GHOST TOWN (1988)
Franc Luz, Jimmie F. Skaggs, Catherine Hickland, Bruce Glover, Penelope Windust, Laura Schaefer, Zitto Kazann
Directed by Richard Governor
Heading down a stretch of Arizona desert highway in a red Mercedes Benz convertible (Judas Priest could easily be playing over this opening scene) is spoiled rich girl, and runaway bride, Kate Barrett. She's jilted her fiancé at the altar, and taken off in her car alone, no doubt for a wonderful new round of freedom as she tosses out her wedding veil. As she's driving, the sudden sound of hoof beats from galloping horses causes her to pull off to the side of the road. Thinking WTF, she is then swallowed in a sandstorm and vanishes. At the same time, Deputy Sheriff Langley is taking some target practice, blasting objects in a junkyard (because what else is there to do in a boring Southwest backwater?) when he gets a dispatch call from his head honcho, Sheriff Bubba, to investigate her possible abduction after she's reported missing by her father. Less than enthused, he arrives at the desolate scene in his Jeep Bronco and finds Kate's battered, empty car when out of nowhere, a man-in-black rides by on horseback shooting at him multiple times. In the attack, Langley bails out of his vehicle just before it melts & explodes, and now he too is thinking WTF. Stranded and on foot, he comes across the gravestone/wooden marker of a Sheriff Harper in which a skeletal corpse bursts out of the ground, grabs his wrists, and tells him to defeat an evil that has taken grip of his town.
Failure will mean a fate worse than death. When Harper's withered corpse collapses even more decayed, Langley scoops up a badge from the crumbled remains and stumbles into a dilapidated, spooky, Old West ghost town named Cruz Del Diablo, ahead of an approaching storm. He takes shelter in an empty rundown building and hits the hay exhausted from the day's bizarre events. He awakens to visions of a saucy barmaid/saloon keeper named Grace, a blind gambler known as The Dealer (also the obligatory fortune teller), and a blacksmith with his daughter, Etta (who looks like Laura Branigan). The former residents are themselves spirits being terrorized by dreaded gunslinger Devlin, a scarred & zombie-ish, ruthless outlaw on black horse (of course) who has made a pact with Satan that keeps him and his lurking phantom gang of hammy roughnecks in control of the haunted town they gleefully punish. Devlin has kidnapped Kate because she's a deadringer for a saloon (or was it brothel?) singer he once had the hots for. As far as dirty rotten scoundrels go, Devlin is lower than a worm's belly and in flashback, we see how he first crucified Sheriff Harper on a windmill, then buried him alive infront of the fear-stricken occupants. Langley -- now the town's defacto lawman -- learns more about the trapped souls from the blacksmith and Etta (whom he got in the sack), but the doomed pair are killed for giving him information.
With his modern guns useless, Grace gives Langley an old pistol which can kill Devlin and his cronies with gold bullets. Langley rescues Kate and the duo hide out in an abandoned church, but they are tracked down and the church is set on fire. They escape and Langley blows away Devlin and his villains in a final 'High Noon' (albeit at night) shootout, thus avenging Harper's cruel death, and releasing the souls of the past-inhabitants from the limbo of unholy dark that ran the show for a century. The town disappears; at last, allowed to die in peace. This team-up of traditional ordinary western meets horror (which for what it's worth is a hybrid that has surprisingly combined for more than a handful of times) has a slight ARMY OF DARKNESS feel with it's theme of being pulled back into time, having to navigate the unfamiliar, and helping townsfolk to lift a curse. [Luz as Langley oddly seems at times as if he's channeling Bruce Campbell while coming off as a cross between Ron Silver and Peter Horton]. Even if you overlooked this as a VHS rental, you're bound to have recognized its memorable cover. There's nothing too special here and truthfully, the movie can be seen as an example of impressive box art sometimes delivering more than the film itself which feels incomplete in a few areas. The acting is passable, the plot is one-dimensional and too thin, and some of the featured music was the same used in GHOULIES II, FROM BEYOND, and CRAWLSPACE.
