The Films of 1982: Q: The Winged Serpent

One  reason I admire low-budget exploitation films so much is that, in many cases, writers and directors don't feel compelled to trot along happily with the Hollywood party line.

A three-act structure patterned after the Campbell Monomyth may be tiresome de rigueur for the big budget extravaganza, but filmmakers such as Larry Cohen or Tobe Hooper are subversives and non-conformists. They march to the beat of their own (distinctive) drums and, in the process, shatter audience expectations.

Not every film they make is great, but every film they make is theirs, not the product of committee. I prefer that approach because I'd rather see a unique, oddball effort than a "product" that looks the same as everything else out there.  I've seen movies like Thor or Green Lantern a dozen times. By contrast, there is only one Q: The Winged Serpent, to modify the tag-line from the 1976 King Kong.  The descriptors "strange" and "offbeat" don't even begin to do this 1982 film justice.

Q: The Winged Serpent, released in September of 1982, is a perfect example of a movie that, on cursory description, sounds like a lot of other monster movies, namely Godzilla or King Kong, but which as been gloriously corkscrewed by writer/director Cohen to play as a totally different, totally unique viewing experience.   

Most importantly, Cohen's point-of-entrance/attack on Q: The Winged Serpent is revolutionary.  The film features a small time crook, Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarity) as protagonist, if not "hero."   And it's not even that he's just a crook that's important. He's actually a coward too. In monster movies we've been conditioned to expect the square-jawed romantic hero, one who is courageous and noble.  Jimmy Quinn is a different...bird.

Additionally, Cohen -- on a low budget, no less -- reveals to audiences a visual aspect of New York City we've never really seen before in film.  It's an eagle's eye, roof-top view of the metropolis and much of the action occurs there.  Notably, such moments atop high-rises, including the vicious opening attack on a window washer, don't appear faked in terms of exteriors or stunts.  The real location shooting -- in Manhattan and atop the buildings -- thus grants the sense a film of gritty authenticity and legitimacy.  Watching Q, I appreciate the contrast between Jimmy Quinn -- a rat on street level --  with Quetzlcoatl, a winged monster in the sky.

Despite such virtues, critics by-and-large dismissed Q: The Winged Serpent.  Janet Maslin wanted to offer "only a very few words" about the film, as if it wasn't worth the energy of a full review.  She also viewed the script's humor as "inadvertent," an opinion I would strongly contest given the comedic sheen of Cohen's work in films including It's Alive (1973) and The Stuff (1985).  Meanwhile, Roger Ebert famously championed Michael Moriarity's tic-filled lead performance as Quinn while dismissing the rest of Q as "dreck." Chicago Reader's Pat Graham called the effort "curiously disengaged and sloppy."

Again, for me the very opposite holds true.

I find Q: The Winged Serpent absolutely engaging because of its droll, edgy, unconventional nature, and because Michael Moriarty absolutely rivets the attention, though often in deliriously oddball fashion. The conventional and disengaged approach, in my opinion, would have been to feature stalwart, heavily-armed heroes of the military and U.S. government battling Quetzlcoatl throughout, with scientists theorizing about how to destroy the dangerous creature.

Instead, Cohen takes the extraordinary route of weaving the story of Quetzcoatl -- an Aztec God "prayed" back into existence -- into the life story of a neurotic, twitchy crook who, perhaps, feels more at home in prison than among free men.  Again, this is a character who might have a supporting role in a "regular" monster movie, perhaps even played as comic relief.  But here, Quinn is Q's raison d'etre.

Can a movie about a giant, man-eating serpent actually be a terrific and illuminating human character piece?  Larry Cohen seems to think so, and in Q: The Winged Serpent he explodes long-standing monster movie cliches to make the point.

"What else is God but an invisible force that we fear?"

In New York City, something strange is happening.  A serial murderer seems to be flaying (willing?) victims in accordance with ancient Aztec rites of human sacrifice.

Detectives Shepard (David Carradine) and Powell (Richard Roundtree) investigate these horrendous crimes at the same time that an urban legend multiplies in the city: the legend of a giant bird/serpent that strikes from the sky, and claims human prey as food.  People have gone missing, and blood has literally rained down upon the streets on occasion.

Meanwhile, small time crook Jimmy Quinn (Moriarity) has been seeking legitimate work at his girlfriend's (Candy Clark) insistence.  Unfortunately, he gets involved in a diamond heist (at a jewelry store called Neil Diamonds...) and runs afoul of both the law and his law-breaking cohorts.  After Quinn loses 77,000 dollars of diamonds in an accident, he hides on the top floor of The Chrysler Building and learns that the city's monster is no legend.

There, he discovers the nest for Quetzcoatl, the Aztec God of blood and human sacrifice.   Pursued by his former partners in crime, Quinn leads the crooks to The Chrysler Building...where they are promptly eaten.

The Quetzlcoatl attacks over Manhattan grow more numerous and brazen, and after Jimmy is arrested, he realizes he possesses a unique bargaining chip.  He offers to share the location of the monster's nest with the police if they give him a "Nixon-like" pardon and immunity, a million dollars, and exclusive book, movie and photograph rights to the monster's story...

"You are a betrayer and now you must humble yourself..."

At the center of Q: The Winged Serpent is Jimmy Quinn, the strangest monster movie protagonist you've ever seen.  He's a loser and a coward.  He "scats" at the piano, and creates his own bizarre musical numbers/voice-over narrations, such as the composition "Evil Dream."

Basically, Moriarity twitches and gesticulates his way through the film in a manner that captivates the attention, and feels strangely authentic and real. Quinn is neurotic and afraid: a rat trapped in the "mean streets"/cage of The Big Apple.   But he's not just your average crook, either. He's a hustler with delusions of grandeur and a creeping suspicion he'd be happier in prison, a place where he would be taken care of by the state, and perhaps do no harm to others. He'x an ex-junkie, an alcoholic, a loser...and yet you root for him to succeed.

In Q: The Winged Serpent, the audience gets to see all sides of Quinn, and some are appealing and some not.  For instance, as I wrote above, Quinn is trying to go "legit," and so the movie showcases his efforts to make it as a musician.  Efforts which are, I would estimate, pretty dire. You haven't really lived until you've watched Michael Moriarity scat at a small bar piano.

And then, further de-romanticizing our already-unconventional protagonist, Quinn and his girlfriend argue over the fact that, on many occasions, he has gotten drunk and hit her. This is a key part of Quinn's character.  When in a position of power, he's not just a small time loser, he's dangerous...and mean.  We see it in his treatment of his girlfriend, but also in the way Quinn holds the City hostage, and, of course, in his brutal, deliberate act of feeding two criminals to Quetzlcoatl.  He brushes off the latter act as self-defense.

Quinn clearly is against-type in monster movies, as I've enumerated above.  But what makes him truly fascinating is his dawning sense of self-realization that he is, to put it mildly,  a creep.  Cohen gives Moriarity a great monologue -- a clear analog to an important moment for Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan's On The Waterfront (1954) -- where he reflects that he's been a bum all his life, and that if things were different, he would change that fact.  "All my life I've been nobody," he reflects, "now I can be somebody."

Moriarity's Quinn is the glue that holds together Q: The Winged Serpent, and more than that, the very point of the movie. Here's a guy who discovers a man-eating monster, and decides to use that knowledge to better his position in life.

Importantly, Quinn's rather heartless approach to life is pointedly contrasted with the efforts of the ritualistic serial killer, who also uses the lives of others to remake the world in an image he prefers.

Amidst all of this selfish behavior -- a perfect reflection of the young, upwardly mobile values of the early 1980s -- Quetzlcoatl and its just-hatched offspring seem like true innocents.  The real "monster" in this monster movie isn't the man-eating beast with razor sharp talons, but the kind of man who would use tragedy and pain to make a personal fortune. There may even be a debate here about human nature.  The Q operates by its nature (to kill in order to survive), but what about Quinn?  Is he just acting according to human nature, or is he representative of the worst of human nature?

The special effects of Q: The Winged Serpent are clearly of their age, featuring very-good stop-motion animation from Dave Allen.  The monster really look pretty good in several impressive shots.
One of my favorite compositions in the film involves a nifty jump scare in which Carradine turns his back on an open window, and the giant serpent lunges in behind him (above).  The film's final battle, with police battling Quetzcoatl from perches atop The Chrysler Building, is also strong, and evokes clear memories of King Kong (1933) and the Empire State Building finale. But the monster scenes are largely not the point. This is a movie about what might really happen if a crook discovered a monster, not a movie about a monster's reign of terror. 

Another perpetual joy in Q: The Winged Serpent is the witty screenplay. Cohen's staccato, rat-a-tat, authentic "city" dialogue has been termed tongue-in-cheek in some circles, but in fact it plays as funny because it is so deadpan and earnest, so true.

If a monster were attacking New York City, wouldn't you expect to hear people asking questions like: "Did you find that construction worker's head yet?" It may seem silly, but it is appropriate. In short, Q: The Winged Serpent accepts and internalizes its bizarre premise, and that acceptane forges amusing dialogue (especially for David Carradine's character) from that real situation.

It's an equation that, for me, really works well.  This is one of those movies that may not seem great in a traditional or conventional sense, but which you just can't take your eyes or ears off of.

More than one critic has also pointed out how the 1998 Godzilla seems to play more closely on aspects of Q: The Winged Serpent than the Gojira mythos. It's an interesting observation, and not entirely without merit.

For instance, both films end on the exact same cliffhanging note: evidence that an unhatched monster -- an egg -- remains even after the final, urban battle with the Mommy Lizard.

But where Godzilla was a colossal, focus-group tested, market-driven blockbuster, Q: The Winged Serpent is a much more intimate and human-scaled film. Again, this  approach is just incredibly unconventional in terms of the monster movie sub-genre.  When you consider the greats of the form, you begin to detect how the classics play with form and expectations.  Such innovation may be done with special effects (King Kong [1933]), a blazing political context (Godzilla: King of Monsters), or a man-on-the-street point-of-view (Cloverfield [2008]).

I'd argue Q: The Winged Serpent belongs on that select monster movie list precisely because it is so odd and so personal, and because it uses the story of a giant serpent almost as background noise for the character study of a memorable creep.

Because Q: The Winged Serpent so expertly grounds its wildest fantasy concepts with a study of Moriarity's sleazy little loser, this film from 1982 truly mimics the soaring behavior of its titular flying serpent.

Q: The Winged Serpent flies so close to the sun, it momentarily blinds you.  

From the Archive: Poltergeist (1982)

 

"It knows what scares you."

- Poltergeist (1982)

The words quoted above are spoken by Poltergeist's resident psychic medium, Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) near the climax of this harrowing film.  They reflect -- with near-perfection -- the nature of this horror classic from the great summer of 1982. 

Poltergeist is a film that knows not only what scares you, but how to scare you. If E.T. (1982) represents the softer side of Steven Spielberg, and suggests his trademark ability to make you see the world from a lonely child's perspective, then Poltergeist, directed by Tobe Hooper and produced by Spielberg accomplishes the same impressive feat...only with a darker, harder, more malicious and mischievous edge.

Poltergeist deftly, ruthlessly. and perpetually frightens audiences by reminding them of those irrational (and yet somehow palpable...) things we feared so much as children: a noise from under the bed, a closet door cracked open, an approaching thunderstorm, or other bedroom, night-time terrors.

For me, the one that terrifies me no matter how many times I see the film is that damned clown...

What seems perhaps less apparent is that Poltergeist also terrifies from the perspective of a parent, something I did not fully account for and internalize, perhaps, until my screening of the film this week; the first time I had seen Poltergeist since Joel was born. 

Previously, I had always considered the film a kind of call-back to juvenile fears associated with going to sleep, of being conscious in the dark and alone in bed with only one's thoughts (and fears) for company. Now, I also realize how cogently Poltergeist plays to the fears of adulthood: the irrational fear that a child could be injured by a terrain that, in daylight, seems perfectly safe. The danger of sleepwalking, for instance, near a backyard pool.

This brand of irrational fear plucks adult insecurities and anxieties that our parenting is not good enough, not careful enough to prevent cruel acts of fate.

There's absolutely no question that Poltergeist terrifies and thrills, even thirty-three years later.  For me, that's always the prime and primal test of the good horror film.

Does it get the blood pumping faster?  

Even as I answer that interrogative in the affirmative, however, I'm conscious that Poltergeist achieves a greatness beyond mere genre thrills because of the double social critiques it explores with such dedication and humor.

Specifically, Poltergeist lodges some well-placed shots at the ubiquity of television -- here a portal for spectral evil -- in American life. 

And, though I realize this will be a controversial statement, the film also knowingly questions the growing Yuppie mentality of the 1980s, an era of "greed is good" ushered in by the election of President Reagan in 1980.

Reagan's laissez-faire economic policies stressed the accumulation of personal wealth at the expense of morality. Regulations designed to protect consumers were cut, and big business was allowed, virtually unencumbered, to test the outer limits of the public welfare and good.  In many ways, we are still paying for Reaganomics today.  It's the poltergeist that haunts our economy, even in 2015

For me, this double-faceted, carefully embedded social commentary results in a great film. Poltergeist is no political diatribe, no partisan horror film trying to cheaply score points.  On the contrary, this movie is nimble and playful as it terrorizes us, and taps into the prevailing Zeitgeist of the increasingly affluent, but also increasingly unequal 1980s.

