The Films of 1991: The Rocketeer

A strange factoid about superhero movies -- which I've written much about lately -- is that period pieces rarely succeed at the box office.

Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), The Shadow (1994), The Phantom (1996), and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) are all examples of superhero movies set in yesteryear that failed to succeed with audiences. 

In 2011, Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger beat that long-standing curse. Perhaps that success happened because the director had faced the same problem once before with 1991’s The Rocketeer, a brilliant and beautiful genre film that never achieved the success it so abundantly deserves.

Why do fans prefer modern superheroes over ones operating in the past? 

Perhaps it is because the superhero template is -- broadly -- similar to the Western format, only with some technological upgrades. Substitute a cool car like the Batmobile for Silver, and a man in a cape for a cowboy in a ten gallon hat, and one can detect how alike the genres truly are.

In both brands of stories, singular men (or sometimes women) tackle corruption and evil, and then, largely, go on their way…until needed again. 

So take a superhero hero movie out of the present, and you might just as well be watching a Western. 

Or perhaps it is just too difficult for us to suspend disbelief in a period superhero film. Audiences might accept a man in a cape fighting criminals in a modern day urban jungle, but if it happened in, say, 1939, how come nobody ever heard of the guy? 

My point is that a period superhero not only asks us to believe in one fantasy element (a person with super powers, for instance), but two, if you count alternate history.

One can speculate any number of reasons why modern audiences will readily accept an Indiana Jones, but not a Kit Walker or Lamont Cranston.  The point is, I suppose, that audiences seem to prefer superheroes with a hard, technological -- even futuristic -- edge.  We want them saving our world, today, operating on the bleeding edge of now.

And in the case of The Rocketeer, it’s a crying shame that our tastes run in this direction.  As critic David Ansen observed, regarding the film, it is “determinedly sweet,” and features “action scenes that are more bouncy than bone-crunching.”

Because of such virtues, I have always considered The Rocketeer the spiritual heir to Superman: The Movie (1978), my choice -- still -- for the best superhero film of all time. 

At one point in The Rocketeer, a character notes “you’d pay to see a man to fly, wouldn’t you?” And indeed, Superman’s famous tag-line was “You’ll believe a man can fly.” 

People flocked to Superman: The Movie in 1978 (in the immediate post-Watergate Age) because they wanted to dream about just such a thing being a reality; they wanted to “believe again.”

The Rocketeer understands perfectly that brand of emotional longing in general, and the long-standing human fascination with flight in particular. 

It depicts the magic of leaving terra firma behind as pilots attempt to touch Heaven itself.  Indeed, the film’s hero, Cliff Secord (Bill Campbell) discusses flight in precisely -- nay, explicitly -- those terms. 

In the film’s denouement, he discusses wearing the film’s rocket pack and getting as close to Heaven as is possible for a living mortal. “It was the closest I’ll ever get,” he says.

In pure human terms, The Rocketeer is very much about that yearning to touch the sky, and few modern superhero pictures feature such a direct and delightful, human through-line. Instead, they get bogged down in character backgrounds, villainous plans, and byzantine back-stories.

Beyond that accomplishment, The Rocketeer lovingly (and meticulously) revives 1930s Los Angeles, and features a great turn by Timothy Dalton as a flamboyant villain. 

Significantly, there is no angst in The Rocketeer.

There is no trademark genre darkness, cynicism or bitterness. 

The film doesn’t focus on revenge, either. 

Instead, The Rocketeer is really about joy; the joy of flight, and, in a way that can’t be diminished, the fact that love of country can bring people of unlike backgrounds together. The movie, after all, ends with Italian mobsters, a failed pilot, government agents and Howard Hughes banding together to stop a Nazi invasion.

What could be more American, or more ennobling, than that “flight” of fancy?

“I may not make an honest buck, but I’m 100% American. I don’t work for no two-bit Nazi.”

A young pilot, Cliff Secord (Bill Campbell) becomes embroiled, accidentally in a battle between Federal agents and gangsters. Through a strange set of coincidences, he ends up with his hands on a new super-weapon, a rocket-pack designed by Howard Hughes (Terry O’Quinn) called the X-3.

Hoping to make a living after his plane is destroyed in the battle, Secord secretly keeps the X-3, and has his resourceful mechanic friend, Peeve (Alan Arkin) make him a helmet to go with the rocket.  

Before long, he emerges as a hero the press dubs “The Rocketeer.”

Unfortunately, the number 3 box office draw in America, Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton), is actually a Nazi spy and has been tasked with stealing the X-3 and returning it to the Fatherland.   He is allied with mobster Eddie Valentine (Paul Sorvino), though Valentine doesn’t know Sinclair’s true allegiance.

Sinclair attempts to ingratiate himself with Secord’s aspiring actress girlfriend, Jenny Blake (Jennifer Connelly) to get close to the X-3.  When that doesn’t work, however, he resorts to force. He abducts Jenny and makes a bargain with Secord: the rocket pack for the girl.

Unfortunately, Howard Hughes and the U.S. government also want the rocket pack back, and Cliff must make a difficult choice.

“How did it feel? Strapping that thing to your back and flying like a bat out of Hell?

The Rocketeer is adapted from the work of graphic novel writer-illustrator Dave Stevens, who first published the title in 1982.  And overall, the title, like the film, is an homage to and pastiche of the pulpy genre entertainment of yesteryear.

For example, the visual look of the title character seems inspired by Commando Cody, a hero who wears a leather flight suit, a bullet-shaped helmet, and a jet pack. The character head-lined in King of the Rocketmen (1952) and Radar Men of the Moon (1953).

The film, however, focuses much of its artistic vision on the 1930s milieu. The audience encounters Hollywood legends Clark Gable and W.C. Fields, for example. A singer in the South Seas Club croons tunes from Cole Porter.  And the soldier villain, Lothar (Tiny Ron) is a dead ringer for Rondo Hatton (1894-1946), a screen actor who suffered from Acromegaly, and put his fearsome visage to menacing use in films like The Brute Man (1946). 

The film also reveals the evolution of the landmark Hollywood sign. It goes from reading Hollywoodland (in 1923) to reading Hollywood (1949), all because of a Nazi incursion on American soil.  And Neville Sinclair, of course, is a variation on film idol Errol Flynn (who was once believed to be a Nazi spy, oddly enough…).

One of the best moments in The Rocketeer, for my money, however is the Nazi propaganda film featured in the last act. In a sort of Art Deco (or Futura) style, we see an animated representation of the Nazi plan for world domination using the X-3.  The terrifying (but beautifully-wrought) imagery shows rocket men destroying Washington DC, burning the American flag, and raising the Swastika.  This short film sells perfectly (and cheaply) the threat that America faces.

Thanks to production designer Jim Bissell and director of photography Hiro Narita, The Rocketeer looks fantastic.  But just as powerful, if not more so, is the movie’s sense of heart, and innocence. 

After Secord saves a fellow pilot (dressed as a clown for an air show), and takes off using the rocket for the first time, the film veritably soars.  One might attribute this feeling of emotional flight to James Horner’s musical score, or to the setting -- wide open wheat fields under Big American Sky. 

Whatever the cause, this inaugural flight sequence is one of the few in superhero movie history that legitimately deserves comparison to the Smallville interlude in Donner’s Superman: the Movie.  The overwhelming feeling is for an age -- an innocence -- lost, but also a yearning for Americana and the American Dream. 

What is that American Dream? In films such as The Rocketeer it involves the achievement of something more than wealth or success.  It involves doing great things; breaking barriers; going where none have gone before. Touching the sky.

It is an indicator of The Rocketeer’s unfettered gentleness and innocence that its call to patriotism in the final act plays not as cheesy or overdone, but as authentically stirring. We see a mobster, Eddie Valentine (Paul Sorvino) make common cause with G-Men to stop a threat to America’s future: Nazi soldiers. 

Then, after he implores Secord to “go get” the bad-guys, we get the glorious shot of The Rocketeer posed next to Old Glory herself, the American flag. The not subtle (yet still wonderful…) message behind this imagery is that Americans may have many, many differences, but in times of strife and crisis, they come together. 

