Lost Horizon (1973)

When you think about movies that have had a major influence over the history of film, there are a few titles that immediately come to mind. As problematic as it is and always was, The Birth of a Nation was the first major movie to not be a serial. The Jazz Singer, another problematic movie, brought synchronized sound to major motion pictures. Jaws and Star Wars are seen as two of the most important movies to the rise of blockbuster filmmaking. Then there was Iron Man, which started the whole “build a universe” thing in movies.

One movie that people see as influential, but doesn’t get quite enough recognition for how influential it was, is The Wizard of Oz. It had Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It had the switch from black-and-white to colour. It had the sequel, Return to Oz, and the re-imagining, The Wiz. Just as important as any of those aspects, however, were the story structure and the character types. That may, in fact, be the biggest inspiring piece of The Wizard of Oz for other filmmakers.

Numerous movies have taken the idea of The Wizard of Oz and crafted their own stories around it. Four characters, sometimes five, are put into a situation together where they must find some part of them they never knew they had. The Scarecrow only wanted a brain. The Tin Man only wanted a heart. The Cowardly Lion only wanted courage. And Dorothy wanted to go home. The other part of the story was the journey into some never-before-seen world, ending with a trip home. If you think about it, there are a lot of movies that share this structure and the character types with The Wizard of Oz.

There are two movies I want to touch upon. One of them will be this week’s movie. However, I first want to discuss another movie, one that’s surely better known, just to show it’s not only this week’s movie that fit the mould. I want to get into how Jurassic Park fit into the structure of The Wizard of Oz. Or how the structure of The Wizard of Oz fit into Jurassic Park. Whatever one makes more sense.

You might be thinking to yourself right now, “Jurassic Park? Really?” Yes. Yes, really. Jurassic Park had all the elements of The Wizard of Oz. The difference was that they were packaged in a science fiction horror story and directed by Steven Spielberg. It had the characters going into another world before going home. It had the character archetypes. It even had the characters following a road that they thought would be easy and safe, only to discover threats later on. All the elements were there.

Why don’t we begin with the basic journey of The Wizard of Oz? You need that to truly understand how the story of Jurassic Park matched that. Dorothy was a farm girl in Kansas. A freak tornado took her on a journey to the land of Oz. Once there, she would journey down the Yellow Brick Road, picking up some walking companions along the way. They would head to the Emerald City to find The Wizard, who would help Dorothy get home by the end of the movie.

Now let’s get into the story of Jurassic Park. John Hammond built a new theme park on a tropical island. He invited a group of four people to the island to see what they thought. They discovered that John Hammond brought dinosaurs back to life, hoping to monetize the spectacle and allow people to visit this prehistoric zoo. Things took a turn for the worst when tech guy Dennis Nedry turned off some of the security. Dinosaurs broke free and threatened the lives of everyone on the island.

At face value, that wouldn’t sound that similar to The Wizard of Oz. There weren’t any dinosaurs hunting people down in The Wizard of Oz. But the basics were quite similar. A group of people were brought out of their normal lives to a place where fantastical things happened. Instead of Dorothy travelling to Oz and seeing living scarecrows and tin men, it was Ellie, Allen, Ian, and a lawyer travelling to Jurassic Park to see dinosaurs that were brought to life. The moment they saw the living, breathing dinosaurs was like the moment when Dorothy opened her front door and stepped into the land of Oz. They were sent on a tour of the park, in some jeeps that followed a track without veering from it. It was their Yellow Brick Road. In the end, they wanted nothing more than to go back home, much like Dorothy’s mantra of “There’s no place like home.”

These might not seem like the biggest similarities, and here’s where the rest comes into play. The primary characters were, in their own way, translations of the characters from The Wizard of Oz. Ellie was the Dorothy of the story. When things at the park turned sour, she was the one who did the job nobody else could. She went out and reset the power so they could get the phone back and call for help. This was similar to Dorothy trying to get home and helping defeat the Wicked Witch of the West, which nobody was able to do up to that point. This is the weakest connection. Alan was The Tin Man, finding the heart that was inside of him as he got the children to safety. Ian found his courage, much like The Cowardly Lion, as he distracted the T-Rex at the wrecked jeeps. The only one of the four travelling companions who didn’t have a counterpart was the lawyer. I don’t remember anyone from The Wizard of Oz being a little shit who died on a toilet.

John Hammond, the man running Jurassic Park, was kind of a mixture of The Scarecrow and The Wizard. The comparison between him and The Wizard was clear. He presented the park to these people in a certain light, hoping that they would confirm it was a good idea. He hid the dangers behind a curtain, much like The Wizard hid himself behind a curtain. There was also a similarity in how he left the park and how The Wizard left Oz. Helicopter and hot air balloon. Flying vehicles. Anyway, I say he’s also partially The Scarecrow because the entire movie was about opening John Hammond’s eyes to the trouble he created. He had the smarts to build the park. He just needed to use them to truly see how dangerous it was.

So, yeah, I’d say that Jurassic Park was inspired by The Wizard of Oz. Going from normal life to the fantastical foreign land was there. The wonder that came with going through a door, or going through the giant gates of Jurassic Park, was there. The voyage down a set road, the character archetypes, and the desire to go home were all there. Obviously, there were major changes. But I don’t think the story would have been what it was without The Wizard of Oz being such a big hit fifty years earlier.

That’s not the only movie I want to compare to The Wizard of Oz in this post. Jurassic Park wasn’t this week’s movie. That’s a good movie. This isn’t Sunday “Good” Movies. It’s Sunday “Bad” Movies. I watch things that aren’t typically seen as good. So here comes one more movie, the one I watched that led to this week’s post.

Lost Horizon was a 1973 remake of a 1937 flick, or a readaptation of the book. One of the two, however you choose to define it. Richard Conway (Peter Finch), Sally Hughes (Sally Kellerman), Sam Cornelius (George Kennedy), George Conway (Michael York), and Harry Lovett (Bobby Van) were on a flight out of, I think, Vietnam. Their plane was hijacked and crashed in the Himalayan Mountains. They were found by some people who took them to Shangri-La, a monastery hidden in a paradisical valley within the mountains. The leaders of Shangri-La, Chang (John Gielgud) and The High Lama (Charles Boyer), slowly convinced each of the five rescued people to stay and live in Shangri-La.

