault, and other atrocities. This time, the “hero” gets the consequences he always deserved.

Bear (Michael Johnston) has a deep fixation on his coworker and friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette), who long ago relegated him to the friend zone. Desperate, he buys a trinket from a magic shop that promises to grant one wish. He wishes Nikki would love him more than anyone else in the world, then snaps the twig-like charm as instructed. As anyone who’s read W.W. Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw knows: be careful what you wish for.

New-media wunderkind Curry Barker has scared up a fortune for Blumhouse and Focus Features, thanks in part to his massive YouTube following - 1.33 million subscribers - and the viral success of his first film, Milk & Serial (3.2 million views). More importantly, Obsession is a taut, confident piece of filmmaking. Bear’s responsibility for the chaos never gets swept under the rug to make him seem heroic, and yet his core “crime” remains relatable. Who hasn’t, at some point, wished a friend would become something more? Barker establishes a creeping sense of dread early, so when the horror erupts, the audience is already primed.

The film delivers several memorable set pieces that linger: Nikki’s patient wait for “her man” to come home, a nimble spoof of the much-maligned animal cracker scene from Armageddon, a game of Jenga with far more than wooden blocks at stake, and possibly the worst college acceptance reveal in cinematic history.

The film does stumble in one key area - particularly frustrating given its commentary on toxic relationship tropes. The “real” Nikki becomes more of a conduit, her unseen suffering functioning as torture for Bear. But the movie never fully establishes the stakes for Nikki herself. Is her consciousness trapped in a kind of hell (as one tech-support gag implies), or is she imprisoned inside her own body, à la Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out? Nikki is blameless - she didn’t cause any of the insanity Bear unleashes - yet the audience only truly connects with her in the final moments. It feels less like a revelation and more like a final twist of the knife. For a film dissecting toxic masculinity, it occasionally forgets the woman at the center of it.

The cast grounds the movie with quirky, committed performances. Johnston, who is openly gay, brings an added layer of subtext to Bear, despite the character being heterosexual. Anyone who has wrestled with identity in their youth may recognize the desperation to appear “normal” by fixating on someone of the opposite sex - an obsession that’s less about love and more about self-denial. Whether intentional or not, it’s a compelling layer.

Though the script sometimes shortchanges Nikki, Inde Navarrette nearly steals the film. Her character’s hairpin emotional shifts give her the opportunity to play multiple registers at once. 

Megan Lawless, as the girl-next-door hopelessly in love with Bear, channels the great “third wheel” archetypes - Watts (Some Kind of Wonderful) and Duckie (Pretty in Pink) - while making the role her own. She’s a fully realized love interest who is consistently overlooked. Cooper Tomlinson, Barker’s comedy partner, slots neatly into the jock-best-friend role, serving as both comic relief and moral sounding board.

For Obsession to become such a massive moneymaker, it’s clearly tapping into something in the zeitgeist. Maybe it’s that Barker, a Gen Z creator, has cracked the code and delivered a $750,000 budgeted juggernaut. Maybe it’s proof that a well-made horror film can still drag audiences back into theaters. Or maybe it’s both. It could take years before scholars like John Kenneth Muir fully dissect its cultural significance.

For now, though, the new king definitely has clothes - and they’re bloody good.

 

50 Years Ago - The Bicentennial!

Since it is July 4, 2026, I thought it might be an opportune to remember America's Bicentennial celebration of 1976....50 years ago

I remember the occasion, five decades ago, well.  I was six years old, and the Bicentennial -- the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence -- was all the craze, all over the country. I was in Kindergarten at the time, and much of our class work was geared towards the Bicentennial and remembering the beginnings of our country.

At the time, Gerald Ford -- an unelected President, ironically -- was Commander-in-Chief, and he spoke meaningfully in Philadelphia, on the occasion, about the aspirations of the first Americans.  He tallied them as personal freedom, self-government, and national unity.

I also remember that my family participated in a costume contest and parade for the Bicentennial at Forest Avenue Primary School in Glen Ridge, the town where I lived.  You can see us all in the photo from that occasion, above.  I'm the little guy up front.  My mother sewed all the costumes from scratch.

Today we usually see costumes such as these worn only by protesters, but during the Bicentennial madness of 1976, tri-corn hats hadn't yet been appropriated by any political movement. They were for everyone who wanted to celebrate the 200th anniversary of our belovednation.

Actually, the Bicentennial was celebrated in all kinds of ways back in 1976. There were Bicentennial coins (quarters, I believe...) a Bicentennial lottery (in my home state of New Jersey) and even Super Bowl X got into the act with players from the Steelers and Cowboys wearing Bicentennial patches. There were Bicentennial TV commercials, and more.

