LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL (1959, John Sturges)

 

* * * * 

The death of his wife at the hands of his old friend’s son puts a lawman on a collision course with the man with whom he once rode.

Starring  Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Carolyn Jones, Earl Holliman, Brad Dexter

Written by  James Poe

Produced by  Hal B Wallis  

Duration  90 minutes

Here we go! John Sturges. One of the great western directors, up there with John Ford, Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah and Howard Hawks. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, anyone? GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL? Not to mention that Bank Holiday perennial, all-star WWII epic THE GREAT ESCAPE. Stephen King even named the town in The Dark Tower: Part 5 ‘Calla Bryn Sturgis’ after Sturges, acknowledging his book’s similarities to MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.

Now, I’d never heard of Sturge’s LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL, which is nestled somewhere in the middle of the great man’s career. But I was certainly familiar with its leads.

Kirk Douglas has one of those iconic cinema faces, seemingly carved out of marble. SPARTACUS is, for me, Stanley Kubrick's weakest post-THE KILLING film, but man that's a legendary role for Kirk. (Side note: PATHS OF GLORY, the pair’s other team-up, is one of Kubrick’s best.) My favourite Douglas performance is in Billy Wilder’s black-as-coal media satire ACE IN THE HOLE, and he has no trouble being convincing in locales as diverse as ships on the sea (VIKINGS) and ships in space (SATURN 3). And he lived until 103, the bloody trooper.

Then you’ve got Anthony Quinn. I’ll always think of him as a comedy mobster in LAST ACTION HERO and for portraying a much more menacing villain as the cuckolded husband in Tony Scott’s REVENGE, but he too had a storied and celebrated decades-long career, winning two Oscars and popping up in the likes of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE and LA STRADA.

Here, the two titans play former friends who are now on opposite sides of the law. It’s a solid dramatic setup, also used for William Holden and Robert Ryan in Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH, and again with Nick Nolte and Powers Booth in EXTREME PREJUDICE from another westernphile, Walter Hill.

In LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL, Douglas is the good guy US Marshall, first seen joking around with the local kids outside his cop shop. His mood worsens considerably when his own son turns up, distraught, to tearfully lead pop into the woods, where his mother/Douglas’s wife has been raped and murdered by a couple of whisky-swigging cowboys. 

Not only that, but one of the rapist-murderers turns out to be the son of Tony Quinn’s wealthy-but-dodgy cattle baron. So Douglas jumps on a train to Quinn’s ends, Gun Hill, and arrests the boy – but when Tony stands in his way, he has to pivot into a local hotel and wait it out with his hostage until the next train arrives, putting the two old buddies into a tense standoff. Douglas’s only ally in this hostile town is Carolyn Jones's feisty dame, a bitter ex-lover of Quinn and the only Gun Hillian willing to stand up to the man who effectively runs the whole place.

Douglas’s granite determination to see justice done in the face of passive local authorities is well-matched by Quinn, who has the more complex role. He retains a fondness for Kirk from all the years they’ve known each other and actually views his own son with distain – in general, for a lack of character, and specifically for his recent abhorrent actions. And yet family is family, so the crooked rancher is driven by loyalty to protect his offspring from what he knows the boy deserves morally; added to this, Tony can’t lose face in the town that shudders before his name.

The story is elegantly simple and doesn’t mess about, all taking place in less than 24 hours and with Douglas’s determination to get his prisoner onto the final train of the day providing a ticking clock. There’s a thrill in seeing this man commit to his task with laser focus and steely resolve, like the Terminator with a badge. "You, you're breaking the law!" one cowardly citizen splutters at our hero. "I am the law!" the Marshall spits back. (The creators of 2000 AD's ‘Judge Dredd’ strip must have been taking notes.)

All in all, while LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL may not be one of Sturges’s better known efforts, it’s a compelling tale with suspense to spare that can hold its head up high among its more celebrated peers.

Four stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Absolutely: the film literally ends with the train pulling away.

What would a movie called FIRST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL be about?  A lot more on what Douglas got up to on the journey into the town than what he does after arriving there. The newspaper crossword puzzle, maybe? Did they have them back then?

Previously:  I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

Next time:  THE LAST MAN ON EARTH

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (1997, Jim Gillespie)

 

* * 

Four young friends are stalked by a hook-wielding maniac a year after killing a man in a road accident (or at least they thought he was dead …)

Starring  Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze Jr, Bridgette Wilson

Written by  Kevin Williamson

Produced by  Neal H Moritz, Erik Feig, Stokely Chaffin

Duration  101 minutes

I have a soft spot for slasher movies. I would call them a guilty pleasure, if I'd ever felt guilty about watching one.

Although the first genuine slasher was BLACK CHRISTMAS four years prior, the genre’s golden period began in 1978 when HALLOWEEN became the highest-grossing independent movie of all time. The imitators came thick and fast; some holiday-season-based, some not. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET birthed a worthwhile franchise; FRIDAY THE 13TH’s results were more mixed. Various standalones clambered above the pack: let me direct you towards HELL NIGHT, THE BURNING, BLOOD RAGE, SLEEPAWAY CAMP, MY BLOODY VALENTINE and THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE.