Here, spectral revenge "trickles down" upon a suburban family, the aptly-named "Freelings," who have profited,  unknowingly, from a corrupt system that disenfranchise the many but makes the few obscenely wealthy.

Writing for The New York Times, critic Vincent Canby expressed well Poltergeist's unique and entertaining equation. He called the film a "marvelously spooky ghost story" and one that was "also witty in a fashion that Alfred Hitchcock might appreciate." (June 4, 1982).  In Time Magazine, Richard Corliss categorized Poltergeist as a "sly comedy" supporting the "proposition that violence on TV...or precisely, in it, can have an influence on children who watch it." ("Steve's Summer Magic," June 1982, page 56)

Creative authorship of Poltergeist has been much debated.  Did Tobe Hooper direct the film, or did Steven Spielberg take the helm?

I've always leaned towards the belief that Hooper deserves the lion's share of the credit for Poltergeist, at least in terms of visualization and atmospheric tenor because the film shares two important trademarks with his other films, namely that the narrative does not, in any way, shape or form, restore order to the universe at the end (and such restoration is a trademark of Spielberg's film).

Secondly, specific images and compositions in Poltergeist, as also seen in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1973) highlight the notion that the world has grown disordered and unnatural under a "malefic influence." Again, this is a virtual trademark of Hooper's canon.  Think of the upside-down armadillo on the highway or the corpse atop a gravestone in Chain Saw.  Those images find distinct and unique corollaries in Poltergeist.  A woman is attacked by a ghost and pushed...to the ceiling.  A family's pet bird is found dead on its back behind the bars of its cage, and so forth.

If one is so inclined, one can also gaze intently at the films of Spielberg and observe how he uses product placement and pop-culture imagery to craft a sincere commentary on how it feels to be a child in the 1970s or 1980s.

Consider how he deployed images of "good" monsters like the Hulk or Greedo in E.T. (1982) to sort of "pave the way" for an acceptance of E.T. in Elliott's life.  By contrast, Poltergeist rather firmly carries its tongue in its cheek in terms of how it views the pop culture. The primary mode here is not treacly sincerity or sentimentality, but ruthless, cutting satire.

Watching Poltergeist, I'm reminded of Hooper's particular gifts as a filmmaker, as ably described by L.M. Kit Carson in the 1980s:

 "De Palma and...Romero had only recently corkscrewed fresh blood into the horror genre...but they were sophisto guys who'd kept the "it's-only-a-movie" deal with the audience.  Hooper was a new deal -- simply this; no deal. Hooper was a scare-director who was methodically unsafe, who the audience (you) finally just couldn't trust...He'd go too far, then go farther...and go farther again, and kick it again...then get an extra kick, then it's over...then one more kick...No deal, friend."  (L.M. Kit Carson, Film Comment: "Saw Thru." July/August 1986, pages 9 - 12.)

Poltergeist is a perfect reflection of this particular Hooper aesthetic.  In terms of logic and narrative, the film should resolve almost immediately after Tangina triumphantly declares "This house is clean" and order is restored to the universe. 

Of course, that  doesn't happen. 

We get one more kick, then another kick, then another, until all sense of grounded logic and reality is gone, replaced by heart-pounding terror.

Where Spielberg ends his lyrical and emotional cinematic efforts in triumphant narrative resolution, Hooper's endings (in films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) tend to be super real or surreal, over-the-top, and sometimes virtually independent -- or even contradictory-- to conventional narrative expectations, as I wrote in my book, Eaten Alive: The Films of Tobe Hooper (McFarland; 2002).  Tobe Hooper's bargain, as the passage above indicates, is no bargain.  That's why Hooper's films, despite some notable lows, also feel unfettered...fearless...dangerous.

But perhaps creative "authorship" is not the point about Poltergeist.

As I wrote above, the film knows exactly what scares and how to scare us too. That ability is forged in the film's ability to understand us as a people, and who we were in the year 1982, a year of economic uncertainty and the dawn of a political movement that lasts to this day.

"You can't choose between life and death when we're dealing with what is in between..."

In the comfortable suburb of Cuesta Verde, the Freeling family becomes unnerved when young Carol Ann (Heather O'Rourke) begins to communicate with the television set. 

One night, after what seems like an earthquake inside the house, the child declares "They're Here," and refers enigmatically to "the TV People."

Not long after this event, a supernatural force punches a hole into the Freeling house and abducts Carol Anne, leaving her shell-shocked parents Diane (JoBeth Williams) and Steve (Craig T. Nelson) to seek help from a local parapsychologist, Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight).

An investigation of the house reveals "poltergeist" activity, and Dr. Lesh recruits a medium, Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) to "clean" the house and recover Carol Anne. Ultimately, Diane must travel into another plane of existence (described as a "membrane" around our world) to get back Carol Anne from a terrifying spirit Tangina terms"The Beast."

Diane is successful on her dangerous odyssey, and Tangina declares the Freeling house "clean," but the nightmare is not over.

A terrible secret from Steve's boss, Mr.Teague (James Karen) about the real estate of Cuesta Verde puts a whole new spin on the Freeling haunting, and the spirits from the other world make one last, devastating attempt to reach our reality... 

"It lies to her. It tells her things only a child can understand. It's been using her to restrain the others. To her, it simply is another child. To us, it is The Beast."

In the passage immediately above this sentence, Tangina describes the nature of "the Beast" that has taken away Carol Anne Freeling. 

If you re-read the passage, however, one might -- with a little bit of imagination -- apply the description not to a supernatural monster or spirit, but to the influence of television in American culture.  

In many instances, television does appear to lie (or at least paint an inaccurate picture), and in many instances, advertisers direct their efforts to "fascinate" directly at children, who are psychologically unequipped to understand how they are being manipulated to believe certain things, or purchase certain products. 

Is TV "the beast?"  From a certain perspective, yes.

Poltergeist positions the television (and television transmissions) as a portal through which "evil" enters the American home. It does so, importantly, as a wolf in sheep's clothing.  The images that open the film are of familiar American monuments and national landmarks.  The song that introduces the film is the National Anthem.  But the images are pixelated and indistinct, symbolizing the notion that something is rotten in the state of Denmark; that something has gone wrong in this purported paradise. What message is the television sending out to people?

Throughout the film, the television is made a figure for horror, ridicule and social commentary.  At one point, Carol Anne is watching a blank, static-filled screen, close-up, in the Freeling kitchen, and her mother tells her that the static-saturated television image will hurt her eyes.  Mom then switches the channel to a violent war film, with infantrymen firing machine guns and soldiers dying on the battlefield. 

This is better for Carol Anne's eyes? 