Mobster or G-Man, Americans draw strength from one another and defend their country -- and the ideals of their country -- when they are threatened. I still remember seeing the film in the theater, and the audience hooted and hollered with raucous energy when the Valentine expressed his love of country, and his urging for Secord to fight the good fight.  It gives me chills thinking about it, even today.

In some way, superhero movies are really about (or should be about…) the things we can’t always do; the ideals we can’t always live by, even though we wish to.

Like rising to the occasion in a crisis. 

Or strapping on a rocket pack and taking off into the sky; touching Heaven.  The Rocketeer absolutely understands this facet of the genre, and presents a kind of wish-fulfillment genre story of the highest order.

The Rocketeer is a light, joyous film that never focuses on special effects over people. The film’s feet never touch the ground, and the action scenes, particularly the final set-piece on the Nazi dirigible, are memorable and well-orchestrated.

So why didn’t audiences flock to the film?

I think that goes back to my original point about audiences deliberately not-seeking out period superhero efforts. Even Captain America, Joe Johnston’s genre follow-up to The Rocketeer, eventually reaches the 21^st century, right?  Some people might see that development as hedging a bet; protecting against an undesirable outcome (financial failure).

Today, superhero films have largely become mechanical and formulaic. They give us everything we expect as part of some multi-media franchise experience (the teaser, the trailer, the second act surprise, and the post-credits reveal or preview for the next picture), but somehow forget to hold up as narratives, as movies that live and breathe and tell us something vital about human nature.

The Rocketeer makes us believe that a man (and America with him, in one of its darkest hours)…can fly. 

You’d pay to see that, wouldn’t you?

I know I would.

Movie Trailer: The Rocketeer (1991)

Cult-Movie Review: Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

Of all the original Nightmare on Elm Street films, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) is the worst.

The film’s setting -- a decimated Springwood ten years in the future -- is actually quite inventive, and, in a way, quite logical in nature, but Freddy’s Dead nonetheless plays more like a cartoon than a movie featuring human beings.  

There’s a campy tone to the whole enterprise that is heightened to ridiculous and unpalatable levels by the (unnecessary) presence of movie star cameos.  

And the Freddy background story -- which reveals he has a daughter -- plays as two-dimensional at best.

Even the film’s conclusion -- which sees Freddy brought into the real world and executed there -- plays as a weak-kneed imitation of Nancy Thompson’s final strategy in the 1984 original.  

The film’s genuinely lousy special effects -- which look even worse in 3-D -- don’t do anything to enhance the script’s better qualities.  

In this case, Freddy’s Dead best quality is the script’s focus on the tragedy of child abuse. Virtually every important character in the proceedings can be considered in regards to this (troubling) paradigm, even Freddy himself.

Somewhere, buried underneath all the campy jokes, there is a good movie waiting to get out.  It’s just too bad that Freddy’s Dead is executed so poorly, and without any sense of or grounding in reality.

The tag-line promised that the filmmakers saved the best for last.  

But the opposite true.  Freddy’s Dead kills Freddy all right, but not because he had to go; but because the filmmakers did such a lousy job dramatizing this story.

“One of these days, you’re going to have to face your father.”

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Springwood is down to its last surviving teenager, John Doe (Shon Greenblat), thanks to Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund).  Freddy sends the amnesiac Doe to a nearby town on a fishing expedition of sorts, hoping he will bring back more victims for Freddy, including his long lost daughter.

John ends up at a half-way house with other teens including Tracy (Lezlie Deane), Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan) and Spencer (Brecking Meyer).  Their counselor is Maggie (Lisa Zane), a woman who is also struggling with gaps in her memory.

Maggie takes John on a field trip back to Springwood, to learn about his past, unaware that the other teens have stowed away in the van for the trip.  She is also unaware that she is leading them all into a trap set by Freddy.

“He’s fucking with the lines between dreams and reality.”

There are three big problems with Freddy’s Dead, I guess one might conclude.  

The first is that space has been made -- too much space, actually -- for celebrity cameos.  Thus the movie shoehorns in appearances by Roseanne Barr, Tom Arnold, Johnny Depp and Alice Cooper.  

Barr and Arnold are the absolute pits in their roles as psychotic Springwood parents, and they don’t take their performances seriously.  Instead, this duo grants the film a camp quality that makes it all seem like a big joke.

Secondly, the film’s climax proves a grievous disappointment. To start off, we learn that Freddy is inhabited by three Ancient Greek Gods called “dream demons.”  

One wonders: does this mean he’s not the protector of the Dream Gate, as established by “The Dream Master?” 

Why do we get another revisionist explanation for his dream abilities at all?  It's unnecessary, and worse than that, contradictory to information we have already received in previous franchise entries.

No matter, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

During the denouement, Maggie pulls Freddy into reality (just as Nancy did in A Nightmare on Elm Street), and then blows him up with dynamite, ending his reign of terror permanently. 

Writing for Sight and Sound Film Review (May 1991-April 1992, page 227), Nigel Floyd pointed out the problem with this straightforward solution: “Here we are asked to believe that a monster – who has survived myriad deaths and been resurrected countless times could be disposed of with sticks of dynamite.”

Yep. The problem is that this film was marketed on the premise of the studio finally killing off Freddy.  You would think, then, that the writers and director would come up with a pretty ingenious, or at least fresh way to kill off the brute.  Instead, they just pick the franchise's first and earliest way to kill him, from Craven’s original.  

It’s a huge disappointment, and not believable for even a second.   

The questions here that the audience might rightly ask, but the filmmakers don't consider are the following.

Why does this death promise to keep Freddy at bay permanently when Nancy turning her back on him failed?

When burying his bones in consecrated bones failed. 

When showing him his evil reflection failed.  

When being captured and absorbed by his mother, the nun, failed?

But this is going to do it?!

Well, Yaphet Kotto says so...

Third, but not least importantly, Freddy’s Dead represents the first time since before the arrival of Dream Warriors, that Freddy’s rules are inconsistent.  

Now, for example, Springwood seems to exist in its own bubble dimension, and Freddy is trying to reach out of it.  

How does he own his own dimension?  I’m not talking about dreams here, importantly,  We actually see the glass-like membrane between dimensions as it is shattered. 

Since when did Freddy get real estate in the waking world?

More dramatically, the movie makes a point of noting that Krueger reqquires John Doe to go fetch victims and bring them back to his dimension, because he can’t affect the world outside Springwood.  

Yet when Maggie and John return to the outside world, reality there has shifted dramatically.  No one any longer possesses memories of Carl or Spencer.  They’ve been erased from the time line.

Again, this is hardly the purview of a dream demon, and it makes no sense that Freddy should be able to re-shape reality from afar when he goes to all the trouble of bringing victims to him in Springwood.

I could go on and on with the internal inconsistencies, because there are many.

In terms of visuals, Freddy is over-lit throughout the movie so you can get a good look at every burn and pock-mark on his face. As I wrote in Horror Films of the 1990s, he’s about as terrifying-looking here as Lt Worf  was on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994).

Yet despite these flaws, I believe that Freddy’s Dead could have succeeded, with better execution, and a rewrite (or seven, perhaps).  For example, I like the idea of Springwood as a ghost town.  That’s a valid notion, given the rate at which Freddy is murdering teenagers in the other films. It only makes sense that, at some point, the town is decimated…and nobody’s moving in anymore, either.

Secondly, I can see that the filmmakers were attempting to make some (no doubt sincere) commentary about abused children and abused parents. 

Tracy is an abused child, as we see in her dream sequence, which features her brutish, hulking father.  

Carlos is deaf in one ear, we learn, because -- similarly -- his mother injured him.  

Maggie, the daughter of Freddy is certainly verbally and emotionally abused by Freddy in the film.

And Freddy himself, we learn from the film’s flashbacks, is also an abused child. 

But Freddy’s Dead doesn’t do much with this idea, or draw any important or original conclusions about what it means that such violence exists in American families.  Accordingly, the flashbacks featuring Freddy are absolutely horrible.  

Basically, young Freddy begs his dad (Cooper) to whip him some more, again utilizing the approach that Freddy is seemingly bad by nature, evil from birth.  I think this does the character an extreme disservice, as I’ve written before.

I believe, instead, that Freddy is a coward. Or at least he was in life. Why else pick a job where he could hurt children in secret?  Why keep in the shadows, or live in a boiler room?  

Clearly, he is a sick individual who operates on the fringes of society. 

But the Elm Street sequels turn Freddy into this two-dimensional, cackling “EVIL” thing who kills schoolroom animals, begs to be beaten by his dad, and roughs up his wife and (possibly his daughter too).  A guy like this draws a lot of attention --  he doesn’t hide -- and so it doesn’t seem to fit with Wes Craven’s conception of the character.  Can you imagine the Freddy seen in this film's flashbacks ever getting a job at an elementary school?  Ever being beloved by the students there?

I know I can't.

With such a dramatic rewrite of the original character, I would suggest that it is the filmmakers, not Maggie and John, who actually need a refresher course in “Freddy 101.”

The Films of 1991: Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey

The difference between the two Bill and Ted movies is a profound and noteworthy one. 

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) is a low-brow comedy about two dumb dudes from San Dimas.  

Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) by contrast is a high-brow comedy about the same dumb dudes.

Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey is not only more intricately plotted than its predecessor was -- featuring an authentically Orphean journey to the Underworld -- but its comedy is much more layered and sophisticated too.

Before it finishes up, this film jabs science fiction tropes, and Star Trek (1966-1969), specifically, but also patiently (and humorously) develops a satire based on Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece, The Seventh Seal (1967).

The result is a film that never has a dull moment, and is never less than searingly funny. The big problem with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is that, outside the Napoleon character -- who was given substantial screen time -- none of the historical figures the duo encountered came across as real characters, only one-note jokes.

In Bogus Journey, Bill and Ted meet Death -- the Grim Reaper (William Sadler) -- and he is a great character: vain, insecure, over-confident and silly as hell.  The two (alien?) scientists from Heaven (!), Station also grab the spotlight for a while, and are genuinely amusing. 

Finally, the creative decision to add a real villain in the person of De Nomolos (Joss Ackland) -- someone dead set against Bill and Ted’s inevitable success -- grants the film a sense of urgency and import that the original lacked.

It is relatively rare for a genre sequel to thoroughly out-strip the source material, but in the case of Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, that’s the real story.  The film’s cerebral approach to comedy elevates this 1991 film, and expands the reach of the franchise in dramatic fashion.

In fact, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey is so good it’s a genuine shame a second sequel has never been produced.

“Get down and give me infinity!”

Bill Preston (Alex Winter) and Theodore Logan (Keanu Reeves) approach “the second crucial point in their destiny,” the San Dimas Battle of the Bands…which is televised.

But in the far future world that worships them, the evil De Nomolos (Ackland) sends homicidal Bill and Ted lookalike robots back in time to sabotage the duo’s chances at the show, and -- preferably -- kill them. 

Rufus (George Carlin) manages to enter the time vortex after the robots, but is soon determined to be missing.

Back in the 20th century, the two robots do their dirty work. They drive Bill and Ted out to Vasquez Rocks and murder them.  

Now restless spirits, Bill and Ted attempt to possess the living, and communicate at a séance, and then end up relegated to  the pits of Hell.

They escape from Hell by challenging the Grim Reaper (Sadler) to a game, or several games, to be more accurate.  

They beat him at Twister (following games of Battleship and Clue), and force Death to bring them back to life.  The Grim Reaper complies, and then takes them to Heaven, where Bill and Ted petition God to help defeat the evil robots.

God provides a great scientist/creature called “Station” to help out, but the Battle of the Bands is nearing, and the evil robots have captured the princesses!

“I think we’re in our own personal Hell.”

Like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey gets a lot of mileage out of the boys’ manner of expression. 

It was odd and amusing hearing them use surfer speak in various historical contexts in the first film, but even funnier to witness them address beings of Heaven and Hell in this one. 

“How’s it going, Beelzabub?” for instance, or “How’s it hanging, Death?”  

Also, it’s impossible not to laugh at the moment here in which Bill and Ted pull a Uranus joke on the Almighty Lord. And,-- ridiculously -- this moment comes after they have mugged peaceful souls arriving in Heaven and stolen their clothes.

But Bill and Ted’s manner of speech isn’t the only joke worth noting here, and that’s what makes Bogus Journey so much fun.  

This films throws up the sci-fi cliché or trope of evil android duplicates, and then puts them in a plot that directly reflects a Star Trek episode.  

Specifically, Bill and Ted watch “Arena” on TV...the episode with Kirk fighting the Gorn at Vasquez Rocks.  We view footage of William Shatner at that famous natural landmark on their TV set.  Then, in the very next scene, we get identical shots of Bill and Ted at the same locale, fighting their own enemy.

Later, the target for satire is Ingmar Bergman’s lugubrious The Seventh Seal. 

In that film, Max Von Sydow’s character, Antonius Block, plays a chess game with Death -- a monk-like, bald-figure in a black cowl -- for his survival. The chess game is a symbol in the Swedish film, and it is believed, by the movie's characters, that no force can beat death. For humans, it is always check and mate, sooner or later.

In Bill and Ted, however, Death plays the dudes in a variety of board games, and loses every match.  

The film features a very funny scene involving several different popular games as Death is beaten -- a terrible player, apparently -- again and again.  The final interlude of this montage involves Twister.

Other scenes also hit just the right notes. There’s a short scene near the beginning of the film when Bill and Ted -- now dead -- possess the bodies of two police officers in their fifties (played by Hal Linden Jr., and Roy Brocksmith). 

Suddenly these aging, balding men in their fifties begin gesticulating and talking like surfers, and the scene earns some big laughs.

The scenes in Hell don’t last that long, but manage to be both amusing and disturbing. Bill, for example, must attend to his ancient, hairy-lipped, lip-smacking grandmother…who wants a sloppy wet kiss.  And Ted contends with a demonic, animatronic Easter Bunny.

They also go to the hellish equivalent of Military School, where they are ordered to drop and do "infinity" push ups.

The difference in approach between the films is telling. There’s no real comedy in the time travel scenes of the original, wherein Bill and Ted meet Socrates, or Billy the Kid for example. These moments are devoid of any pacing or real humor. They just kind of land with a thud.

But in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, the screenwriters move effortlessly from joke to joke, from Star Trek gag to Grim Reaper gag, from, possession gag to Hell gag, to Heaven gag, and so on. The film veritably speeds by on its humorous high points, and ends before you can think twice about any gaps in logic.

Alas, there are a few. 

Rufus established in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure that time runs on always-moving tracks. In other words, the clock continues for time travelers even when they are traveling.  

But in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, the duo violates this rule, able to leave the Battle of the Bands to learn how to play guitar, and then come back to that very moment in time, as if no duration elapsed. Given the rules established in the first film, how'd they manage this?

A little more thought about how time travel works in this universe would have made the film all the stronger.

On the other hand, this sequel does expand the franchise universe in other memorable ways.  We see the depths of Hell, the architecture of Heaven, and even Bill and Ted University in the future. The original film had all of human history to explore, and yet felt like a cheap TV show.  

By comparison, Bogus Journey is as big and weird as existence itself.

One key reason that Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey succeeds goes by the name of William Sadler.  

He’s been baddies (Die Harder [1990]) and a supporting, fatherly figure (Roswell) before, but the actor demonstrates real comedy chops as the Grim Reaper in this film. He comes off as pathetic, desperate, and a hanger-on, but ultimately, a worthy ally for the non-judgmental Bill and Ted. He's a great sidekick and foil for the duo, a would-be regal figure brought to a point far below his ostensible dignity.

Finally, this sequel conforms to one of my favorite rock movie cliches of all time: A great rock show can change the world (to quote Jack Black in 2004's School of Rock).  

That's very much what happens here, as Bill and Ted's music changes the fabric of reality itself. The film's end credits amusingly feature magazine covers charting the rise of Wyld Stallyns and Bill and Ted to ever greater heights (including a mission to Mars).

Bill and Ted may go through Hell, literally, during their bogus journey, but for this reviewer, the 1991 sequel is actually a lot closer to Heaven, with nearly every crazy, inventive gag hitting its mark, and hitting it hard.