I'm BACK!!! - Pieces (1982), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), The Unseen (1980), The Changeling (1980)

I'm back!! 

After two years away from the blog, I'm going to resurrect it like a horrible comet-fueled zombie (how appropriate). I've been watching '80s movies all the time, so I have plenty of material to fill in. 

Tonight I'll start with a stinker, a classic, a blah, and a maybe: 1982's Pieces and 1986's Big Trouble in Little China, then The Unseen and The Changeling from 1980. 

You know you're in trouble when the tagline is "It's exactly what you think it is." That inspires no confidence at all. This is a pretty braindead Halloween knockoff about an insane kid who kills his mom in the opening scene (much as Michael Myers kills his sister)... because she yelled at him for putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a naked pinup. 

Then many years later a series of murders occur at a college, where someone is killing women and sawing them apart to make a perfect woman (shades of Jame Gumb in Silence of the Lambs, I guess) ... surprise, surprise, it's the grown-up murderer who is finally completing his "jigsaw" puzzle. 

This movie is not good. The acting is lifeless and flat, the script is DOA, the idea was done better just a handful of years before... I feel this was a classic "soulless cash grab horror clone," and it feels like a holdover from the late 70s instead of from 1982. 

It was filmed in Boston, and was financed out of Puerto Rico. 

Directed by the Spaniard Juan Piquer Simon, who also did 1983's The Pod People and 1988's Slugs... and a 1990 curiosity called Cthulhu Mansion, which I am legitimately curious about. Although his career began in the 1960s, you'd never know it watching this... there is no spark of creativity here whatsoever. However, in interviews he's expressed pride in the gore - apparently they used pig carcasses for the chainsaw murders. I was unconvinced and unimpressed. 

The college dean is the only halfway interesting character, played by "Replacement Star" Edmund Purdom, who was known early in his career for taking over roles rejected by Mario Lanza and Marlon Brando. He's in other 80s cult classics, like Ator The Fighting Eagle (1982), 2019: After the Fall of New York (1983), Who is Afraid of Dracula? (1985), etc. 

Critics have wondered for years now if this movie is an example of self-aware horror or not. Does this movie KNOW it's a cheap derivative slasher? Is it, essentially, a parody of itself? This remote possibility resonates with some horror fans and results in a surprisingly high 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 

But I agree most with this review I found on the Wikipedia entry for the movie: "Kevin Thomas, film critic for the Los Angeles Times gave the film a negative review, writing, 'Pieces is a wretched, stupid little picture whose sole purpose is the exploitation of extreme violence against women,' and further criticized it for being poorly dubbed and lacking suspense." Check, check, check. 

Meanwhile, Big Trouble in Little China is as good as they say, and better. A true cult classic, I saw it on TV when I was very young - I would guess I saw it when I was 7 or 8 at my Dad's house, perhaps on cable TV. I've been a devoted fan ever since - like I have been with almost every John Carpenter film I've seen.

Our hero Jack Burton (Kurt Russell in his prime) is really an anti-hero - he does almost nothing of note during the entire running time of the film; instead his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun, who is magnificent) kicks most of the ass, possesses most of the knowledge, has the girl to save, etc. Burton is more a Western "outsider" type, like in Shane or The Searchers - he enters a foreign community, lends "aid," and then leaves again at the end. But as Carpenter has noted, Jack Burton is really a sidekick who believes he's the leading man - that comic tension fuels a lot of the film's best moments. 

The original screenplay actually WAS a Western, taking place in 1880! Jack Burton would have rode an actual horse instead of driving a big rig, but the movie would still center around Chinatown and the "weird" supernatural aspects. The original script was written by Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein, but the studio later determined the script was no good and unfilmable, and hired W. D. Richter (director of Buckaroo Bonzai!) to come in to doctor it. 

Richter took 10 weeks to basically rewrite the entire thing. According to Wikipedia, Goldman called him and asked him to lay off - hoping the studio would rehire him and Weinstein to step back in - but Richter explained it was too late. When 20th Century Fox attempted to remove Goldman and Weinstein entirely from the screenwriting credit, the whole affair ended up at the Writer's Guild, and Goldman/Weinstein had their names restored. Apparently Carpenter was dismayed by this, as the final shooting script was entirely him and Richter. 

Anyway, behind-the-scenes stuff aside, unlike in classical Westerns Jack Burton is massively tongue-in-cheek the entire ride. He's funny as hell, delivers one liners and quips effortlessly (the ONLY thing he does effortlessly!), and is very brave, always driving the story forward in his (a) quest to retrieve his truck - his REAL relationship, and (b) help his friend. 

It's a rollicking, kitschy good time. The villains are wild, coming straight out of Chinese mythology, and the special effects are fantastic - peak 80s practical effects. Of special note is the wonderful James Hong, who plays the ultimate bad guy Lo Pan - he cackles marvelously and his screechy voice borders between menacing, petulant, impatient, and exasperated constantly. He's one of those 80s villains who the audience isn't sure whether to take entirely seriously or not - he's a threat, but he's a goofy threat, and rather charismatic - he never dismisses the heroes without first bantering with them. 

The movie was not a hit on its first run... made for between $20-25 million, it only made back ~$10-11 million. But it became a huge cult hit on video and cable, and probably has broken even over the years in rentals, streaming, and physical sales. The film was initially released only a week or two before the massive James Cameron action hit Aliens - the 7th biggest movie of the year - which buried Big Trouble in a landslide of marketing and lead-up hype. 

Meanwhile, The Unseen (1980) ... was not much fun to watch. Directed by Danny Steinman, who is mainly known for Savage Streets (1984), the Linda Blair street violence flick that I already covered on the blog, The Unseen is a pretty cheap and braindead horror movie. The movie is mostly known for a strange, almost unrecognizable performance by Stephen Furst (a good actor who was in Animal House, The Dream Team, the TV show St. Elsewhere,  lots more - how did he agree to this??), the plot is thin as 100 year old sheets.

Three ladies on holiday are convinced by a local guy to stay at his mansion for cheap after their hotel reservations fall through. Two of the girls are killed, and the final one is about to be, when it's revealed that the "unseen" killer is actually the Leatherface-like developmentally challenged son of the mansion's owner. The whole movie reeks of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but not as raw or harrowing as that film, and without anything to recommend it. 

Casting notes: 

• The trio of ladies (two sisters and a friend) are played by Barbara Bach, Karen Lamm, and Lois Young. 
• Barbara Bach is of course known for being married to Ringo Starr, and being a Bond girl in The Spy Who Loved Me. 
• Karen Lamm is best known for being married to Dennis Wilson, and starring in lots of 70s TV movies. 
• I couldn't find anything about Lois Young, but IMDB reports she wasn't in anything from 1980 onward until Newsies (1992) as a nun (!)... and then nothing after that. I'm sure there's an interesting story. 
• The horrible father and mansion owner is played by ... Sydney Lassick!!! Yes, Cheswick from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest! He was in a lot of horror movies in the 80s, including Alligator (1980), and the perhaps underrated Lady in White (1988). 
• Finally, his wife is played by Lelia Goldoni (!) - known for some really famous, serious films, most notably Cassavetes's Shadows (1959) and Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974).

Finally, The Changeling (1980) ... a movie with very good atmosphere, and some interesting setup, a fantastic soundtrack, and good acting throughout, but which is sadly very dated. It's one of those 1980 movies that gives off late '70s vibes strongly, and feels every inch of 42 years old (don't remind me!).  

Made in Canada, it stars George C. Scott (!) as a classical composer in New York City who moves to Seattle after his wife and daughter are killed in a traffic accident. Yeesh. But, unfortunately for him, the house he rents in Seattle is extremely mega-haunted. 

The plot from there is a little convoluted, but involved the murderous, vengeful spirit of a crippled boy who was murdered by his father so the father could collect/control an inheritance. 

To cover up the crime the murderous father adopted a new kid and pretended he was the original. Many years later, the adopted kid - who had no idea of the whole scheme - has grown up to be a US Senator and has to come to grips with the fact that his childhood was a lie predicated on the greedy murder of a sick child... all while George C. Scott's classical composer lives in the haunted house and tries to find love again (!). It's a crazy ride. 

The movie is very highly regarded by horror fans, and is frequently on lists of Best Canadian Horror Films. Directed by Peter Medak, a Hungarian director who also made Zorro, The Gay Blade (1981), many episodes of Showtime's Fairy Tale Theater, The Men's Club (1986), and perhaps most famously The Ruling Class (1972). Most recently, at age 80 in 2018, he made a documentary about Peter Sellers - which I would be interested to watch.

Besides George C. Scott, the casting includes:

• Trish Van Devere, as Scott's new love interest, and who won a Genie award for this film. She was married to George C. Scott in real life, and it shows in the movie - they have very natural chemistry. 
• The fantastic Melvyn Douglas as the US Senator whose childhood was a lie. 
• Voldi Way as the ghost child. Here is his IMDB bio: "Voldi Way was born in a VW bus to his flower children parents, home educated until the age of about eleven, when he co-founded a software company in Santa Ana, California. He attended Orange Coast College until his early teens, when he decided he needed more exposure to people his own age, and enrolled himself at Costa Mesa High School, in tenth grade." Wow! I'd like to read that autobiography. It appears he became a stuntman in later years. 
• John Colicos as a detective hired to look into the situation by the Senator. He was in quite a few movies from 1950 onward, and his 80s output includes The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), the underrated Nowhere to Hide (1987), and Shadow Dancing (1988).

The movie was a success - it cost about $6 million to make, and brought back $12 million. I agree, ultimately, with Ebert's review:  "If it only took craftsmanship to make a haunted house movie, The Changeling would be a great one. It has all the technical requirements, beginning with the haunted house itself... [the film] does have some interesting ideas... But it doesn't have that sneaky sense of awful things about to happen. Scott makes the hero so rational, normal, and self-possessed that we never feel he's in real danger; we go through this movie with too much confidence."