Now, here's the thing. These are the years those six films I just listed were released: 1981, 1981, 1987, 1983, 1981 (again!) and 1982.

Notice a pattern? Sheer unabashed '80-ness is big factor in slasher success. More than a couple of years back into the previous decade, you get '70s grittiness – good in its own way, but a different proposition. And stepping forward lands you slap bang in the mire of '90s blandness, where something that would have been a delicious cheesefest 10 years before ends up being completely tasteless (but not in the good way). 

Yes, by the mid ’90s, the slasher was well and truly on its last mutilated legs, clogged up with inferior HALLOWEEN and HELLRAISER sequels and dire straight-to-video efforts. Then along came SCREAM in 1996 and a brief second-coming for the genre, with 1997’s I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER one of the next out the traps.

LAST SUMMER has a screenplay by SCREAM’s Kevin Williamson, this time with the irony left out – unless you think it's ironic to be killed by someone who you thought you yourself had killed. (More like poetic justice – it’s a thin line.)

The movie does not inspire optimism by opening with a bombastic cliffside wave-crashing panorama set to a nu-metal cover of Seals & Crofts ‘Summer Breeze’. And things don’t improve any upon meeting the four leads. As soon as they open their mouths, out comes the tedious self-awareness and unrealistic verbosity Williamson’s teenagers were known for, an overwritten cadence that integrated itself into America’s film and TV landscape and can still be found today synthetically lengthening any number of Netflix original series. The ‘Williamson-ese’ here doesn't reach the painfully twee nadir of his show Dawson's Creek, but without something clever and substantial like SCREAM surrounding them, the characters sound empty and narcissistic. It's not uncommon to be hoping that the people you’re supposed to be rooting for in a slasher will be swiftly offed, but usually the viewer doesn't start praying for their deaths minutes into their introductory scene.

The worst offender is Ryan Phillippe, who spends the whole film either shouting or pouting. Does he feel left out as the only one of the central foursome who doesn't use their middle name? Or was he bitter from jealously watching FPJ chatting up SMG between takes while JLH was proving immune to his own charms? (Not to worry: he was about to meet Reese Witherspoon.)

To be fair, there are a couple of satisfying deaths, including Johnny Galecki taking a hook to the face in a scene that will elicit cheers from anyone who's ever accidently turned over to his perma-repeated TV hit The Big Bang Theory and been involuntarily exposed to that annoying squeaky voice. And Love Hewitt is a decent ‘final girl’, with her notorious ‘What are you waiting for?!’ scene giving us at least one pleasingly bonkers moment – but that just serves to emphasise how bang-average everything is around it.

The slasher renaissance briefly promised by LAST SUMMER barely lasted out the decade, and as the 20th Century lurched towards its close like Jason Voorhees with an arrow in his leg, horror veered instead towards found footage, thanks to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT channelling (the infinitely superior) CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, before the grim likes of SAW and HOSTEL briefly popularised so-called ‘torture porn’.

So, in the end, the late ‘90s didn’t usher in a new wave of slasher classics after all. People only really remember this film because of how well it’s parodied in SCARY MOVIE.

It was probably for the best; some things are so much a product of their time that to attempt them again in a different era just leads to disaster. Or worse, a dullness that feels worse than death – by meat hook or otherwise.

But I will leave you on a more positive note: Christopher Landon's nu-slashers HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017), HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U (2019) and FREAKY (2020) are well worth your time.

Two stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  There were two sequels (coming soon, to a blog near you!), so clearly not.

What would a movie called I KNOW WHAT YOU DID FIRST SUMMER be about?  Most people’s first summers were spent lolling about in nappies and it’s hard to imagine what could possibly be worth knowing about that.

Previously:  THE LAST HORROR MOVIE 

Next time:  LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL  

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST HORROR MOVIE (2003, Julian Richards)

 

* * * 

A wedding videographer who has a sideline in brutal killings starts filming his murderous exploits as a documentary.

Starring  Kevin Howarth, Mark Stevenson, Antonia Beamish, Christabel Muir  

Written by  James Handel, Julian Richards

Produced by  Zorana Piggott, Julian Richards   

Duration  79 minutes 

   

Found footage. The V/H/S franchise is keeping the fire of this sub-genre burning, to mostly successful effect, but by and large it feels like a style of filmmaking whose time has passed.

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT popularised found footage in the modern era, of course, back in 1999, but few were able to recapture that magic. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and CLOVERFIELD did well in 2007 and 2008, but while the former birthed a franchise, the peak was brief and (with some exceptions) the decline swift.

Found footage actually draws its origins back to the epistolary novel: your Draculas (good) and your Frankensteins (didn’t like it) that were structured around characters' correspondence or diary entries, or from newspaper clippings. The desired effect is to make everything seem ‘real’ and thus more involving. 