Honestly, I can't believe that this was fifty years ago. Sometimes I can remember it all so clearly.  

I will be 106 if I live to see America's Tricentennial...but I'm eating right and exercising in hopes of making the date. 

I hope I'll see you there! 

40 Years Ago: Psycho III (1986)

Directed by Anthony Perkins, Psycho III (1986) is -- perhaps paradoxically -- both sleazier and more spiritual than its 1960 and 1983 predecessors were.  

The third film in the Psycho mythos explores a world of the fallen; a world of sex without love, and cynicism but no truth. Yet the film’s consistent use of religious symbolism suggests that Norman Bates can yet be redeemed, and yet navigate this mortal coil. He may, perhaps, even find forgiveness, and love.

Although Psycho III does not feature a tightly-structured mystery like the ones that dominated Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) or Franklin’s Psycho II (1982), the second sequel nonetheless thrives on its finely-developed sense of gallows humor, particularly in a scene involving a (bloody) ice machine.  

Also, Anthony Perkins’ unparalleled understanding of the Norman Bates character makes this film, perhaps, the most sentimental entry thus far, and Psycho III is the first film in the series that might genuinely be said to feature a happy ending, even if it is arrived at through tragedy. 

Although Psycho III’s loose narrative structure means that the story feels less urgent than it should, it also permits Perkins’ more breathing room, more freedom to excavate the character of Norman,  the “man boy.”  At least some critics would consider this a fair trade. I know I do, especially since Perkins still leans hard on crisp imagery and visual symbolism to express Norman’s tale.

On that point, the late Robert Ebert recounted in his review of Psycho III a scene in which Norman believes that he will come face-to-face with his (dead) mother. Ebert writes that though Perkins’ “facial expressions” -- in a long, unbroken shot of him walking the length of the motel front -- are not subtle, he isn’t over-acting, either. 

Rather “he projects such turmoil that we almost sympathize with him.”  

This is Perkins’ modus operandi throughout Psycho III, making viewers see Norman as more than a murderous schizophrenic, and more than a pawn to be maneuvered on a chess board about like others of strong will (such as Mother, Emma Spool, or Lila Loomis).  

Although it was not a box office success in 1986, Psycho III gained (sometimes grudging) respect from many critics, in part because Perkins’ has charted such an intriguing path for Norman. In the past, Bates has seemed so confused, so directionless that redemption wasn’t necessarily even an option. In Psycho III, one can, for the first time, see his path towards that destination.

The result is a sequel that, in the words of horror film scholar Ken Hanke is “just short of being a little masterpiece.”

“You remind me of someone I knew once.”

A fallen nun named Maureen Coyle (Diana Scarwid) is responsible for the accidental death of a fellow nun at her convent following a suicide attempt.  Consumed with guilt and feeling faithless, Maureen leaves the church and her responsibilities.  She wanders the desert with only a suitcase of her belongings, until she is offered a ride by a sleazy guitar player, Duane (Jeff Fahey).

After Duane makes unwanted advances, Maureen ends up in the desert again, but she soon happens upon the town of Fairvale, home to Norman Bates and the Bates Motel.  Almost immediately, Norman is drawn to Maureen because she reminds him of Marion Crane (and even shares her initials and hair-cut).  

Growing closer to Maureen by the day, Norman hires Duane to manage his motel at the same time a nosy reporter, Tracy Venable (Roberta Maxwell) comes to town wishing to interview Bates regarding “the insanity defense.”

Norman saves Maureen when she attempts suicide again, slitting her wrists in bathtub, and Maureen resolves that she can save Norman too.

But Mother may have other ideas..

“The past is not really the past.”

From Psycho III’s opening blast -- Maureen’s sacrilegious shout that “There is no God!” -- the film treads deeply into a religious argument and symbolism. The film’s inaugural image is of the Virgin Mary, and not coincidentally, Mary looms as an important figure in the film when one thinks closely about Norman and his journey.  

For one thing, the Virgin Mary is a mother -- the mother of Jesus in particular, -- and we all know that a boy’s mother is his best friend, according to Bates own testimony.  For a franchise that obsesses on a Mother’s power over her family, it is appropriate that this Psycho sequel should choose the symbol of the Virgin Mary to explore.

More to the point, Norman boasts a long history of falling in love with women named Mary, women who can -- under the right circumstances -- “save” him from himself/Mother, if given the opportunity. Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane. Meg Tilly plays Mary Loomis. And Diana Scarwid, here, is Maureen.  All three are human versions of Mary, one could say, women who try to help Norman in some way.