[All those titles via the catalog of the Empire International Pictures production/distribution company owned by Charles Band which went bust by 1989, but saw Band forming Full Moon Entertainment that same year]. Outside of sadistic Devlin's violent penchant for shoot 'em up, more blood & gore (climax aside) would have been nice. But as far as the low budget visual look, the rotting teeth and deformed decomposing flesh make-up is decent (if not rubbery and dated), and the cinematography on the whole is atleast effective, particularly with the undead gunmen as seen through the dreary haze of dust. [Fun fact: Kane Hodder did stunt work in this, the same year he debuted as Jason Voorhees]. GHOST TOWN is clichéd and mediocre but spirited, has parallels in its storyline to HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973) starring Clint Eastwood, and gets brownie points for trying to offer something different in its blend outside of the slasher stable of then-established franchises. Sergio Leone this ain't but remade today with its cobwebs and swing doors, I can picture a considerable change of the tired & fed up, equally deceased locals rallying to band together and intent on ending their suffering, once n' for all finally standing against the demonic henchmen -- either both to a montage or end credits of Johnny Cash's 'The Man Comes Around'. [I wonder if the filmmakers modeled Devlin from Freddy Krueger, as there seems to be a pale imitation here]. Overall, the movie has room for improvement, and best looks like it could have been an off-kilter episode from the 1985-89 Twilight Zone revival.
BONE TOMAHAWK (2015)
Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins, Matthew Fox, Lili Simmons, Kathryn Morris, David Arquette, Sid Haig
Directed by S. Craig Zahler
Set in the Wild West of the 1890's, Purvis and Buddy are bushwhacking drifters who have just brutally killed 3 campers out in the brush. Hearing horses, they take off into the hills and on a burial site, Buddy is killed by an arrow. Purvis escapes and 11 days later enters the small, peaceful cowpoke town of Bright Hope (on the New Mexico/Texas border) where he buries his stolen loot. Raising suspicion as an obvious robber and taking his dead partner's name, he comes to the attention of Deputy Chicory and Sheriff Franklin Hunt, and is shot in the leg trying to flee while in the local saloon. Hunt has the town Casanova, John Brooder, call for the doctor but Doc is a drunkard, so another physician, Samantha O' Dwyer, instead patches Purvis up in jail. Her husband, Arthur, is a foreman who is nursing his broken, lower right leg at home. That night, unknown attackers kill a stable boy and steal horses. In the morning, Hunt finds Purvis, Samantha, and another Deputy (Nick) all missing from the jail, and finds an arrow. A Native American dubbed "The Professor" tells Hunt it belongs to a vicious group of cave-dwelling cannibals known as troglodytes who reside in the "Valley of the Starving Man." The cautious Hunt forms a posse of aging Chicory who rambles, hobbling-on-a-crutch Arthur who has insisted on joining despite his injury, and dashingly vain Brooder who is unapologetic for the number of Indians he has killed. The 4 men set off to rescue, Samantha, Nick, and Purvis. On their journey and mindful of potential raiders out in the barren plains, Brooder kills 2 men who wander into their camp. During a night ambush, both Brooder and his horse are injured while the remaining 3 animals are stolen.
After the horse is put down, and with the group on foot, Brooder and Arthur get into a punch-up regarding Samantha. As the condition of Arthur's leg is worsened from falling in the fight (as well as from the threat of gangrene), Chicory sets it in a splint, and the 3 men leave him behind and alone to recuperate. Upon arrival at the Valley, the trio are met with a hail of arrows. Injured, they manage to kill 2 of the trogs, and in a retreat, Hunt and Chicory abandon a seriously hurt Brooder, who has demanded he be left behind. Macho to the end, Brooder kills a trog before he himself is killed. Hunt and Chicory are captured and imprisoned in a cave. Samantha and Nick are still alive, but poor Purvis has since been eaten. Nick is then taken from his makeshift cell, stripped, scalped, vivisected in half, and feasted upon by the trogs. Samantha quips that present existence is hard because of "idiots" and figures the remaining number of cannibals to be possibly 12. Hunt remembers he has a flask of opium he took from Arthur which is given to some of the trogs to drink. Only one fatally OD's while another blacks out in narcotic sleep. Arthur's determination knows no bounds. Desperate to get his wife back and in limping & agonizing pain, he tracks his comrades to the Valley and after killing 2 trogs, finds an embedded whistle-like implement on the outside of a dead attacker's throat (actually windpipe) meant as a communication device, as they do not speak. Carving it off, he blows it which summons a trog, who is quickly killed. Back in the cave, the trog leader is pissed to see 2 of his men felled by Hunt. Hunt is yanked from his cell, has the right side of his abdomen sliced open, and a now fire-heated flask shoved into the gash.
He is then shot in the left arm, and stomach by his own rifle. (And only by sheer luck does he avoid having his balls blown off). Arthur shows up at the cave having killed a few trogs, and a still-alive Hunt kills the leader with a tomahawk (in this case, a weapon fashioned from a human hip bone). Samantha and Chicory are freed, while mortally wounded Hunt stays behind to kill the rest of the trogs who will return; to ultimately prevent Bright Hope from being paid anymore of their unwanted visits. Leaving the cave, Arthur, Samantha, and Chicory pass 2 pregnant trog women. Both are mutilated having been blinded and their limbs amputated. Neither female makes a sound. Arthur blows the whistle and their is no reply, thus paving the way clear. Outside and away from the cave, the surviving trio hear 3 gunshots ring out, signifying Hunt has killed the last of the trogs. Safe, the party make their tired way home. If BONE TOMAHAWK was played out as numerous past Western Hollywood classics (e.g. THE SEARCHERS from 1956), we would have noble cowboys heroically banding together and hitting the trail to save a group of innocent settlers, kidnapped by the uncivilized Red Man whose ruthlessness is more implied than visual. But here, with an injection of horror-fusion very much recalling THE HILLS HAVE EYES, the Native Americans have been replaced by man-eating, warrior, savage tribesmen from a degenerate bloodline. And the assembled, flawed group upon whom the imperiled will depend on, not only bicker and have eccentric issues that could derail the mission, but the odds of them rendering successful help, let alone their own survival, is less than slim.
More than the punctuation of realistic, ultraviolent gore & slaughter (which is more restrained than rampant, and saved for the final reel), the movie's key element is its dialogue-heavy slowburn; a building atmosphere of trepidation and dread that sets the highly unsettling tone. That and a top notch cast of excellently, tightly written characters who are more a motley crew than they are seasoned vigilantes; all with their particular backgrounds & insights, combined with deadpan humor and sadness. Each man evokes empathy -- especially in the terror of being cut loose from the rest -- in a brotherhood that barely bonds in their beginning. [Russell as Hunt is a more subdued but just as brave version of his Wyatt Earp in TOMBSTONE]. The interaction of gritty frontier life is also richly presented, running from daily droll to dangerous. [Accusations of racist overtones aside, the indigenous, bestial inbreds are depicted as basically primitive, mud and ash-smeared, animals who rape and eat their own mothers. And we can only shudder to think what happens to some of the offspring]. The lack of a musical score amplifies the ill-at-ease quiet, and tension all throughout, and really intensifies every specific moment that is dark & disturbing. The movie has traces of Eli Roth splatter, some CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, and even a pinch of FROM DUSK TILL DAWN. I could imagine this being made and written by the Coen Brothers, and dare I say -- wait for it -- Rob Zombie (even though Mr. Boogie Man might benefit more with a better writer than himself). To date, BONE TOMAHAWK is probably the most gruesome and graphically unflinching nod to a spaghetti western yet (easily outbesting THE HATEFUL EIGHT, which also featured Russell, and equally a tad too long at 132min). Lastly, it is also not for the squeamish and weak-stomached.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment