EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by Jenn Upton, who has graciously made a donation and picked this movie. Would you like to have me write about the movie of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

Sam Raimi was, at one time, mostly known for horror. Of the novels of Scott B. Smith you would think he’d make a movie of, maybe The Ruins would make more sense. That said, A Simple Plan reminds you that he once lived in the same house as the Coen Brothers when all were new to Hollywood. That said, he makes this movie all his own.

Wright County, Minnesota mostly has a feed mill and lots of snow. Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton) and his wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) are two of the few college-educated people there. Hank’s brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and his friend Lou Chambers (Brent Briscoe) are closer than the two actual brothers are. This is tested when the men find a crashed plane and $4.4 million dollars. Hank wants to turn it in. Jacob and Lou change his mind, saying he should keep it until the snow melts and if no one brings up the money when the plane is found, they can keep it.

They all agree to not discuss the money with anyone except that Hank tells Sarah. She thinks they should take some money back to the plane. On the way, Hank and Jacob are surprised by a farmer on a snow vehicle. In the heat of the moment, they kill him and send his body and vehicle into the icy river.

Sarah believes that the money was a ransom for a kidnapped heiress from Michigan, who was abducted by two brothers by the names of Stephen and Vernon Bokovsky. She tells him that there’s no victim in the crime now, as one of the brothers had to be the dead body in the plane. The plan falls to pieces though when Lou demands his money. He’s been spending too much and might lose his truck. He threatens to go to the cops. Sarah says that they should kill him, a shocking moment as she’s just given birth to their first child.

Sarah says that they should frame Lou for the farmer’s murder by getting him drunk, making him confess and recording it. Jacob is upset that he has to betray his friend and it almost all goes wrong when Lou pulls his gun. It ends up with Lou and his wife Nancy dead and Hank having to spin the story to the police of what exactly happened. The next problem is that Jacob mentioned the plane, so Sheriff Carl Jenkins (Chelcie Ross) makes Hank show him where it is, bringing along FBI agent Neil Baxter (Gary Cole).

This is probably where you should stop reading if you want to watch this movie.

Baxter is, of course, Vernon Bokovsky. Somehow, Hank is able to kill him but now Sheriff Jenkins is also killed. That means that another story has to be told. And that’s when Jacob tells him that he’s tired. He’s either going to kill himself or force his brother to kill him, creating an alibi so that Hank can live free. It turns out that when he tells the story to the real government agents, they tell him all of the money was marked. He burns it in his fireplace, realizing that he will always be haunted by what he has done.

Paxton and Thornton had been scheduled to be in this movie for years. John Boorman was the original director and the film got cancelled. Neither believed they would ever be in the film but luckily, it all came together. This was one of the first movies where Raimi worried more about the performances of his actors instead of the action of the shots.

I miss Bill Paxton. I realize I never knew him outside of the roles he played but I feel like some part of me — I know it’s strange — knew he was a good man. In this, Hank is an ordinary person who somehow becomes a level of evil that he had no idea that he was capable of. Thornton also plays a role that any other actor would treat as a message part. His diminished intelligence is just who he is; he has other smarts that somehow make up for his lack of intelligence.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by Jenn Upton, who has graciously made a donation and picked this movie. Would you like to have me write about the movie of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

Hubert Selby Jr. had always intended to adapt his novel into a film, as he had written a script years before meeting director Darren Aronofsky, who said, “Anyone that reads Selby’s work can see how intense his world is. He writes the most discordant, angry words that tickle the air with some sweet music around it. It’s an unbelievable experience to read his books. I knew that once I made a larger film it would be very difficult to do a project like this. I live my life not wanting to have any regrets, and I knew that Selby was cool, that he’s a badass.”

Before the movie was made, Jared Leto spent time on the streets and starved himself. The director also asked him and Marlon Wayans to stop having sex and eating sugar so their cravings felt honest. Jennifer Connelley and Ellen Burstyn lived in similar situations to their characters and tried to understand the lives they led.

Burstyn is Sara Goldfarb, a widow who lives with her television, watching it nonstop. Leto is her son Harry, a heroin addict along with Connelley as Marion and Wayans as Tyrone. They sell heroin not just for their own addictions but for the dreams they have, whether that’s to open a fashion store or to escape the ghetto. Sara just wants to be on the TV show she’s obsessed with and begins to diet so she looks good for it. Her friend Rae (Marcia Jean Kurtz) suggests she try diet pills; she’s soon crushing amphetamines to the point that even her junkie son is worried. But all she wants to do is get on that show and impress her friends Rae and Ada (Louise Lasser, the former Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman who once had issues of her own). As the time of the show gets closer, she descends into madness. She imagines her refrigerator is attacking her and a trip to the office of the game show ends with her hospitalized and given electroshock therapy.

Meanwhile, a gang war puts Tyrone in prison and with drugs so much more expensive, Harry tells Marion that she should start doing sex work, even sleeping with her therapist (Sean Gullette). By the time it’s all over, she has a pimp (Keith David), he’s lost his arm from using so much heroin and he and Tyrone are trapped in jail. By the end, everyone is lost, trapped in a fetal position, their only dreams ones that will never come true.

Most movies have 700 cuts for ninety minutes. This has over 2,000 as the quick cutting madness and always in-your-face camera shots are disorienting. Released with no rating, this movie in no way allows its actors to have the old Hollywood addiction cliches. Drugs have never felt this horrible. There’s no fun in any of these highs.

There are some really interesting moments in this. Beyond the influence of Perfect Blue for one of the bathtub scenes, when Sara talks about being old, there’s a second when the camera literally slips away from her. That’s because cinematographer Matthew Libatique had started to cry and fogged up the camera and made that mistake. Despite Aronofsky being upset at the time of shooting, that’s the take in the movie. Also, all of Tappy Tibbons’ dialogue was actor Christopher McDonald improvising.

Aronofsky didn’t want to change the book, as he loved the author’s work. He wasn’t sure if Harry lived or died and had asked Selby about the character’s outcome. The author answered, “Of course, he lives.” When Aronofsky asked why he said that, Selby responded that the character had to suffer more. That may be why the director believes that Tyrone is the only person capable of reclaiming his life. That’s why in the final scene, only he has an actual good thought of someone other than himself. He remembers his mother.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by Chris Salazr, who made a $5 donation and got to pick the movie of his choice. 

Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

As they await repairs, Val Com 17485 (Andy Kaufman), a robot valet with a specialty in lumber commodities, falls in love with Aqua Com 89045 (Bernadette Peters), a hostess companion robot who is made for poolside parties. They assemble a robot named Phil (Jerry Garcia) who they treat as their child and take with them a comedian robot, Catskil-55602 (Jack Carter).

They are pursued by Crimebuster (Ron Gans), a broken police drone that wants to bring them into to be erased. They are and yet they keep reverting back to their new programing as the love between them has become too strong.

The story sounds good but the actual movie, well…

In his book Andy Kaufman: Revealed, Bob Zmuda wrote that Kaufman and Zmuda had “pitched” the The Tony Clifton Story to Universal Studios. They were concerned that Kaufman had not acted in films except for a small role in God Told Me To, so they arranged for him to star in this movie as a test. It was a disaster and Kaufman even apologized on Late Night With David Letterman for making it.

When I spoke with director Alan Arkush about this movie, he was very honest about it.

B&S: Can you tell me about Heartbeeps?

ALLAN: I got offered this big studio movie. And I really have to say that I totally misread the situation. I didn’t really understand the script or maybe it didn’t indicate that it could be a wacky comedy. I seized on the idea that it could be this big story about robots falling in love and making it a Frank Borzage movie (a bizarre idea and nothing like what the studio wanted). He was big on love conquers death, love is a spiritual thing and I thought that’s what the situation was with these robots. Maybe that’s an intellectually good solution but it’s not the movie they wanted.

I made so many bad choices like a pace that was WAY too slow for comedy. I should have just turned Andy Kaufman loose, used many many more special effects and taken more advantage of the genius of my FX team Stan Winston and Albert Whitlock. We recently did a commentary for the Kino Lorber rerelease and that was both eye opening and painful, but useful to me as an artist, not unlike when I critique a film at the AFI.

B&S: But you had a great cast! I mean, Jerry Garcia is in it.

ALLAN: Yes, Jerry was someone I knew really well. And I asked him to do one of the robot voices on the guitar. I was trying to borrow stuff from other parts of my life to shoehorn in. The studio cut ALL of Jerry’s work out.

At least Arkush was able to get Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov and Dick Miller in the movie, as well as Kenneth McMillan and Randy Quaid as repairmen. But otherwise, this movie seems like it’s going somewhere at first and then just sits there forever, despite being only around 75 minutes. I’ve put off watching it for years because I’ve heard just how bad it is and I’d hoped that it would surprise me.

It was written by John Hill, who also wrote Quigley Down Under, Little Nikita and episodes of Quantum Leap and L.A. Law. He also scripted Steel Justice, a TV movie in which monster truck robot Robosaurus teams with a police officer. Do you think he told people, “I did Heartbeeps so I am a natural to write this movie about a child who brings back his dead cop dad as a fire-breathing transforming dinosaur?”

What is great is the makeup by Stan Winston.

The artist had been sought after he created the makeup for the Tin Man in The Wiz. Winston said, “I hadn’t been all that happy with the final results of the Tin Man makeup, which was made up of foam rubber appliances, painted to look like metal. I wanted to see if I could come up with something better for Heartbeeps, appliances that would have an intrinsic metallic quality, rather than one that was just painted on.”

He used gelatin appliances that were painted with metallic colors. However, the heat of shooting meant that the makeup needed near-constant touch-ups. This almost ruined Winston’s sanity.

“I had created the look I wanted and I had done something that no one had ever seen before. The downside was that, on a daily basis, I didn’t know whether or not we were going to get through the shoot! These were very difficult makeups to maintain, very labor-intensive. Every day at lunch we had to replace the lip appliances, for example, because they were starting to melt on us. Vince Prentice and Zoltan Elek, the makeup artists who actually applied the prosthetics, constantly had to stay on top of the problems with the gelatin. I was a wreck through the entire shoot.”

It did teach him an essential lesson.

“I was in a stressed-out state, which was fairly typical of me at that time, and Bernadette Peters said to me, “Relax, Stan. It’s just a movie.” Here she was, going through this grueling process of having these prosthetics applied to her, and she had to calm me down. It should have been just the opposite. To this day, I thank Bernadette Peters for putting my attitude in perspective. In this work, there are always going to be very real responsibilities and pressures — but it’s just a movie, and there’s nothing to be gained by being a walking stress factory. Ever since that time, I’ve tried to bring positive energy and lightheartedness to the set.”

Resources

Stan Winston School. Heartbeeps: Behind the Scenes at Stan Winston Studio.

This movie by Felipe M. Guerra has bad audio, is kind of dark and feels thrown together. And you know, that’s kind of perfect for Luigi Cozzi, who has made some of my favorite movies on the same budget that most movies spend on paper towels.

Cozzi started as a fan, writing to authors and becoming the Italian correspondent for Famous Monsters of Filmland. After becoming friends with Dario Argento — he’s still the man who runs the director’s Profundo Rosso store — he went on to help write Four Flies on Grey Velvet and The Five Days and direct The Killer Must Kill Again, Starcrash, Contamination, Cannon movies Hercules, Adventures of Hercules and Sinbad of the Seven Seas, Paganini Horror, The Black Cat and Blood on Méliès’ Moon.

I’m a huge fan of Cozzi. He seems like someone who genuinely loves chatting about his movies and what it was like to make them. Starcrash was one of the first Italian movies that I ever saw. My very young eyes saw it and was amazed and forever since, Italian exploitation has just spoken to me on a higher level. It’s so amazing to hear how these films were created by the source. If you love movies, despite the flaws of the production, you’ll love this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Immoral Minority Picture Show was made in 1983 and went unreleased until 2009. It’s very much a Kentucky Fried Movie but probably closer to Movie 43.

Director and writer Scott Mansfield — yes, the same director as Deadly Games — put together this sketch-filled movie and sure, most of them aren’t funny, but there’s a great slasher sequel parody called Don’t Scream On My Face that has a great part for Linda Blair. There’s also a Lite Blood ad with Count Dracula (James Sikking) talking about how he needs to cut the fat. And John Carradine introduces great moments in Polish history, which means he sits in silence. How about a slasher called The Hanukah Horror?

None of these jokes are funny but I can’t hate a movie that includes such a cast. I mean, David L. Lander and Michael McKean as Third Reich soldiers? Marilyn Chambers as Marilyn Chambers? Colleen Camp is in this! Barbara Bosson (did she and Sikking ever talk about this on Hill Street Blues?)? Georg Stanford Brown from Roots and the former husband of Tyne Daly? Sybil Danning? Juila Duffy? Meadowlark Lemon and Jimmie Walker as the first black men on the moon? Deborahg Harmon? Sunny Johnson (Flashdance)? Audrey Landers from Dallas? Kim Lankford from Knots Landing? Squire Fridell (Ronald McDonald in Mac and Me)? P.J. Soles!?! Wendi Jo Sperber!?! Jennifer Tilly? James MacKrell (Lew Landers in Gremlins and The Howling)? Ed Marinaro (did he also discuss this movie on the set of Hill Street Blues?)? Diana Muldaur? Newhart‘s William Sanderson and Peter Scolari? Bruce Weitz (can I make that Hill Street Blues joke again? I can.)? Fred Willard? Keenan Wynn?!? Jere Rae Mansfield, who called herself “the blonde that died on every Aaron Spelling show?” Marie-Alise Recasner (Island of Blood)? Miguel A. Núñez Jr. (Spider from Return of the Living Dead)? Erika Eleniak? Adult director Paul Thomas? Karen Lorre? Sniglets Rich Hall?

Yes, it’s not good, but I loved it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Linda Vargas (Montserrat Prous) works a showgirl number with Maria Toledano (Kali Hansa, The Night of the Sorcerers) before picking up Ortiz (Manuel Pereiro), seducing him, calling the cops and killing herself by slicing her own throat, which implicates him in her murder.

His wife, Rosa (Jacqueline Laurent) attempts to learn the truth and discovers from Countess Anna de Monterey (Anne Libert, The Demons, A Virgin Among the Living Dead) that her husband assaulted Linda when she was just a young girl, going from drugs to, well, the title is Sinner: The Secret Diary of a Nymphomaniac, so you can guess the rest.

Made after the death of Soledad Miranda and before Franco would fall for Lina Romay, this comes from the more serious side of Jess Franco, feeling like it was inspired by the structure of Citizen Kane, which makes sense more than the absolutely formless movies he’d make later in his career.

The worst thing is that Jacqueline Laurent was fired from her position as a drama teacher at a private high school because of this film. Her students learned that she had appeared nude in this film — made 39 years before — and the school’s administration claimed that this and other erotic thrillers she made in the sixties and seventies posed a distraction.

The Kino Cult release of this film has a new commentary track by Tim Lucas, interviews with Jacqueline Laurent, Anne Libert and editor Gérard Kikoïne. It has English and French language options with English subtitles. You can get it from Kino Lorber.

Shot directly after Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik, this Roger Vadim-directed movie is based on the comic book of the same name by Jean-Claude Forest. The film stars Vadim’s then-wife Jane Fonda as Barbarella, a United Earth agent sent to find scientist Durand Durand, who has created a weapon that could destroy humanity.

Vadim was hired to direct this film after producer Dino De Laurentiis purchased the rights. This led to Vadim looking to cast several actresses in the title role, including Virna Lisi, Brigitte Bardot (that’s who the character was originally based on) and Sophia Loren before ending up picking his wife.

In case you’re wondering why this movie is such a mess, Charles B. Griffith was the last writer to work on it, saying that he had done uncredited work on the script after fifteen other writers — including Terry Southern — worked on the movie.

This film is packed with fashion, amazing sets — you can credit Bava’s film for some of that, and great characters, like John Phillip Law (who used the break in shooting to be in the aforementioned Danger: Diabolik) as Pygar the angel, Anita Pallenberg (Performance) as the Black Queen, Milo O’Shea as Durand-Durand, Marcel Marceau in a rare speaking role as Professor Ping, David Hemmings (Deep Red) as Dildano and even cameos from Fabio Testi and Antonio Sabato (who was originally to play the role that Hemmings ended up doing).

So yeah. This is a gorgeous film that makes no sense whatsoever. Is that such a bad thing? I first watched this as a child on HBO and I think when the part came in which the birds tear apart Barbarella’s clothes, my parents decided that it was time for me to go to bed. I was hooked on movies that were seen as being wrong for me to watch and Italian-shot films.

A sequel was planned with producer Robert Evans called Barbarella Goes Down, but it never happened. Nor did a 1990 remake, a Robert Rodriguez idea or a potential project with Nicolas Winding Refn, who moved on to other projects, saying, “…certain things are better left untouched. You don’t need to remake everything.”

The Arrow Video release of Barbarella is, as you always expect, overflowing with features. It starts with a brand new 4K restoration from the original negative by Arrow Films, all inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tula Lotay. It comes with a double-sided fold-out poster featuring the same artwork, six double-sided postcards and an illustrated book with new writing on the movie by Anne Billson, Paul Gravett, Véronique Bergen and Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén, and select archival material.

There’s audio commentary by film critic Tim Lucas, as well as alternative opening and closing credits in 4K with Dolby Vision and the isolated score.

Extras include an appreciation by film critic Glenn Kenny, a two-hour in-depth discussion between film and cultural historians Tim Lucas and Steve Bissette, a feature on the costume designs, an interview with camera operator Roberto Girometti, actor/director Ricky Tognazzi discussing the life and work of his father Ugo Tognazzi, an interview with Fabio Testi, a video essay by Eugenio Ercolani on producer Dino De Laurentiis, a trailer, U.S. TV and radio commercials and an image gallery.

You can get it on 4K UHD or blu ray from MVD.