This one was a much more obvious result of The Wizard of Oz, thanks to the structure. The characters, of course, went to a fantastic land that they never could have imagined. After twenty to thirty minutes of hijacking drama, the characters stepped through an icy cave and into a temperate environment. It was very much that opening of the front door into the colourful world of Oz. The landscape wasn’t the only thing that changed in that moment, though. Much like the technical transition from black-and-white to colour, Lost Horizon had a change in what the movie was. Once the characters got to Shangri-La, the movie became a musical. People began breaking into song. That only happened in Shangri-La, like how colour only happened in Oz.

It didn’t stop there, though. Of course, there were the character types thrown in there. The characters weren’t exactly one-to-one, but they were learning the same lessons. Richard Conway was the Dorothy of Lost Horizon. He was the leader of the group. It was Richard who tried to lead everybody home before urging them to stay. Of course, he would venture home with his brother, George, who only wanted to leave the paradise and go home. I guess that desire to go home made the entire Conway family a Dorothy surrogate. The leader and the character who wanted to go home.

The other characters were a little more direct. They were the brain, the heart, and the courage. Sam Cornelius was a disgraced engineer. He essentially was the head of an unintentional Ponzi scheme sort of thing before coming to Shangri-La. When he found gold in the water at Shangri-La, he considered smuggling it before being persuaded to use his brains to help instead of taking for himself. That’s the brain of The Scarecrow. Harry Lovett was a failed comedian who found an audience in the children of Shangri-La. He wanted to stay and teach them how to find happiness through art. He wanted to share his love of song and dance. That was the heart of The Tin Man. Then there was Sally Hughes, a drug addict who almost killed herself because of withdrawal. She was shown how to build the courage to take down her disease. She was The Cowardly Lion.

No movie inspired by The Wizard of Oz is complete without a translated version of The Wizard. That’s what Lost Horizon gave with The High Lama. He was a hidden figure that nobody really knew a lot about. The characters were introduced to the idea of him through legend. He stayed out of sight. And he was, for all intents and purposes, in charge of Shangri-La, like The Wizard oversaw the Emerald City. The main difference was that The High Lama was not a fraud. The things that he said could happen in Shangri-La would happen. People lived longer and kept their youthful looks. The society was a betterment of humankind, rather than the violent, evil society of the outside world. He was a cult leader leading a commune, except it actually seemed like it was a good place for people. I still don’t trust communes, though.

Of course, there was also the musical aspect, which I quickly touched upon earlier. It wouldn’t be a complete analysis of the similarities between Lost Horizon and The Wizard of Oz without mentioning they were both musicals. The Wizard of Oz was a musical both before the trip to Oz and during the trip to Oz. Lost Horizon was only a musical when the characters were in Shangri-La. They both had musical numbers, however, so that was a similarity that Jurassic Park didn’t have with them.

With Jurassic Park and Lost Horizon, you can see the influence that The Wizard of Oz passed on through the generations. Each of the movies couldn’t have been structured the way they were without the people behind them having seen The Wizard of Oz before. The way the stories played out shared many similarities with how the story played out in that 1939 classic. The characters shared emotional arcs, learning more about themselves and how they had the qualities they thought they lacked. Writers are always told to write what they know. These filmmakers certainly knew The Wizard of Oz when writing and directing their movies.

There are certain movies that you could pinpoint as influencing many others that followed. It could be a technical feat like telling a complete story, creating a montage, inter-mixing different times, adding sound, adding colour, or changing an aspect ratio. People could be inspired by the story and have a desire to tell a similar story in their own way. Movies like The Birth of a Nation, The Jazz Singer, Jaws, Star Wars, and Iron Man did just this. They changed the way people saw movies. They changed the way people made movies. And there are many other movies that did the same.

As always, notes:

• George Kennedy made his third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week in Lost Horizon. He was previously in View from the Top (week 83) and Bolero (week 456).
• Sally Kellerman played Sally in Lost Horizon. She was the narrator in Delgo (week 148).
• Phil Chong had a small role in Lost Horizon. He already showed up in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (week 184).
• Michael York has a very recognizable face. He has now appeared in 54 (week 266) and Lost Horizon.
• Finally, Charles Boyer was in Lost Horizon and Casino Royale (week 461).
• Have you seen Lost Horizon? What did you think? Did you see the similarities to The Wizard of Oz? What other movies do you think were inspired by The Wizard of Oz? Share your thoughts in the comments.
• If there’s a movie that you think would make for a good Sunday “Bad” Movies subject, let me know. Drop it in the comments and I might just watch it for a future week.
• Make sure to check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram for more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.
• Next week, I’ll be checking out a movie I watched once before, many years ago. It was one of two Craig Robinson rapture movies to come out around the same time. I’m not going to be writing about This is the End. Instead, I’ll be checking out a movie called Rapture-Palooza. Maybe you’ll join me? I’ll see you next week, if you do.

BloodRayne (2005), BloodRayne 2: Deliverance (2007), BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011)

It’s another one of those weeks where I watch a franchise, or part of one. I decided it was the right time to get back into the Uwe Boll filmography and tossed on the BloodRayne movies, which gave me a few ideas for a new post. One of those ideas was fairly simple, but wouldn’t be able to sustain a whole post. Blubberella, a movie I watched way back in Sunday “Bad” Movies was essentially Uwe Boll remaking BloodRayne: The Third Reich, his own movie, as a comedy. The problem with that idea was that I haven’t seen Blubberella since I first saw it back in 2016. It has been six and a half years. I could recall bits and pieces. However, if I wanted to do a deep dive into the similarities of the two movies, I would need to rewatch Blubberella. I didn’t have time for that.

So I went with a second topic that I had in my head upon watching all three BloodRayne movies. It’s a topic that I may have covered before, thanks to another franchise I’ve watched having a similar trajectory. Each of the three movies in the BloodRayne franchise was set in a different time period. The same concept was overlayed into different settings to make the sequels feel fresh. It made the sequels feel different. That’s what I want to discuss. That’s what I will discuss. Beginning now.

BloodRayne followed a group of vampire hunters known as the Brimstone Society as they sought Kagan (Ben Kingsley), the vampire king, in the Middle Ages. Vladimir (Michael Madsen) led Sebastian (Matthew Davis) and Katarin (Michelle Rodriguez) through the European countryside, fighting vampires and tracking Kagan. Along the way, they encountered Rayne (Kristanna Loken), a dhampir who happened to be the illegitimate daughter of Kagan. She joined their team, wanting revenge on Kagan for raping her mother and creating her.

Kicking things off for the BloodRayne trilogy was a movie set in the Middle Ages. This was a departure from the games. The first BloodRayne game was set in the leadup to World War II, with Rayne performing global missions to stop the Nazis from bringing Hitler to greater power through the occult. That’s nowhere near the same story. Even later in the movie trilogy, they wouldn’t touch upon the story of the first game. It did take slight elements from BloodRayne 2, however, with the patriarchal revenge storyline.

There’s a certain feel that comes from setting a vampire hunting story in the Middle Ages. The weapons used in that setting felt less explosive. Handheld gunpowder weapons hadn’t yet been perfected, meaning that guns weren’t a major piece of weaponry. There may have been cannons, but not guns. Swords, arrows, and spears were the go to weapons. When it comes to portraying the use of these weapons on screen, the battles are usually harder fought, more physical, and bloodier. There’s a certain spectacle you don’t get from modern weaponry. A certain athleticism that goes with swords and spears. It’s like watching a martial arts fight, but with heavy, bulky weapons.

The other aspect of the Middle Ages that can make a vampire movie like BloodRayne interesting is the time it took for people and news to travel. A vampiric character like Kagan could be more open with their intentions because it was less likely that people would know the truth. They would know him as a ruler. Maybe even a deadly ruler. People wouldn’t necessarily know he was deadly because he was a vampire. They might hear stories or legends about the guy. As people got farther away from him, the stories would be fewer and farther between. The people who heard the stories might not find truth in them. Not unless he was presenting himself in major public ways, which he wasn’t.

BloodRayne 2: Deliverance changed up the setting. Rayne (Natassia Malthe) was back to kill more vampires, this time in the Wild West. Billy the Kid (Zack Ward) took over the town of Deliverance. He was waiting for the railway to come through town so he could turn all the passengers and send them out through the US to spread vampirism. Rayne teamed up with Pat Garrett (Michael Paré), a member of the US branch of the Brimstone Society, as well as The Preacher (Michael Eklund) and Slime Bag Franson (Michael Teigen), to take down Billy and his town full of vampires.

As you can see, the setting changed for the sequel. Instead of the Middle Ages, BloodRayne 2: Deliverance was set in the Wild West. It was a good change. It showed that Uwe Boll was open to letting the franchise change. He was open to letting it evolve. Mind you, he’s also the guy that took the name and very, very basic idea of the games and used that to make an almost wholly original franchise. He threw out the stories of the games. And here he was, again, changing things up to make them his own. In this case, I think it worked quite well.

Changing the setting for BloodRayne 2: Deliverance changed the entire vibe of the movie. Instead of a medieval movie that was all about beating the villain through brute force, it was a western. Gunslingers were pitted against gunslingers. A lawman was pitted against an outlaw. A vampire hunter was pitted against a town filled with vampires. It was very influenced by the Kurosawa samurai movies and the westerns adapted from them. Of course, it had Uwe Boll’s sense of humour, as well. That was apparent through The Preacher and Slime Bag Franson, particularly in their introductions. The Preacher had his cartoonish sermon as he ripped his parish off, while Slime Bag was found in a brothel getting his kinky fantasies fulfilled.

Much like the Middle Ages setting of BloodRayne, the Wild West setting of BloodRayne 2: Deliverance added to the credibility of the villain. Outlaws of the Wild West era in the US were legends in themselves. That legendary status made unbelievable things believable and reality unbelievable. Jesse James, Bill Doolin, Butch Cassidy… They were all legends of the Wild West. What did people really know about them, though? This idea of people coming up with exceedingly out-there stories about the outlaws would make it easy for a vampire to hide among the rest of the outlaws. People would come up with stories that would steer the public in another direction entirely.

Then there was BloodRayne: The Third Reich. Rayne (Natassia Malthe) was back, this time during World War II. Dr. Wolfgang Mangler (Clint Howard) wanted to steal Rayne’s blood to use as a super-strength serum for Adolf Hitler. Commander Ekart Brand (Michael Paré) wanted to steal the serum for himself, after having been turned into a vampire. Rayne teamed up with Nathaniel Gregor (Brendan Fletcher) and his gang of rebels to stop both Mangler and Brand from enacting their evil plans.

Once again, the setting changed between movies. What was once a film franchise set in the Middle Ages and the Wild West was now set in World War II. This was as close to the time period of the games as the film trilogy would get. It brought a war backdrop that neither previous Uwe Boll movie provided. It was an all new vibe. The first movie was the raw brutality of the Middle Ages. The second film was the gunslinger, everyone can become a legend, Wild West story. And now Uwe Boll was placing Rayne into a story about how war is hell and sometimes everyone must die for the greater good of humanity. Three different styles of storytelling, all within one franchise.

That death leading to greater good could be seen through Nathaniel Gregor’s rebels. He was working hard to create any sort of disruption within Hitler’s Third Reich. There was a decoder who was able to crack any of the encryption in the Nazi messaging. There were the friends who fought alongside him through the many little skirmishes throughout the war. All of them would lose their lives while they came head-to-head with Ekart and Mangler, showing that war took many lives in the pursuit of stopping the bad guys. This theme pulled from the other movies, but it hadn’t truly been focused on until it had the World War II backdrop.

Much like the previous entries, BloodRayne: The Third Reich provided a way for the villain to be a vampire without the world knowing. The Nazis were already monsters. They set out to exterminate any bit of humanity that wasn’t within their idea of the perfect specimen. It aligned with the idea of vampires who want nothing more than to kill, or to turn other people into vampires. The world would become vampires sort of thing. Replacing a Nazi with a vampire wouldn’t make the average person question anything. It was practically the same thing by another name. A monster.

As you can see, each of the period settings brought something different to the franchise. Each period setting made the movies feel different from one another. That’s what was necessary to keep the franchise going. Having the same setting over and over again would make the action feel repetitive, especially on the relatively small budget that most Uwe Boll movies have. His In the Name of the King sequels very much felt that way, though each of those had different characters with different personalities. Switching things up kept the action fresh and showed that vampires existed in, and were a major part of, many significant moments in history.

The thing about placing vampires in these time periods is that the vampire aspect could be lost through the retelling of history. There’s no definitive account of these periods, minute-by-minute. There are large chunks of time in the Middle Ages that are lost memories. Same with the Wild West. The big moments have been remembered, maybe with skewed details, but the smaller bits have been forgotten. Especially if people wanted them to be forgotten. Pat Garrett, who was a famous Wild West lawman, probably didn’t want word getting out that vampires were real. It would cause more harm than good, when trying to stop the vampires. When telling the story of how he stopped Billy the Kid, Garrett would likely leave out the part where Billy was a vampire. With World War II, so much was going on that something like a vampire super-serum could easily be missed. Yes, I know the movies aren’t based on real stories. They’re based on video games. But it would be possible for them to be real, if vampires existed, because these moments in history could be forgotten.

I alluded to another franchise that changed the setting with each installment. That franchise was The Gingerdead Man. The first flick was set in the present day, where the spirit of a serial killer possessed a gingerbread man and attacked people at a bakery. The second flick changed the setting to a low-budget B-movie studio, parodying the studio that producer Charles Band ran. The third movie was set in a 1970s roller rink, becoming a merger of Carrie and The Gingerdead Man. It was a franchise that changed things up with the setting of each installment, which kept things from simply feeling like the same gingerbread man killing people slasher movie every time.

These aren’t the only two franchises to do this sort of setting change to keep things fresh. Horror movies frequently play this game. After seven movies that happened at or near Camp Crystal Lake and whatever it was named later, the Friday the 13^th movies went to Manhattan, Hell, Space, and Springwood. The Leprechaun started out at a farmhouse before going to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Space, and the hood. Jack Frost went on vacation in the sequel, while Chucky ended up going to military school in one of his sequels.

Few of these franchises, however, played with time the same way that the BloodRayne movies did. They changed the setting, sure, but they didn’t change the period in which the movies were set. Aside from Gingerdead Man 3, that is. Not many horror icons are immortal dhampirs that manage to outlive generations, though. The period changes only helped to show that the threat of vampires wasn’t confined to one era. It was always a problem. It would always be a problem. Rayne would always be there to help stop the problem. That was the power of the time changes. Not that I think Uwe Boll ever thought of it like that. He probably just thought it would be fun to make these movies. And that’s cool, I guess.

Something almost as cool are these notes:

