The Weekly Gravy #188

The Burning Hell (1974) – Dreck

I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.

– Isaac Asimov

I doubt Asimov ever saw the films cooked up by Ron Ormond and Estus Pirkle after the former (a producer of exploitation films) became a born-again Christian and teamed up with the latter (a Baptist minister) to spread the Word with the same taste and talent Ormond had brought to his previous works. If he had, he’d have likely found them too laughable to be truly offensive; their first collaboration, If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, warns us about the perils of Communism so hysterically you’d think The Communist Manifesto was the Necronomicon.

This their second work together, tackles a far more enduring theme, one which Asimov railed against in the quote above: the notion that those who do not accept Jesus in this life will spend all eternity in the flames of Hell – and according to this film, the damned will actually get to leave Hell on Judgment Day, only to be sent right back after their predestined guilty verdict. That just seems petty to me, but then I’m hardly the target audience for The Burning Hell – but then, does anyone watch these films for the theology anymore?

As with Footmen, we have a mixture of preaching, dramatization, and a conversion narrative to tie it all together. The dramatizations here begin with Moses being confronted by Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Numbers 16); they resent his status as a prophet, for which God splits the Earth and plunges them into Sheol, the land of the dead – which is close enough to Hell for Ormond and Pirkle, just as the 20th century Americans acting it out, the ludicrous Santa beard on Moses, and the Monty Python-level simulations of the Earth splitting and the unrighteous falling into flames are close enough to the Biblical account to pass muster.

They don’t, of course, and those looking for high camp will revel in the incompetence on display, especially when set alongside Pirkle’s stern insistence that Hell is real and that “modernistic” preachers who claim otherwise are leading their congregations astray. And for those who agree with Asimov about the very notion of Hell, there’s a chilling fascination in the opening remarks by Dr. R.G. Lee, who argues “To take the doctrine of Hell out of our thinking…is to take away the physician and leave the disease.”

As for the conversion narrative, we’ve got Tim (Tim Ormond, Ron’s son), a mild-mannered young man who visits Pirkle’s home with his abrasive friend Kenneth (who doesn’t seem like the proselytizing type) to sell him on their hip new version of Christianity, which disputes the long-held notion of Hell. Pirkle easily dismisses their arguments and invites them to his sermon on Hell, but Kenneth refuses and they leave – only for Kenneth to be killed in a motorcycle accident, after which the traumatized Tim goes to Pirkle’s church and listens to his sermon, having a change of heart as he does.

It’s a little hard to believe he doesn’t leave Pirkle’s church in disgust after he asks whether Kenneth has gone to Hell, only to be told “Chances are, he’s likely burning in the flames of Hell right now” (psychological abuse in the name of God, nothing like it), but given that he’s just seen Kenneth’s severed head lying in a field (oh yes, there’s plenty of fake blood on display), he might just need to sit down for a while. Of course, the film ends with his accepting Christ – and Pirkle inviting us to do the same – but the younger Ormond plays Tim so mildly that it’s hard to believe he’d ever really strayed.

Then again, it’s hard to believe in anything that happens in the film unless you’re already a committed believer. Yes, the production values are a bit higher than Footmen‘s – they used higher-quality film stock, spent real money on the costumes, and didn’t attempt much that the small budget couldn’t cover (Pirkle does claim to be visiting Mt. Sinai at the start of the film, but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether he actually did). Unfortunately, that results in an unforgivable shortcoming: the film’s depiction of Hell is decidedly lacking.

We do get some camp touches, like a demon (who resembles Justin Timberlake) made up like a stained-glass window, but the actual setting is a fairly anonymous void; there’s a lot of fire, a handful of actors stumbling about in sloppy makeup (it looks like motor oil was smeared on their faces), occasionally grappling and bemoaning their fates, and a few brave souls with maggots crawling on their faces, but all in all Ormond’s Hell is neither memorable nor very frightening.

Pirkle, shot at times like a speechifying dictator, does his utmost to literally scare the Hell out of us, claiming that Dives (the wealthy man who spurned Lazarus the pious beggar) has been roasting in hellfire for 2,000 years as of “this very moment,” and makes a bizarre error in claiming that a 1 followed by nine zeroes is a million while showing us a page full of zeroes to show just how many years one will burn for not believing.

Dives (Jimmy Robbins) and King Belshazzar (Buddy Mullinax) are greatly disappointed to see how their wealth and power count for nothing, and even more disappointed in themselves for not saving themselves when they had the chance. Of course, Ormond and Pirkle sidestep the question of whether an otherwise decent person who simply declined to accept Jesus would end up right alongside these Biblical bad guys, but they didn’t make this film for people with serious questions.

They made it for the people we see sitting in the pews of Pirkle’s church, listening uncritically – even impassively – to his relentless oratory. They made it for the people who need to believe that God would cast the unrighteous into a lake of fire for eternity. And so, while it’s technically a hair better than Footmen. I find it far more appalling on a moral level.

Score: 2

Scanners (1981) – ***

Resuming my journey through David Cronenberg’s filmography, I come to the film that really bridges his early period – his low-budget, high-concept, very Canadian period – with his rise to international success. The Brood was a major step, but the success of Scanners led to his one-two punch of Videodrome and The Dead Zone two years later, cementing his status as a name director. It also contains the single most famous image of his filmography – the exploding head you’ve doubtless seen a thousand times.

But until I actually saw the film, I didn’t realize that this occurs very early on, to a minor character, and it only happens once; until the climactic showdown between two Scanners, their powers manifest more often as psychic control than actual bodily distortion. I also hadn’t realized that the film was put together in great haste and that Cronenberg was writing the film as he was shooting it – but it’s reflected in the end result, which is full of interesting concepts but rather sporadic as a narrative.

Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) is an awkward drifter with the ability to psychically affect others; after overhearing (at the very least he has extremely sensitive hearing; he may be outright telepathic) a woman speak ill of him, his humiliation causes her to have a seizure, attracting the attention of agents who arrest him on behalf of Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan), who has been studying Scanners on behalf of the ConSec organization.

ConSec organizes a demonstration of scanning using one of their trained Scanners (Louis Del Grande); asking for a volunteer, he gets Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), himself a Scanner who reflects Del Grande’s energy back at him with such intensity that, well…

Revok is also arrested by ConSec agents but uses his abilities to make them crash their cars and kill themselves and each other. Ruth then gives Vale, whom he’s given the drug Ephemerol to quiet the voices as needed, the assignment of tracking down those Scanners Revok has not yet won to his cause or killed for rejecting it, eventually leading Vale to Kim Obrist (Jennifer O’Neill), who leads a group of non-violent Scanners.

However, Revok’s agents are hot on Vale’s trail – including ConSec’s chief of security, Braedon Keller (Lawrence Dane), who’s trying to undermine Ruth at every turn. Narrowly escaping death multiple times with the help of his superior abilities, Vale discovers that Revok is the head of the chemical firm which manufactures Ephemerol – and that Ruth founded it years earlier. He and Obrist go to ConSec headquarters to reveal Revok’s role to Ruth, but things go haywire.

The stage is ultimately set for a confrontation between Vale and Revoke, complete with multiple revelations, Ironside’s singular menace, a scan-off which allows Dick Smith to really go wild with the makeup effects, and a final twist which might have made a good sequel hook, except that the multiple sequels which eventually followed – and have since been forgotten – apparently made no use of it.

Given that the first of these sequels took a decade to appear, they might as well have waited a little longer and simply remade or rebooted the original. For all its fascinating ideas and memorable images, Scanners is a mixed bag, obviously made with great talent and imagination but just as obviously thrown together as it was being made, with a rambling story, underdeveloped characters, and wildly uneven acting, not helped by what seems to be pervasive and poorly handled ADR.

Lack is a particular dud; TV Tropes suggests that his extreme underplaying serves the character, since Vale has had little room to develop a sense of self, but I don’t see it – I just see a blank-faced protagonist who inspires neither empathy nor interest. O’Neill (who despite top billing doesn’t appear until 37 minutes in) isn’t much better; there’s not much to Obrist either, despite her serving as the light to Revok’s dark, and aside from a scene where she uses scanning to make a security guard break down (making him think she’s his mother) she really does very little but accompany Vale on his quest.

Ironside is better by virtue of being Ironside, a great character actor whose heavy-browed glower (he’s like Kiefer Sutherland crossed with Jack Nicholson) and deep, nasal voice make him a natural heavy, but the aforementioned ADR undermines his work; giving his performance a detached quality that’s simply distracting, at least until the final showdown. McGoohan comes off best with his old-pro gravitas, but where he had plenty of room in Braveheart to shine, here he appears too sporadically and leaves the story too unceremoniously. He’s good when he’s got something to work with, he just doesn’t have enough.

I have no qualms, however, with Howard Shore’s brilliant score, combining masterfully tense orchestral themes with electronic themes that are, by turns, dreamily futuristic and nervously distorted. Kudos is also due to Carol Spier’s production design (the use of red is fantastic) and of course Smith’s makeup, too rarely seen but brilliantly grotesque when it appears. Cronenberg’s direction is a touch uneven, and best when he sticks to the visual; Mark Irwin’s cinematography is effective.

If it bears the scars of its chaotic production and reflects its creator’s own struggle to turn his concepts into actual stories – he’d finally strike the right balance in Videodrome – Scanners is still a vital step in his career and so iconic it’s probably worth at least one viewing for any serious fans of the genre. It also represents the only collaboration to date between Cronenberg and Ironside, which is frankly inexcusable. Reunite them, Canada.

Score: 74

The People’s Joker (2022) – ****

Maybe you remember Escape from Tomorrow; it was shot without permission at Walt Disney World and depicts the Disney corporation in an extravagantly sinister manner. At the time, it was widely believed Disney would never allow it to see the light of day, but the Mouse ultimately made no effort to suppress it and it was duly released – only to be seen for the mediocre mess it was, given to bizarre tangents that had little to do with the park and less to do with entertainment. What might have been a real jab in Disney’s eye turned out to be just a sloppy prank.

The People’s Joker isn’t trying to be a jab in DC’s side; it’s taking the characters and images associated with the Joker, Harley Quinn, Batman, and the rest of his rogue’s gallery and applying them to a story about a trans woman finding herself, made by a trans woman drawing on her own experience. As often as it acknowledges the absurdity of its inspirations (like the “Damaged” tattoo on Jared Leto’s Joker), it’s concerned with sincerely weaving existing media into a personal story, and the results, while not seamless, are delightful.

Joker the Harlequin (Griffin Kramer as a child, Vera Drew as an adult) grows up in Smallville, Kansas with an intensely neurotic mother (Lynn Downey) who guilt-trips them at every turn. When they first begin to question their gender identity, their horrified mother takes them to Dr. Jonathan Crane (Christian Calloway) at Arkham Asylum, who prescribes them a drug called Smylex to keep them smiling, if not truly happy. Their only real joy is watching the comedy series UCB Live, presented by the United Clown Bureau in Gotham – the city’s only authorized comedians.

As an adult, they move to Gotham and audition for UCB Live under the watchful eye of Ra’s al Ghul (David Liebe Hart) but cannot cope with the high-pressure (and heavily masculine) atmosphere. Teaming up with their new friend Oswald Cobblepot, aka The Penguin (Nathan Faustyn), they start an “anti-comedy” club in an abandoned amusement park, assembling a group of other Batman-villain misfits including trans man Mr. J (Kane Distler), whom our protagonist falls for and starts dating. With Mr. J, they feel comfortable expressing their true identity, finally plunging into a vat of estrogen to begin their medical transition.

Unfortunately, Mr. J – who turns out to be Jason Todd, one of several Robins who was taken in by Batman (Phil Braun) and effectively groomed – is emotionally abusive and manipulative, and their relationship begins to sour even as Joker the Harlequin – now owning herself and her identity – gets a shot at appearing on UCB Live and intends to use the platform to stick it to The Man, whether that’s Batman or Lorne Michaels (Maria Bamford). And there’s also the matter of her mother, who’s trying – with very limited success – to understand her daughter’s path in life.

There’s a whole hell of a lot going on in The People’s Joker. While the film is very much a personal testament by Drew, it took a village to make; the credits cite dozens of animators and effects artists who contributed to the various sequences of the film, which combines live action (mostly using obvious green screen) and a wide variety of animation, from deliberately crude CGI (Poison Ivy (Ruin Carroll) is especially uncanny) to digital 2D animation, shifting styles wildly from sequence to sequence.

It also has a huge cast (some live-action, some voice-only) and draws on a wide array of influences, from Suicide Squad (Mr. J is pretty much Jared Leto’s Joker) to 2019’s Joker to SNL to just about every Batman film, especially Batman Forever (the film is dedicated to Drew’s mother and Joel Schumacher). The script is officially by Drew and Bri LeRose, but it’s not hard to imagine that the vast number of contributors added to its tapestry of references and embellishments.

And it’s those embellishments – the way Drew and company take these materials and make something new, let fully in conversation with what came before – that make it special. Because as wildly comic as this film is – and it’s often incredibly funny, from Joker the Harlequin’s advice to never date a comedian to the ludicrous fate of Michaels – it’s also deeply sincere about the struggles trans people (especially trans youth) face, about the joyous potential of self-discovery, and about the pain of abusive relationships.

It helps that the cast strike the right balance between wacky comedy and sincere emotion. Drew may be playing herself to a degree – though her career has been more focused on editing than acting – but she nimbly shows both the nervous humor (as much a coping mechanism as a means of expression) and the longing for acceptance from people who can hardly see past their own problems. Kramer is also quite solid as the young protagonist.

Distler is excellent as Mr. J, by turns charming and frightening in the way manipulative people are, but never making a monster out of him – just a deeply troubled young man who’s not what Joker the Harlequin needs in her life. Downey is comparably fine as the peerlessly anxious mother (the scene where she and Joker try to recall a single happy shared memory is deeply affecting), as is Faustyn as the brashly lovable Oswald. Hart – whose own reputed behavior makes his casting in this MeToo-aware film a touch surprising – is suitably wry and inscrutable as Ra’s.

And while the ever-shifting style and tone can be challenging to watch, and while the last sequence goes just slightly off the rails (with a final beat that should’ve been given more room to breathe), there’s so much packed into The People’s Joker, so much to admire about its honesty, its invention, and the skill with which it was made by so many united by Drew’s vision (e pluribus Drewnum), that it achieves a singular greatness. There’s really nothing quite like it.

Score: 88

Sasquatch Sunset (2024) – ***½

After Sasquatch Sunset ended, my friend Greg said, “I’m not sure we haven’t been trolled.” I was sure we hadn’t – but I wasn’t sure just what had happened. It seems to me that Sasquatch Sunset is an attempt to prove that it could be done, and so it was, and about as well as you could hope for. In terms of cinematography, music, and makeup, it’s a masterfully accomplished film, while the performances are sincere and committed. And while it inevitably wears a little thin at times, it doesn’t overstay its welcome and is both genuinely funny and sincerely affecting.

And yet I’m left wondering what it actually says about these creatures, about their lives, and about the role human beings play in them. It’s dedicated to the parameters of its vision – there is no dialogue and no homo sapiens actually appear on screen – but despite enticing feints at how similar these supposed beasts really are to the human race and how our actions affect them, it’s ultimately a bit too vague to be more than a beautifully executed stunt.

Set in the Pacific Northwest, it profiles a quartet of sasquatches: here’s the alpha male (Nathan Zellner), the female (Riley Keough), the beta male (Jesse Eisenberg), and the juvenile (Christophe Zajac-Denek). Without dialogue or narration, we gradually get a sense of their personalities: the alpha male is aggressive and immature, the female is reasonable and self-possessed (don’t try to mate with her out of season), the beta male is curious but limited (a key scene has him trying to count the stars, but failing to get past three or so), and the juvenile is lively and good-natured.

Beginning in the spring and following them through the seasons and across the landscape, we have episodes both comic and dramatic as they deal with the other inhabitants of the forest and each other, and as they encounter signs of humanity’s presence which might herald the end of their race – it’s titled Sasquatch Sunset, after all. I say “might,” because the film refuses to spell out anything the sasquatches themselves cannot communicate. It remains absolutely true to its vision to the very end.

And it backs it up with stunning cinematography which makes the most of the gorgeous settings, a wonderful score by The Octopus Project which ranges from wry folk to jazzy howls reminiscent of Bitches Brew, makeup that reflects the strange sincerity of the project in making the sasquatches utterly seamless, and performances which betray no uncertainty and commit fully to the grunts and body language; all four players are well up to the challenge. It’s no troll.

But what is it? The closest parallel one can draw is with Quest for Fire (though I’m also reminded of the obscure Missing Link) but that had a clear story to tell. Sunset hints at the danger humanity poses to the sasquatches, but the worst things that happen to them are caused by their own actions. The film draws some parallels between the sasquatches and homo sapiens, most notably the toxic masculinity embodied by the alpha, but not enough to really hang a film on. There are times it feels as if the film is consciously trying to avoid having a clear point.

That it remains engaging throughout, that we do get invested enough in the sasquatches to feel for them when tragedies strike (or threaten to) and that the laughs it inspires are wholly intended, from the hilariously gross scene where their minds are blown by the existence of a road (and they desperately mark their territory) to the scene where an Erasure song moves them to tears, keeps from rating it lower.

But as I wrote about the Zellner brothers’ Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, it’s “very well-made, but lacking that extra dimension which would make it more than a fable.” But Kumiko also had more of a story to tell, however slight. Sunset simply seems to prove that it could be made at all – and be reasonably entertaining to boot. There are far worse things to be, and far worse reasons to make a film.

Score: 79

The Beast/La Bête (2023) – ***½

I haven’t read any Henry James, nor been especially motivated to do so, but after seeing The Beast, I’m considering reading his story “The Beast in the Jungle,” about a man whose premonition of a vague catastrophe leads him to fritter away both his life and the life of the woman who loves him – at which points he realizes that waste of life and love was the catastrophe he dreaded. It’s a powerful theme, and maybe – just maybe – I could attune myself to James’ prose and actually appreciate it.

It was the inspiration for The Beast, but loosely so; films like Lelouch’s And Now My Love, Aronofsky’s The Fountain, and Cloud Atlas come to mind as much as James’ tale. For here we have three timelines – 1910, 2014, and 2044 – and three incarnations of the same pair, all named Gabrielle and Louis and all played by Léa Seydoux and George MacKay.

In 1910, Gabrielle is a Parisian pianist married to dollmaker Georges (Martin Scali). She meets Louis at a salon, and they hit it off; Georges is kind and supportive, but Gabrielle feels a passion for Louis that grows too great for her to deny. In 2014, she’s an aspiring actress in L.A. and he’s an incel who makes videos of his misogynistic rants; he begins stalking her, but it takes a while for their paths to truly cross.

And in 2044, after an unspecified disaster has apparently ruined the environment and diminished the population, a technique called “purification,” which wipes out the accumulated trauma of one’s bloodline (sounds a bit like getting Clear), is a prerequisite for most employment. Gabrielle is reluctant to be purified, seeing it as a kind of emotional lobotomy, and in her fleeting encounters with Louis is drawn to him, possibly by their shared history – if indeed they share a history.

There are hints that some of what we’re seeing, especially the 2014 scenes, is only really happening in Gabrielle’s mind as she attempts the purification process. The same may be true of the 1910 sequences, but those are gentler in tone and straightforward in style, compared to the aggression and distortion of the 2014 scenes.

There are also repeated beats which hint at the connections between the timelines – 1910 and 2014 Gabrielle both consult a psychic, 2014 and 2044 Gabrielle both approach a group of lesbians at a nightclub and ask to sit with them, only to be rebuffed – but writer-director Bertrand Bonello doesn’t beat us over the head with the parallels. He’s more concerned with the bittersweet dynamic between Gabrielle and Louis, with what draws them together and keeps them apart.

Sometimes it’s bad luck. Sometimes it’s her fear of future catastrophe; sometimes it’s his hateful attitude. The fear of giving up the security of marriage, of becoming vulnerable to rejection or seeming weak, of giving up the full scope of one’s emotions or of being one of the countless unemployed in the far future – all of these drive a wedge between Gabrielle and Louis.

Given the film’s length (145 minutes) and ambitious structure, it’s no surprise that it’s a bit of a mixed bag. For me, the 1910 scenes work best, with the gorgeous period detail, the gentle, graceful relationship that blossoms between our protagonists, the dilemma she faces, and the poignant resolution to their story. The 2044 scenes are a bit underdeveloped but full of intriguing details: the nightclub dedicated to different years of the 20th century, the humanoid doll Kelly (Guslagie Malanda) assigned to help Gabrielle through the purification process, and the modest but convincing futurism.

On the other hand, the 2014 scenes feel a bit aimless and repetitive to me. It doesn’t help that most of these scenes come in the second half, while the 1910 scenes are mostly in the first half, but because Gabrielle and Louis don’t share a scene until late in the game and because he’s so repellent, there’s far less of an emotional hook, while the mild skewering of Hollywood (or Hollywood-adjacent) culture isn’t really enough to compensate.

The performances, however, are. Seydoux must play a huge range of styles and emotions, from the elegant reserve and emotional dilemma of 1910 to the frustrated starlet and growing fear of 2014 to the considered but firm resistance to social pressure and the undefined longing of 2044. She’s excellent at every turn. MacKay also must play a wide range, from the thoughtful good nature of 1910 Louis to the vicious entitlement and self-loathing of 2014 Louis (2044 Louis has comparatively little to do), and he’s likewise superb, truly charming and truly repulsive as the setting demands.

Ultimately, The Beast is too uneven and too sprawling in theme and form to be a great film for me, but I’m compelled to respect it; despite its length I was never bored, and the aspects which worked – the performances, the visuals, the poignant emotions, the sheer ambition – are enough to make it a good one. It’s not an automatic recommend, but there are those who will really love it.

Score: 80