Awesome ’80s In April: Firestarter (1984)

firestarter poster

One of my aims for this series is to watch films that I knew about as a kid during the 1980s but for whatever reason have never bothered to watch. All kinds of films were floating around the cultural ether – films that I’d seen trailers for or seen on Siskel & Ebert, or that my friends were talking about, but that didn’t appeal to me for some reason. Or that I just never wound up seeing. As an adult, a lot of these films have some kind of appeal, but not enough to usually make me sit down and watch them.

Firestarter is a good example of this. It starred Drew Barrymore, who was the biggest child star at the time. I was actually too young to watch the film when it came out in 1984, but she had something of a career resurgence in the 1990s by taking on more mature (and sometimes scandalous) movies like Poison Ivy (1992), The Amy Fisher Story (1993), and Boys on the Side (1995). I was a fan of the actress as a teenager and though Firestarter was a few years old at that point it was still very much part of the culture. It was often shown on cable television and the video stores still had copies of it on their shelves.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Firestarter was part of my cinematic memory, even though I never did watch it. It is that kind of thing that fascinates me and those are the types of movies I’ll be trying to watch this month.

The film is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name and follows one of his more regular themes – that of people with psychic ability and the secret government agencies that want to exploit it.

Barrymore plays Charlie a girl with pyrokinetic powers. She and her father Andrew (David Keith) are on the run from those secret government agents. Years before Andrew and his wife were given experimental drugs by that agency which gave her the ability to read minds and him the ability to control them. The agency killed his wife and kidnapped Charlie. He got her back and that’s why they are on the run.

Eventually, they get caught and the Agency director (Martin Sheen) and his hitman (George C. Scott pretending to be Native American and sporting the most ridiculous-looking ponytail) attempt to befriend Charlie so they can get her to master her powers.

Writing all that out makes the film sound pretty good, but I’m afraid I have to tell you it is mostly a snore. The government plot is dull as can be, George C. Scott’s performance is just plain odd, and for a more about a girl who can start fires with her mind (and is titled Firestarter), it sure takes its time letting the girl start fires with her mind. It finally gets going in the last fifteen minutes or so and that scene is a real corker with tons of action and blazing fire action. But getting there takes a lot of effort.

Oddly enough it did make me want to read the book. The bones of the plot are good, and exactly the sort of thing King is good at writing. There is a scene in the film where Charlie and the father are picked up by an old man and taken back to his home where the man’s wife fixes them lunch. It is a perfectly fine little scene in the movie, but you just know King expanded it for multiple chapters allowing these characters to really bond and for us to get to know them. That’s the sort of thing King excels at, but that tends to get shortened down to nothing on the big screen.

Hardcore (1979)

Hardcore (1979) stars George C. Scott as Jake VanDorn a conservative, Calvinist, businessman from Grand Rapids, Michigan. When his teenage daughter goes missing while on a trip to California he hires a sleazy private detective (Peter Doyle) to find her. The detective turns up a short pornographic reel with the daughter in it, but when he is unable to locate her Jake flies to Los Angeles to do the job himself. Once there he journeys through the seedy underbelly of the city talking to strippers, prostitutes, and porno hustlers.

It covers similar territory as the Martin Scorsese-directed Taxi Driver (1976) which Schrader also wrote. Except in that film, Travis Bickle lived in the dark spaces and seemed to thrive there. Jake VanDorn is from the midwest. He is a moral man. A good churchgoer. He is unmoved by all the sex and unseemliness. He is propositioned several times throughout the movie but only offers back a scoff. As if sex doesn’t interest him. His disgust and anger come out only when dealing with his daughter – while watching her perform sex acts on camera or dealing with someone who put her in that position.

Schrader himself was from Grand Rapids and was raised as a Calvinist. He’s on record saying that the Jake VanDorn character was modeled after his father and it is hard not to see the daughter as a symbol for himself. He did leave Grand Rapids for Los Angeles after all to make a living making movies, something his father no doubt would have abhorred. Yet it is interesting to see how the film is from the father’s perspective. We rarely see the daughter at all, nor do we get her side of the story. Make of that what you will.

Jake wanders around the seedier sections of Los Angeles. He walks into porno shops asking the clerk if he’s seen his daughter. He wanders into makeshift brothels where one can wrestle nude with a pretty young woman and negotiate with her for anything else he wants. He pays these women but all he wants is answers. He doesn’t get very many. While pornography has become essentially legalized, this world is still full of secrets, it lives by a code and Jake is clearly not part of it.

He changes tactics. He puts a classified ad in a local newspaper stating that he is a porno producer looking for male studs. He’s hoping to find the young man who was in that porno clip with his daughter. He dons a cheap wig, a cheaper mustache, and clothes that make him look like a narc with no clue as to how to blend in.

He finds the guy but only plunges deeper into this world which includes underage prostitution and snuff films. In parts, it reminded me of several Brian DePalma films. Movies like Dressed to Kill and Body Double also delve into these unseemly sides of a city, but DePalma fetishized them whereas here Schrader looks at them with a detachment. Jake digs deep into this world that he only ever feared existed but he is not part of it. He is a watcher.

George C. Scott is a fascinating choice for Jake. He’s such a square. I mean I don’t know what the actor was like in real life, but his characters are often very straight-laced, or at least unsentimental. While diving into the underside of Los Angeles and San Francisco, he walks through it as if a robot, almost emotionless. He does break down a few times, but each time it is only due to his feelings for his daughter. He meets a young hustler who says she started hooking up when she was very young. Jake is happy to take care of her while she’s helping him find his daughter, but unlike Travis Bickle, he never seems all that bothered that she’s been abused her entire life. It is almost like this is a completely different world to him, to his world back in Grand Rapids, and he’d just assume it doesn’t exist once he gets his daughter out of it.

Schrader is a director whose work I’ve almost always enjoyed. This was the second film he ever directed and the sixth film that he had written. Hardcore isn’t his best work, but it is an interesting film, and it makes for a very interesting companion piece to Taxi Driver.

Calendar Movies: Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

For Christmas, my wife bought me a 12-month calendar full of classic movie posters. It is a lovely thing with large, full-color photographs of some great movies. I immediately decided that I would have to watch all of the movies featured. Then I decided that each month I would throw a party around each film.

I’ve continually got ideas running through my head about throwing parties in which to watch a bunch of movies. Call them my own personal mini-movie festivals, like Sundance in my living room. The idea of getting a bunch of people together to watch Kurasawa films, or movies set in space, or the Evil Dead and Reanimator series back to back to back sends me into orgiastic spasms.

The problem is I just don’t know enough people willing to sit still for 8 hours to watch multiple movies. This is especially true when my idea for a festival includes Wild Strawberries (1957) and Cannibal Holocaust (1980).

The only thing I’ve ever managed to do is get some folks together for a semi-regular horror movie festival in October. And even then most folks don’t make it past movie number two.

I believe I’ll have more luck with my classic movie poster festival, for I’m only asking the audience to watch one movie. And indeed, I had a fine turnout for the January movie, Anatomy of a Murder. Well, if three people can be considered a fine turnout – but everyone seemed to have a swell time.

Truth be told, half the problem with my movie festival ideas is that they never get past the idea stage. I’m great at thinking up themes for movies to watch and really terrible at actually planning parties. I always wait until the last minute and by then everyone already has plans.

This month was no different. I mentioned to a few people my idea for a regular monthly gathering to watch a classic movie, but didn’t nail down the details. The day of, the wife and I made a few phone calls and got a few folks to agree to come over for pizza and a movie.

I have come to realize that all of my social skills have deserted me. There was a time when I liked nothing better than to sit and converse with acquaintances. I loved to enthrall an audience with a good story. But somewhere over the years, this skill has gone away. I now tend to allow the awkward silences to run into infinity. It’s not that I can’t think of anything interesting to say, it’s that I don’t want to. It all seems so pointless anymore.

Being married is part of it. I’ve got a woman, so chatting up women into a flirtatious frenzy is beyond the question. But even just making more friends seems tiring and not worth the time. Maybe I’m just getting old and curmudgeonly.

I’m being hard on myself, I’m a friendly enough chap and can still hold a room’s attention with a good story, and nail the perfectly timed joke. One of the invitees, Daniel, a somewhat friend of my wife, and I got along smashingly. The wife has told him that I’m a big fan of the film buying so he brought over three DVDs to borrow, and a list of all the DVDs he owns. I quickly printed out my list (and my wife had a good laugh over what freaks we were to even have lists.

As the film started Daniel and I both let out a grown over the DVD being in the Pan and Scan format. Then we sounded off in excitement over Duke Ellington having created the film score.

In the first scene, I suddenly realized that I had, in fact, seen this film. Though all I could remember was Jimmy Stewart and something about fish.

It is a delightful film with marvelous performances from Jimmy Stewart, Lee Remick, and George C Scott. Stewart plays Paul Biegler, a recently ousted DA who is enlisted to defend Lt. Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara) who is on trial for the brutal murder of a man who raped his wife.

For a film that deals with wife beating, rape, and murder, it is a very lighthearted and enjoyable picture. The script snap, crackles, and pops out of the actor’s mouths, trading one wisecrack for another.

It is notable, now, for its controversy back then. It was banned in Chicago and Jimmy Stewarts’ own father took an ad out in a newspaper deeming it a “dirty picture.” What seems immensely tame to modern audiences, was highly controversial for its time, for the film uses such words as “bitch,” “contraceptive,” “panties,” “slut,” and “sperm.”

Today what stands out is not the use of dirty words, but a tightly directed story with nuanced performances by some of the world’s greatest actors.

Remick slinks and broils across the screen. There is a marvelous scene in which Stewart asks her to take off the hat she’s wearing in court. She is dressed ultra-conservatively to appear the ever-happy and straight-laced housewife for the jury. But as she takes off the hat and swizzles her hair lose you can feel the lust of every warm-blooded man and woman in that courtroom from 45 years away.

Stewart plays the cornball country lawyer with his usual aplomb. A very young George C Scott nails the role of a slick, big-city lawyer. His reaction to an unexpected answer in the courtroom towards the end of the picture is absolutely stellar. Simply perfect acting from a great actor.

It is a great movie, and it was a great beginning to what will hopefully be 12 fabulous months of classic movie festivals (editor’s note, I only had one other party, and then the whole thing collapsed).