The implication of this moment is that TV is not a "safe" place for kids, whether or not it is a portal for spirits.  It's an insidious influence upon American culture and American youth.

This idea is reinforced in the dialogue of the film, which establishes that the Freeling haunting may end up featured not on 60 Minutes, but the cheesy (if popular...) "That's Incredible," a bizarre reality/magazine show of the era.

In other words, the suffering of an American family is fodder for the entertainment of the masses, but not a story to be taken seriously on a news program.

Another sequence reveals Steve and his neighbor locked in a war of TV remote controls, each attempting to establish "domination" over the airwaves, of the material that is being beamed into their homes.  Football or Mr. Rogers?

The final shot of the film, of course, represents the Freelings' total rejection of television and its influence in their lives. 

After leaving their haunted home, the Freelings go to a hotel, and push the hotel room's television set out on a ledge.

The last shot of Poltergeist is thus a long, slow withdraw or pull-back from that dark set, a shot which suggests, literally, that the American family must back away from this "beast" of television, lest it suffer the same kind of agony as the Freelings experienced.

Briefly stated, one might summarize Poltergeist's point in this way: television is too violent, too out-of-touch with our values, and actually a danger to many of those who watch it.  I don't know about you, but I've actually heard the TV media referred to as "The Beast" by some right-wing elements (and also jokingly on the Fox sitcom "King of the Hill.")

Given the connection between the evil of "the other side" and the evil of television, it is no accident in Poltergeist that the TVs strobing white light is almost constantly reflected upon the faces of the film's principal characters, and that self-same, strobing blue/white coloring and lighting scheme is used to render the closet "portal" to the supernatural realm. 

The static blue of the television and the spectral blue of the TV set represent, literally, two heads of the same monster, the self same thing: portals to places that can steal your children away from your influence.  Both venues can overtake your life and both can be evil if allowed to run rampant.

The argument here is certainly debatable, at least.  TV signals are beamed into our hearths and our homes, and we don't have control over the content of those signals.  And since television is frequently utilized as a "babysitter" for children in an age where two parents work full-time at careers outside the home, we must wonder: what is the impact of this "beast" on our impressionable young?

Poltergeist plays wickedly with this notion without ever seeming too serious, and ends with the visually-established notion that the best thing to do is kick the boob tube to the curb, literally.  I love it when a filmmaker uses form to mirror content, and that occurs again and again in Poltergeist.  Over and over, the TV is made a symbol of evil's entrance into suburbia.

"You son of a bitch! You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn't you? You son of a bitch, you left the bodies and you only moved the headstones!"

When Ronald Reagan was elected in an absolute electoral landslide in 1980, he enacted a laissez-faire approach to the American economy. Laissez-faire means, literally, "let it be." 

One of the four cornerstones of Reaganomics was a reduction of government regulation so private parties were free to enact economic transactions without significant interference or oversight. Reagan espoused the notion that government regulation stifles market competition. In accordance with his values, he streamlined and eliminated many regulations in the energy, transportation, and most importantly, banking sectors. Presidents Carter, Bush and Clinton all share a measure of responsibility on this matter too. But Reagan was the herald and spokesperson for the movement, and is often remembered explicitly for the so-called "anti-regulation" Presidency.

But the thing about letting the market decide, of course, is that the market doesn't boast human morality. It can select economic winners and losers based on supply and demand, but it can't make a determination if the winners utilized ethical means to achieve domination.

We've have seen this truth played out again and again vis-a-vis Enron, Worldcom, Countrywide, and so on.  Big Business simply cannot be trusted to police itself responsibly in terms of moral and ethical behavior. Not when there's oodles of cash to be made.  I don't know why this fact comes as a surprise to people, or offends people. As a nation, we boast law enforcement officials and a judiciary, because, quite simply, we believe the citizenry can't police/regulate itself on an individual basis.  Contrarily, it needs policemen to back up our collective sense of moral and ethical rectitude. It isn't anti-business to say that business also requires oversight.

Some regulations are absolutely necessary to keep businesses honest. And please don't quote me any Rand Paul-isms about how the market will punish wrong-doers.  Tell that to the executives at many banks who, despite unethical procedures, kept their million dollar bonuses while investors lost pensions and life savings. How did the market punish those guys, again?

It is this image of Reagan as anti-regulator, as a laissez-faire advocate -- that ghost, if you will -- that Poltergeist plays deliberately upon.

Early in the film, for instance, Steve Freeling is seen reading a biography of, you guessed it, Ronald Reagan, titled  Reagan: The Man, The Presidency.

You get the feeling Steve is reading the book because he holds up Reagan (and his pillars of economics) as a role model.

Indeed, when we see Steve attempting to sell a new home near Cuesta Verde to prospective buyers, he slips (unconsciously, we presume)  into slick spin, business-speak, and Gordon Gekko-isms.

 "The grass grows greener on every side," he ridiculously asserts, attempting to sell the real-estate as if there is no downside to it.  That was a key aspect of the 1980s and Reaganomics  We could have it all.

In Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988," the authors write: "He said it was possible to have it all - to cut taxes and increase spending and at the same time fight terrorism, roll back Communism and the threat of nuclear war, all without risking American lives. Reagan seems to be offering a miracle cure."

And, of course, as the film reveals, you can't have it all.  There are downsides.  Your great new house? It's built on a lie, and on a cemetery.

The market has "permitted" Mr. Teague to cut corners. In building the homes of Cuesta Verde, he moved a cemetery. But it was too expensive to move the actual corpses under the ground.  Doing that cut too deep into his profit margin.

So he only moved the headstones, but told no one.  And boy did the profits go through the roof! 

The market chose a winner here, right?

Our protagonist Steve is an upwardly mobile but essentially decent guy, a family man. But he is also responsible, we're told, for 42 percent of sales of new homes in Cuesta Verde.  He is thus complicit in Teague's crime: sacrilegiously building new homes over the discarded bodies of the dead.

Again, in the free market, means don't really matter; the ends do.  But the spiritual infestation of Steve's house reveals that reality doesn't necessarily work according to the whims of the free market.  There is, literally, a spiritual price for unethical, immoral behavior. Steve's house is foreclosed upon, spectrally speaking. The original owners want their land back.

So what Poltergeist actually implies is that we are all accountable when we benefit from a corrupt system. The Freelings go through hell because they profited from an unseemly business practice at Steve's firm.  Given this, Steve's choice of heroes, Reagan, is certainly a crux of the movie.  If you think I'm reading too much into the film, or stoking some partisan hatred of Reagan, ask yourself why the book appears in the film at all.

Why not a Kennedy or Eisenhower bio?  Choices such as the appearance of Reagan: The Man, The  Presidency are not accidents.  Instead, they contribute to a fuller understanding of the film's themes. 

Consider also  that the name "Freeling" seems to pivot off this idea of laissez-faire run amok, the notion that the family may think that's its middle-class that success is "free," but it isn't.  There are consequences one when cuts corners, when free enterprise is allowed to run amok, unrestricted.

Here, those disenfranchised by illicit real estate deals "punch a hole" into the Freelings' house, making their voices and concerns heard most memorably.


We were wondering if you had experienced any... disturbances?

One of the most intriguing facets of Poltergeist remains that, in terms of visualization -- and much like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre -- this film is obsessed with the idea of order overturned.  Here, the overturning is in suburbia, not rural Texas, but the idea is the same.

For instance, the suburban trees of Cuesta Verde are lifeless, leafless things that look sad and out-of-place because real estate development has gone wild. 

Then, Carol Anne's little bird, Tweety dies unexpectedly, and later, we see the bird's grave overturned in the dirt when a construction  bull-dozer sweeps through the Freeling's yard.

Another shot shows us the shadow of the bird's corpse being lowered into a toilet, a small metaphor for the film's central thesis about respecting the dead.  In short order, we also see overturned bicycles on the street and thunder-clouds roiling over suburbia.

The overall impression here is of a storm coming.

That this previously wholesome realm of surbubia has been overturned by something dark and dangerous.  Depending on how you interpret the film, that "something" is either vengeful spirits (who have been wronged), or bad business practices which have literally upset the balance of the supernatural world.

Finally, Hooper courageously ends Poltergeist with matters disordered. Teague's business practices haven't changed, and so there is no restoration of order in the film. 

Rather, the Freelings end up fleeing their home, never to return, as neighbors watch in horror at the madness unfolding upon their property.

Mr. Teague is left screaming "lies! lies!" like a cowardly ninny, though the nature of his trespass is now plain.  He cut corners and now the dead themselves are rising up against his immorality.

Interestingly, one shot in Poltergeist seems to get to the heart of this disorder in paradise.

We see Steve and Mr. Teague walking together on a pastoral hill. In front of them is a long, white picket fence...universally the symbol of Americana and small towns. Then, Hooper changes perspectives, and suddenly we see tombstones blotting out the white picket fence. 

After another perspective change, we see the full picture: the white picket fence is dilapidated and in need of repair, and it borders a vast graveyard.  Read that image symbolically, and combine it with the "fuzzy" images of national monuments in the film's opening scene, and you begin to detect the breadth of Poltergeist's social commentary.

The film reveals that something has gone awry in America. Priorities -- morality itself -- are misplaced for yuppie-ism.

Sometimes, people write me and tell me to leave the interpreting/analysis out of my reviews, and just reveal whether or not a movie entertains.  For me, of course, "entertainment" is the beginning of a discussion on film theory, never the final destination.   It's plain that Poltergeist is entertaining.  You certainly don't need me to tell you that.  The film features heart-felt performances, astonishing visual effects, a great score from Jerry Goldsmith, and a wicked sense of humor. 

But beyond the film's entertainment value, the film conforms to the best tradition of the horror genre. Poltergeist asks us to look in the mirror at ourselves, and ask questions about the role of television in society, or the wisdom of letting the "free market" determine morality.  These values, coupled with Hooper's devotion to the meaningful and trenchant use of film grammar, render Poltergeist immortal...classic.

This 1982 film makes us ask, at last: when we see "the light" do we acknowledge it, or "stop where we are?"  Do we "turn away from it" and "not even look at it," or do we confront the things that make us uncomfortable about ourselves and our very human nature? 

Despite its various and sundry New Age touches, Poltergeist is very much a Christian film.  It asserts that our behavior here will have repercussions in the afterlife.

That message sometimes get lost in a decade when "upwardly mobile" doesn't meaning saving your soul, but enriching your bank account.

Cult-Movie Review: The Road Warrior (1982)

I first viewed The Road Warrior on a double bill with Superman III at the Castle Theater in Irvington, New Jersey. I was thirteen or fourteen years-old at the time and saw the movie(s) with my father. 

Alas, my showing of The Road Warrior was interrupted three times by police incursions into the auditorium (the Castle was that kind of theater in the eighties...) but somehow the danger in the theater only added to the aura of danger, anxiety and uncertainty generated by George Miller's landmark, startling post-apocalyptic film.

At that young age, I had rarely experienced an action film as intense or cut-throat as The Road Warrior, but now that I've screened the film a dozen times over the years, I recognize that it wasn't merely the experience of seeing it at the Castle during a drug bust or three; it's the film itself, which remains of the ten great action films of the last thirty years. 

More than that -- and discounting Planet of the Apes -- it's one of the cinema's most effective and brilliantly-shot post-apocalyptic efforts.

The Road Warrior opens with an evocative and tightly-edited black-and-white montage. A voice-over narration accompanies the fleeting but memorable documentary images (stock footage), which depict our twentieth-century "oil culture" as two "mighty warrior tribes" go to war to control the dwindling resource. 

The montage reveals vast war machines at sea and on land, and then endless, stagnating debate among world leaders on how to control the limited reserves. After this debate, the montage reveals, the thundering war machines of technological man "sputtered and stopped." 

Furthermore, world civilization itself "crumbled." Cities exploded in a whirlwind of looting, and man "began to feed on man." Nomadic gangs took over the highways, dominating them and making the roads treacherous, murderous passages. It is here, via stock footage of 1979's Mad Max that we are introduced to the personal story of Max [Mel Gibson], an ex-policeman who lost everything; only to wander the wasteland as a "burned-out" desolate sentinel.

In terms of narrative, the voice-over device and stock-footage montage in unison frame this tale as though it occurred in the distant, murky past. 

In part this is because of the grainy stock footage, which looks to be drawn from the early part of the twentieth century, but the sense of an "old story" also arises from the voice of the narrator, which suggests wisdom and age, among other qualities. 

The war is history to the adult "teller" of the tale; and our civilization itself is pre-history. This remote time frame thus lands the post-apocalyptic "future" of Mad Max into the realm of origin myth, or heroic legend. The teller could be speaking of Achilles and the Trojan War, or perhaps more aptly, the Old West in his discussion of the manner in which a new civilization was founded from the ashes of the old.

The Old West metaphor also works to the film's advantage because in -- some very critical ways -- The Road Warrior is not unlike a Spaghetti Western of the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

Witness these facts: it is filmed in a location that could be the American West (here, the Australian Outback); the camera work is highly fluid (like the work of Sergio Leone); and the production is distinctly, but not alarmingly, low-budget.

Similarly, much like many Italian Westerns, the film also actively sets about to deconstruct or de-mythologize its world, focusing on such horrible human behaviors as rape and murder. To put it politely, The Road Warrior is not a romantic vision of human nature. 

Even the treatment of a child -- the Feral Child -- is realistic rather than romanticized.

After the opening exposition, which plays like the visual equivalent of a dusty history book, Miller's kinetic camera swoops down (apparently from a helicopter) at near-warp speed towards an endless highway. 

The asphalt flies by the camera and immediately the audience feels a sense of momentum and acceleration. Suddenly we're enmeshed in colorful, full-speed chase, as loner Max is pursued by the motorcycle-riding thugs of a warlord called Humongous (also known as "the ayatollah of rock-and-rollah..."). 

From this first moment, the film never lets up, never stops, never really slows down. It is a race from start to finish, a maelstrom of flipping, careening vehicles, high-speed pursuits and bloody confrontations.

The cinema has provided us all manner of "end of the world" scenarios before, from nuclear war (Planet of the Apes) to germ-created vampires (Last Man on Earth), to melting ice caps even (Waterworld), but The Road Warrior today seems to offer the most plausible (or at least relevant) scenario as it explicitly concerns a war over limited resources, in this case oil.

In 1982, America had not yet fought two wars for oil in the Middle East, and so didn't seem quite so prophetic. 

But now? It's seems so indeed, especially with some factions fomenting for yet another American war in that region of the world.

The bulk of The Road Warrior involves Max's interactions with a post-apocalyptic frontier town, a society that has sprung up around a functional oil refinery (perhaps the last...). The people who live there boast resources to squander, and don't want to share it. Instead, they dream wistfully of a paradise by the beach where they can live in peace with their drums of black gold tucked safely away. 

Before long, Max is dealing not only with these inhabitants of the refinery (who feel they have a rightful claim to the oil), but with the occupying, invading army of Humongous. The Warlord, who admonishes the peaceful refinery people to "just walk away," requires the oil to keep his mechanical war machine running. Without it, one realizes, even his loose society of scavengers and marauders would likely fall into total anarchy.

The story of fallen mankind fighting over the scraps of civilization (like "angry ants," as one character notes), is buoyed by Miller's directorial sense of invention and also his understanding of framing and mise-en-scene.

For instance, in the scene in which Max is confronted by an auto-gyro pilot (Bruce Spence), notice how Gibson is almost always positioned in the center of the frame, He deals with snakes and an armed assailant...yet those threats still "orbit" Max, not vice versa. This is important because the framing makes us believe in Max as immovable object -- a tower of strength -- early in the film (witness his handling of the snake...), a notion which is undercut significantly later in The Road Warrior when he is bruised and beaten after one encounter with the scavengers. 

The idea, I suppose, is to open with Max as figure of strength, and then -- as the events of the film overcome him -- figuratively cut off his legs, so that the audience grows more involved with his survival. He starts out as a loner, but by the end of the film, Max needs the others to survive. This is an important element of his growth; of his redemption and return to the human race. The journey is completed in the final film, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985).

The stakes are high in Max's world, and George Miller doesn't shy away from revealing how bad things are there. There is a scene, for instance, in which Max sits on the rim of a mountain eating dog food, and acts as though it is the best thing he's ever tasted.  

Miller also dramatizes a failed escape attempt with horrific results. A man and a woman flee the refinery and are set on by the marauders. The moment, seen through the lens of a telescope, culminates in a double murder. The auto gyro pilot watches this event lasciviously at first, because the female escapee is stripped (we see her breasts...), but his desire turns to horror as she is brutally raped and murdered. '

This is what mankind has come to, and it's only hope is Max, a man whom the screenplay describes as "a parasite." Max is no hero; the people of the refinery are no saints (they resort to duplicity with Max, for one thing...);but both Max and the town people are better than the utter immorality and monstrosity represented by Humongous and his gang. Here -- as in many cases -- it is a choice between the lesser of two evils.

So much of The Road Warrior is unromantic and blunt. Consider, for instance, the beautiful, Amazonian warrior (Virginia Hey). She protects the refinery and is portrayed as heroic and courageous. In most Westerns or genre films, a romance might blossom between this gorgeous, strong character and Max. 

Not so here. 

Instead, she is brutally murdered in the film's final chase scene. She is shot and left to dangle off a truck turret. The message: this is a world that makes no distinction between male and female; between movie "hero" and movie "fodder."

Likewise Humongous's version of Baghdad Bob loses his fingers to a boomerang in one scene, and Miller indelicately cuts to an insert shot of those fingertips flying through the air. Even more tellingly, it was the Feral Kid -- a warrior, himself -- who throws that boomerang. A child! And how do Baghdad Bob's "friends" and associates react when he loses his fingers? They cheer and guffaw. 

In this world, pain is a source of laughter; even if the person hurting is on your side. The message is again that society is gone, and that we -- as viewers -- can't expect decorum from this film if we simultaneously expect it to be "true" to what such a world would look and feel like.

The murder of a dog (or dingo) is depicted slightly less bluntly, but there are other harrowing moments here, when arrows are yanked out of human skin on screen, for instance. And examine Max's demeanor too. In the film, he demonstrates no compassion or human consideration for anyone, including the pilot, until he himself requires help and rescue.  All of this focus on human ugliness makes The Road Warrior a nihilistic action film, but one of remarkable imagery and power. With civilization goes decorum; with decorum goes decency; with decency goes humanity.

The central portion of The Road Warrior involves Humongous's Alamo-like siege on the refinery (and there is a brilliantly-staged, almost De Palma-esque tracking shot featured here as Miller's camera pursues a rabbit hopping madly through the compound as an attack gathers nearby...), yet it is the final third of the film that leaves one breathless and walloped. 

The last act of The Road Warrior is an eighty-mile-an-hour chase scene, a non-stop demolition derby involving a weaving tanker truck, buzzing cars, roaring motorcycles and the swooping auto-gyro. Characters leap from speeding vehicle to speeding vehicle; characters swing chains, fire arrows, and drive for their lives. 

It's a go-for-the-gusto finale that tops everything else in the picture, and to this day still tops most action movie denouements. I should add, it was all executed on a low budget, with real vehicles (no CGI!) and absolutely rousing stunt work. Coupled with Brian May's pulse-pounding soundtrack, the action climax of The Road Warrior is a burst of sustained adrenaline, injected right into the heart.

A superb and clever addition to the post-apocalyptic film pantheon, The Road Warrior is artistically crafted, and the film pauses its relentless drive to the climax only long enough to offer a little homage. In a scene involving a music box and a corpse falling out of a truck cab, Miller's film momentarily pays tribute to a quieter moment in Romero's Night of the Living Dead. 

It does so, I submit, because Miller recognizes Night as a spiritual antecedent. Both films are distinctively unromantic portraits of humanity; both films are about a change (or degradation...) in the social order, and both films are blunt in their portrayals of violence. 

The only significant difference is that Night of the Living Dead is so bleak that it kills Ben (the film's hero), whereas the device of the montage/voice-over leaves room in The Road Warrior for the possibility that mankind -- in a better iteration, hopefully -- will go on to thrive in a new world; one where the violence we see here is but a misty memory; just like that warrior of the wasteland, Max.

The third film completes Max's journey of redemption, but even there, he is not quite ready to return to the human race, to civilization.  

It will be fascinating to see at what point we pick up with Max in Fury Road...

Movie Trailer: The Road Warrior (1982)

The Films of 1982: First Blood

In general, I am not the world’s biggest fan of the Rambo films. 

Parts II – III (I haven’t seen IV…) serve largely as awkward polemics in which a fighting man who is not really a “thinker” is put in the position of making political statements, and quite awkwardly so. 

The grandiose, high-flying words just don’t feel right or ring true coming out of John Rambo’s mouth.  He’s not a politician.  And he’s not a deep thinker, either.

I’m certain others will disagree with me, but the blockbuster 1985 film Rambo: First Blood Part II feels more like a laundry list of flag-waving philosophical talking points than a fully-articulated movie.

However, I am an affirmed admirer of First Blood (1982) the film that introduced the world to Sylvester Stallone’s character, a Vietnam veteran named John Rambo.

I resolutely admire this film not only because of the splendidly orchestrated stunts and action scenes, but because Rambo’s righteous anger is not directed at any one particular group or party, but at everyone in a system that has egregiously failed him.

In this way, First Blood is neither a right wing diatribe nor a left wing polemic.

Instead, it is an aching, emotional primal scream that transcends politics and partisanship. 

The brilliantly-staged film asks -- in a rage-driven bellow -- how the world could turn out this badly for someone who was only doing what he felt was his patriotic duty, and what he was called to do.

To put it crudely then, First Blood is simultaneously anti-war and anti-anti-war.

The film vehemently derides the system that landed men into armed conflict without the resources they needed to cope with the violence they witnessed, and then abandoned them upon their return stateside.

At the same time, First Blood decries the protest movement, which in some cases blamed soldiers for the decisions of their superiors, and the decisions of politicians in Washington D.C.

There’s more than enough anger to go around, in other words. And make no mistake: First Blood is an angry, emotional, reactionary film. 

Indeed, that incredible passion is the engine that fuels this work of art and provides it tremendous energy.

By contrast, later Rambo films attempt to suggest that might is right, and that if only Rambo were “allowed” to fight unfettered, we would have won the war in Vietnam. 

“Do we get to win this time?”  Those films asked, and that’s a deflection.  It’s the wrong question, and the wrong point to focus on.

Whether or not one supported the Vietnam War, this focus represents a deeply unsubtle simplification or reading of history.

Or described another way, First Blood is a veritable primal scream suggesting that the Vietnam War was a nation’s folly, and that elements of the anti-war movement are responsible for making it worse for those men who (bravely) fought in it than it already was. 

The later Rambo movies say, basically, if we could just re-fight the war, we’d sure win it this time.

There’s a lot of space between those two different philosophies. I find the first admirable, and the second delusional. 

First Blood still impresses as a work of art today as well because it recreates -- in small-town America, no less -- the deep contradictions, divides, and paradoxes that bedeviled the country in the 1960s and early 1970s.

First Blood isn’t a gung-ho, macho, flag-waving cartoon, either.  That’s merely the caricature that Rambo became later.  To some extent, critics have retroactively imposed that popular image on this initial film, and a re-watch reveals it just doesn’t fit.

On the contrary, First Blood is an angry, righteous -- and necessary -- exorcism of a national tragedy; one in which there is plenty of blame to share on all sides of the debate.

“We aren’t hunting him. He’s hunting us.”

Some years after the end of the Vietnam War, former United States Army Special Forces soldier John Rambo (Stallone) goes to visit in his friend, Delmar, in the Pacific Northwest, only to learn that he has died due to his exposure to Agent Orange. Delmar’s death makes Rambo the last survivor of his unit.

Rambo continues his journey through the town of Hope, Washington, but is intercepted by the town sheriff, Teasle (Dennehy), who fears that he is a drifter, and a dangerous element. Teasle drives Rambo out of town and when Rambo tries to return to Hope, Teasle arrests him.  Teasle finds a knife on him, and charges Rambo both with vagrancy and carrying a concealed weapon.

While incarcerated, Rambo is treated brutally by Teasle and his deputies, including Galt (Jack Starrett), Mitch (David Caruso) and Ward (Chris Mulkey).

This wretched treatment causes Rambo to experience flashbacks from his excruciating time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and to lose control of his impulses. His survival instinct kicks in, and Rambo injures several police officers, escapes the jail, and flees into the nearby forest.

Teasle and his deputies pursue Rambo into the wilderness, and before long, have a full-scale war on their hands as the Vietnam vet arranges for them to be fouled by booby traps and other dangers.

Rambo incapacitates the entire group, and Galt is killed, though the circumstances are not precisely Rambo’s fault.  Rambo attempts to surrender to authorities, but is rebuffed by Teasle, and nearly shot in the head.  Later, Rambo captures Teasle and tells him to “let it go,” but Teasle will not back down.

Before long, Rambo’s former superior office, Colonel Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna) arrives in Hope to help negotiate a peaceful solution to the war that rages. 

But Teasle has already called in the National Guard and State Police. 

Matters are escalating, and before long, there’s a very real chance that this war will have no winners at all…only casualties.

“We had orders. When in doubt…kill.”

Adapted from David Morrell’s 1972 novel of the same name, First Blood boasts a truly clever structure in the sense that Rambo’s mis-adventure in Hope -- an ironically-named town -- seems to mirror directly much of the Vietnam War experience and context.

In particular, Rambo runs up against a man, Teasle, who refuses to back down or to negotiate with him. Teasle’s only strategic move is to escalate, to the point that his own town is torn apart by his refusal to see reason, or to think outside the rubric of “total victory” over Rambo. 

In some fashion then, Teasle -- at least as depicted in the film -- symbolizes American leadership (from both political parties) circa 1964 – 1974 or thereabouts.  He represents unyielding, boot-on-your-throat authoritarianism.  It’s his way or the highway. If he cannot win with the forces under his command, Teasle will simply call up more forces and throw them at the cause too.  His “tactic” is overwhelming numerical advantage…and that’s it.

The paranoid quality of First Blood’s narrative arrives early, specifically in Teasle’s wantonly hostile actions in the film’s first act. He manufactures a reason to hate and fear Rambo on sight, trumping up charges of carrying a concealed weapon (a hunting knife, for Heaven’s sake…) and vagrancy. 