But there is a danger that the reverse will happen. Any time we enter the world of a movie, we know we are being asked to suspend our disbelief – to enter a dream-like state where we take things as they come. In removing the sense of artifice, the found footage approach can in fact create more artifice; be a distancing effect rather than an engrossing one.

Because without any of the traditional manipulative cinematic techniques (precise use of editing, lighting, staging, scripting, etc.), there's the risk that we never reach that suggestable state. And so, what looks like an amateur pointing his camera at random things happening in front of him may only ever end up feeling like an amateur pointing his camera at random things happening in front of him, an experience as incapable of engrossing us as a relative's boring video of their two weeks in Camber Sands.

Although not in the found footage style, for me the same principle applies to those one-take gimmick movies. They take me out of the story, forcing me to step back and admire the filmmaking rather than the film. The odd sequence can work out OK, but I was left deeply unimpressed with the feature-length ‘oners’ BIRDMAN (2014) and 1917 (2019) – both of which actually had several disguised cuts. The latter was especially misguided – rather than an immersive experience of the horrors of war, it turned the protagonists’ odyssey into a tedious trek, without the breaks and rhythms that good editing and pacing provide. Hitchcock’s ROPE is an example of the gimmick that actually does work – and the big man had fewer ways to cheat back in 1948.

(I’m similarly unimpressed with all the lauded one-take action scenes which litter the genre nowadays, such as in the overrated JOHN WICK films. All I see is how well Keanu has rehearsed for something the ends up looking like a video game cutscene, with none of the grace, tension or beauty of an expertly edited Peckinpah, Cameron or Woo.)

But back to found footage. Some of those films are actually very good. BLAIR WITCH didn’t do much for me, but I’ve been meaning to revisit it. The aforementioned CLOVERFIELD does a great job of combining high-quality SFX within a lo-fi aesthetic, and CHRONICLE works, if you’re into that sort of thing. And I can’t neglect to mention CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980), one of the best ever horror films, period. REC (2007) and TROLLHUNTER (2010) also deserve your attention.

And, I’d say, so does THE LAST HORROR MOVIE – just about.

At first, the viewer is made to feel that they’re watching the wrong movie. An opening sequence takes place in a distinctly American diner, with a stereotypical slasher setup: a waitress closing up on her own is stalked and attacked by a maniac. It’s clearly not found footage, as was advertised.

Then we cut via a fuzzy screen to a British man addressing the camera from his grubby West London flat, admitting to taping over the diner slasher – which was the ‘real’ movie that we the viewer rented. He goes on to promise that what he’s about to show us will be much more horrific.

This is Max Parry, a serial killer, and he’s going to tell us about his exploits – he estimates he ‘does’ eight to ten people per year, between stints as a wedding videographer. More than that, he’s going to show us.

So, it’s basically as if after Henry and Otis from HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986) filmed their home invasion they decided to carry on bringing the camera along and started to enjoy the documenting as much as the killing. It’s also like the Belgian MAN BITES DOG (1992), but without the accompanying film crew (Max just has a protégé ‘assistant’ to film him).

THE LAST HORROR MOVIE isn't as good as those two, lacking their power and insight. Max is far too smug and cocky and doesn’t really convince as a homicidal maniac – the idea persists that he’s doing his whole video project as one big prank. The film tries for some thematic depth by calling out the viewer for their bloodlust and complicity, but is not nearly as incisive or witty as Austrian director Michael Haneke was with the same message in his FUNNY GAMES in 1997.

Nevertheless, it does have its moments.

There’s a queasily suspenseful sequence where we're led to believe that Max is luring a young boy away to be his latest victim, but it turns out the lad is his nephew and he’s only bringing him home to his mum/Max’s sister. A montage of bludgeoning kills cuts comically to Max tenderising some steaks with a mallet. Max runs up to a woman while she’s doing the laundry and stabs her repeatedly, and then while she sits there bleeding out he passionately explains to her, "We're trying to make an intelligent movie about murdering while doing the murders... we’re trying to do something interesting!"

That last example is more thematically rich than chastising the viewer with "so why are you still watching all this unpleasantness, eh?", presenting as it does an artist whose frustration to create something meaningful has driven him to murder – similar territory to Abel Ferrara’s DRILLER KILLER (1979).

If THE LAST HORROR MOVIE had had more of that kind of thing, and less oily smugness delivered straight to camera in extreme close-up, then Max's exploits might have been compelling and disturbing enough to put him up there with HENRY’s Henry and DOG's Ben in the pantheon of narcissistic killers with a camera. Pity.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Max actually explains this towards the end, in a nice meta twist that I won't spoil here, all the while pondering whether his over-analysis makes him "sound like a wanker". Cough-cough.

What would a movie called THE FIRST HORROR MOVIE be about?  Universally, that would be THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI (1920). For me personally, it was probably ALIENS – not strictly horror, I know, but pretty scary when you're eight years old.

