Behind Enemy Lines

This action picture from 2001 is a marvel of odd choices.  Owen Wilson (Anaconda, Cars 3) as a downed Navy fighter pilot in enemy territory who must run the gauntlet of war-torn Bosnia to escape to a friendly country next door is miscast.  His laid back jokey demeanor doesn’t fit with the character.  Most of the runtime calls for him to be in awe, pain, anger, display stoicism, remain defiant, etc. but he never really gets there.  He’s too much of a lightweight compared to the more intense tone of every other aspect the production is aiming for.

The editing I can’t go too hard on considering the style of the time but the chaotic moments are damn annoying.  Every once in a while it goes into a frantic seizure with rapid cuts, zooms, camera spinning, slow motion, sped up motion and other gimmickry.  Be careful, suffering whiplash is a real threat here.

Moving on, the soundtrack is all over the goddamn place with pop songs seemingly chosen at random like “What’d I Say” by Ray Charles used during a scene where Wilson and co. fool around propelling a football off the deck of an aircraft carrier at incredible velocity.  But then there’s also techno bangers, villain cues reminiscent of Brad Fiedel’s T2 with metal clanging, dramatic choir singing and your typical driving orchestral pounding.  Again, the tones don’t line up.

But what about all that sweet action?  Well, it’s both cool at times (Wilson’s jet being chased by two heat seeking missiles is tense as hell, followable, fast paced and damn exciting, although the scene is twice as long as it needs to be) and comical at times (Wilson must run through a crumbling factory lined with trip wires all setup adjacent to each other like fifty or sixty in a row like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon and who the hell stacked this shit like this?  No strategy or thought was put into placing them).

Strangely everything is mismatched so much that it comes back around to being kinda interesting.  It nearly works as a whole even though any individual element is a head scratcher.  Every actor is taking the material deadly seriously and then Owen Wilson pops in to do a whiny “aw c’mon”.  Some of the shots are neat like the POV of the catapult that launches the jets off the aircraft carrier or the extreme slow motion of a baddie getting blown away by a trip mine.  But then other parts are a cheese-fest like Wilson’s constant headbutting with his superior officer (Gene Hackman (Extreme Measures, Young Frankenstein)) or his saccharine relationship with his smiling and always supportive co-pilot (Gabriel Macht (The Spirit, Whiteout)) who’s way too upbeat so you know damn well he won’t last long.

This was director John Moore’s first feature and he went on to not have the best track record which includes the pointless 2006 The Omen remake and the sad sequel A Good Day to Die Hard.  I can see how this film would spark interest though.  There’s enough good, even great, stuff to give him more projects.  Maybe he would abandon some of the sillier of-the-times techniques and mature with subsequent films but the material didn’t really pan out.  He doesn’t seem to have been active since 2016.

So there’s plenty to enjoy and plenty to mock here.  From Hackman’s gruff performance to the title being the plot.  The entire thing is basically just Owen Wilson going to a place, getting shot at, navigating a set of obstacles particular to that location, running away (there’s A LOT of running in this) and evading death for a short period until the next set piece.  Repeat ad nauseum.  Each circumstance is entertaining and pretty wild but almost immediately becomes laughable due to Wilson’s bottomless dumb luck and the ineptitude of his pursuers.  He should’ve easily died twenty times over.

Take that for what you will.  It’s messy absurd fun and a time capsule of early 2000’s junk when major movie studios still made straight ahead genre action shit like this.  The same concept would be done much better decades later, albeit in only one act, in Top Gun: Maverick.

*Spoiler for this final paragraph* Lastly I have to mention the weird decision made by Owen Wilson at the end of the movie to stay in the Navy after putting in his letter of resignation earlier in the film.  You would think the insane situation he barely survived where he had a thousand brushes with death would make him want to exit the Navy even more.  But nope, instead his resolve is strengthened.

X-Ray (aka Hospital Massacre)

One last Valentine’s Day themed horror picture for ya.  Similar to Valentine we start in the past with an adolescent boy named Harold (ok, I know what you’re thinking but we’ll get to that in a sec) leaving a valentine card for a girl at her home.  She and her guy friend (or boyfriend?  Not sure) scoff at the idea and crumple it up and toss it away.  Harold, creepily peering through the window, sees this and goes ballistic.  He hangs the other boy (you read that right) and scurries off.  Smash cut to modern day where that girl is a grown woman now, Susan (Barbi Benton (Deathstalker)), and is off to the hospital to pick up some X-rays from a routine checkup.  But someone at the hospital starts killing off the medical professionals and replacing Susan’s records with some shit that deeply concerns the other doctors.  We never find out what but it’s bad enough that they want to run more tests and keep her there for observation.  All the while the killer stalks her and wreaks havoc.

So that’s a pretty good setup.  They keep the action contained entirely within one location, there’s plenty of dangerous stuff lying around the hospital for the villain to use, the doctors think Susan is both physically and mentally ill with all the games the killer plays so when she tries to leave several times she’s stopped and strapped down, most of the film takes place at night and since hospitals don’t close there are always potential victims around.

They definitely try hard to make the hospital feel like a scary place but not in the way you’re expecting.  The building itself isn’t really lit or presented in a spooky manner, although there’s this gag where one of the floors is being fumigated so anyone that goes up there has to grope their way through a cough inducing fog.  Aside from that the filmmakers mainly rely on the patients and staff to give you an uneasy sensation.  As far as the patients go they’re made out to be either mentally disturbed (like the three old ladies Susan shares a room with or the one guy who roams the corridors with a bottle of hooch) or physically impaired (like the room filled with people in full body casts writhing around in muffled screaming or the other room full of decrepit old guys seemingly on their deathbed).  These people are just trying to get some help but the movie wants you find them all frightening in some way or another.  Kinda messed up.

In terms of how the staff is portrayed there’s one doctor in particular who treats Susan and man do they make him a fuckin’ slimeball.  He’s so serious and condescending and never tells Susan what the hell’s going on or why she’s being held there against her will or anything.  In one decidedly uncomfortable scene he has her strip down to her underwear so he can examine her in the most sinister way possible.  He’s feeling her all over and goes to draw blood and does it all very slowly without saying a word practically.  I think the filmmakers wanted to convey how some folks feel when they go see a doctor, how exposed they are, how in the dark they are about their own health, wondering if they’re being taken advantage of.  And, tragically, in some cases patients really are abused.  But I think the intention of these scenes, along with Susan’s run-ins with the other patients, is to create a sense of ambiguity surrounding her perception.  Are these people being treated like lab experiments or getting proper care?  Is this guy examining her in a professional manner or molesting her?  This is a whodunit slasher after all and we need suspects.  But really these scenes come across more awkward than anything else.

And that’s something that carries through the whole movie.  There’s a stiffness to the performances and cinematography and an unevenness to the pacing.  Director Boaz Davidson is Israeli and had made plenty of films over there before coming to the US and hooking up with Cannon in the late 70’s.  X-Ray was earlier on in his American phase so maybe something’s getting lost in translation.  Or it could simply be he went for a style that doesn’t completely work.

Anyway, overall the picture is ok.  I like that Susan’s X-ray is what sets the plot in motion so that fits in neatly with the title.  There’s some Valentine’s Day stuff like a couple of decorations in the hospital and Susan’s outfit towards the beginning is red and pink and the way her jacket is buttoned makes it look like she has a heart on her chest.  Oh and someone’s head gets delivered in a red hatbox.  The kills are varied with a few being gruesome like a medical saw through the throat and a hatchet to the head.  I appreciate that the villain runs after their victims which is a welcomed departure from the typical brisk walk in most other slashers.  They do the really heavy mouth breathing though through a surgical mask.  Like probably the heaviest mask breathing I’ve ever seen where the mask is billowing in and out like a balloon.  It’s exaggerated as hell.  Barbi Benton doesn’t do fantastic for the first half of the runtime where she’s kinda detached and even a touch jerky but turns on a nice performance when she has to wig out in a crazed and desperate state.

