Review #1,404: 'The Quick and the Dead' (1995)

By 1995, the western genre had all but disappeared completely from our cinema screens. Black-and-white tales of cowboys and Indians in America's Old West was the stuff your granddad would watch on television during the day and claim they just don't make 'em like this anymore. They didn't stop completely however, with the likes of Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man making an earnest attempt to infuse the genre with a psychedelic, folksy edge, and George P. Cosmatos' Tombstone turning the events at the OK Corral into an explosive action thriller. Some, like Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, while adding a more sombre tone, successfully stuck the traditions of the genre, while others, like Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead, simply took an old-fashioned premise and ran with it. If you're looking for revisionism or an interesting take on an iconic time in America's history, then The Quick and the Dead ain't the film for that, but you may just find yourself having a bit more fun that you expected.

The town of Redemption was once a thriving community, but it now rests in the hands of the ruthless mayor and former outlaw John Herod (Gene Hackman). Herod enjoys a nice house while taxing his citizens 50% on any money they make, and apparently relieves his boredom by hosting a quick-draw contest every year. Gunslingers from all across the country arrive to take part - but God knows why, given the obviously high risk of death - including the mysterious Ellen (Sharon Stone), who shares a history with both the town and Herod himself. Also in town is Kid (Leonardo DiCaprio), a cocky teenager with a steady hand who also believes he is Herod's unacknowledged son, and a repentant outlaw-turned-preacher named Cort (Russell Crowe). Cort is dragged into the contest against his will by Herod's cronies, and the boss man is seemingly angered at his former associate's new anti-violence stance. There's backstory and melodrama, but it's all just an excuse for a series of stand-offs in a town where it always seems to be high noon.

While subverting expectations by enlisting a woman to play the central gunslinger, Raimi may as well have cast a broom in a wig, as Stone struggles to convincingly brood and frown and maintain any kind of interest in her character. Faring considerably better are DiCaprio and Crowe, who were just a few years off Titanic and Gladiator and the global stardom that followed. Their charisma and star quality are as clear as day, especially when they share a scene with the one-note Stone. For a film that boasts a wonderful supporting cast (Roberts Blossom, Tobin Bell, Keith David, Lance Henriksen and Gary Sinise are just some of the familiar faces), they all cower in the shadow of Gene Hackman, who somehow manages to turn some truly atrocious dialogue into Shakespeare. Yet the real star is Raimi's crazy camera lens. Before he was bringing Peter Parker's swinging exploits vividly to life in Spider-Man, he was crash-zooming on the faces of readying gunslingers and capturing daylight through a bullet-hole in the belly. It's silly, outrageous and wonderful. The problem is everything that comes in between, from the dreary central hero to the unengaging backstories.


Directed by: Sam Raimi
Starring: Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobin Bell, Roberts Blossom, Kevin Conway, Keith David, Lance Henriksen, Pat Hingle
Country: Japan/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,242: 'Alien 3' (1992)

After the overwhelming success of James Cameron's follow-up to Ridley Scott's creature feature classic Alien, the direction in which the franchise could go from there was a mystery. Surprisingly, 20th Century Fox made the risky move of hiring an untried director who had made a name for himself in music videos, but didn't have a feature to his name. That man was David Fincher, and the experience almost turned him off movies for good. Frustrated by studio interference, constant script rewrites and budget issues, Fincher turned his back on the film once it hit the editing room, and has since disowned the film completely. The result was a box-office disappointment which received mostly negative reviews, possibly the result of an unyielding, miserable tone, or the fact that the final product was stitched together from scenes shot during an incredibly problematic production.

Even in a series that includes Alien: Resurrection and Prometheus, Alien 3 is still very much the dark horse of the bunch. Fans mostly loathe the film, but there are some who believe the film to be some sort of unrealised masterpiece. After all, this was made by the director who would go on to helm Se7en, Fight Club and Gone Girl, although you would never guess it. I sit somewhere in between. 2003's 'Assembly Line' cut (which Fincher refused to take part in) establishes some much-needed coherency, bulking up the role of Paul McGann's character and introducing more fluidity to the story. The new cut certainly doesn't cover up the movie's main issues, but it is a refreshingly downbeat spectacle, reasserting the alien's genetic superiority and terrifying prowess after Cameron's entry blew a small army of them away in spectacular fashion. There are also some terrific performances by a mainly British cast.

Alien 3 didn't do itself any favours by killing off fan favourites Hicks (Michael Biehn) and Newt (Carrie Henn) during the very first scene. After narrowly escaping with their lives following the events of Aliens, an alien egg inexplicably found itself on board their ship, hatching while the crew slept in stasis. An escape pod containing Hicks, Newt, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the mangled android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) is launched when a fire starts on board, eventually landing on 'Fury' 161, a penal colony and lead-smelting works housing sex offenders and murderers of the worst kind. Led by the imposing Dillon (Charles S. Dutton), the inmates have also turned to God. They are all bar-coded and shaven-headed due to a lice infestation, and look like they haven't seen the sun in years. Ripley, the only survivor, confides in prison doctor Clemens (Charles Dance), who is willing to perform an autopsy on the dead to ensure no alien lives inside of them. He also displays a bar-code.

Of course, it isn't long until another alien has hatched and is hunting down any poor sap in its way, as it seeks to reproduce and overrun. Writers David Giler, Walter Hill and Larry Ferguson made the correct choice in returning to the series' routes with a lone alien stalking its prey. Cameron went bigger, but you can't really go any bigger than that. Fincher stages some scary set-pieces, particularly one involving a terrified Paul McGann and very close encounter for Ripley. The main issue lies in between these moments, with the film too busy establishing the new setting, introducing an all-new cast of characters, and bridging the gap between the end of the second movie and the beginning of this to gather any real momentum. Fury 161 is also a horrible place to spend over two hours in, especially with the threat of rape and murder at every turn. With the Assembly Cut now the definitive version, Alien 3 is certainly not the complete mess it is still considered to be by many. It's rough and ugly, yes, but this arguably adds more grit and ferocity to the terror. It's hard to think of what could have been had Fox realised the talent they had on their hands.


Directed by: David Fincher
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Paul McGann, Ralph Brown, Danny Webb, Lance Henriksen
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,239: 'Aliens' (1986)

The biggest obstacle faced by a studio looking to cash-in on a surprise success that resonated well with both audiences and critics is the direction in which to take it. The seemingly obvious call would be to study the original and pick apart the ingredients which helped form, in the case of Alien, an instant science-fiction classic. While the sequel faced trouble getting the greenlight as Fox procrastinated over a project they felt was a costly risk, this delay in production was only leading to the sequel rights falling into the hands of the perfect guy for the job. Production on The Terminator was facing a lengthy delay due to scheduling conflicts, so director James Cameron found himself some spare time to pen a script. Only this wasn't to be called Alien 2, but Aliens, as Cameron sought to embrace the scope and ambition he would later become famous for.

While Alien features gruff space truckers, Aliens is led by a band of buzz-cut space marines, and Cameron's idea was not to continue with the slow-burn, show-little approach of the original, but a relentless assault on the senses. It's certainly isn't that Cameron doesn't know how to generate tension (the slow beeping of the motion tracker and the moment trapped inside a room with a face-hugger is clear evidence that he does), but he has a different method of pay-off. A long build-up following by a genuinely terrifying jump-scare made you hold your breath in Alien, but when the indecipherable blobs turn into a huge hoard of the remorseless, slimy killing machine, it's difficult to catch it. It's incredibly long, with a climax that seems to go on forever. But Aliens truly puts you through the wringer, to the point that, by the end, you loathe the xenomorph just as much as Ripley (Sigourney Weaver).

After spending 57 years in stasis, Ripley is picked up and rescued by her employers the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the very company that sent the crew of the Nostromo to their doom. Her wild claims of a perfect alien hunter are dismissed, mainly because the planet it was originally discovered on was colonised years ago, and her flight officer license is revoked. When communication with the colony is inevitably lost, shifty company representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) convinces Ripley to join an expedition back to the alien planet to investigate and exterminate any alien lifeforms discovered. She reluctantly agrees, and finds herself on a mission accompanied by a rag-tag squad of marines, who all seem trigger-happy but incredibly naive about the dangers they will face. When they arrive, the only survivor is a little girl named Newt (Carrie Henn), who speaks of monsters who mostly come out at night... mostly.

Sigourney Weaver is so terrific in this film that she received Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, something almost unheard of in the sci-fi/horror genre. Having learned that her daughter had died of old age just two years before she was rescued, her relationship with Newt and her eventual showdown with the alien queen is given a whole new layer. She is backed up by a supporting cast who help distinguish themselves in the platoon of grunts, with special mention going to Michael Biehn, Jenette Goldstein and, of course, the late Bill Paxton. They help elevate the film from an exciting sea of bullets and spattered alien carcasses to an engrossing thriller featuring characters you genuinely hope will make it out alive. Of course, they all don't, but Cameron makes almost every death memorable and occasionally oddly powerful. I still prefer the quiet horror of Alien, but I can completely understand why many prefer the deafening terror of Cameron's vision, but it can quite rightly take its place among cinema's greatest ever sequels.


Directed by: James Cameron
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, William Hope, Jenette Goldstein
Country: USA/UK

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,123: 'Hellraiser: Hellworld' (2005)

Due to the release of Hellraiser: Deader - the previous instalment in the increasingly dismal Clive Barker franchise - being delayed for two years before finally crawling straight to DVD, 2005 saw not one, but two follow-ups to the classic original and its stream of sequels. Hellrasier: Hellworld is director Rick Bota's third and, thankfully, final entry, and he bows out with his most atrocious Hellraiser film yet, having succeeded in turning the world of Cenobites, sadism and the quest for the ultimate pleasure into a running joke of slasher cliches, with an obligatory, blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by Pinhead (Doug Bradley) to loosely tie into Barker's mythology and allowing production company Dimension to retain the rights to the series in the process.

Two years after they buried a close friend who became obsessed with playing online game Hellworld (based on Hellraiser) and committed suicide, five friends - Chelsea (Katheryn Winnick), Jake (Christopher Jacot), Derrick (Khary Payton), Mike (Henry Cavill) and Allison (Anna Tolputt) - receive an invitation to attend a private Hellworld party held at an old mansion. The group are warmly welcomed by the host (played by Lance Henriksen) and are taken on a tour of the mansion's lower levels, which include a former asylum and convent. After initially taking the extremeness of the party with a pinch of salt, the group start to experience strange events, such as becoming invisible to everybody around them, and the appearance of Pinhead and his Cenobites.

Boasting a more recognisable cast than Rick Bota's previous entries, Hellworld still manages to fall flat on just about every level. With the action moving into the digital era with the shoddy-looking website the characters seem so enamoured with, the action is rooted firmly in the mid-90's, and is shot with the same bland, TV movie aesthetic that dogged many forgotten, bottom-shelf horror features during the decade. You would think that the presence of Henriksen, who is something of a cult legend in the B-movie circuit, would liven things up, but he looks half-asleep during his handful of scenes. Only Winnick, now enjoying success with TV drama Vikings, appears to be an actual actor, with future Man of Steel Henry Cavill mugging his way to the most annoying performance of the lot. There is nothing at all to recommend about Hellworld, with Bradley subsequently bailing the role that made him a horror icon. 

Directed by: Rick Bota

Starring: Lance Henriksen, Katheryn Winnick, Christopher Jacot, Henry Cavill, Khary Payton, Doug Bradley

Country: USA/Romania

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie

Review #651: 'The Right Stuff' (1983)

"Is that a man?" asks the pilot of a rescue plane headed towards the crash site of Chuck Yeager's attempt to reach the edge of space in a Lockheed NF-104A. An outline of a man appears on the horizon, blurred by heat and mirage, his face bloody and burned, walking at pace with his helmet in his hand. Yeager's good friend Jack Ridley sits in the passenger seat, having seen Yeager conquer several near-suicidal flight records, including the first to break the sound barrier. Ridley smiles. "You're damn right it is!". The Right Stuff, adapted from Tom Wolfe's best-selling account of the test-pilots in the Mercury Space Program, shows what it takes to be a man; to have the 'right stuff' inhabited by these fearless men, who were the only ones crazy enough to risk everything, on live TV, to beat the Russians in the space race.

Besides the many fascinating and frequently hilarious vignettes involving the test pilots - played by a stellar cast of Dennis Quaid, Ed Harris, Fred Ward, Charles Frank, Lance Henriksen, Scott Glenn and Scott Paulin - the movie's real ace-in-the-hole is the juxtaposition of this story with that of Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard), a man thought of by his peers to be the finest pilot in the world. Played stoically by an Oscar-nominated Sam Shepard, he is brooding, dusty, a true man's man, but without the college degree needed to join the space program. He is the polar opposite of the 'hot dog's' of the Mercury Program, and when he is not off chasing his wild wife Glennis (Barbara Hershey), he is making sure he is still the fastest man in the world.

Even at over 3 hours, the movie is packed with great and memorable scenes. Director Philip Kaufman managed to retain Wolfe's skill for absurd humour, so we get to see the President crawling on the floor to plug in a projector, two astronauts' slow walk to the bathroom following an enema, and a hilarious moment involving humming and sperm samples. It has an observational aesthetic that America conquered in the 1970's, made even better by some amazing aviation and space travel scenes, easily more exciting than the CGI-laden movies we get nowadays. It's often called the second-best movie of the 1980's behind Raging Bull (1980), and, although I don't necessarily agree with that statement (Blue Velvet (1986), anyone?), it's one of the finest movies to come out of it's era, feeling almost classical despite being modern. Like Shepard's Chuck Yeager, The Right Stuff seems old before its time, encompassing wisdom and poignancy with ease.


Directed by: Philip Kaufman
Starring: Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Fred Ward, Barbara Hershey, Kim Stanley, Veronica Cartwright, Scott Paulin, Lance Henriksen
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie