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

Review #510: 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' (1978)

After discovering a strange flower pod and taking it home, health department agent Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) notices her partner Geoffrey (Art Hindle) acting strangely. She follows him, watching him meet up with similarly morbid characters exchanging packages. It is only her work partner Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) who seems to take her seriously. He takes her to meet intellectual psychiatrist David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy), who thinks she has convinced herself of this due to a breakdown in communication between her and Geoffrey. Only when Matthew's friend Jack (Jeff Goldblum) discovers a re-animating body of himself at his work, does the truth hit Matthew, and the group, along with Jack's wife Nancy (Veronica Cartwright), flee to escape the alien onslaught.

Anyone who has seen Don Siegel's 1956 original, which was based on Jack Finney's 1955 novel, will know that the plot serves as a metaphorical interpretation of the U.S.'s political attitudes to communism, which they felt was attacking their countries democratic idealism. Philip Kaufman's 1978 remake abandons this intriguing premise in favour of something more straight-laced and old-fashioned. Not that this is a bad thing, as although inferior to Siegel's version, Invasion... is still a highly entertaining horror, that takes its time in the early stages to establish a foundation of impending dread, and to develop the main characters. This was an aspect that was prevalent throughout 1970's horror movies, with respected directors taking on the genre, and bringing their own artistic aesthetics and embedding them on screen.

It is after the first 50 minutes or so when the film seems to abandon this approach to pursue a more relentless, panicked tone, as the film descends into a chase movie. It was this aspect that brought the film down a peg or two for me, as it seemed to almost sell-out on its atmospheric openings, and resort to more action-orientated tactics, with repetitive scenes of fleeing and hiding. Interestingly though, the camerawork shifts from calm and slow-moving, to hand-held and loose just as things get frantic, a similar approach directors Nicolas Roeg and Roman Polanski would take in their masterpieces Don't Look Now (1973) and Chinatown (1974), respectively.

But, like I said earlier, the film is undoubtedly entertaining, and has plenty of homages to the original (stars Robert Duvall and Kevin McCarthy put in cameo appearances - the latter shouting "they're here!" in the street as if wandered over from the climax of the original), and, differently from the novel, stays true to the original's depressing and unresolved ending, the final image now being somewhat iconic in the world of horror. There are plenty of better films from the era of a similar ilk, but Invasion... remains extremely watchable, and unashamedly B-movieish in its execution.


Directed by: Philip Kaufman
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, Leonard Nimoy, Art Hindle
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie