10th May 2008

‘Doomsday’ Special: In Which I Open Up My Critical Faculties To Intense Scrutiny

I'm not a fan of “Escape From New York”'s rather antiquated form of post-apocalyptic, I have to say I much preferred “Doomsday”'s streamlined approach to those kind of heroics.

I guess I should back right up and make somewhat of a confessional.

Snake Plissken has *always* been second fiddle to Jack Burton for me. The latter, at the very least, seemed consistently and grossly aware of his inherent wild ridiculousness and gross fallibility. For this, he was a far more agreeable character to accompany on his fantastical journey. Plissken and the mammoth chip on his shoulder always seemed like he'd be a drag at parties. Whenever I try and revisit “EFNY” again, I almost wish he'd get capped in the 2nd reel -- like Hitchcock (or Stuart Baird! If you get this, you get this…) might do -- and Ernest Borgnine would take over the mission like some cuddly vengeance-riddled Brian Dennehy. For all his self-importance, I find Plissken a bit of a bore. Add to that the fact Plissken is a self-centered criminal: not a misunderstood man of the people but, like Ms Gennero’s assessment of Hans Gruber, a common thief. I find he’s a very literal anti-hero without any degree of levity or everyman gravitas that makes even bland beefcake like John Nada in “They Live” identifiable and, comparatively, a joy to watch. Nada: you really want *that* guy to win, to uncover the truth and to make everyone wear shades, man.

In “EFNY”, what I really want is for Lee Van Cleef to slap that eye-patch right off Plissken’s sneering cheek.

Plissken is a paint-by-numbers, wish-fulfillment badass, a relic of the early-80s by way of Clint Eastwood in Leone's stylised westerns. He’s a couple of pithy one-liners on legs. Perhaps in aping the terse, hard-boiled conventions of the spaghetti western, it’s no surprise that Leone veteran Van Cleef comes off as the most memorable part of ‘EFNY’. Those Leone westerns, incidentally, were *never* really about character, and more about complexly choreographed situations and events in which those ciphers of the human condition (mostly guilt, fear and avarice) found themselves. In paring down a 60s caricature even further to an almost non-dimensional 80s action hero template, John Carpenter and Nick Castle’s “EFNY“ has actually dated incredibly badly.

Ironically, I come here to praise Neil Marshall not to get on his tits, so I do realize that this invective might be needlessly provocative, pissing in his chips and taking unnecessary potshots at one of his heroes. But…

…much as I love Carpenter’s golden period -- ’76 to ’96 -- and have always wanted to like “EFNY” more than I do, much as I truly love Kurt Russell as a presence, I always come away thinking Plissken is a monumental twat. Free of all the hip insouciance that *sort of* works in the context of the stylised narrative, he’s a kind of bouffanted, slightly ludicrous blue-print for Matt Berry's brilliant Sanchez from “Garth Marenghi's Dark Place”.

Further proof?

Look no further than Kurt Russell's other, more multi-faceted incarnations for Carpenter in later pictures. As I mentioned above, the key to Jack Burton is that he's rather sadly aware that he’s a colossal knob a lot of the time. And “The Thing”’s R.J. MacReady has pretty much given up with humanity before it starts to mutate anyway. MacReady’s not trying to stick it to the man or prove a goddamn thing -- the picture’s final shots may leave him waiting into forever with Childs, but I’d argue he’s been waiting like that from minute one of the picture, so resigned to the awfulness of humanity he’s introduced taking it all out on a computer chess mate. These two men are both far more empathisable and -- even though far from quote/unquote ‘realistic’ -- *human* leads in two far more imaginative and well-constructed pictures.

Then there's the utter failure of “Escape From L.A.” Same character, different era. With this late blooming return to that sketchy sci-fi world, the cloak of Carpenter's retro thrills reveals the entire concept to be a paper thin sketch, with a wisp of a main character, no longer able to seem particularly cool, making this outmoded update the worst picture in Carpenter's career. And that includes “Village Of The Damned”.

Alongside Remo Williams, “The Goonies” and “Iron Eagle” Snake Plissken should really be consigned to a Room 101 of 80s indulgences. Please no “Escape From Earth”. Already stretching the bounds of it’s arch concept before the end of 90 minutes, “Escape From New York” does have a great look, courtesy of Dean Cundey, a typically tight Carpenter score and ambience to burn. Yet it’s hamstrung by a protagonist who is merely a punchline: consequently, the picture only really works when he’s delivering one.

Jaws may now be picked up of the floor.

So, while no anti-hero for the ages, I think Rhona Mitra's Major Eden Sinclair, while no legendary character creation, is perfectly suited to “Doomsday”’s breed of throwback lunacy. She's a slick, turbo-driven bulldozer whose sole and successfully realized function is to get from south to north to future to medieval past and back to future again as swiftly, viciously and effectively as possible.

To treat the characters of “Doomsday” as if they were anything other pawns in a glorious game of referential bingo would be completely disingenuous of Marshall. It's not about how multi-faceted these characters are, how wonderfully iconic they can be or how literate their pithy exchanges amid the carnage: it's about using them as the audience’s entry point to the story then flexing them as extra muscles in a finely controlled display of multi-platform mayhem.

Given a backstory made flesh in a couple of nifty visuals at the start -- beats that are *inextricably tied to narrative build of the initial set up* -- Sinclair is given all the humanity a lead in a picture like this needs. And all an audience should want. There was, thankfully, no extension of the castle dungeon moment in which McDowell’s Kane asked what Sinclair has ever lost in the Reaper plague. She didn’t spell the whole “mother” thing out. Again. We all knew from reel one. It would have been a meaningless, indulgent and foolish speech. One look says it all, and we fill in the rest. Kane didn’t really want to know anyway. Ditto the wrap-up with Hoskins and Mitra in her mother's abandoned house. There’s no emotionally stagnant outpouring and the picture is so much the better for it.

“The Descent” was Marshall's very successful attempt to marry the actual nuance of female characters with genre thrills. “Doomsday” is plainly about a pair of fists with a pair of (very nice) legs attached.

The hard-edged action sequence immediately following the swift Reaper set up lays Marshall’s cards out on the table. There’s no pause to further spell out “How Catastrophic Things Are”™. It just shows you the kind of world at stake. And it seems a world not honestly worth bothering about. Violent and unhinged, the sequence introducing Sinclair isn’t a posturing parade of wisecracking super-heroics. Like the naked hag in the bath toting a shotgun, it’s messy and hysterical. Sinclair doesn’t prevail in this scene through unattainable-to-mere-mortals skill. She makes it out through the sheer gumption of being a well-trained soldier (and the luck of her target’s clumsy footing -- something for which her semi-headless commanding officer is less fortunate to encounter)

Forget Miller, Hill and Carpenter, this is pure, magnificent Castellari.

Like the potent spread of the Reaper Virus or the best early-80s Italian exploitation, the film is set up as unpredictable, to put it mildly. It’s a neat device which allows Marshall to indulge his passions at will, the very nature of the escalating, frenzied plot meaning he can literally throw what he wants into the mix, because you’d pretty believe anything can happen in this world gone mad, mad, mad, mad. Despite what the picture’s dreadfully fudged marketing may have led audiences to believe, this volatility of purpose prevails. Recently, a friend begrudgingly summed up the picture’s awkwardly mishandled US release thus: “you kind of can’t really blame them for not selling it properly. How do you do it justice without showing *all of the exploding heads*”

Without resorting to t***ure-p**n stylings, Marshall, and f/x man Paul Hyett, bring an adult intensity to his scenes of human destruction. And ruined rabbits. Consequently, the world feels *dangerous* from the outset -- something so often missing from pictures not revolving around the vile perversions of Eastern Europeans. Despite it’s dynamic, cartoonish presentation, it’s a world not populated solely with CGI zombies. Rather it’s populated with very real corpses and the threat of very real destruction at every turn.

And because Sinclair is not forced to comply or else an explosive implant will end her life, her increasingly weary quest to cull the threat to human existence is a much more rounded piece of character business. The whole undertaking assumes certain gravity. This isn’t a flippantly selfish operation, as Plissken’s ultimately is. He doesn’t give a tupenny fcuk about humanity or his target, and unlike McReady, it seems he never has. Sinclair’s mission, is more altruistic -- hopelessly or otherwise -- duty. For me, it makes for a much more dramatically satisfying ride.

And it’s a ride, it must be said, that’s scored like a dream by Tyler Bates. Mark Thomas and particularly David Julyan have done marvellous work for Marshall on his previous pictures. Marshall is a director of tangible pleasures: Simon Bowles detailed production design; Sam McCurdy’s radiant, shimmering photography; vibrant, intense practical effects; evocative, pulsating orchestral scores. This last facet cannot be overestimated. In an era of the techno-metal durge that lulls you into insecurity by playing itself at full volume for a really long time, the art of old fashioned scoring if something often lost on, especially modern genre filmmakers. Marshall realises how accessible emotion can be to a scene with the right musical touch. It’s a rare skill.

As ‘important’ or ‘weighty’ as “Grindhouse” (of which this is surely the long-lost third sibling) or “Die Hard“, “Doomsday” is nevertheless a rare, relishable treat: smart, fun, imaginative, *British*. How often can you proudly say that?

Jack Pierce, In Memorium

I don’t normally do this kind of thing. Petitions. It’s seems as pointless as arguing on a message board. It’s the Internet. It’s a *petition site* on the Internet. Filled with probably 10,000 such petitions championing causes ranging from banning alcohol in Kashmir (the country, not the song I’m guessing) to the campaign to bring Series 2-5 of ‘The Bernie Mac Show‘ to DVD (*before* “A Different World” gets a release? Not in my lifetime, chum.) How much impact can it actually have?

So hypocritically, I present this piece of news, a petition to grant a ‘star’ on Hollywood’s legendary Walk Of Fame to one of the horror genre’s pioneers. It’s a rallying of classic horror fans to honour one of the great unsung, whose work is ironically some the most recognisable iconography in cinema history: Jack Pierce. If you don’t know Jack Pierce, apart from being shamed, you should know his most famous creations. Boris Karloff as the Monster in “Frankenstein”. Lon Chaney’s “Wolf Man”. For these two legendary faces alone, he should be honoured. But for the legion of Universal horrors and an imagination from which he conjured the darkest of dreams, it’s insane that there’s any question he should be honoured alongside the best.

As I wrote in my own signature to the petition, he's as valuable a contributor to the industry as, oh, I don't know, Chris Farley is! Honour this legend.

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