The film’s first act also suggests, after a fashion, a story from Scripture: the expulsion from Paradise or the Garden of Eden.  We see Norman living a life alone at the motel, happily stuffing birds and never interfacing with people or the larger world.  This little tract of desert land is his paradise, away from the prying eyes of Fairvale, and it is a place where he gets to be…innocent.  

The events of the film soon compel Norman to leave that paradise, reckon with the real world, and finally, embrace a genuine human relationship

Early in the film, we see a plastic Jesus figure in Duane's car. Later in Psycho III we get a close-up of the Holy Bible, and finally, Maureen hallucinates that Norman in his Mother gear, brandishing a knife, is actually the Virgin Mary holding a crucifix, coming to save her from herself.  

Mother wears a dark blue dress, as always, and importantly, many art works from antiquity associate Mary with the color blue as well.  

One level, one could note that this is a wicked joke: a murdering, knife-wielding “Mother” as the Virgin Mary?  

On another level, however, Maureen’s hallucination of the Virgin Mary suggests the ultimate strength of her faith, and it is that faith which allows her to forgive Norman and help him seek his redemption. 

Thus Psycho III suggests a weird symbiosis. By dressing as Mother and saving Maureen from death, Norman rekindles the nun’s belief that she deserves a second chance.  And by embracing that second chance, Maureen decides to spend it saving Norman, despite her full knowledge of his past wrong-doings.  They each help or complete the other.

Another figure known for love – Cupid – however, proves Norman’s undoing. Maureen falls on the staircase in the Bates house and her skull is speared by a Cupid sculpture, an act which precludes Norman and Maureen from finding happiness together. Yet, in a way, Maureen, by showing Norman love and acceptance, has already done her job.  By the end of the film, Norman turns his butcher knife on Mother and declares that he is finally “free” of her.  

Sure, he’s headed back to the looney bin, but Mother is no longer a monkey on his back. Norman has known love because of Maureen, and will no more be enslaved to his most peculiar form of Oedipal love.

Oddly enough, the sleazy aspects of Psycho III ultimately add to the film’s spiritual argument. 

Duane puts the moves on Maureen and when she resists, quips that she could have been “coming” instead of “going.”  Nice.

Later, Duane is nasty and abusive to a woman he has bedded. He throws her out of his hotel room, leaving her stranded -- and topless -- in public.   

At another point, we see the drunk, horny revelers of Homecoming in the motel, and again there’s the feeling of a cynical, sleazy world. That Norman and Maureen find true love -- even for a brief, shining moment -- against this backdrop, is truly an accomplishment.  They not only forgive and accept one another, they love each other in a way that is not ugly or cynical, but sweet.

One of the best scenes in the film is a quiet one, wherein Norman, sitting in a diner, allows himself to be interviewed by the toxic, chain-smoking reporter, Tracy Venable. She asks him about the insanity defense, and Norman replies that his cure “could not cure the hurt” that his actions caused.  He furthermore explains that “the past is not really the past,” a viewpoint that suggests a highly developed form of Catholic guilt.  

Long-time readers of the blog may remember how I discussed Catholic guilt vis-à-vis Captain Kirk in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), but Catholic guilt could defined as a melancholy or world-weariness brought about by an examined life. It's the constant questioning and re-parsing of decisions and history (some call it Scrupulosity). Here, Norman shows the capacity to examine his life, and see it from a perspective that is not to his favor. His quest is to be forgiven for “the past that is not really the past.” Maureen helps him to do that, but the scene with Venable explores the fact that Norman is not some mindless lunatic (in sharp contrast to the other slashers of the 1980s), but a man who is fully aware of the “private trap” in which he is snared.

The greatest scene in Psycho III, however, is one that would have made Hitchcock proud, and which isn’t strictly speaking, a part of the film’s theme of forgiveness/redemption.  

Instead, it’s just a droll scene brilliantly shot, that fosters suspense. The scene involves Fairvale’s Sheriff Hunt at the Bates Motel. He has come to question Norman about a missing woman, and digs his hand into the outdoor ice machine to cool off.  

Right out of his view, is the body of that victim, buried under all the ice in the freezer.  Norman knows the corpse is there, but the Sheriff doesn’t. Perkins’ camera cuts to a close-up of the ice -- the bloody ice -- next to the Sheriff’s grasping hands.  The scene’s pay-off is a close-up of the sheriff’s face as he licks bloody ice water from his lips, but is no wiser to the game.   

This scene is brilliantly written, constructed, and executed and it gets to the core appeal of the Psycho films. Not surprisingly, that appeal is schizophrenic. On one hand, we want Norman Bates to get caught.  On the other hand, we want him to go free and find happiness. Those two ideas compete in the brain, and the result is a kind of unbearable suspense.

Perkins gets it, naturally, and as Jeff Strickler in the Star Tribune wrote, he “shows the same precision as a director that he demonstrates as an actor.”  Psycho III is a “cut above” most sequels horror sequels because of his involvement, and proof positive that the film series was still conjuring new and worthwhile stories for Norman Bates in the late 1980s.

40 Years Ago: Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

One of my all-time favorite cult movies is John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China (1986), a film involving an American hero treading into a mysterious, non-Western world where he feels like an “outsider.”  That world, in this case, is not literally another planet, but rather the mystical and dangerous world of Chinese black magic. 

So. movie audiences get an on-screen representative of “us” countenancing a strange land and strange customs, but Big Trouble in Little China leverages tremendous humor not only from the peculiarities of this culture clash, but from the rather dramatic presentation of the American hero in question.   

To wit, Kurt Russell’s truck-driving, self-important protagonist, Jack Burton, is a swaggering, blundering John Wayne-voiced blow-hard.   He’s Jack Blurtin’, so-to-speak.

And yet Jack also reveals (in the words of the screenplay) “great courage” under stress, and his heart is always (well, almost always...) in the right place.  I have always maintained that the accident-prone but intrinsically heroic Burton represents director Carpenter’s most positive silver screen depiction of American dominance upon the world stage, especially compared with the perspectives showcased in the dystopian Escape from New York (1981) and the 1980s social critique, They Live (1988).

I also wrote in my book The Films of John Carpenter that “it’s all in the reflexes,” to quote Jack. So Big Trouble in Little China serves as Carpenter’s almost reflexive tribute to the style of Chinese martial arts films.  Thus, this is a movie that rests largely on Carpenter's unimpeachable film-making instincts, his fully-developed directorial muscle or chops.  The action sequences -- particularly an early one set in a Chinatown alley -- represent a visual tour de force.   The final battle in the film is one of the most giddy, over-the-top, visually-dynamic set-pieces put to celluloid in the 1980s, and a high point for the fantasy/action genre.

But here's the big secret in Little China: the film is much more than action too. 

What is Big Trouble in Little China, then?   Well, the film is one part culture clash, one part genre pastiche and all camp humor. Writing for the Village Voice, Scott Foundas suggested Big Trouble was a “far more enjoyable mash-up of classic Westerns, Saturday-morning serials, and Chinese wu xia than any of the Indiana Jones movies, with Kurt Russell in full bloom as Carpenter's de rigueur hard-drinkin', hard-gamblin', wise-crackin' loner hero—a bowling-alley John Wayne.”

And as critic Richard Corliss wrote in Time Magazine (“Everything New is Old Again”), Big Trouble in Little China “offers dollops of entertainment, but it is so stocked with canny references to other pictures that it suggests a master’s thesis that moves.”

And boy, how Big Trouble in Little China moves.  It never stops moving, in fact.

This is one frenetically-paced spectacular, and the feeling of unfettered delight Carpenter engenders simply from the film’s manic sense of speed is a remarkable thing.  One scene near the climax that begins with a close-up of a hammer pounding an alarm bell escalates to such intense velocity that your heart threatens to leap out of your chest.  And naturally,the moment ends on a joke.  After running a gauntlet of monsters, bullets, and opponents, Jack Burton is nearly undone...by a red traffic light.

Frankly, I’ve never understood why so many critics rejected this film upon its release in the summer of 1986, but as I always argue: don’t bet against John Carpenter in the long-run.  Big Trouble in Little China has ably survived the slings and arrows of bad reviews and stood the test of time to emerge one of the most beloved cult movies of the 1980s. 

I think this is likely so because of Jack Burton.  Other films have been set in distinctive "underworlds," and many movies have been set against the backdrop of Chinese myth or legend.

But there is only one Jack Burton.

“Everybody relax. I’m here.”

When his friend, Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is unable to re-pay a bet, surly truck driver Jack Burton (Russell) tags along to the airport to pick up Wang’s betrothed, Miao Yin (Suzee Pai).  Unfortunately, the green-eyed beauty is abducted right out from under the duo by a Chinese gang known as the “Lords of Death.”  Miao Yin is then delivered into the custody of an ancient warlord and cursed spirit called Lo Pan (James Hong).  Lo Pan believes that if he marries and sacrifices a green-eyed woman, he will be rendered flesh again, after two-thousand years as an insubstantial ghost.

Jack and Wang pursue the gang to Chinatown and become embroiled in an all-out gang war.  Jack’s parked truck is stolen from an alleyway, and the theft draws the skeptical American further into the realm of Chinese black magic.  Soon, Jack teams-up with an elder sorcerer, Egg Shen (Victor Wong) and a crusading lawyer, Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall) to stop Lo Pan and recover Wang’s would-be bride and his own ride.  This quest takes Jack deep underground, into the Hell of Upside Down Sinners, into Lo-Pan’s secret lair, and into fierce battle with monsters, warriors and ghosts of all shapes and sizes.

“May the wings of liberty never lose a feather.”

As the The Village Voice review notes, Big Trouble in Little China can be interpreted as an example of the Chinese literary and film form known as the Wu xia, or simply “wuxia.”  

In stories of this type, a young hero survives and overcomes tragedy in his life, undertakes a heroic quest, and ultimately emerges as a great fighter and an adult, all while maintaining a strict code of honorable behavior.  To state the matter broadly, “wuxia” is the Chinese equivalent of the western-based “heroic journey.”  It’s a rite-of-passage tale, and one that heavily features a romantic component.

Big Trouble in Little China conforms with many details of the established wuxia formula if and only if the viewer considers Wang Chi the film’s prime hero figure.  Wang loses his bride-to-be, undertakes the quest to save her, and becomes – during the course of the film – a real hero.   Each time he fights, Wang becomes stronger until, by film’s end, he is actually an equal to Lo Pan’s invincible minions, the Storms.   

Of course, the quality that makes Big Trouble in Little China so unusual as wuxia and as action film is that the capable hero – the man on the quest and with all the heroic capabilities – is but a sidekick or second fiddle to the star, the bumbling, accident-prone Burton.  

Thus, in some significant but very funny and subversive way, Big Trouble in Little China questions and teases long-standing Hollywood assumptions that America and Americans must always stand at the center of the cinematic action, and must always play the “hero.”  This film suggests there’s another tradition and source of inspiration for cinematic adventure too.  

After all, George Lucas raided the film oeuvre of Akira Kurosawa to create Star Wars, so here John Carpenter pays tribute to Eastern-produced martial arts fantasies and their unique style of heroic storytelling.  

Again and again, then, Big Trouble in Little China invites us to view our "hero" Burton in distinctly funny and non-traditional terms.  He faces the implacable bad guys with bright red lip-stick marring his face, for example.  Far from striking fear in the heart of his enemies, Jack’s battle cry actually renders only himself unconscious.  At one point, we see Jack miss his intended target with a knife throw, and on several occasions he expresses fear and uncertainty about the creatures and world around him.

In spite of all this, Jack is certainly persistent and loyal and yes, heroic. So you get the feeling that, when held in contrast to the film’s Asian characters, Carpenter’s depiction of Jack charts an intriguing new global dynamic.  

Specifically, American might and bravery joins with Asian complexity for a great victory against evil.  Jack is a big and strong American, grounded in stereotypical western concepts, whereas the Asians are more introspective and ambivalent. In other words, Jack seems to live on the surface of reality; reality as his (limited) imagination weighs it. This quality enables him to see clearly “right” and “wrong.”  By comparison, the Chinese characters dwell in a more ambivalent, complicated self-doubting state; one where modernity requires them to eschew the beliefs they know to be true.

In terms of the film’s characters, the Americans in Big Trouble in Little China are defined basically by what they look like and what they say.  Jack is a muscle-bound, athletic truck driver and looks every bit the traditional hero.  Gracie Law is a beautiful lawyer and simultaneously a walking parody of the old Hollywood film cliché: the lady crusader.  “I’m always poking my nose where it doesn’t belong,” she enthuses at one point, effectively defining her own purpose in the narrative.  Both Jack and Gracie boast an exaggerated sense of self-importance too.  At one point, Jack blusters into a room and says, flat-out, “Don’t worry, I’m here.”

The Eastern characters, by contrast, seemed defined…differently.  On the surface, Egg-Shen appears to be a little old man and bus driver, but in reality he is a powerful sorcerer.  Wang Chi is a skinny, diminutive man who works in his uncle’s Chinese restaurant, and yet is actually a warrior of superb skills.  The Chinese heroes seem to possess layers of self-awareness, modesty and contradiction that Jack and Gracie do not.

Kurt Russell does a mean John Wayne impersonation as Jack, and that choice underlines the film’s unique approach to heroism.  When we think of John Wayne, we think of the idealized American hero, a man from a time when “men were men” and  when morality was as plain as black and white.  But Jack Burton drives his truck into an alleyway in Chinatown in this film, and all bets are off.   Suddenly, he might as well be on another planet, just like Flash Gordon because he’s asked to countenance an ethnically diverse world where all the truths he holds dear about the nature of the universe may no longer apply.  Certainty is harder to come by.  

If John Wayne had met the moral ambiguity of the late 1970s or 1980s, perhaps he’d be Jack Burton.  

The front-and-center placement of the anachronistic John Wayne character in a drama about foreign mythology and spiritual is the very thing that makes Big Trouble in Little China more than just your average adventure film, but rather a commentary on our shifting position in a globalized world.  In the 1980s, when it looked like the East (particularly Japan) was rising to eclipse America in terms of innovation and technology, along came Big Trouble in Little China to -- with tongue-in-cheek -- critique our place in the new world order.  

“I’m feeling a little like an outsider here,” says Jack.  “You are,” is the reply from the Chinese.  But then, as they must readily admit, the Chinese protagonists need Jack.  Their destiny rests in his “capable hands.”   He is the one they require (with his black and white views of the world?) to bring "order out of chaos."

Jack has a lot of catching-up to do in the film in terms of understanding Chinese lore and mysticism, but in the final analysis, who ultimately takes out Lo Pan?

When Jack does save the day (because he was born ready, remember), he does so, literally, with time-worn reflexes.  Lo Pan tosses a knife at him, and Jack instinctively tosses it back, with fatal results.  When Jack states “it’s all in the reflexes” it’s a deliberate comment on America too.  Our reflex – our instinct - is to act heroically, even if we don’t always think our way fully through a problem before jumping in.  We may have to play catch up, like Jack, but when big trouble rears its head, the world counts on us to do something...and we invariably deliver.  

Moving with breathtaking speed and with ample good humor, Big Trouble in Little China is much smarter than it tends to get credit for.  It takes the long-standing cliché of American Exceptionalism and both questions and re-affirms it for the age of globalism.  But if the delightful, one-of-a-kind Jack Burton – warts and all – is an insult to our traditional American images of strength and power as some film scholars insist, then, to quote the great man himself, “Go ahead…insult me.” 

Because when the "chips are down," you can count on Jack Burton.  

(Not to mention John Carpenter).

40 Years Ago: Labyrinth (1986)

Although it bombed at the box office in 1986, Labyrinth -- director Jim Henson’s elaborate follow-up to The Dark Crystal (1982) -- is one of those films that, across the span of decades, has attained cult classic status. More than that, the film has found meaning and relevance for generation after generation of enthusiastic, imaginative children.

Although the film’s final act degenerates into unnecessary and ultimately uninteresting violence, Labyrinth finally deserves its longevity because it symbolically and effectively makes its case for female agency, for the explicit right of its fifteen-year old protagonist, Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) to chart her own path as she reckons with maturity and the world surrounding her.

As is plain from any close analysis of the film, Labyrinth acutely concerns a young woman who is trapped between two worlds both literally and metaphorically. At fifteen, Sarah is no longer a child, nor precisely an adult. Instead, she is somewhere in between, and not certain where, precisely, she belongs.

Importantly, Sarah also resides at the half-way point between childhood fantasy or imagination, and real world responsibilities, as befitting her age. 

The film’s opening scene reflects Sarah's uncertain status of “in-between.” Labyrinth’s inaugural shot reveals Sarah dressed in a flowing white princess gown. 

She runs through a fairy-tale glade, an ivory owl perched in the composition's foreground. After a moment, however, the audience realizes that Sarah is not some damsel dwelling in Never-Never Land, but rather a modern teenager in 20^th century America, acting out a scene from a book (titled, not coincidentally, The Labyrinth).

Throughout its running time, Labyrinth sees Sarah go from world to world, from childhood fantasy to reality and back, making choices as she goes and reckoning that whether life is fair or not, “that’s the way it is.” 

Armed with this fact, Sarah must make decisions based on that knowledge, and that are true to her heart.

Many, many films of the 1980s (E.T. [1982], Invaders from Mars [1986] to name two) involve the trope that I call “This Boy’s Bedroom:” a peek into an adolescent boy’s world of interest. It is his sanctuary and lair, and a place of model kits, monsters, and action figures. Delightfully, Labyrinth provides us a peek at “This Girl’s Bedroom” for insight into Sarah’s psyche. There’s a case to be made that every fantastic event in the film is based, at least in part, on the inspirations we see in this domain, whether it be Maurice Sendak or M.C. Escher. 

Furthermore, another item in Sarah’s bedroom -- a scrapbook -- helps audiences understand Sarah’s existential quandary. 

Delightfully, no dialogue points us towards this understanding, and the film allows us to draw conclusions about this hero’s journey based primarily on well-placed images.

“Things are not always what they seem in this place.”

Tired of babysitting her baby brother, Toby, the imaginative Sarah (Connelly) calls upon the Goblin King to take the child away to his kingdom.

Unfortunately, Jareth the Goblin King (Bowie) has been listening, and complies with Sarah’s demand.  

Now Sarah has just thirteen hours to navigate the king’s labyrinth, reach his palace, and rescue her brother. If she fails, Toby will be a goblin forever more.

On her journey through the labyrinth, Sarah encounters a variety of strange creatures, both helpful and treacherous, including Hoggle, Ludo, and Sir Didymus.  

She also navigates dangerous terrain, encountering the cavern of helping hands and the Bog of Eternal Stench

Finally, Sarah must confront the Goblin King, and her own fantasies about adulthood as well…

“The way forward is sometimes the way back.”

Gaze closely at the scenes in Labyrinth set inside Sarah’s suburban bedroom, and you’ll detect posters, scrapbooks, and photographs of her (absent) mother.  

Her mother, an actress named Linda Williams, has apparently left the family behind for a love affair with an actor -- played by David Bowie. In the scrapbook, we read headlines of Linda’s on-again/off-again relationship with this actor, and see photographs of the couple together. 

In the same scrapbook, we see that Sarah has drawn hearts by the photos of her mother, and written the word “Mom” in red marker.  

Sarah now lives with her father, stepmother and baby brother, and has fantasized that normal existence as a sort of put-upon Cinderella-styled one. 

Her new “mom” reports that she doesn’t appreciate being cast in the role of “wicked stepmother," but Sarah persists in doing just that. She idolizes her own mother, who -- despite leaving the family -- lives in the glamorous world of romance and acting.

So, through visuals, Labyrinth establishes that Sarah loves her biological mother and misses her desperately.  But, at the same time, this imagery suggest her mother has abandoned that which is important: family.

The fantasy narrative of Labyrinth, in which Sarah must choose whether or not to abandon her baby brother, Toby, deliberately mirrors the choice her mother has made. And David Bowie doubles as both the actor who took away Sarah's mother (seen only in photograph form), and the Goblin King, Jareth, who entices Sarah to a life in which abandoning a child is okay...at least if fantasy and romance are involved.

The bedroom setting is vital to the film, not only for establishing the context of Sarah’s story (her first steps into adulthood) but also for revealing the direction of the eventual fantasy sequences. Virtually all of Sarah’s travails in the Goblin King’s world emerge right from the items we see decorating Sarah's bedroom.

In a long, slow pan, Henson’s camera falls across a strange, pink plush animal that later finds life in the Goblin world as the dancing fire gang creature (the one with the detachable limbs). 

Similarly, Sarah encounters the gentle Ludo, who looks like he came right out of Where the Wild Things Are.  Accordingly, a Sendak book also seen in the same pan.

The same pan also reveals a music box in which a beautiful princess stands inside a golden pavilion or frame work.  Later in the film, Sarah becomes that princess, at least for a time, after eating the poison peach given her by Jareth. She is then depicted wearing the same dress that we saw on the music box figurine.  he is also viewed inside a bubble, and the world -- like the music box -- is most definitely a gilded cage.  

Inside that gilded cage, Sarah can live a life with Jareth as her romantic lover, but the price for such romance and lust is that she loses her brother, her family, forever.  

In real life, of course, this is the “illusion” that her mother has already selected.  Linda went off and romanced an actor, a figure who might be correctly described as being deceitful in a sense, since he appears to be one thing, but is actually another.  

In the fantasy world, standing in for that kind of "two faced" figure is not just Jareth, but several masked individuals. They cloak their real identities behind those masks, but it’s a lovely, romantic world on the surface.

The film's central setting, the labyrinth, is also foreshadowed in that early, detailed pan across the bedroom.

Even the film’s final confrontation, in which Sarah must make a choice between Jareth or her brother, Toby, we see a visual reference to Sarah’s bedroom.  

There, on the wall, in the film’s early scenes, we see a painting of an impossible labyrinth created by Escher.  In the climactic scene, Sarah actually inhabits that labyrinth, and attempts to rescue Toby.  It takes some time to reach him, because the world -- like adulthood itself -- is so confusingly rendered.

In The Wizard of Oz, every character that Dorothy knew in Kansas had a double in Oz, and in Labyrinth, virtually every item, book, or figure (including a Goblin King custom figure!) in Sarah’s bedroom also comes to life in the fantasy world.  

One thing that remains so delightful and affirming about the film and this symbolic approach is that Sarah is ultimately able to make a good choice regarding her future (and her brother’s) without surrendering her right to imagination. These things in her bedroom (books, posters, etc.) are part of her gestalt.  

After the Goblin King is defeated, Sarah begins to say goodbye to those who helped her on her quest, including Ludo and Hoggle. But Sarah realizes that they are part of who she is now, and that since she is the one with the power, she can continue to have them as guides, going forward, as long as she wishes.

To grow up means to think differently, but it doesn’t mean you forget who you are. That was the mistake Sarah's mother made. When Linda left Sarah behind, she sacrificed too much for a “fantasy” image of perfect romance.

One of the most successful and symbolically-wrought scenes in Labyrinth comes soon after Sarah has rejected temptation and a life inside Jareth’s bubble or music box, symbolically rejecting the adult choice her mother made.

Next, Sarah ends up in a junkyard, and a junkyard representation of her bedroom.  A weird junk lady begins accosting Sarah with all of her old plush animals, all the toys she has outgrown. Sarah rejects the goblin's entreaties because she is no longer an innocent child. Those particular toys belong in her past, but the junk lady -- not unlike Jareth -- keeps trying to define her, keeps trying to tell her the things she “needs.”  In other words, if Jareth represents a negative "face" of adulthood that Sarah must avoid, the junkyard lady interlude represents a face of childhood that Sarah has outgrown.

Finally, Sarah defeats the Goblin King when she remembers a line from her book: The Labyrinth.  

That line asserts “You have no power over me.”  

This is Sarah’s ultimate recognition of her own agency, her own power and capacity to chart her path.  She is not bound by the actions of the junk goblin, who tries to infantilize her, nor seduced by the Goblin King, who wants her to believe that adulthood is, simply, an offering "of dreams come true.”

On the contrary, with adulthood comes Sarah’s reckoning that life isn’t fair...but that’s the way it is.  

The trick is to understand that fact (that life isnt fair) and plan accordingly, knowing the truth. Labyrinth is a delightful and valuable film because it suggests that adulthood is not about getting your dreams to come true, usually, or finding a fantasy love with an appealing, bad-boy figure (Jareth, and the actor who romance Linda).  

Instead, life is about holding onto who you are and your influences and beliefs even in the face of a world that is not always as you would wish it to be.

Even the film’s central idea of a labyrinth seems to reinforce this idea of Sarah’s heroic journey. She does not go through a maze, notably, but rather a labyrinth, which is a single path to a central location.  That’s what life is: finding the identity that is “central” to your personality.  Some might even call it your heart.

When I first watched Labyrinth many (many…) moons ago, I must confess I was disappointed with the film.  I felt it was a sort of creative pull-back from the uncompromising genius of The Dark Crystal: a film lighter in mood, with identifiable human performers at its center.  I felt that few of the creations here could rival the ingenuity or imagination The Dark Crystal put on screen in the form of the Skeksis, the Garthim, or Aughra.

I see now, as an adult, that I missed the point. By a mile. As much as The Dark Crystal charts a completely alien world, Labyrinth asks audiences to understand its “in between” worlds premise about Sarah, and make her journey to adulthood one we can relate to and understand.

And without making invidious comparisons to other films, the creation of Sarah’s fantasy world here is quite remarkable. The “helping hands” cavern is unforgettable, and Ludo seems to be Chewbacca by way of Where the Wild Things Are.

Yes, the final battle between Sarah’s allies and the Goblin King’s minions is largely unnecessary (especially the machine gun sequence…), but otherwise that the film ingeniously visualizes Sarah’s imagination, drawing “life” from the fantastic inspirations we see decorating This Girl's Bedroom.

I am also quite certain that, as a teenager, I entirely missed the idea that the Goblin King had a surrogate in reality, as the man who took Sarah’s mother away from the family. 

With full knowledge of this today, the metaphor underlying Labyrinth is all that much clearer.  Jareth is the bad boy and romantic promise of adulthood (sex, romance, dreams, adventure come true…) that allows the idea of sacrificing family even exist as a possibility.  What’s truly intriguing, too is the idea of Toby’s fate if left un-rescued. He will grow up to be a Goblin, to be a “family thief,” essentially, if raised by Jareth.  In other words, the cycle of raising "goblins" continues.

Labyrinth is by no means a perfect film. Some of the musical sequences seem badly-dated, and the pacing is a bit off in spots too. But nonetheless, this is a fantasy film with heart, and it features the relatively rare occurrence of a female hero driving and motivating the action. 

Labyrinth is also an implicit rejection of princess-ism, a true blight in our modern culture because it suggests that a woman has worth only by virtue of marrying a prince, or being born to a King. In other words, basically for a woman to be successful and special she must be connected to a powerful man in some way. In short...no agency of her own.

Sarah’s story, by contrast, is very much about her own agency. Labyrinth is about Sarah choosing her own path, and maintaining her own identity while she does so.

To quote the film: “that’s the way it’s done...”