One aspect that’s a standout is the awesome soundtrack by Arlon Orber (Eating Raoul, orchestrator on Child’s Play and Sam Raimi’s Crimewave).  It’s a mix between Friday the 13^th and The Omen with string stabs, Psycho-esque screeching and hellish choir chanting.  It’s distracting how fantastic it is.  Honestly, it’s too good for this movie.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the music was written for something else and the producers re-used it here.

Alright, I’m finally circling back to what I was alluding to in the intro.  The murderous boy in the opening scene is named Harold and guess what the killer miner’s name is in My Bloody Valentine?  Harry.  Plus, and this is a doozy, at one point early in the movie Susan takes an elevator up to the floor that the hospital is fumigating and when the doors open three people in gas masks tell her the floor is off limits.  The masks are very similar to the one used in My Bloody.  And of course there’s the Valentine’s Day connection.  My Bloody Valentine was released in 1981 and according to Wikipedia X-Ray was released in 1982 so I’m hoping these are playful nods.  I refuse to believe this is all a coincidence.  I don’t know how it played back then but it’s amusing now and put me in a bizzarro state of mind when those gas masks popped up.

Anyway, that’s X-Ray (or Hospital Massacre).  It’s fine.  A fairly standard slasher that isn’t too remarkable except for the soundtrack and the quirky Valentine’s Day backdrop.  And that it begins with a child murdering another child.

Valentine

This is about as generic as it gets.  Honestly I wasn’t even going to write anything but I sorta started this Valentine’s Day thing with the My Bloody Valentines and then I saw this and thought “fuckin’ Scream did this to me”.  I mean “damn, this is uninteresting.  My Valentine’s slasher shit isn’t panning out like I hoped”.  The problem is I don’t really have anything positive to say about this film and feel a little bad only rattling off negatives.  So I’ll try to be brief.

The story revolves around a group of once middle school girls who all individually rejected an awkward disheveled boy at a Valentine’s dance which eventually somehow led to him getting accused of sexual assault, soaked with punch and his clothes torn off by bullies, in front of everyone.  So that kinda fucked him up.  Over a decade later this group of friends, along with a few other folks, start to get picked off one by one.  Is it the same kid, now grown up, out for revenge?

Ok, first thing upfront is I don’t understand this casting.  Three of the four main character friends are broads with blonde hair and blue eyes and they all look exactly the same (Marley Shelton (Scream 4), Jesica Capshaw (Grey’s Anatomy), Jessica Cauffiel (Legally Blonde)).  Who the hell thought this was a good idea?  Casting actors with similar appearances is a big pet peeve of mine.  I had such a hard time figuring out which character was which in any given scene.  Something like this is an unforced error.  They could’ve had other slightly more diverse people in these roles.  Denise Richards (The World Is Not Enough), a brunette, plays one of the leads so that was easy to pick out but the rest were a struggle to tell apart.

3 lookalikes and Denise Richards

Each of these ladies is an asshole too which didn’t help.  Wait, scratch that.  Every character in this movie is unlikeable.  Whether air-headed, aggressively flirty, hopelessly desperate, self-absorbed, thoughtless, scummy, creepy, pompous, condescending, oblivious, scornful, it’s all here.  The only person who has any depth is one of the boyfriends who’s struggling with alcohol addiction and it feels like too serious a topic to throw in your shitty slasher.

Another unfortunate thing is the ending is pretty confusing.  I won’t spoil it (I don’t know why, no one cares) but the whodunit mystery doesn’t actually get explained.  Yea the mask gets pulled off at the conclusion but, and this is crucial, after the person is dead.  So we don’t get a motive.  Now to be fair there’s one last twist that helps a bit but it’s still not enough to tell us what we need to know.  Naturally there’s a deleted scene that ties all this up but the studio axed it because it tipped off the true identity of the killer earlier than they wanted.  Really though this sounds like it might’ve been a script problem that was simply never addressed until it was too late.

Forgot to mention Katherine Heigl is
also in this...she doesn't last long

They don’t take advantage of the Valentine’s Day theme either which is weird considering you know, the title of your movie is Valentine.  The only bits are the killer sends flowery cards with seemingly romantic poems that then turn gruesome with the last line and there’s a vaguely Valentine’s themed party towards the end but that’s it.  The villain’s mask is a cherub with a chubby child face and blonde curly hair but the rest of the outfit is a black trench coat, black pants and black boots.  The filmmakers must’ve known the design wasn’t obvious so they have the characters mention the cherub or cupid thing a couple of times.  I couldn’t figure it out either.  I thought it was just supposed to be a fat baby.

Other shit like the editing (location hopping isn’t always clear), character relationships (the four mains are best friends yet they never seem to know what’s going on in each other’s lives) and the hard rock industrial White Zombie/Nine Inch Nails type soundtrack are bad too.

Sorry movie, I don’t want you to be my valentine.

My Bloody Valentine (2009)

Boy do they lean into the 3D gimmick on this sucker.  Pickaxes, eyeballs, blood and other junk slam you in the face regularly.  I find watching these types of films way after its original intended context (in a theater surrounded by other folks ready to up the filmgoing experience by donning 3D glasses and relishing the dozen or so moments when they forcibly jut an object towards you out of nowhere) charming.  It’s not like they’re subtle about when the gags occur so while it can be awkward to witness someone waving a gun across the screen directly in front of the camera there’s something oddly endearing about it as well.  You even get some interesting angles that the filmmakers would probably never think to use otherwise.  For example during the bar fight scene we see a dude about to punch a mirror that’s hanging on the wall and we cut to behind the mirror to see the guy’s fist shatter the glass up close.  Or there’s another part where a truck swerves off the road and hits a tree.  A branch bursts through the front and rear windows and hurtles towards us.

But plot you say?  Well it’s not a carbon copy of its predecessor, so that’s good.  But unfortunately it’s blander while simultaneously being more complicated.  We open with some teens partying at a mine who get attacked by a crazed sonuvabitch in a miner’s outfit.  It’s Harry Warden who’s pissed because the mine owner’s son, Tom (Jensen Ackles (The Boys)), fucked up reading the methane levels and it caused an explosion.  He got blasted into a coma, woke up and now wants revenge.  The cops stop him but not before he murders like fifteen people or something.  Anyway, fast forward ten years and the survivors of the attack still live in small town Pennsylvania except for Tom.  He split after the incident but has returned to sell the family mine.  Naturally the town is not happy to see him because of his past mistake and now he’s effectively going to kill the town by offloading the mine.  Coincidently someone in miner’s gear has started to bump off folks again.  Got all that?

So aside from a bunch of backstory there isn’t much going on here.  They play up the whodunit angle quite a bit and while a standard in slashers this rarely works in my opinion.  What’s kinda funny to me is that when slasher fever hit back in the late 70’s and early 80’s and everyone was attempting to replicate the success of Halloween a lot of them added this additional mystery of who the identity of the killer is which is something that film didn’t bother with.  You know it’s Michael Myers from the beginning and the movie doesn’t ever pretend otherwise.  Here they go a step further than most by not only doing the whodunit thing but they also rip off another famous slasher to stir shit up (it’ll be a spoiler if I say which one).  I don’t think they really pull it off either.

Weirdly some parts of the production come across like the filmmakers were trying pretty hard like the psychological edge to the story, anything surrounding the 3D use, the effects overall, the amped up gore (a ton of pickaxes through heads) and the action scenes (although they all feel like they go on a bit too long strangely).  But then other areas of the production are totally dull like the characters, dialogue and production design.  Some shit is even downright lazy like the Valentine’s Day theming is a little half-hearted (pardon the pun) and the fact that this is supposed to take place in February in Pennsylvania yet the trees are full of lush green leaves and some characters are dressed down in skimpy clothing.

This was released during the glut of horror remakes in the 2000’s and while nothing special it actually might be one of the better ones.  It doesn’t feel entirely shameless and is totally watchable.  Plus the filmmakers brought attention to the original which is a touch stronger than your average slasher.  That film didn’t do well at the time but thanks in part to the remake it’s remembered somewhat fondly now.  Curiously the remake seems to be best remembered for a scene where a hot babe is terrorized by the miner at a motel and runs around the place completely nude for an extended period of time.  They could’ve had her wear a robe or a towel or something but nah, buck naked.

My Bloody Valentine

Well, it’s Valentine’s Day again.  Flowers, candy, a romantic evening with someone special, dunking someone’s face in boiling hot dog water, you know, the usual.  Mines, miners, mining equipment, mine shafts, mine carts, hmmm…we seemed to have taken a turn here.

Seriously though despite my stupid jokes one of the strongest aspects of the original My Bloody Valentine is how much it leans into the holiday theme.  The setting is a small Nova Scotian town called Valentine Bluffs (“The Little Town with the Big Heart”), there are heart decorations and streamers lining main street and in stores, the killer leaves heart shaped boxes with real human hearts in it for the police, there’s a themed dance party being prepared, a central plot point involves a love triangle and the events take place around the 14^th (as compared to the Friday the 13ths where it’s debatable how many installments actually occur on the titular day).  So kudos.

Along with all that the killer has one of the best looks in any slasher picture.  He’s a miner dressed in a black jumpsuit with a hardhat and headlamp, wears a full face creepy gas mask like you’ve seen in old World War I pictures and wields a pickaxe.  I love that the outfit is head to toe and real stuff a miner would wear.  It’s ok when it’s simply a random mask and weapon combo like so many other slashers but the filmmakers hit upon something special here.  The gas mask is very off putting with its extremely large circular eyes, flat pig nose and long tube running out from the mouth area.  It has the appearance of a large insect or alien humanoid.  The light atop the helmet lends a somewhat disturbing edge to the kill scenes as well because it focuses your attention and accentuates the terror on the victim’s face.  It makes the entire ordeal feel almost like a snuff film, like you shouldn’t be watching this.  Finally, the pickaxe is an implement that certainly looks imposing with its hefty weight and sharpened point.  Just by appearance you know it can do serious damage.  It may be a bit bulky but the imagery is striking and pretty perfect.  And while the killer isn’t opposed to employing other methods of murder I appreciate that he uses the thing quite a bit.

Pacing is another important attribute the movie gets right.  We don’t go too long without another target getting knocked off and all the while in the background the town sheriff is investigating the incidents.  As mentioned above there’s a love triangle between two guys and a gal and that’s set up well too.  One of the guys left town for a while but returned and wants to hook up with his old flame who’s moved on to someone else.  It’s a legitimate reason for there to be tension and rivalry.

Of course there’s the typical slasher stuff too.  Like the town suffered a past incident that no one wants to acknowledge which is linked to the current homicides, the sheriff who means well but ultimately ends up being useless, an old kook who tries to warn others of impeding doom, a whodunit mystery and rowdy partying teens. 

Well technically they’re not teens (I don’t think).  The cast of young folks are made up of miners and their girlfriends who work at different establishments in town.  The attempt to swap out the regular batch of high school students for everyman/woman townies is noted but this ends up making no real difference in the end product.  They all act obnoxious, drink, goof around, have horny make out sessions, do dumb shit they’re not supposed to like trespass into the mine so they can explore and etc.  I guess having them be adults makes it more plausible that they all wind up in the mine at the end because the guys work there and know how to get down there and navigate it?  I dunno.

There are some other parts that aren’t so great like the acting, the bland dialogue, the ham-fisted exposition of past events and the prominent use of the killer’s Michael Myers/Darth Vader type heavy breathing.  However, when you add it all up the strengths outweigh the weaknesses.  The film has a nice dingy dirty vibe due to all the mining stuff and the tiny blue collar town, the makeup effects are good, the cinematography is decent, they put a twist on the final girl trope, the killer’s motivation isn’t too complicated and the finale in the mine works well because it’s a legitimately dangerous dark maze with plenty of crap around to maim you if you’re not careful.

It's also Canadian as shit which I didn’t remember from years ago.  The Nova Scotia license plates, the royal seal on the cop cars, the accents, Moosehead Lager, flannel shirts and the like.  Neato.

While not a top tier contender like Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street it’s a solid effort that’s fairly streamlined and goes by quicky.  There were a billion slashers released in the late 70’s and early 80’s so it’s a difficult category to make yourself stand out in.  This one is totally competently made and plays with the formula in a clever enough manner for this to be a small cut above.