Murder by the Blade


Murder by the Blade

Washington Post, The (DC) - October 1, 1980

Author: Gary Arnold

The newspaper ads for "He Knows You're Alone" and "Schizoid" are almost identical, the dominant motif being a dark silhouette with a sharp weapon (knife in one case, scissors in the other) gripped in its fist. The copy also overlaps: "The wedding night killer is about to strike again!" contrasts with "Dear Julie: Don't let me do it again . . ."

Obviously a similar MO. And at the theater where I sampled "Schizoid" over the weekend, lobby posters for the upcoming "Terror Train" and returning "Prom Night" quadrupled the stabbing imagery.

Despite the impression of bloodthirsty uniformity, these movies have been far more distinctive in mood and technique than, for example, porn features or the genre of raunchy farces spawned in the wake of "National Lampoon's Animal House," More often than not, murder thrillers exhibit an authentic flair and gusto, suggesting that they supply the least expensive and most reliable pretext for aspiring talent.

If John Carpenter could earn a reputation as an exciting young stylist with a scare movie as elementary and ponderous as " Halloween ," then the unknown directors of "He Knows You're Alone" and "Schizoid" -- Armand Mastroianni and David Paulsen respectively -- merit instant cult acclaim and multiple-picture deals. They imprint a surprising amount of kicky, insinuating stuff on the screen, notably and aptitude for erotic comedy that needs a less frightening and under handed pretext to evolve in a consistently satisfying way.

It's curious that in both movies, the most shocking elements tend to receive the most derivative, cliched depiction, with the camera crudely stalking the victims while the sound track redundantly breathes down their necks. The directors can't afford to skip the violent pay-offs, of course, but they seem far more inventive and relaxed with the expository material that precedes and follows the atrocities.

In "He Knows You're Alone" the killer is identified relatively soon as a psycho whose specialty is terrorizing young women about to be married. Judging from the pile of victims he leaves behind, the homicidal urge is easily transferred to friends, acquaintances and by-standers. (In fact, a title like "He's All Over the Place" would be more appropriate.) I wish Mastroianni (a cousin of the famous Marcello but born and raised in New York) and screenwriter Scott Parker had used one of the lines echoed with creepy effectiveness in the course of their playful, verbally witty script: "Is Anybody There?"

"He Knows You're Alone" is the classier production and superior fright spectacle of the two. It opens with a deceptive, illusion-meet-reality murder sequence that combines hilarious and terrifying effects. Making a scintillating feature directing debut at the age of 30, Mastroianni reveals a special knack for juxtaposing funny and frightening stimuli, recalling De Plama and Steven Spielberg at their most provocatively amusing.

It's a safe bet that Mastroianni's cirriculum included "Carrie" and "Jaws" as well as "Psycho," which is casually discussed by one of the characters and twice emulated. "He Knows You're Alone" inspires sustained, high-decibel shrieking when Mastroianni cuts loose, but it ingratiates itself in a more congenial way by being so mischievosly movie-crazy and by swift strokes of characterizationand funny romatic by play.

Most of the characters -- including those seen or heard only momentarily -- create distinctive impressions. The apparent ease with which Mastroianni can achieve a humorous, diverse social atmosphere may carry him much further in the long run than the mechanics of pictorial terror, proficient as he is at souping up the jolts and shivers The menace seems more menacing because you're often charmed or tickled by the people in harm's way, notably Don scardino (the only recognizable human in "Cruising" not so long ago) as the affable ex-boyfriend of the imperiled heroine (caitlin O'Heany, effectively vulnerabvle in appearance but not quite adequate histrionically); Patty Pease as the heroine's liveliest pal, a sexpot with an infectiously brazen sense of humor; and Joseph Leon as the crusty, cigar-puffing proprietor of a bridal shop.

Mastroianni's exuberant talent doesn't necessarily save him from bad judgement. The killer seems to come and go with the freedom of a phantom and strike with the inhuman force of jaws or The Thing. A subplot involving a cop obessively pursuing the killer seems as misplaced as a dangling shirttail. If Mastroianni and Parker couldn't get it tucked in, they should have cut it off. Worst of all, the fadeout evocation of " Halloween " is a very dumb joke. o

"Schizoid" is a hapless title, and for the first reel or so it appears unlikely that the film will rise above its initial lurid homicide and low-budget veneer.

Neverthless, Paulsen succeeds in sustaining a mystery plot and showing flashes of intuitive directing ability in a ramshackle context. The hit in his movie consists of five women introduced sharing gossip and champagne in a hot tub. (Obvious overlooked title: "The Hot Tub Murders.") It's disclosed that the victims have something else in common: an ambiguously tormented group therapist played by Klaus Kinski, revealed to be romantically entangled with more than one female member of the group.

Perhaps the funniest line in the script occurs when murder has taken a toll of Kinski's patients, and he exclaims "Where is everybody?" (another swell title wasted) at a small turnout. The ultimate target is Mariana Hill, who writes a newspaper advice column, "Dear Julie." It's Julie's friends who get knocked off first, and the suspects are somehow connected with Julie.

At first every suspicion points rather too directly at Kinski. The rival suspects -- Craig Wasson as Julie's estranged husband and Christopher lloyd as a building suprintendent infatuated with Julie (hilariously, he's also a member of her group) -- don't receive nearly as much suggestive footage. Unexpectedly, Paulsen compensates for this weakness by springing a fourth suspect, who could be in a unique position to frame Kinski. s

Finally, in a deft climactic manuever Paulsen gets all four suspects and the heroine in the same deathrap -- her office -- at the same time. Having achieved this social coup, Paulsen begins cooking with a skill you couldn't have anticipated in the early reels. Throughout the denouement the suspense intensifies partly through the manipulation of clever ironic details like the timely use of the prevailing murder weapon, a pair of scissors, to help save the heroine's skin. When the final credits roll up you still feel slightly breathless from the whirlwind payoff.

Mastroianni and Paulsen haven't come to town with the most reputable vehicles ever made, but you leave convinced that they know how to get some exciting mileage out of those rattletraps.

Too Many 'Knights' in the Same Old Town



Too Many Knights in the Same Old Town

Washington Post, The (DC) - May 20, 1980

Author: Gary Arnold

The Hollywood Knights," the motleyest imitation yet of "American Graffiti," illustrates how rapidly decay can set in after a concept is generally recognized as appealing in Hollywood. The idea of "American Graffiti" was rejected by every major studio (and some twice) before finally being shot for the paltry sum of $800,000 and released successfully in 1973.

Its success inspired a popular TV series, "Happy Days," which then became the model for increasingly strained spinoffs and imitations. "American Graffiti" no doubt paved the way for fitfully interesting theatrical disappointments like "American Hot Wax" and "The wanderers." The derivative trail seemed to come to a dead and last summer when George Lucas himself collabrated on "More American Graffiti," a misbegotten sequel to his original triumph. With "The Hollywood Knights," Floyd Mutrux, the director of "American Hot Wax," seems determined to wear out the welcome of a once-amusing nostalgic device once and for all.

"Knights" relies on a soundtrack full of golden oldies to evoke the ostensible setting. Beverly Hills on the Halloween night, 1965. The members of a car club, the Hollywood Knights, cruise in and out of their favorite meeting place, a drive-in diner called Tubby's that is scheduled to close the following day, victimized by uptight residents and urban renewal.

The jerky, threadbare continuity is devoted to savoring the antics of the most irrespressibly clowish Knights, notably an obnoxious campus cutup called Newbomb, embodied by a smirky galoot named Robert Wuhl. Sort of a cheerless, vague reminder of Dick Shawn, Wuhl betrays the ill effects of too many appearances as a facetious would-be escort on Chuck Barris' "The Dating Game." He already resembles stale comic goods in his movie debut. Moreover, he appears so old for the role that one is left with the impression that Newbomb must have been repeating the 12th grade since about 1950.

Evidently destined for a career as the slimiest lounge comedian in Las Vegas, Newbomb celebrates this farewell Halloween by repeatedly humiliating other subspecies: Gailard Sartain (who played The Big Bopper in "The Buddy Holly Story") and Sandy Helberg as stoogy patrolmen; Leigh French and Richard Schaal as adulterous upper-middle-class hypocrites; Stuart Pank as a fat adolescent mama's boy. The Newbomb repertoire relies all too heavily on stinky chestnuts: food-chuckling, mooning, flatulence, even the old flaming dog doo on the front porch. He's got a handful of hot ones, does Newbomb.

The derivative ineptitude of Mutrux's burlesque humor is epitomized in his borrowing of the sight gag from the cover of the National Lampoon's High School Yearbook Parody. You'd think that moving pictures might do more with the idea of a pantyless cheerleader than a still photograph could, but Mutrux is so imprecise and inattentive that the forgetful (or exhibitionistic) cute isn't even caught from wittly revealing, decisive angles. Mutrux canan barely be trusted to get a laugh out of can't miss, pie-in-the-face situation.

Mercifully, not every Knight is supposed to be a card. There are subdued subplots dealing with a member about to join the Army (and presumably perish in Vietnam) and another (Tony Danza of "Taxi") at odds with his girlfiend (Michelle Pfeiffer), a carhop with dreams of a Hollywood career. Although it comes as a welcome change of emphasis, the "serious" motif is as superficial and perfunctory as the farce. Nothing takes hold within this spastically facetious, centrifugal filmmaking context. Moreover, the dialogue tracks seem so poorly recorded or mixed that the conversation is often reduced to incomprehensible static.

Mutrux is probably a genuine child of pop culture, and he showed some comic aptitude in "American Hot Wax." He's backpedaling in "Holloywood Knights," a disgraceful trifle predicated on an idea whose time has passed. Far from showing continued promise, Mutrux has now identified himself as a kind of untutored, remedical-school imitator of George Lucas.

' Halloween ': A Trickle of Treats



' Halloween ': A Trickle of Treats

Washington Post, The (DC) - November 24, 1978

Author: Gary Arnold

A most inappropriate Thanksgiving attraction, " Halloween ," arrives at a time when reports of an authentic horror story are bound to accentuate the triviality of a mere horror movie.

Not that this plodding exercise in sham apprehension would look impressive even if one felt starved for morbid stimulation. Now at area theaters, " Halloween " is far more proficient at torpor than terror.

Evidently conceived as a genre talent showcase by 30-year-old John Carpenter, who also collaborated on the minimal scenario and composed the undernourished score. " Halloween " is a stab at a derivative minor classic. It's apparent where Carpenter got his horror devices - and a minor misfortune that he hasn't been able to synthesize them in a fresh or exciting way.

The movie begins with a prologue in which a teen-age girl is stabbed to death in her room on Halloween night, 1963. The murder is depicted subjectively, supposedly from the point of view of the killer, who peeps at the girl as she necks with her boyfriend, extracts a butcher knife (inevitably reminiscent of the murder weapon in "Psycho") from a kitchen drawer, climbs a steep staircase (inevitably reminiscent of a key setting from "Psycho") and attacks the victim, who is unclothed and appears to recognize her assailant.

In a moment it's revealed why she knows him: the killer is the victim's kid brother, dressed in a clown's costume. This kicker is the sort of "masterstroke" that makes the crime itself look clownishly implausible, but Carpenter blunders on. It's 15 years later, Halloween Eve, 1978. Two passengers in a car navigating through a rainstorm (inevitably reminiscent of a situation in "Psycho") are entrusted with cryptic expository lines updating the murderer's case history.

The passengers are a psychiatrist, played by Donald Pleasence, and a nurse. According to the physician, the killer was a child of six when he stabbed his sister and has failed to respond to treatment while growing up in an institution for the criminally insane. He is convinced that this bad seed, named Michael, will always be a menace - indeed, the essence of evil. He is determined to impress this fear on a parole board scheduled to review Michael's case.

Arriving at the institution to pick up Michael, doctor and nurse discover that he's been waiting for them. In fact, he steals the car from under their negligent noses and heads for the scene of the crime, Haddonfield, Ill., an idyllic small town obvioulsy chosen to duplicate Hitchcock's use of pretty, serene Santa Rosa, Calif., as a backdrop for terro in "Shadow of a Doubt."

Once back home, the grown Michael, whose face remains averted from the camera, branches out a bit, recalling sources other than Hitchcock. He begins stalking potential victims derived from Brian DePalma's "Carrie" - high school girls played by Jamie Lee Curtis. P. J. Soles and Nancy Loomis - and affecting a heavy mockasthmatic wheeze borrowed from the maniac played by Ross Martin in Blake Edwards' "Experiment in Terror."

Since there is precious little character or plot development to pass the time between stalking sequences, one tends to wish the killer would get on with it. Presumably, Carpenter imagines he's building up spinetingling anticipation, but his techniques are so transparent and laborious that the result is attemuation rather than tension.

Carpenter lacks the stylistic flair and psychological penetration that have allowed De Palma and George Romero to contribute new classics to the horror in recent years. Carpenter's scenario isn't rooted in anything except old movies, and it develops too arbitrarily to establish roots even in that shallow ground.

Michael's case history doesn't sustain the movie beyond the prologue. The killer has no identity as a dangerously demented human being. He's a thing lurking in the dark, the bogeyman that a neighborhood kid takes him to be.

Moreover, that darkness is so Stygian that it's often impossible to discern anyone's face or appreciate the monster's unexpected entrances. The murky images are the closest Carpenter comes to giving the picture a "look," and it turns out to be a self-defeating one, similar to the lighting miscalculations that seem to be plaguing many movies these days, especially "Comes a Horseman" and the still unreleased "September 30, 1955," both shot-by Gordon Willis and both literally lost in the dark for long, long stretches.

Eventually, Carpenter's dimly perceived bogeyman degenerates into a bad joke. After snuffing the high school girls played by Soles (who appeared in "Carrie" as the best pal of bad girl Nancy Allen) and Lomis - whose promiscuity apparently renders them expendable - Michael is confronted by the straight-arrow character of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis but more suggestive of a melancholy, ungainly young Lauren Bacall).

The movie ends with the sound of heavy, heavy breathing still haunting the pleasant tree-lined streets of Haddonfield. A horror melodrama that resorts to an "irony" like that obviously wants to be congratuled for digging its own grave. Congratulations.