• Movies I alluded to in this post included The Gingerdead Man (week 69), Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust (week 252), Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver (week 302), Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (week 294), Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (week 85), Leprechaun in the Hood (week 120), Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood (week 120), Leprechaun 4: In Space (week 359), Jack Frost (week 54), and Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (week 159).
• The BloodRayne movies are far from the first time I’ve covered Uwe Boll. I’ve watched eight of his other movies. They were House of the Dead (week 59), Blackwoods (week 115), Alone in the Dark (week 152), Blubberella (week 189), In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220), In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (week 220), In the Name of the King: The Last Mission (week 220), and Far Cry (week 364).
• The BloodRayne movies put Mike Dopud atop the most featured actors list for Sunday “Bad” Movies at ten appearances. They were Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (week 33), Skin Trade (week 146), Alone in the Dark (week 152), In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220), Snow Buddies (week 270), Space Buddies (week 270), Far Cry (week 364), Futuresport (week 491), BloodRayne, and BloodRayne 2: Deliverance.
• BloodRayne 2: Deliverance was Michael Teigen’s eighth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance, following In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (week 220), Snow Buddies (week 270), Space Buddies (week 270), Far Cry (week 364), Russell Madness (week 382), Santa Buddies (week 420), and Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups (week 420).
• Clint Howard made his seventh Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week. His six movies are House of the Dead (week 59), Blackwoods (week 115), Blubberella (week 189), Santa with Muscles (week 211), The Wraith (week 355), Street Corner Justice (week 391), and BloodRayne: The Third Reich.
• Udo Kier appeared in BloodRayne, marking his sixth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance. His others were Far Cry (week 364), Surviving Christmas (week 367), Iron Sky (week 440), Iron Sky: The Coming Race (week 440), and Feardotcom (week 465).
• Billy Zane was also in BloodRayne. You might remember him from Going Overboard (week 67), The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (week 380), Sniper (week 430), Holmes & Watson (week 486), and Sniper: Reloaded (week 506).
• BloodRayne 2: Deliverance featured Chris Coppola, an actor who has appeared in Sunday “Bad” Movies in Far Cry (week 364), Russell Madness (week 382), Santa Buddies (week 420), The Search for Santa Paws (week 420), and Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups (week 420).
• The final six-timer was the only person to appear in all three BloodRayne movies. Michael Paré’s other three movies were Blackwoods (week 115), Blubberella (week 189), and Far Cry (week 364).
• Will Sanderson played an important role in BloodRayne. He also showed up in House of the Dead (week 59), Blackwoods (week 115), Alone in the Dark (week 146), and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220).
• Another five-timer was Darren Shahlavi, who was in The Marine 3: Homefront (week 30), Alone in the Dark (week 146), In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220), Cold Vengeance (week 511), and BloodRayne.
• I always enjoy when Michael Eklund pops up in a movie. He was in BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, The Marine 3: Homefront (week 30), House of the Dead (week 59), Blackwoods (week 115), and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220).
• Natassia Malthe played Rayne in the two BloodRayne sequels. She was also in DOA: Dead or Alive (week 191), In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (week 220), and Halloween: Resurrection (week 413).
• Michael Madsen was one of the lead actors in the first BloodRayne film. He had roles in Die Another Day (week 153), Not Another Not Another Movie (week 402), and I’m in Love with a Church Girl (week 436).
• John Tench returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, after appearing in Repeaters (week 62), In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (week 220), and Air Buddies (week 270).
• John Novak was in BloodRayne 2: Deliverance. He was also in The Incredible Hulk Returns (week 335), but you might remember him more for his role as the djinn in Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (week 410) and Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled (week 410).
• Brendan Fletcher is a recognizable face in Canadian produced content. He was in Alone in the Dark (week 146), Blubberella (week 189), BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, and BloodRayne: The Third Reich.
• T.J. Storm has a cool name, as well as three Sunday “Bad” Movies appearances in Mortal Kombat (week 140), Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls (week 208), and BloodRayne.
• Esteban Cueto has been in Getaway (week 135), The Scorpion King (week 380), and BloodRayne.
• BloodRayne featured Constantin Barbulescu, who previously popped up in Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (week 330), and Phantom Town (week 404).
• Rocky Taylor has now been in three Sunday “Bad” Movies. They were BloodRayne, Die Another Day (week 153), and Casino Royale (week 461).
• Banica Gheorghe was in Anaconda: Offspring (week 80), The Princess Switch (week 520), and BloodRayne.
• Moving onto BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, there was an actor named Tyron Leitso, who was in House of the Dead (week 59) and Far Cry (week 365).
• Another Uwe Boll regular in BloodRayne 2: Deliverance was Jamie Switch, who was in In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (week 220) and Far Cry (week 365).
• Natalie Burn appeared in Blubberella (week 189), In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (week 220), and BloodRayne: The Third Reich.
• Steffen Mennekes popped up in BloodRayne 2: Deliverance and BloodRayne: The Third Reich, after previously appearing in Sunday “Bad” Movies in Blubberella (week 189).
• There were a lot of actors in both BloodRayne: The Third Reich that also appeared in Blubberella (week 189). They were Boris Balta, William Belli, Petar Bencic, Arved Birnbaum, Mark Boldin, Dalibor Brkic, Katarina Brozincevic, Dusan Bucan, Annett Culp, Hrvoje Dokoza, Nik Goldman, Sven Jakir, Vjekoslav Katusin, Safiya Kaygin, Slavika Kosca-Vrlazi, Miran Kurspahic, Dora Lipovcan, Goran Manic, Dino More, Luka Peros, Karlo Pervan, Damir Poljicak, Branka Prislic, Frank Raffel, Michael Reed, Slaven Spanovic, and Davorka Tovilo.
• Ho-Sung Pak was in BloodRayne and Alone in the Dark (week 146).
• A Sound of Thunder (week 169) was the first Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Ben Kingsley. The second was BloodRayne.
• Kristanna Loken played Rayne in BloodRayne. She also had an important role in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220).
• Dorin Zaharia returned from Transylmania (week 297) for BloodRayne.
• Bryan C. Knight was in BloodRayne. He was also in Canadian classic The Final Sacrifice (week 312).
• Meat Loaf, the musician, was in both BloodRayne and Spice World (week 451).
• Finishing off BloodRayne was Geraldine Chaplin, who appeared in Casino Royale (week 461).
• Zack Ward was in Ed (week 11) back in the day. Now he showed up in BloodRayne 2: Deliverance.
• In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220) and BloodRayne 2: Deliverance both featured Aidan Williamson.
• Finally, two actors appeared in both Far Cry (week 365) and BloodRayne 2: Deliverance. They were Carrie Genzel and Michael Robinson.
• Have you seen the BloodRayne movies? What did you think of them? How do you feel about sequels that change the era when the movie is set? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
• Make sure to share any suggestions you might have about movies I should check out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies weeks. I’m always looking for movies I might not have otherwise known.
• Head on over to Instagram for more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.
• The next post will be about an older movie. It’ll be a 1970s musical that is pretty poorly regarded. At the same time, it has a fandom. I’ll be checking out something called Lost Horizon. Check out that post to see what it’s about and what I have to say about it. See you over there.

She's Out of Control (1989)

Movies were different in the past. The people behind making movies, mostly cishet white men, weren’t respectful to people that were different from them. They treated the worlds they built as though cishet white men were the only people who mattered. Sure, there were women, children, other races, and other sexualities present. But the cishet white men who were writing, directing, and producing movies usually presented their stories through the perspective of a cishet white male main character.

Telling stories through this lens frequently presented problems. Racism and sexism abounded. Blackface, yellowface, and brownface were sometimes ways to get minority characters into a story without hiring minority performers. Or it was used as a way to insult those other races without having someone present who would be able to object that treatment. Even through the 1980s, there were movies like Soul Man that featured white actors donning racial makeup for laughs. Sexism and misogyny were also major elements of movies through slashers and sex comedies, among others. Things have improved since then, but those elements aren’t completely gone.

One of the 1980s movies that was problematic due to the cishet white male lens was She’s Out of Control. Katie Simpson (Ami Dolenz) was a sheltered, nerdy girl. When her father, Doug (Tony Danza), went away on a business trip, Katie got a makeover. This caused Doug to react with hysteria. He couldn’t handle his fifteen-year-old daughter dating boys. With the help of his therapist, Dr. Fishbinder (Wallace Shawn), Doug manipulated Katie in whatever way he could to keep her as sheltered as possible. It was a struggle for him to not be the only man in her life.

She’s Out of Control wasn’t about racism or misogyny in the typical way. It did have misogynist elements, however, thanks to the story. The movie was about trust. Doug had been such a controlling factor over his daughter’s life for so long, he couldn’t handle losing that control. He couldn’t handle losing that control because he didn’t trust his daughter and didn’t trust any of the boys she started dating. The only boy he trusted was the boy next door, who he had forced his daughter to date. She felt no feelings for that kid and, as soon as she got her makeover, broke up with him in favour of playing the field. Doug didn’t like that.