In keeping with the metaphor of the Vietnam War, Teasle’s trumped-up charges against Rambo serve as the equivalent of The Gulf of Tonkin incident… a manufactured reason to go to war.  Suddenly, Teasle has the excuse he needs to treat Rambo badly.

Oddly, Teasle’s actions make almost no sense on a practical level. They are only sensible if one considers the Vietnam War allegory.  Rambo’s hair isn’t especially long or ratty.  He doesn’t appear especially unkempt, either. And all he wants in Hope is a hot meal.  That’s all he “hopes” to find there. 

But Teasle is unreasonably and irrevocably hostile to Rambo…even telling him that his jacket with the American flag patch on it is bound to cause a problem.  If we understand Teasle as an avatar for imperialism and authoritarianism, he makes, at least, a modicum of sense as a dramatic character.  He becomes consumed by what “could” happen because of Rambo’s presence, not who Rambo actually is. 

And frankly, this sounds a lot like the (now-discredited…) Domino Theory. If Vietnam falls to communists, other states will also fall to communists too, the theory went.  There are a lot of “ifs” in that scenario that don’t involve -- at least directly – either reality or the present circumstances. 

Similarly, Teasle sees Rambo as a future threat not yet fully materialized, but it’s hard to see exactly why. Does Teasle think that this Vietnam Vet is going to start killing babies in Hope?  Is that his hidden (and paranoid…) fear?

Uniquely, Rambo takes on the characteristics of the Viet Cong in a sense.  He is “one” with the natural environment, using the forest to his advantage and acting as a guerrilla soldier when the first shots are fired.

He also sets booby traps for the pursuing officials, and many of his decoys and traps outlast superior firepower (the rubric of American forces in Vietnam).  At one point, Rambo even takes sanctuary in a mine or tunnel system, imagery which clearly evokes Viet Cong tactics. 

In more blunt terminology, both the Viet Cong and Rambo are deemed enemies of American authority in their respective wars. They represent some “outside” or “alien” world-view.

This shuffling of traditional heroic and villainous roles in First Blood effectively recreates the visceral confusion of the Vietnam War Era.  Americans were in Vietnam to fight the Viet Cong, and yet when stories came back about the behavior of some American soldiers, the tide of public opinion in the States turned against the war.

For instance, the My-Lai Massacre -- the murder of several hundred unarmed civilians by American soldiers in March of 1968 -- scrambled traditional concepts of right and wrong, heroes and villains.  How could people feel patriotic knowing that innocent people -- families -- were being murdered in their name?

First Blood is very much reflective of this complex and difficult dynamic. Watching the film, we expect to be on the side of the law and order, on the side of police, national guardsmen, and state police, but find that these expected authority figures are alternately despotic and cruel, or (as in the case of the guardsmen) inept, heavily armed buffoons. 

By contrast we sympathize with Rambo, even though he is launching a full-scale assault against civil and military authorities. He destroys private property, threatens other soldiers, and creates chaos.

Once more, traditional lines of sympathy are scrambled, and it isn’t clear who we should be rooting for.

Should it be for the police to put down an armed threat who lays siege to an innocent town? 

Or for the wronged man fighting the system with every ounce of strength in his body? 

Of course, as the film’s central figure, we ultimately do root for Rambo, but he is clearly an anti-hero in this film (as opposed to the sequels, where he is the fully heroic arm of a resurgent right-wing establishment…).

In First Blood, Rambo is fighting the system -- the very system that we cherish -- but one that has been co-opted by those who refuse to compromise or see reason.

In my introduction to this review, I noted that First Blood is an “aching” primal scream, an exorcism, and a necessary one. 

This becomes especially apparent in the final scenes.  I believe that Sylvester Stallone’s greatest silver screen performance arrives in First Blood, in the last act, when Rambo lays out the details of his life post-Vietnam.

He can’t get a job, let alone keep one.

He is tortured by images of friends and comrades dying in war. 

He is hurt -- psychically-wounded -- by the fact that his countrymen view him as a murderer and a baby-killer when he went to war, essentially, at their government’s behest (and demand).  

Rambo did what was asked of him, even though it was destructive to him personally, and now he is hated for having answered the call.

Thus Rambo faces the true no-win scenario.  He is derided because the war was lost, and hated by both the establishment and the anti-establishment.

During Rambo’s rage-driven monologue, Stallone is as raw and open emotionally as we have ever seen him…as if driven mad by the contradictions of Rambo’s situation as a man without a country, even though he gave everything for his country.

It is rare for an action movie to resolve in a scene of intense dialogue like Rambo’s in the police station in First Blood, but that’s precisely what occurs here.  We get this huge catharsis -- not out of violence meted -- but out of emotional release.  Rambo finally speaks at length about who he is, and what he is become…and is heard.  To some extent, that seems to be all he wants…to be heard. 

Later films in the franchise, as I’ve noted, ask Rambo to pull a lot of partisan baggage re-litigating the Vietnam War.  But in First Blood, we simply get a portrayal of an angry man who has been abandoned at every turn, and must now reconsider what his country stands for, and what he stands for.

First Blood is all about Rambo’s consuming rage, and the fact that he has been taught by his country that the way to express such rage is through violence, war, and blood-shed.  Trautman describes the philosophy as “when in doubt…kill.”

Only in the film’s finale, when Rambo unloads his emotions on Trautman, however, is Rambo’s war truly ended.  Violence and war ultimately resolve nothing, and that’s why First Blood is an anti-war film.  War did not make Rambo great.  On the contrary, war trained him to survive in only one heightened environment -- the battlefield -- but left him without the resources he needs to live among us, as a countryman, as a human being.

Although Rambo is described as “resilient” in First Blood, the opposite is actually true. He mounts a “private war” because he “just can’t turn off” the rage within him.  Accordingly, the final, haunting freeze frame of First Blood is a portrait of a man who -- years after the war is ended -- is finally taking stock of who he is, and why he is that way.

First Blood features involving, dynamic action scenes. Rambo’s escape from jail is a kinetic dance, a battle of violence that showcases John as a living, breathing weapon.  The scene on the cliff-wall, perhaps the most dazzling in the picture, is tense, and bereft of any obvious fakery or stunt doubles.  The action here is splendidly orchestrated, but again, the film’s real gut-punch comes in the substitution of Rambo’s self-expression for a deadly shoot-out.  The film goes out not with a blaze of fire-works, but a blaze of emotions and truth-telling.

Popular reputation to the contrary, First Blood isn’t a rah-rah cartoon or a two-dimensional action film like its successors. It’s the emotionally-affecting primal scream of a soldier hated and abandoned on all sides, who is just trying to mind his own business.

Sadly, he finds that he is to be denied even that modest freedom, and fights back the only way he knows how.

The way we taught him to fight.