Movie Review: Dressed To Kill (1980)

An erotic suspense thriller with horror elements, Dressed To Kill is a vivid and effective homage to Alfred Hitchcock.

In New York City, Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) is a sexually frustrated housewife, stuck with a remote and boring husband who cannot satisfy her. She resorts to rape fantasies to spice up her life. Her teenaged son Peter (Keith Gordon) tinkers in electronics and has invented his own computer-like device as a school project. Kate is seeing psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine), and he encourages to express her frustrations rather than keep them bottled up.

Kate spends the day at an art gallery, where a mysterious man tries to get her attention. She is interested, they silently flirt and pursue each other, and finally get together for steamy afternoon sex in the back of a taxi and then at his apartment. As she is leaving later in the afternoon, Kate is horrified to learn that her illicit lover has venereal disease. A gory murder is then committed, partially witnessed by high-class call girl Liz Blake (Nancy Allen). Sarcastic detective Marino (Dennis Franz) gets involved to try and sort out the mess.

Not much more should be revealed about the plot, because Dressed To Kill is filled with stylistic and plot surprises. While the identity of the murderer is quite easy to guess and the plot holes are plentiful, director and writer Brian De Palma is more interested in staging eloquent set-pieces, and he often succeeds quite brilliantly. Using a minimum number of words, with entire scenes passing by without dialogue, De Palma unapologetically salutes, mimics and modernizes Hitchcock. With a cunning Pino Donaggio music score enhancing the tension, Dressed To Kill adopts the familiar formula of a deranged murderer stalking vulnerable women, and adds plenty of spice, nudity and gore.

The highlights are many. The two opening scenes, first in the bathroom and then in the bedroom, are shocking for in-your-face eroticism bordering on soft-porn but combined with mental angst, as De Palma announces the start of the 1980s with raw on-screen sexuality that will soon mix with dissatisfaction, violence and then gore. The art gallery scene is a classic, Kate and her mysterious admirer playing silent adult hide and seek through the maze of rooms filled with art.

Stranger danger quickly catches fire with the startling taxi sex scene, Kate finally jumping into the fire of irresponsibility. The first murder is sudden and intense, Psycho's shower replaced with an elevator, De Palma prolonging the impact all the way to a bloodied and lifeless hand preventing the door from closing. And the murder also serves as a hand-off for Liz to take centre stage, as the call girl finds herself exactly at the wrong place at the wrong time, a witness and suspect all at once with few allies to turn to.

Another wordless sequence follows on a subway platform, this time Lisa navigating around multiple threats with a surprise late intervention. Late in the film sex, psychology, manipulation, voyeurism and mental instability all come together as Liz goes looking for the killer's name and finds much more than what she bargained for.

Angie Dickinson and Nancy Allen are both excellent, sharing the woman-in-danger role and committing to their characters. Dickinson does wonders expressing frustration and curiosity with an economy of words, while Allen brings plenty of scrappy spirit to Lisa's predicament.

Mixing fantasy with stark and sick reality, Dressed To Kill is slick, sleazy and stylish.

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Movie Review: The Last Detail (1973)

A slice-of-life drama about fleeting friendships and the oppressive responsibilities of military life in a civilian context, The Last Detail is an unforgettable low-key road trip.

At the U.S. Naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, Signalman Billy "Badass" Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and Gunner's Mate Richard "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young) are given a new assignment: escort 18 year old prisoner Seaman Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) by train and bus to Portsmouth Naval Prison. Meadows has been convicted of attempting to steal $40 from a charity jar, and sentenced to a ridiculous seven years because he targeted the favourite charity of the naval base commander's wife.

Badass and Mule hatch a plan to make the most of the trip to break the dull monotony of life on the base. They plot to deliver Meadows to Portsmouth as quickly as possible and then spend a week living it up. But Badass starts to feel sorry for the goofy, oversized kleptomaniac Meadows, and decides to give the kid a good time to make up for what he will lose while serving his sentence. Badass and Mule prolong their stay in New York and then Boston, and introduce Meadows to alcohol and women, while helping him build up his assertiveness.