It might seem right now that control was more of the issue than anything. You might think that Doug simply wanted to control his daughter for her entire life. He was the reason she had braces. He was the reason she stayed in and studied, rather than going out to have a social life. Before the makeover, I mean. And you might be right. But it was definitely the trust issues that drove the story forward. It wasn’t that Doug wanted Katie to be with Richard (Lance Wilson-White). He did, but it wasn’t because he wanted to control her life. The reason Doug was comfortable with that relationship and wanted it to continue was that Richard had grown up next door. Doug knew Richard. He had known him for Richard’s entire life. There was trust built there because Doug knew Richard. Richard was the known.

Every other guy that Katie began dating was the unknown. Doug hadn’t watched these guys grow up. He didn’t know what they were like. He didn’t trust them to treat his daughter well. Not that he ended up treating her well. After the first date or two, Doug began screening the guys as they came to the door, turning them all away for one reason or another. They weren’t right for his daughter. Sure, this was controlling. I can’t deny that. But the control came from a lack of trust he had with the guys. He thought they were all focused on Katie’s body and nothing else. Based on a beach scene later in the movie, he was right.

Aside from Joey (Dana Ashbrook). Doug’s first impression of Joey wasn’t a good one. After turning away so many potential suitors, Katie snuck into a date with Joey. She made sure Joey didn’t come to the door, instead meeting him outside at his big-wheeled pickup truck. Doug couldn’t see who the guy was, only seeing the big truck, and made his judgement based on that. He didn’t trust people who drove vehicles like that. They were from the wrong side of the tracks and would do bad things. You know, societal judgment, class difference stuff. When he finally met Joey, face-to-face, they would connect. Unintentionally, but the connection was there.

I say unintentionally because Doug was being helped, if you could call it that, by Dr. Fishbinder. This doctor was only making Doug’s trust issues worse. As revealed at the end of the movie, he wasn’t even a credible doctor. Dr. Fishbinder was writing about things he had no experience with. He wrote about raising horny, teenage daughters without ever having a daughter. Doug didn’t discover that until the end, though, and spent most of the movie following Fishbinder’s increasingly ludicrous advice. Increasingly offensive advice.

The advice began with the screening of all the boyfriends to take control of his daughter’s dating life. There’s that control again. It wasn’t so much that Doug wanted control, even with his sleep-talking mantra of “I’m in control.” He just felt like he was losing the love of his daughter for boys, and he didn’t trust the boys. She was supposed to be daddy’s little girl. The control idea only gave him reason to let his lack of trust in anything unknown come to the forefront. But it was spurned by the advice of Dr. Fishbinder.

When Katie began dating Joey and not bringing him anywhere near the house, Dr. Fishbinder told Doug to become fake friends with the new boyfriend. Doug got home to find a makeout party in the living room and used that opportunity to connect with Joey. The problem was that he actually formed a sort of connection with the guy. Joey was allowed to drive Doug’s Jaguar. In fact, he was allowed to street race Doug’s Jaguar, with Doug excitedly watching. The car getting destroyed by the second train of a two train fake-out is beside the point. Doug rooted for Joey in the race, showing that he had invested in Joey, however little. There was a small connection. Joey would later come to Doug to talk out his emotions after Katie dumped him. Doug didn’t kick him out, showing that the bond was there.

The third, and maybe worst, piece of advice that Dr. Fishbinder gave Doug came when Katie started dating Timothy (Matthew Perry). Timothy seemed like a nice, upstanding young man. He met Doug and mentioned he was going away to Yale for school, against his parents’ wishes because they wanted him to go to Princeton. He said he would bring Katie back an hour before her curfew. It was all the right things to make Doug happy. However, Dr. Fishbender pointed out that Timothy was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and said Doug needed to show Katie how bad Timothy was. Doug began stalking the high school senior, snapping photos of Timothy with other teenage girls. You know, that real creeper kind of stuff. A full grown, adult man taking pictures of teens getting their freak on. All because he (justifiably, when you see what he sees) didn’t trust Timothy to treat his daughter well.

It all came to a head during senior prom, which Timothy took Katie to. Doug made sure that his dinner date with his girlfriend, Janet (Catherine Hicks), and her parents was at the same location as the prom. That way, he was able to sneak onto the dance floor to spy on his daughter. The chaperones rightfully kicked him out. Then he followed the teens to a motel and essentially broke into the bedroom where Timothy tried to force himself on Katie, much to her refusal. Yes, he helped his daughter. But it really showed that he didn’t trust her to handle her own situations. She didn’t ask for his help. He just kind of barged in, which was a breach of their mutual trust. Because the trust was already gone from his end. He had no trust in anyone.

Dr. Fishbinder was a major source of these trust issues. When Doug couldn’t handle the thought of his daughter dating boys he didn’t know, he sought out Dr. Fishbinder’s help. Instead of helping, Dr. Fishbinder egged on Doug’s thoughts. He made them worse. He threw Doug into a downward spiral of trust issues with his daughter. Doug probably would still have his Jaguar and wouldn’t be as predatory if it weren’t for Dr. Fishbinder’s influence. The doctor made things worse. Much, much worse. To the point where it hurt Doug’s career and his relationship with Janet.

Although you might be able to point at Katie living her own life without Doug’s oversight as the cause of Doug’s stress, I think it was more about his trust in other people than anything. Doug was a guy who was comfortable with the things that he knew. He knew his daughter. He knew her boyfriend. He knew her marks in school. When unknowns were thrown into his life through Katie’s new, carefree attitude after her makeover, Doug was uncomfortable. He didn’t trust the new people in his daughter’s life. He didn’t trust his daughter to stay safe around those people. It was a lack of trust, more than anything, that drove Doug to be a crazy man.

Nearly thirty-five years after She’s Out of Control was released to theaters, it’s easy to see why the movie wouldn’t be made anymore. Having a story from the point-of-view of a father who doesn’t trust his daughter and her sexual freedom is no longer an easy sell. People are more open about their sexuality. The double standard of men sleeping around being cool and women sleeping around being bad has begun to fade. Having this story in a major, theatrical comedy would be seen as a misogynistic story (which it was) that perpetuated heteronormative double standards (which it would). There’s a story to be told about a father who can’t handle his daughter hitting puberty and showing interest in boys. This is not it.