Previously:  THE LAST THING HE WANTED

Next time:  I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST THING HE WANTED (2020, Dee Rees)

 

* * 

While investigating something really important, other equally important things happen to a journalist during the course of her important investigation.

Starring  Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Rosie Perez, Toby Jones, Willem Dafoe

Written by  Marco Villalobos, Dee Rees

Produced by  Cassian Elwes, Dee Rees   

Duration   115 minutes

  

OK, so we’ve all been there. You’re watching a movie, and realise you don’t know what’s going on. If it’s within the first 10-15 minutes, then that’s fine: things are being set up, questions are being asked, you’re settling into its rhythm.

By the end of the first third, you can expect to know what those questions are, and won’t be surprised that they are developed further into act two. You’ll want to be surprised as to the exact ways that they develop, but what the things that are developing are should come logically from what was set up in act one – and which will be resolved in act three (again, hopefully hitting that magic balance of surprising yet inevitable.)

OK, but what if you’re halfway through the movie – deep into act two – and you still don’t have a handle on things? And at this point, this far in, you’re getting the sinking feeling that it’s unlikely comprehension will ever arrive?

There are times when this is acceptable. For instance. You’re on a date and the date is going well, extremely well. You may glance up at the screen every now and then and have no idea what’s going on – and not care in the slightest. Similarly, if you’ve gone to the movies in the early throes of an exciting new relationship, where the two of you feel contentedly cocooned in your own world where nothing outside matters, then you may intentionally lose track of what’s going on. Not following the plot becomes another of your hilarious in-jokes, since it's just another part of an outside world that's irrelevant to your loved-up interactions.

Other examples. Where the convolutedness is kind of the point, and the pleasure comes from watching the characters untangle the mess they’re in. Private eye stories come to mind, particularly the Howard Hawks/Bogart THE BIG SLEEP (1946) and, more recently, John McNaughton's trashterpiece WILD THINGS (1998).

Also. Movies where the plot doesn’t matter or isn’t the priority, where the regular conventions of narrative are not necessarily adhered to. These could be purely allegorical, or follow a dream logic, or be artistic experiments in the form. See examples from the output of Andre Tarkovsky, Michael Haneke, Lars Von Trier, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, etc.

So fine, it can happen and not matter. Other causes can be the viewer’s fault: keeping half an eye on their phone; falling asleep mid-movie.

But then there are films that have a lot of plot, and want you to follow it, and really try to get you to follow it, but which fail and leave you baffled and frustrated.

Films like THE LAST THING HE WANTED.

I wrote in my review of THE LAST SUMMER that not recognising anyone at all from the cast or crew can be a bad sign – not always, but it rarely bodes well. With this film, it's a case of recognising people (A-listers Anne Hathaway and Ben Affleck! Character acting legend Willem Dafoe! Dee Rees, director of critical darling MUDBOUND!), but never having heard of the movie. And it only came out three years ago!

OK, so you’ve got Anne Hathaway. She’s a journalist of some kind, being led into a jungle by an armed escort, here to presumably report on something. There are dead and burned bodies – alright, so she’s not here to study the local fauna for Botanical Monthly. She wears no makeup (or at least not much), another sign that this is a ‘serious’ role. And she smokes – that never happens anymore! She must be serious.

Cue Hathaway’s reflective voiceover, saying things like ‘I wanted to know why’ and ‘I see now that the clock was ticking’ and ‘weightlessness seemed like the mode where we could be both time and the effect itself’ – all over shots of classified papers. Then she’s grilling some politician type in a press conference, something to do with trade disputes, I think? Is this film a remake of STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE?

Then Ben Affleck turns up, looking a bit chunky, playing some kind of political aide who's getting told off by his boss, the same man who Hathaway just pissed off. Hathaway, meanwhile, is on the phone to ‘kiddo’ – so her job makes her an absent parent, too. Of course it does. And then she argues with her boss (editor?) who tells her to drop the story, for whatever reason, whatever the story actually is.

But then Willem Dafoe, playing her Dad, calls and they meet for a drink, him wearing sunglasses indoors and a maroon suit, and spouting homophobic barbs at unassuming bar patrons while munching handfuls of almonds. He delivers a lot of backstory, and possibly present-story, too; it’s hard to tell. It becomes apparent that the director has instructed the actors to speak extra fast, too, which just makes it even harder to keep up. It feels like about 40 minutes of story is hurtled at us in the space of 5 minutes.

THE LAST THING HE WANTED is a bit like when you’re on holiday and skipping through the channels in your hotel room, and you start watching a movie in another language. You can follow what’s going on (it’s a thriller, she’s in danger, there’s a cover-up) but the details remain elusive.

It’s the kind of film that would benefit from turning the subtitles on – but I hate doing that, it’s distracting and shouldn’t be necessary if the filmmakers have done their job properly.

It’s the kind of film where you get so much information that none of it sticks, and at the end you don’t really remember anything. It’s a tactic politicians use: instead of giving straight answers to complicated or thorny questions, they resort to obfuscation.

I tend to hold my movies in higher esteem and expect more from them than that.

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  I don’t really know who ‘he’ is supposed to refer to, let alone what it is he wants and whether or not he went on to want any other things or not.

What would a movie called THE FIRST THING HE WANTED be about?  Watching this movie, a stiff drink comes to mind.

Previously:  THE LAST STARFIGHTER

Next time:  THE LAST HORROR MOVIE 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST STARFIGHTER (1984, Nick Castle)

 

* * * 

A teenager is so good at videogaming that aliens snap him up to fight in an interstellar war for reals.

Starring  Lance Guest, Dan O'Herlihy, Robert Preston, Catherine Mary Stewart

Written by  Jonathan R Betuel

Produced by  Gary Adelson, Edward O Denault

Duration  101 minutes

INT. LORIMAR PRODUCTIONS, HOLLYWOOD, CA. - MID ‘80S

FADE IN on a HUGE MOUNTAIN, not unlike the Paramount logo.

PULL OUT to reveal that it is actually a HUGE PILE OF COCAINE, stacked up on a LONG DESK in a CORPORATE BOARDROOM.

We take in more of the boardroom and the several MOVIE EXECUTIVES who are buzzing around in an animated state of BRAINSTORMING. The walls are covered in POST-IT NOTES and the EXECUTIVES are GESTICULATING WILDLY at each other.

One of them, clearly the BOSS, CRASHES DOWN face-first into the coke and begins SNORTING IT LIKE AN OPEN DOOR ON A SPACE SHIP, while we tune into a nearby conversation.

 

EXECUTIVE #1
(excitedly)

I’ve got it! I’ve got it!

 

EXECUTIVE #2

What? What?

 

The BOSS looks up from his SCARFACE-STYLE MOUNTAIN OF POWDER to take in their exchange. The white mask on his face makes it look like he is participating in a DRUG-FUELLED REVERSE MINSTRAL SHOW.

EXECUTIVE #1

Okay, so you’ve got Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? He’s big, right?

 

EXECUTIVE #2

Big. Yeah?

 

EXECUTIVE #1

Right, okay, and so then you’ve got Danny Devito. He’s, he’s--

 

BOSS
(getting it)

Small...

EXECUTIVE #1

Yes! Small! They couldn’t be any different, but what if, what if-- guys, you’ve gotta hear this-- what if--

 

EXECUTIVE #3
(interrupting)

No good.

 

EXECUTIVE #1

What?

 

EXECUTIVE #3

My buddy is Ivan Reitman’s assistant. His people are already working on a treatment, I think it’s called 'Condom Full of Walnuts Meets Testicle with Arms'. Arnold and Danny as brothers. 

(beat)

I said they’re gonna need to work on that title.

 

SILENCE. Apart from the sound of ENORMOUS LINES OF COCAINE being snorted.

BOSS
(getting an idea)

Guys...

 

His colleagues all TURN TO HIM IN TWITCHY ANTICIPATION.

 

BOSS (CONT'D)

I’ve got it. Kids like video games, right?

 

EXECUTIVE #2

Yeah...

 

BOSS

What’s better than just playing a video game?

 

No one knows. Many stand around RUBBING THEIR GUMS, as if expecting to find the answer there.

 

BOSS

Being a real hero in your own video game!

GASPS around the room. Everyone starts to rack up an EXTRA CHUNKY LINE. Everyone except EXECUTIVE #1.

 

EXECUTIVE #1
(timidly)

But, but boss ... didn’t Disney already do that? TROM or something--

 

BOSS

You’re fired!

(pushes an intercom)

Marlene, get me Universal.

(thinks a beat)

And Pablo Escabar!

FADE TO BLACK

Allow me to indulge in some nostalgia for a moment.

No, not for THE LAST STARFIGHTER. I’m certain I watched it as an adolescent but couldn’t remember much – just something about an arcade machine in a motorway service-station (actually turns out it was a trailer park), some kind of proto-X-WING game that our lead was so good at, he somehow got recruited to fight actual aliens. Other than that, I wasn't sure which memories were of this film and which were of everyone’s favourite Fred Savage-starring Super Mario Bros. 3 commercial, THE WIZARD.

My nostalgia is instead for a time when arcade machines were everywhere. If you popped out with your Dad to get fish and chips on a Friday night, there would be a Streetfighter 2 or Final Fight cabinet you could have a go on while the bloke behind the counter was still scooping out the chunky chips to join your battered saveloy. Cinema foyers had them, too; I have vivid memories of darting out of the queue for ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES at the ABC Catford to give the 3D Pac-Mania a go.

But as the ’90s wore on, bit by bit the coin-operated game in the corner disappeared. Some suffered the indignity of being replaced by a fruit machine, which was no worthy substitute, let me tell you.

THE LAST STARFIGHTER takes us back to that glorious time when the arcade machine was still king. 

The film booms into life with a space backdrop and a musical score that is the exact median between STAR WARS and SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, over credits that come at you like FLASH GORDON. You certainly can’t accuse this thing of not setting its stall out early or failing to indicate what’s coming.

Our hero is Alex Rogan, who pines for an escape from his small town existence, where his reliability as a handyman around the trailer park means that he can't get away to spend Saturday with his pickup-driving pals and love interest – old Mrs Elvira’s dodgy pipework isn’t going to fix itself!

Now, Lance Guest was 24 at the time of filming, playing a character who is supposed to be a teenager. As with every time this happens, the most the filmmakers can do to sustain the illusion of youth is to keep poor Lance completely clean-shaven at all times. They must have had to put a razor to him between every take to prevent even one tell-tale hair poking through, sending trash bags of empty shaving foam cans away from the set in dump trucks. It’s surely only a matter of time before we see a class action lawsuit filed by Guest, Richard Grieco (TEEN AGENT), Alan Ruck (FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF), Billy Warlock (SOCIETY) and the rest against movie studios for historic abuse, claiming debilitating skin conditions caused by years of stubble rash.

Anyway, Alex saunters off to relieve his frustrations by yanking furiously on his joystick. But today won't be like any of the other times he's stood prone in front of a screen with his brow furrowed and sweat seeping out of his pores. "Nine-hundred thousand – you're gonna bust the record!" exclaims the toothless old cleaner who likes to watch Alex when he's playing with himself.

This prompts the entire community to evacuate their trailers and gather around one man (I mean, boy) and his Starfighter arcade cabinet. The bleeps and blips are joined by whoops and cheers until the entire spectacle climaxes with the machine announcing that Alex is indeed a "record breaker".

But the trailer park folk aren’t the only ones to witness Alex be the best of the best at aiming long pixilated lines at moving pixilated shapes on a black background. Later that night, a humanoid alien in a flying DeLorean (five years before BACK TO THE FUTURE PART 2!) turns up and tells Alex that the game was really a recruitment tool and that Alex is "the best we’ve ever seen".

From then on, it’s basically what A NEW HOPE would have been like if the third act had taken up 80% of the movie. Back in 1984, with no new STAR WARS on the horizon after RETURN OF THE JEDI closed off the trilogy the previous summer, this would have been catnip for those desperately jonesing for more battles in space.

Viewed today, it's a palatable slice of cheese-on-toast from an era when a kid could still dream of immortality being just a 20p coin away.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  It’s kind of unclear as to how Alex is the last of those who fight among the stars, since he meets a shitload of others from a bunch of different planets in a space station. 

What would a movie called THE FIRST STARFIGHTER be about?  Arguably, it's STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE – since that whole saga is set ‘a long time ago’, they presumably made it into space before any of the rest of us.

Previously:  THE LAST SEVEN

Next time:  THE LAST THING HE WANTED

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST SEVEN (2010, Imran Naqvi)

 

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A man wakes up alone in a deserted London and discovers that he and six others appear to be the only people left alive.

Starring  Tamer Hassan, Simon Phillips, Ronan Vibert, Daisy Head, Danny Dyer

Written by  John Stanley   

Produced by  Simon Phillips, Toby Meredith   

Duration  84 minutes   

   

 

Well, that was a disappointment. Multiple, in fact.

Here are my top seven disappointing things about THE LAST SEVEN.

Disappointment #1: Not enough Danny Dyer.

For a while back there, Danny Dyer was kind of a star. He was certainly well known – in the UK, at least. He’s now firmly entrenched in the acting retirement of misery soap Eastenders, but at one point he must have had grander ambitions.

Curiously, there was never any attempt to break America. It seems impossible that the idea never crossed his mind. Was he irredeemably bad at the accent? Did he flat-out refuse to soften up and do a romcom, or be a comedy sidekick, or try out a gay best friend? Or was the concept of ‘geezer’ not meaning someone over 65 simply unfathomable to Hollywood casting directors?

Something I’ve always disputed is Dyer’s reputation for ‘hard man’ roles. Does it come from the straight-to-home-media portion of his career, all those buried on streaming or end of the supermarket aisle DVD efforts – films that have had zero impact on the cultural landscape? It must do, because here is the evidence from his best-known titles:

 – HUMAN TRAFFIC: Caught by his mum wanking in his bedroom during a phone sex call = not a hard man.

– MEAN MACHINE: Mild mannered and timid on the football pitch, despite being in prison = not a hard man.

– THE FOOTBALL FACTORY: Spends the whole film worried about getting his head kicked in; eventually does get his head kicked in = not a hard man.

– THE BUSINESS: Lets frequent collaborator Tamer Hassan (see below) and weaselly Geoff Bell push him around for an hour and a half = not a hard man.

– OUTLAW: Spends the whole film worried about getting his head kicked in; it doesn’t happen this time, but he does look awkward when required to wield a pump-action shotgun = not a hard man.

– STRAIGHTHEADS: Has sex with Gillian Anderson (plus) but then fails to protect her from getting attacked and raped (minus) = not a hard man.

– SEVERANCE: Survives a work retreat in the Hungarian countryside that turns into a life or death struggle against sadistic poachers, but only by numbing himself to the ordeal by quaffing magic mushrooms = not a hard man.

In THE LAST SEVEN, he plays ‘The Angel of Death’, a mysterious, bloodied and blindfolded figure who keeps popping up on the periphery to try to give the film some tension and urgency.

And, criminally, apart from some opening and closing voiceover, where his ear-to-the-Bow-Bells lilt is distinctly toned down, he never speaks. Boo.

Disappointment #2: Not enough Danny Dyer and Tamer Hassan together.

If Dyer could have been the geezer De Niro, then Tamer Hassan was his Joe Pesci – with, of course, Nick Love as their Scorsese.

After the abovementioned Love pair of FACTORY and BUSINESS, they also cameoed together in spoof THE HOOLIGAN FACTORY, as well as both essaying DEAD MAN RUNNING, FREERUNNER and CITY RATS.

That means THE LAST SEVEN ties them with the number of projects Bob D and Joe P did together on (funnily enough) seven. Except, much like Pesci’s quickie appearances in A BRONX TALE, THE GOOD SHEPHERD and ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, they aren’t screen partners this time.

Disappointment #3: Missed opportunity with London locations.

The movie opens 28 DAYS LATER-style with a man waking up in an empty London. And of course, he’s right in the centre of the city, somewhere between Bank tube and Fenchurch Street, by the looks of it. Now, okay, fine, that’s fair enough for starters, you have to give the people what they expect.

But why not show some lesser-photographed parts of London in your movie, for a change? Would it kill you to travel south a little and dolly up Brixton high street? Pan away from the Catford cat statue at a Dutch angle? Give us a crane shot of the Ladywell water tower?

Disappointment #4: Nothing happens for ages.

I mean, okay, you’ve managed to get the entire Square Mile deserted to film in, presumably on a summer’s Sunday morning, with the coming-down ravers on their way home kept at bay by a production assistant just out of shot.

But why drag the solo opening on for nearly 20 minutes, especially when the entire film is only 84? That's nearly a quarter of the running time! And especially when it's not even an original opening, having already been done by a much better film 10 years earlier (as well as being transposed to Atlanta for the pilot of The Walking Dead).

Disappointment #5: When more characters are finally introduced, still nothing much happens.

Tamer plays a military man (with a machine gun and everything) and there’s also a posh politician type and a young woman.

After lots of wandering about between skyscrapers and speculating as to why no one else seems to be around and why none of them can remember what happened, the latter of those says, ‘We have to go somewhere, we have to do something!’

I wasn’t sure if she was addressing another character or pleading with the offscreen director.

Disappointment #6: It’s all backstory.

As the number of survivors reaches the anticipated amount, intermittent flashbacks gradually (and I do mean gradually) reveal what went down before the world turned to shit.

But it would have been better to structure the story so that what the characters are doing now was more compelling than what went on before. 

Better acting, characters we care about and tolerable dialogue also would have helped matters, too.

Disappointment #7: There’s a guy in it who looks a bit like Alan Rickman (Ronan Vibert), but he’s not Alan Rickman.

And although the much-missed thespian was still with us in 2011, he wouldn’t have touched a tepid project like THE LAST SEVEN with a ten-foot pole.

And neither should you.

One star out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  The whole convoluted plot curdles into something completely baffling by the end, so your guess is as good as mine. And you’ve probably never even seen this thing.

What would a movie called THE FIRST SEVEN be about?  How about profiling the top seven number sevens in Premier League history? Ooh, let’s see. I’d say... Cantona, Beckham, Pires, Le Tissier, Ronaldo, Luis Suarez and Son Heung-min. And as a plus, that’s definitely something Danny and Tamer could settle down on the sofa with a case of lager and happily watch together.

Previously:  LAST HOLIDAY

Next time:  THE LAST STARFIGHTER

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

LAST HOLIDAY (2006, Wayne Wang)

 

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A department store assistant is diagnosed with a rare brain condition and only has weeks to live, so she takes off on a luxury holiday to Europe.

Starring  Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton, Gérard Depardieu, Alicia Witt, Giancarlo Esposito 

Written by  Jeffrey Price, Peter S Seaman   

Produced by  Laurence Mark, Jack Rapke   

Duration  112 minutes   

   

Dear Mom,

Greetings from sunny Hollywood! Yes, I made it here in one piece! Sorry for not writing sooner, but I wanted to be able to put a return address – the Studio City YMCA just wasn’t gonna cut it!

But now I’m sitting here writing to you on my own desk (second hand) in my own room, in my own apartment! Well, I got the living room anyway, the sofa bed. It’s a one-bedroom, see, and I’m rooming with this British guy I met in the Y, who also wants to be a screenwriter. He’s got the bedroom, I got the living room, but don’t worry ma, he pays more of the rent.

And you’ll be pleased to hear that this letter isn’t the only thing I’m writing. Yes, I’ve started working on my first screenplay!

Okay, so here it goes. It’s about this woman, like an everywoman – like ‘everyman’, but a lady! She’s kind of like… not a loser, exactly, but definitely not happy. She buys her food with a big pile of coupons, her only social activity is singing in the church choir, she lives in a rundown neighbourhood near a bridge (alone, of course), with a shitty car that barely runs.

And, you know, she works in a department store in a real crappy job and her boss is a total jerk – like, his cell phone rings and he actually answers it in front of her, and all he cares about is money, whereas she wants to make the customers happy, that kind of thing. So yeah, like, overall, she’s real good natured and everybody loves her and all of that.

And those food coupons, they’re not just some random detail, Mom! You see, what she really wants to be is a chef. When she gets home every day, she watches TV cooking shows, and prepares all the food along with the TV chef. And she takes photos of the dishes she cooks and puts them in a scrapbook. It’s like a dream book for her, her aspiration book or something. Maybe that’s what I’ll call it in the screenplay!

But for sure she definitely also has this other book called ‘Possibilities’, where she’s cut and pasted the head of a guy she’s in love with onto photos next to herself. He’s her dream man, and he’s also her colleague! No, Mom, I know what you’re thinking. It’s not going to be creepy. It’s going to be real sweet and charming! 

Anyways, so here’s where it gets real interesting. This is the best part. Now, I gotta admit up front, I didn’t exactly come up with this idea totally from my own little mind. My roomie, he was reading this book named Last Holiday, by this old English writer who goes by JB Priestley. And Mom, I didn’t actually read the book or anything (you know me!), but I did read the back of it. And I don’t know anything about getting rights or permission or whatever, but I’ll worry about that later – this is the kind of idea that is too good to ignore.

You see, I was looking for a way to set the woman in my movie free, but how? What would make it so she can burst out of her funk and finally make the most of her life?

Well, this is it, here goes: she finds out she only has three weeks to live!

Isn’t that genius? Isn’t that original?

So she marches into her boss’s office and not only does she quit, she grabs his cell phone and smashes it on the floor! Wham! ‘That was a $200 phone!” he yells. I might even put the dialogue in capital letters!

So what next? She decides she’s gonna live her dream of being a chef in, now get this Mom, tell me this is not totally awesome: Europe! Can you believe that?

Now, when I told this to my British roomie, he said something really weird. He said that Europe is not, like, just this one place that’s kinda all of the same. He claims it’s actually a continent full of many different countries, all with unique cultures and that we Americans should stop lumping an entire continent together like we do. He said that was totally ignorant! 

Well, boo to him. This is gonna be an American movie for Americans. And in this American movie, my American leading lady goes to Europe and does European things with all those quirky, cute little European people. And snooty, right? Those Europeans are kinda snooty, everyone knows that. Of course, we'll make her spend most of the movie with other Americans who have also gone abroad, because we can't have too many Europeans around, that would be crazy.

I guess she can fly to France? In first class, of course. France is in Europe, right? That’s the one with Paris, I think. I think I heard once that they have, like, a lot of food in France. So that could be where she goes to learn how to cook. I'm not sure yet. Hey, remember that movie GREEN CARD, where they had that guy who was French (or was he English?) who had to pretend to be married to Andie MacDowell to stay in the US of A? Imagine if they ended up casting him as a celebrity chef who trains her! That would be super sweet.

Heck, maybe I just won’t even say which one of those cute little European countries she’s gone to, what difference does it make? That way, we can have all kinds of accents and languages and whatever all together, to be extra quirky and hilarious.

So anyways, you know, she goes to this European spa hotel place, and flies a helicopter, and goes skiing, and base-jumping, and has a PRETTY WOMAN-style shopping montage in a fancy department store, and does a load of other kinds of awesome things (all in a super cute and quirky European style).

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Three weeks to live? Major downer! But no, Mom, and this is where you’re really gonna see how all the money to send me to UCLA was totally worth it. Because, okay, get this: it turns out she actually isn’t about to die! Maybe the brain scanning machine or whatever was actually broken! Or maybe the doctor made a mistake, like he looked at her chart upside down or something! I’d probably have to make him European, too, or at least some kind of foreigner, if he's gonna be one of these real quirky, campy, useless doctors.

So that’s gonna mean I can write an awesome happy ending, where she’s had the time of her life, and realised that life is all worth living after all, and got her man, and opened her own restaurant, all of that. The audience is gonna walk out of theatres with a smile as wide as the Hollywood sign!

Right, gotta go. Just thinking about this awesome screenplay makes me wanna get back to it! Love to Dad and little Billy-Joe and Susie-Anne.

Love to Dad,

Your son

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Since she is not, in fact, about to die, it would be extremely unlikely for her to never go on another holiday.

What would a movie called FIRST HOLIDAY be about?  Personally, I spent a lot of my youth in the Yorkshire coastal towns of Scarborough and Bridlington (both in Europe, for the record).

Previously:  X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

Next time:  THE LAST SEVEN

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com