Directed by Hal Ashby and written by Robert Towne, The Last Detail is an understated piece of quintessential 1970s film making. The story of a prison escort detail triggering a road trip cannot be any simpler. The layered theme of psychological confinement holding back all three men emerges slowly, and finally takes over the film with unusual potency.

Stylistically Ashby bathes the film in harsh tones, browns, yellows and whites dominating many of the scenes to represent the unmistakably bleak outlook for all three men. From nondescript cheap motel rooms to characterless diners, the film crawls along an uninspired America surviving through one day just to get to the next similarly joyless day.

And traversing this terrain is one man in handcuffs and two men just as confined in their careers. Meadows cannot help his kleptomania and will be paying the price behind bars for a long time. Badass and Mule are prisoners of their own making. Lifers in the Navy, now stuck inside a military machine but on land and away from any war, their prospects are more grim than anything Meadows faces: at least he gets variety in locale and a release to look forward to. They get nothing except more of the same.

The road trip is a brief escape for all three men, Meadows getting his first introduction to drinking, chanting with hippies, whoring and generally being purposelessly loose. Badass and Mule enjoy the freedom of breaking some rules away from the eyes of authority and doing good by being bad. The three men form a bond of friendship anchored by sailing outside the lines.

Jack Nicholson dominates the film as the anti-authoritarian man reluctantly resigned to a life under the thumb of authority, but seeking every opportunity to bend the rules. Otis Young allows Mule to be a counterbalance, a sailor more invested in the daily regulations of his career but gradually allowing his resistance to crumble. Randy Quaid delivers one of his finest career performances as the clueless Meadows, a man-sized boy with his fate already in the hands of others. Carol Kane, Nancy Allen and Gilda Radner appear in small early career supporting roles.

The Last Detail momentarily challenges all the small details in the inconsequential lives of three men, but the vast emptiness of soul confinement is an overpowering, if quiet, force.



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The Movies Of Nancy Allen

All movies starring Nancy Allen and reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

The Last Detail (1973)

Carrie (1976)

1941 (1979)

Dressed To Kill (1980)

Blow Out (1981)

RoboCop (1987)

Out Of Sight (1998)

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The Index of Movie Stars is here.

Movie Review: RoboCop (1987)

A near-future science fiction action thriller, RoboCop has rollicking fun with the introduction of a semi-human robotic police officer into a decaying urban landscape dominated by gangs and a corrupt corporation.

In a dismal future Detroit, megacorporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) is given control over the city's overstretched police force. Senior President Richard "Dick" Jones (Ronny Cox) plans to introduce the mammoth ED-209 tank-scale robot to keep control of the streets, but the machine malfunctions in the worst possible way and the program is scrapped by the Chairman (Dan O'Herlihy). Instead, OCP executive Robert "Bob" Morton (Miguel Ferrer) rushes his alternative plan into place: reanimating deceased police officers into almost indestructible robots.

Police officer Alex Murphy (Paul Weller) is transferred into Old Detroit, the worst precinct in the city, and partnered with officer Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen). The pair soon fall into the clutches of vicious gang lord Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his trigger-happy friends. Murphy is repeatedly shot, including a bullet through the head, and attempts to revive him fail. He is reconstituted as RoboCop, and is soon helping to get criminals off the street. But RoboCop begins to experience flashes of his old life as Murphy, and sets out to bring Boddicker to justice. Meanwhile, the power struggle between Jones and Morton turns nasty, as OCP's grander objectives are revealed, placing RoboCop and Lewis in grave danger.

A cross between cheesy low budget science fiction and sly social commentary, RoboCop contains many of director Paul Verhoeven's favourite trademarks: a dysfunctional society merrily marching to the beat of bad television reporting and worse corporate control. The violence is of the jarring in-your-face variety, the satirical humour is subtle and never far from the surface, and the message about science-gone-wrong in the hands of the profit sector resonates with a sharp jab.

Clocking in at an efficient 100 minutes, RoboCop builds quick momentum and maintains it with a no nonsense style. Characters say what they mean, bad guys are evil, sleazy or both. Boddicker and Jones make for a perfectly vile pair of villains, and officers Murphy and Lewis are the overmatched forces of good arrayed against heavily weaponized gangsters. When Murphy becomes RoboCop, his impressive new abilities are not so much an advantage as a leveller. The dystopian Detroit aesthetic is only a few high rises removed from Mad Max's preferred terrain.

The action highlights are plenty and packed with fun. ED-209 disrupts a board meeting in a classic case of meeting adjourned with finality for one unfortunate middle manager. Officer Murphy meets his end in a grim abandoned warehouse, shot multiple times by the worst examples of human refuse. And to set up the rip-roaring climax, Boddicker gets his hands on several of those futuristic rifle weapons of mass destruction that only exist to embolden on-screen mayhem.

Through it all, Verhoeven has plenty to say about an extrapolated near-future. Every social service is for sale to the private sector in RoboCop, with OCP tackling policing as only the latest in a series of expansions into what used to be the domain of government. The battle for control of the streets is already lost, and the clean-up placed in the hands of those who can profit from deploying hardware, the city as proving grounds for military applications. The sergeant in charge of the Old Detroit police precinct is routinely shoved aside by OCP executives, a relic of the failed old methods of public safety. Unfettered privatization will expand to fill any void (and it's hinted that the enforcement void is created by Boddicker with OCP's blessing), as long as there is a profit to be made in the product lifecycle.

An action film that is smart, brassy and perceptive, RoboCop pounds out its message in gleaming bullet-proof armour.

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Movie Review: Blow Out (1981)

A political conspiracy suspense thriller, Blow Out builds admirable momentum in a stylish package but takes an awkward wrong turn in its final 20 minutes.

Jack Terry (John Travolta) is a Philadelphia-based sound technician for low-budget slasher flicks. While out at night recording natural sounds for use in upcoming productions, Jack witnesses a car crashing off a bridge and plunging into the river. He dives in and just barely manages to rescue Sally (Nancy Allen) from the submerged car. The crash kills a high profile governor who was being touted as a presidential candidate, and Sally was the call girl entertaining him for the night.

Based on his microphone picking up the sound of a gunshot just before the tire blow out that causes the crash, Jack strongly suspects that the governor was actually the victim of an assassination. But he finds no officials interested in what he saw and recorded, and is advised to forget the whole incident, including Sally's existence. Low-life photographer Manny Karp (Dennis Franz) suddenly emerges with film of the crash and sells images to the tabloids, while a mysterious assassin named Burke (John Lithgow) goes rogue and initiates a killing spree that threatens both Jack and Sally.

As it heads into a murderous climax, Blow Out loses its way. The delicately constructed narrative of politics, assassination, cover-up and scandal is all but abandoned. In his rush to find derivative Hitchcockian moments and to drive Jack's life towards an imitation of the slasher movies he works on, director Brian De Palma unfortunately reconstitutes Blow Out as a routine serial killer terrorfest, sucking the air out of the drama.

The ending takes away some, but not all, of the lustre of the first 90 minutes. Here De Palma, working from his own script, combines style with mystery, dropping the Jack Terry character into a devious world he knows nothing about. Drawing savoury inspiration from the John Kennedy assassination and the Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick incident, the film is dark, all the characters surrounding Jack are seedy, everyone seems to have something to hide, and even seemingly innocent victims are not as uninvolved as they seem.

De Palma deploys his usual bag of dynamic tricks, including a dazzling rotating shot amplifying Jack's mounting frustration as he discovers that all of his tapes have been deleted.

In one of his better early dramatic outings, Travolta demonstrates a driving passion for Jack's profession: he may work on low-budget flicks, but he is also a sound technician who believes in what his ears and equipment are telling him. While faithful to what he knows is the truth, Travolta allows Jack to carry just enough of an independent swagger about the broader conspiracy. His world can live without all the politicians, police officers and their corrupt games; he learns to care only about Sally's fate.

Blow Out pumps up good pressure, but unfortunately picks up a late puncture and somewhat deflates.

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Movie Review: 1941 (1979)

An attempted war comedy, 1941 is a debacle of almost unimaginable proportions. Steven Spielberg momentarily loses his touch and presides over an obnoxious bomb.

It's December 1941, one week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Los Angeles, civilians and the military are both on the edge of disorganized hysteria, anticipating an attack on the west coast. Indeed, a Japanese submarine is prowling the waters off California, and sub commander Akiro Mitamura (Toshiro Mifune) wants to make a name for himself by bombing Hollywood.

The US military men stationed in the area include Major General Stilwell (Robert Stack), more interested in watching Dumbo than leading his men; the slightly crazed Captain "Wild" Bill Kelso (John Belushi), randomly flying his fighter plane over California seeking phantom enemies; tank commander Sergeant Frank Tree (Dan Aykroyd), who knows how to inspire with words but not with actions; Captain Loomis Birkhead (Tim Matheson) who desperately wants to get Stilwell's assistant Donna (Nancy Allen) into an airplane to get her motor running; and the hot head Corporal Chuck Sitarski (Treat Williams), who is desperately vying with dance-loving waiter Wally Stephens (Bobby Di Cicco) for the attention of hostess Betty Douglas (Dianne Kay).

Spielberg's first and perhaps most serious major flop, 1941 is a thunderous failure, a remarkable calamity considering the talent on both sides of the camera and a budget of $32 million. There really is no plot to speak of. The screenplay by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale fails miserably to create any characters or events worth even remotely caring about. With astounding speed the film degenerates into an excuse for excess in search of broad slapstick-style jokes, with most of the attempted humour falling embarrassingly flat. The whole exercise takes on the unmistakable air of an unmitigated disaster.

The opening scene, a funny take on Spielberg's Jaws, deserves recognition as the only idea to hit the target in the entire two hour running length. Otherwise, long minutes that feel like hours pass by with no meaningful laughs, as an enormous amount of destruction is thrown at the screen to no effect. With a cast that also includes John Candy, Warren Oates, Slim Pickens, Ned Beatty, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Christopher Lee and Lionel Stander, 1941 achieves quantity over quality in all respects. Characters scream, over-act, fight, punch, riot, brawl, shoot, and frantically wave their arms in the air, all to no avail. The events on the screen bear no resemblance to rational film making, and a weird disconnect settles over the film. Someone actually thought that all this would be funny. Instead, it's just humiliating for all involved.

1941 features an orgy of wanton destruction, Spielberg mistaking a child's tendency to spectacularly annihilate stuff with good farce. Never has so much on-screen hardware been so spectacularly destroyed to so little effect.

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Movie Review: Out Of Sight (1998)

A heist movie featuring a romance across criminal lines between a bank robber and U.S. Marshal, Out Of Sight tries to be slick but succeeds only in being mostly wet. Based on an Elmore Leonard novel, the action never leaves the realm of the contrived and hydroplanes on accumulations of the absurd.

Serial bank robber Jack Foley (George Clooney) has committed more hold-ups than anyone can remember.  He is non-violent and has never used a gun, and has spent a lot of time in prisons and as much time plotting to escape. With the help of frequent accomplice Buddy (Ving Rhames), Jack busts out of jail, and in the process takes Marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) hostage. A spark immediately ignites between the two, but they part ways as Jack and Buddy hook up with another accomplice, the slow-witted Glenn (Steve Zahn). As Jack and his gang make their way to Detroit where they plan to hold-up the diamond-rich mansion of Ripley (Albert Brooks), Sisco is part of a group of federal agents on their tail, and hardened criminal Maurice Miller (Don Cheadle) leads a rival mob intent on getting to Ripley's mansion first.

Out Of Sight is a film attempting to be cool and real, but not many of the central actions or character behaviours ring true. Foley's unlikely escape from prison; Sisco abandoning all logic to immediately fall for a con man who has abducted her; the police showing up en masse to arrest Foley and Buddy at their hideout hotel, but failing to secure the parkade; and the prolonged climactic robbery sequence, in which the real bad guys (Miller and crew) fall into that typical Hollywood trap, where vicious and calculating criminals become bumbling and incompetent just when it matters most, to the benefit of the attractive stars.

Director Steven Soderbergh attempts to cover up the gaping script holes by unnecessarily forcing the action to jump around the hurdle of convoluted flashbacks, which add little style but plenty of confusion. Other stunts include tiny roles for Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, and Nancy Allen, none of whom are on-screen long enough to meaningfully contribute.

Without a firm grip on any sort of reality, Out Of Sight is left with the chemistry of its two stars as it's only watchable element. Clooney and Lopez do not disappoint, but neither can they save the movie. Clooney, still a couple of years removed from movie superstardom, provides further proof that he is heading in that direction with a world-weary performance that oozes class, while Lopez overcomes her character's lack of common sense and delivers what may be her most engaging screen performance, particularly in the scenes opposite Clooney.

Despite the available star charisma, Out Of Sight is out of ideas and quickly out of mind.

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Movie Review: Carrie (1976)

A chilling horror film that is both a psychological and physical terror ride, Carrie combines the worst nightmares of any young girl: awkward puberty, bullying by the meanest of classmates, parental religious terrorism, and prom night turning into torment. That Carrie White discovers a way to extract a brutal revenge on all who abuse her through telekinesis just makes Brian De Palma's task of creating a frightfest so much more fun.

Based on the Stephen King novel, the movie opens with withdrawn and friendless high schooler Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) discovering her first period in the gym shower, and being traumatized when her mean classmates, including Chris (Nancy Allen) and Sue (Amy Irving) throw tampons at her. As the gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) tries to make amends and help Carrie out of her shell, Carrie begins to discover that she has the telekinetic power to physically move objects through mind control. Carrie's real problem is her uncompromisingly stern mother Margaret (Piper Laurie), a sexually repressed religious zealot who abuses her daughter.

Sue feels some regret at the mistreatment of Carrie, and to make amends, convinces her popular boyfriend Tommy (William Katt) to ask Carrie out to the prom. But Chris is much more intent to continue the bullying, and plots with her boyfriend Billy (John Travolta) a most humiliating climax to Carrie's prom night. Carrie enjoys most of her evening with Tommy, the one and only successful social event in her life, but when Chris turns the prom from dream to nightmare, Carrie unleashes her telekinetic power to extract a most violent revenge.

Sissy Spacek was 26 years old when she portrayed high school student Carrie White, and her performance is unforgettably disturbing. Acting with haunted eyes, a frail physique, and long, uncared-for hair, Spacek's sheer presence foretells disturbing obscurity and impending doom in equal measures. Spacek is matched by an unhinged, over-the-top performance from Piper Laurie as Carrie's mother Margaret, a religious fundamentalist who embraces all the most twisted interpretations of sin and guilt associated with sexuality and dumps them on her daughter. The scenes of Margaret terrorizing Carrie with her religious dogma are more disturbing than all the blood that De Palma throws onto the screen.

And De Palma is the third star of the movie, using slow motion, camera rotation, and point-of-view shots to great effect. He boosts the impact of the horror sequences by juxtaposing them with tranquil scenes, or by deliciously prolonging the set-up prior to unleashing the inevitable shocks.

Carrie's secondary characters are brought to life by a lively group of actors, many of whom achieved varying degrees of fame. This was John Travolta's last film prior to shooting into superstardom with Saturday Night Fever, while Nancy Allen, Amy Irving , P.J. Soles and William Katt would go to on build modestly interesting movie profiles. Betty Buckley had an excellent stage, screen and television career, and Priscilla Pointer (Irving's real-life mother) was most famous for a role on TV's Dallas.

Many hidden meanings can be layered into Carrie's story, from her entire experience being a metaphor for the sacrifices of womanhood, to the societal damage caused by religious extremism and the equating of sexuality with sin. The hints of subtext bubbling below the surface provide an added edge of enjoyment to the unfolding tragedy.

Carrie is a classic horror film, compact, on-target, unsettling and unforgettable.

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