There’s a growth within society as time passes by. People begin to understand each other. They begin to care for each other. That’s not the case for everyone. If the Trump presidency showed us anything, there are still a lot of people out there filled with hate and prejudice. But movies have, for the most part, taken large steps forward as time moved forward. Racism, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry have lessened to a great extent on the big screen. Diversity has become a bigger part of the filmmaking process, allowing stories to be told and influenced by people who aren’t cishet white men. Though, every once in a while, a very offensive cishet white male story like Chicks Dig Gay Guys sneaks through.

With these changes happening behind the scenes, movies will only get more inclusive and less offensive on the whole. There may still be some outliers, but the advancements seem to be outweighing any setbacks. Things have changed a lot since the early 2000s, the 1990s, the 1980s, and anything before. Storytellers care more about how they treat their characters and how their characters represent the audience. We might just be beyond the days of most major releases featuring bigotry.

We’re not past these notes, though:

• I mentioned two other Sunday “Bad” Movies features in this post. They were Soul Man (week 354) and Chicks Dig Gay Guys (week 145).
• Dr. Fishbinder was played by Wallace Shawn, an actor who has shown up in Sunday “Bad Movies a good many times. His previous appearances were Furry Vengeance (week 162), Mom and Dad Save the World (week 186), Air Buddies (week 270), Cop and a Half: New Recruit (week 340), Southland Tales (week 428), and Don Peyote (week 445).
• Robbie Rist returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in She’s Out of Control. He already showed up in Iron Eagle (week 90), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (week 184), Sharknado (week 190), and The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time (week 510).
• She’s Out of Control featured Kevin West, who was also in Bio-Dome (week 124), Santa with Muscles (week 211), and Super Mario Bros. (week 248).
• Stan Rodarte was also in She’s Out of Control. He could be seen in Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (week 372), The Pirate Movie (week 489), and Grease 2 (week 508).
• Dominick Brascia was in Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning (week 46), Iron Eagle (week 90), and She’s Out of Control.
• Another three-timer was Derek McGrath, who has been in Freaked (week 131), Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (week 400), and She’s Out of Control.
• She’s Out of Control also featured Oliver Muirhead from Roxanne’s Best Christmas Ever (week 108) and Alvin and the Chipmunks (week 470).
• Brad Kesten was in Monster in the Closet (week 55) and She’s Out of Control.
• Terry Willis was in Iron Eagle (week 90) before returning to Sunday “Bad” Movies in She’s Out of Control.
• Do you remember Lindsley Allen from Showgirls (week 170)? Yeah, Lindsley Allen was also in She’s Out of Control.
• Jim Raposa returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies this week. He was in She’s Out of Control, as well as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (week 184).
• Ria Pavia appeared in both She’s Out of Control and Son in Law (week 251).
• Killer Klowns from Outer Space (week 361) featured Jimmy Locust, who was also featured in She’s Out of Control.
• Dana Ashbrook was one of the most recognizable faces in She’s Out of Control. Part of that was due to his appearance in Ghost Dad (week 435).
• Finally, Peter Linari was in She’s Out of Control and Maximum Overdrive (week 479).
• Have you seen She’s Out of Control? What were your thoughts about it? Let me know in the comments.
• You can also use the comments to drop any suggestions you might have about movies for me to check out. I’m always open to suggestions.
• Check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram for whenever I actually post something there.
• This post is going up a couple days late. Hopefully the next one won’t. It’s going to be a franchise post since it’ll be a franchise week. I’m going back to Uwe Boll, one of the most dependable directors for Sunday “Bad” Movies. This time, I’ll be taking on the BloodRayne trilogy. I hope to see you next week when I write about it.

The Tropes in Above the Law (1988)

The more you watch movies, the more you will notice the tropes that come with them. Writers, directors, and producers have their bag of tricks that they frequently like to revisit. That’s why so many movies share different story beats, different shots, and different sound effects. We all know the Wilhelm scream. These little tidbits have become the language of film. They have become part of the language that anyone who watches movies speaks.

As part of Sunday “Bad” Movies, I watch a whole lot of trope-filled flicks. There are a lot of movies that get bad reputations due to how many tropes they utilize. Audiences recognize ideas they’ve seen before in other movies and television shows. If too many of them are used, to the point where the originality of the storytelling gets blurred, audiences will turn against a story. They like the tropes. They feel comfort from the tropes. But they’ll get bored if there are too many tropes.

One movie that relied a little too heavily on tropes was Above the Law, and the tropes were engrained from the foundational level of the story. Nico Toscani (Steven Seagal) was an up-and-coming CIA man in his younger years. When he uncovered a drug ring within the agency, from the top ranks down, he stepped away from the job. He became a police officer, married Sara (Sharon Stone), and had a kid. After settling into his comfortable Chicago life, Nico and his police partner Jacks (Pam Grier) discovered the same drug ring operating in their city. It was up to them to bring it down because the FBI wasn’t going to do it.

Above the Law was an action flick that very much fit into the action movies of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The story, itself, was a trope with the international drug running going on. I can think of a whole bunch of movies from that time when the story was about a police officer or military personnel taking down a drug running operation originating in another country. In this case, it was opium out of Vietnam. The CIA was using the aftermath of the Vietnam war to bring opium out of Vietnam for profit. Nico wanted to put an end to it.

It's a story that was also part of Aces: Iron Eagle III. In that movie, Chappy and his air stunt show buddies took their planes to Peru because an old friend was killed at the hands of a drug cartel. There was cocaine running from Peru to the US. Chappy was a former military pilot, trying to put the cartel to an end. The main difference between Aces: Iron Eagle III and Above the Law was the location. One of them brought the fight to the US, while the other took the fight to a foreign territory in Peru. It was the same idea, though.

One of the more famous examples of this action story would be the James Bond movie Licence to Kill. It was one of the Timothy Dalton vehicles that was heavily influenced by the action flicks of that era. James Bond went up against a drug lord who had major influence in a fictional Central American nation. It was a former special agent going up against a drug lord on foreign soil. Very much the same basic story as Aces: Iron Eagle III or Above the Law.

Licence to Kill shared one other major trope with Above the Law and many other action movies of that time. How many times have you heard a police officer in a movie be told to “turn in your gun and badge”? Licence to Kill was one of many James Bond movies where the title character was suspended because of his actions, yet decided to go rogue and finish the mission, anyway. Where did he get the money to travel around the world while suspended? I have no idea. That’s not the point. It used the trope.

This post is about Above the Law using the tropes, though. One of the first things that Nico discovered in Chicago was the smuggling of C4. He knew the look and smell of it because of his CIA experience. The guys he caught with the C4 were immediately released and Nico was told not to tail them. It wasn’t his case anymore. It was the FBI’s case. Nico didn’t listen. He tailed the guys, and he continued to do things he was told not to do. This led to his boss asking for his gun and badge. Even then, it didn’t stop Nico from going after the bad guys. He was an action hero in a police movie, of course. He was the trope that many police movies around that time used.

One more example of the turn in your badge trope could be seen in Stone Cold. In this case, the reprimanding happened before the events of the film. The main character had a history of excessive violence when he was pursuing criminals. Now a civilian, while on suspension, he jumped in to stop a grocery store robbery by doing his excessive violence thing again. He had already turned in his badge and gun but was still doing his crime-fighting thing. It would lead to the FBI tapping him in for an undercover mission.

Now that the badge stuff is out of the way, I want to get back to the moment in Above the Law that sparked the main storyline. I want to get to the thing that put the story in motion. There was that little bit of C4 smuggling that really got things going. C4 was a major part of Above the Law. It was essentially the inciting incident. There was a bombing at a church caused by C4. And, most of all, there was supposed to be the bombing and assassination of a senator. The C4 was a major part of the story, a weapon used by the villains to secure the safety of their drug operation.

C4 was something that movies loved to use at that point. It was an explosive that people knew about, so it was an easy way to describe the cause of an explosion without the catch-all of bomb. It made things sound a tad bit more technical. If I’m remembering correctly, Top Dog involved a bunch of C4 in a bomb during the coalition at the end. The Neo-Nazis chose to use C4 to blow up the stage and a bulletproof car so they could kill the people in charge of the coalition. At least, that’s how I remember it. C4 was one of the go-to sources of explosion for action movies at that time. It kind of still is, too.

There were various other tropes throughout Above the Law that were at their hey-day in the 1980s, but are still prominent today. There was backwards driving during a chase scene in a parking garage. That same sort of thing happened during the Pac-Man scene in Pixels. The bad guy tortured Nico and described what he was torturing Nico with while he was doing it. That’s just a standard action movie thing that goes back at least as far as Goldfinger with the laser table. The heroic police officer knowing some form of martial arts was something also seen in Samurai Cop. There was some sort of dive bar that Nico got in a fight in. That type of dive would be popularized in Road House, since the entire movie was about cleaning a dive up.

All these tropes came together to build Above the Law, which felt like a Frankenstein’s monster because of them. It felt like someone took a little bit of this movie and a little bit of that movie and squished them together. What came out was something that felt like everything else at that time. And it almost succeeded, as full of tropes as it was. It almost made for something pretty good. The problem, and what made the tropes so much more noticeable and grating, was Steven Seagal. His acting was an issue, taking you out of the story, and allowing you to more easily notice the flaws within it. It almost worked. If not for him, it probably would have.

Tropes can be a comforting bit of movie watching. As an audience, you sometimes want to see something you recognize. The difficulty for filmmakers is that they sometimes rely too much on tropes. When the entire story is crafted through tropes, it can get tiring. Audiences pick up on things like that. They know the tropes. They like some of them and they like when they’re used sparingly. Unless a movie is some sort of parody or spoof, playing upon the tropes to poke fun at them, filmmakers should stay away from making them trope after trope after trope. There’s no originality in that, and no enjoyment.

Here are a few notes to close things out:

• I mentioned a bunch of movies during this post. They were Aces: Iron Eagle III (week 90), Stone Cold (week 423), Top Dog (week 126), Pixels (week 407), Samurai Cop (week 66), and Road House (week 200).
• Thalmus Rasulala made a third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Above the Law. He was previously in Blacula (week 82) and Mom and Dad Save the World (week 186).
• A recognizable face in Above the Law was Sharon Stone, who was also in Catwoman (week 174) and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (week 400).
• Pam Grier was also in Above the Law. She already popped up in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (week 224) and The Adventures of Pluto Nash (week 446).
• Michael Rooker had a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance in Above the Law. He would also make appearances in The Marine 2 (week 30) and Jumper (week 452).
• Finishing off the third appearances in Above the Law was Gene Hartline, who was in Stone Cold (week 423) and Maximum Overdrive (week 479).
• The star of Above the Law was Steven Seagal, who was the star of Exit Wounds (week 93).
• Gregory Allen Williams was in God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness (week 319) and Above the Law.
• Dennis Phun returned from Surf Nazis Must Die (week 484) for Above the Law.
• Finally, John C. Reilly had a small role in Above the Law, well before he would appear in Holmes and Watson (week 486).
• Have you seen Above the Law? What did you think? Did you recognize the tropes in it? What ones did I miss? What other movies can you think of that featured these tropes? Answer any of these questions in the comments, or leave any of your other thoughts.
• If there’s a movie that you think would make a good fit in Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know. I’m open to suggestions. In fact, I appreciate them. They help me discover movies I might not have otherwise known.
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is on Instagram. Check it out.
• Now it’s time to look towards next week, when I’ll be checking out a movie I don’t know. I know it enough to schedule it, but I don’t know how I know it even that well. I don’t remember scheduling it. I don’t remember how I found out about it. Anyway, I’ll be checking out She’s Out of Control. It’s Tony Danza time! I’ll see you next week for that.