The Fly (1986)

Director: David Cronenberg

Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Joy Boushel

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It even became the basis for an occasionally returned to rule on <Beyond the Cabin in the Woods>. Essentially: Toxic masculinity aside, when your penis falls off, you need to go to the doctor.

Somehow, I haven’t returned to the film since starting with Cabin and these reviews.

Did I Like It: Even though I’ve seen it probably a dozen times over the years, I’m struck by how much it works as a thriller. The lead up to the unfortunate fate of the baboon (and the relatively benign fate of his brother), Brundle’s (Goldblum) prowling for someone else to share of teleporting, his progressive unravelling right up until the point that he fused with his infernal machine. Each of those moments put me on the edge of my seat, as if I was watching the movie for the first time. I’ve seen other horror movies multiple times—Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Halloween (1978) immediately come to mind—but none of them hit me with that same instinctive feeling of terror as this does.

Even if the film’s pulse-pounding effects somehow dulled over the years, there would be more than enough of a great film to enjoy. I’m torn on whether or not this was the role Goldblum was born to play, or if he so thoroughly understood the task in front of him, but every stutter and twitch makes an audience believe that the border between man and fly is thinner than any of us might want to admit, and that’s before any special effect comes into place. And this entire review has managed to avoid talking about those very special effects. The makeup revolts and feels real, and it is supremely difficult for any horror movie to embrace puppetry and not feel silly, but when those last vestiges of humanity disappear, ti still feels as if there is something of Goldblum in there somewhere.

Thelma & Louise (1991)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen

Have I Ever Seen It Before: Never, which seems like preposterous blind spot, I know.

Did I like it: Is there any director other than Ridley Scott who has such a tonnage of absolute classics under his belt (and a few stinkers; let’s not completely lose our heads), and have those classics reside in such complete different genres? Spielberg may be as prolific, but he generally has his Amblin period, and his Oscar-bait period, and nearly every one of his films can fit into those large categories. Kubrick is certainly varied, but between a more high brow sensibility and a compulsive need to do scores of takes, there are only a handful of films in the canon. It’s Ridley Scott and only Ridley Scott for this particular category.

And so it is with this film, that an unlikely source creates an unabashedly feminist film. If the film came to the surface now, it would be beset by complaints over over-wokeness, and the only comfort I get from that realization is that it was also beset by those bad faith arguments, so maybe all lousy criticism (including, sometimes, the ones that appear on this site) will eventually evaporate into the ether, and the really good stuff will remain. Every man in this movie lands on some end of the terrible spectrum, and if that bothers you, well, 1991 called and wants its bullshit back.

And that’s what this is, the writing is top notch, often funny, and never boring. Sarandon and Davis are never better, bringing the simmering strength and still ingrained weakness in equal measure. There’s an absolute reason it is a classic.

Which brings us to the ending. No conversation about this movie would be complete without touching upon the final moments, as those are the ones that have become the most iconic over the years. It may be my least favorite thing about the film. The action of driving the car off the cliff feels tacked on somehow. The action of going out in a blaze of glory is fine, and absolutely flows from the film that precedes it. Perhaps the production ran out of money to have they turn around and make the various cops pay for their chase. Maybe I’m just bothered by how the polaroid of them from the beginning managed to stay just so on the backseat through that whole action sequence, only to fly off at the moment of maximum pathos. Maybe I don’t like the fact that my idiot brain thinks for a moment they might have made it.

It’s a minor complaint.

Beetlejuice (1988)

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Michael (f’ing) Keaton, Winona Ryder, Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, Jeffery Jones, Glenn Shadix, Robert Goulet, Dick Cavett… Christ, the cast on this picture is bonkers.

Have I Seen it Before: It is a core member of the “VHS tapes I wore down to the point of evaporation during childhood” association. 

Did I Like It: It’s a weird movie, but that’s more of an objective statement, isn’t it?

Beetlejuice—Tim Burton’s second feature—is about death. Again, that seems like a pretty objective statement. Perhaps it is about death in the same way that Young Frankenstein (1974) is about neurosurgery. And yet, over dozens of viewings in the late 80s and early 90s, that never seemed to be what the film was about. If you were to ask me in my first decade of life what the story of the film actually is, and I would probably tell you that some people wander around a movie for the better part of an hour before Michael Keaton shows up and the real movie begins. This may be because a) I was more familiar with the ensuing cartoon series based on the movie, that transformed Beetlejuice (Keaton) and Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) from the lecherous demon in search of a suicidal child bride into a pair of wacky pals and b) I wasn’t quite ready to comprehend the idea of death at the age of five.

And yet, I can kind of get where I missed the idea way back when. The whole movie attaches itself to a pointedly nebulous aesthetic. The football team is out of left field, especially when they’re in the last shot of the picture. Why do dead people get sent to Saturn? Why is it a huge public health issue in the deceased community? Why has no one noticed Sand Worms traveling the surface of Saturn? Why did the sandworm appear out of nowhere at the Maitland/Deetz residence? That one’s a bit of deus ex machina, right? Don’t get me started on the fact that this may be the only film in existence which is regularly uncertain about the spelling of its title.

And so the film exists in a state of contradiction, often bewildering, but just as frequently charming. It might be the key case study in my Michael Keaton Theory. (Which postulates that a film is automatically ten percent better than it would have been otherwise. It works wonders in cases like Robocop (2014), and brings the rottentomatoes score of a movie like Multiplicty (1996) into the mid-eighties).

Another thought that only just now occurred to me on this screening: So odd that Burton directed this as sort of a warm up to Batman (1989) and didn’t cast Baldwin as the Dark Knight the next year. I mean, I’m grateful. Baldwin at this point in his career is too-on-the-nose for the “dance of the freaks” Burton was intent to bring to the screen, but the fact that the studio didn’t insist—or, in the alternative, Burton was able to bypass their insistence—is sort of freaky.