Mubi Monday: Blue Steel (1990)

It is a happy coincidence that I have spent the past few months hankering for a rewatch of Blue Steel and it has now appeared on the MUBI streaming service. I couldn’t remember many details, but I remembered liking it. I hoped it would hold up as a solid thriller.

It does.

Jamie Lee Curtis stars as Megan Turner, a young woman who we see at the start of the movie finally achieving her dream of becoming a cop. She is barely on the streets for a few hours when she foils an armed robber in a store (a small turn from Tom Sizemore). One of the customers lying terrified on the floor is Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver), a man impressed by Megan, and also impressed by the gun dropped by the robber. Taking the gun away for his own personal use, Eugene complicates the situation for Megan, who is subsequently investigated for shooting an “unarmed” man. And things get even more complicated when people turn up dead, shot with bullets that literally have the name of our heroine on them. What could make the situation even worse? Maybe Megan and Eugene becoming romantically involved with one another?

Co-written by director Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Red, Blue Steel is a 1990 thriller that feels as if it belongs in a later part of the decade. It has everything you expect from this type of thing, including a supporting cast of characters containing one or two people you know aren’t going to make it to the end, but one or two elements that help it to stand out from the crowd.

The first USP here is Ron Silver’s villain, equal parts charming and completely psychopathic. Silver is the kind of actor I miss nowadays, we don’t have a modern equivalent, and he is superb here, especially once he drops any facade and reveals his true nature, at a surprisingly early stage in the proceedings.

The second USP here is the brilliant commentary on the fetishization of guns. From the title to the opening credits, from the motivation of the villain to the changing power dynamics that depend on who is or isn’t armed at any one time, Blue Steel isn’t just a typical thriller with gunfights here and there. It’s a film that uses the broken mind of one man to show just how strange and dangerous the typical American “gun-worship” mindset is.

Curtis is fine in the lead role, if a bit unconvincing, but her main reason for being onscreen is to look attractive while holding an attractively alluring weapon (in the eyes of the villain anyway). Elizabeth Peña is the best friend, which immediately puts her in danger, and Clancy Brown is a gruff detective who enlists the help of our lead, which immediately puts HIM in danger. Kevin Dunn is a standard superior officer, reminding our lead of the rules and her duty, and there’s an enjoyable little turn from Richard Jenkins, the sharp lawyer defending his “innocent” client, as well as welcome, albeit brief, performances from Louise Fletcher and Philip Bosco, playing the parents who view the career choice of their daughter in very different ways.

Although it feels a bit flat during the final scenes, and those thinking Bigelow would throw more action scenes into this will be disappointed, Blue Steel works as well as it does because it never loses focus. It’s about a dangerous man falling in love with a woman, but he falls in love with her only because he sees her attached to a gun. And it’s a gun that drives almost every decision in this film, by being present or being absent.

8/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Shudder Saturday: Strange Behavior (1981)

Filmed in New Zealand, but set in Illinois, and considered by many to be an Ozploitation flick, Strange Behavior is a very odd experience. And it's not a very satisfying one, which is a shame when you consider how well the premise could have worked.

A number of teens are turned into killers. A local police officer (John Brady, played by Michael Murphy) believes it may be the work of Dr. Le Sange (Arthur Dignam), who happens to be deceased. Perhaps his work is being continued by a loyal assistant, Gwen Parkinson (Fiona Lewis). Whatever is really going on, Brady needs to get to the bottom of it, even before he realises that his son (Pete, played by Dan Shor) has been dragged in to the plan.

Directed by Michael Laughlin, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Bill Condon, Strange Behavior is almost an entirely flat and unexciting time for the duration (and it runs at just over 100 minutes). Very few of the supporting characters are memorable, occasional set-pieces just appear and then end, without any feeling of being properly framed for maximum impact, and even the third act lacks any decent scares or tension. I suppose it is also structured in a way that is supposed to have viewers looking forward to the central mystery being solved. If anybody else watched this and cared about the resolution of the mystery then please let me know.

As well as lacking any decent thrills, Laughlin also wastes almost his entire cast. Okay, Murphy and Shor are okay as the older and younger Brady men, mainly because they get the most screentime, but Lewis doesn't have half as much fun in her role as she should have been allowed to have, Dignam is used to have a sly bit of fun that just doesn't work, and Louise Fletcher, perhaps worst of all, is just sidelined for much of the film. Louise Fletcher. If you get her to take a role in your movie then, dammit, you should make that role as good as she deserves it to be.

There may be some people reading this who think I missed the entire point of the film, which is a homage to certain films of the 1950s. Unfortunately, I don't think it works in that regard either. Those making the film had a choice to either make a straight horror, make a homage, or make something that landed somewhere between the two. This works as none of those things, and one sequence featuring a character wearing a Tor Johnson mask isn't enough to convince me otherwise.

I know there are some people out there who seem to enjoy this one. I just struggle to think of anything that would appeal to most film fans.

3/10

You can get a pack of discs here (R1).

Flowers In The Attic (1987)

Here is what I used to know about Flowers In The Attic. It was based on a very popular book, the first in a series, by V. C. Andrews (AKA Virginia C. Andrews). It had something to do with family members being a lot more familiar with one another than they should be. And it probably wasn't something I would be very interested in.

I was right on the first two points, but oh so wrong with my last assumption. Although I have never read any of the original novels, I have finally (thanks to a recent release from Arrow Video) seen the film version and it is quite the experience. Sometimes dark and twisted, sometimes unintentionally hilarious, it's an entertainingly bonkers presentation of a story that isn't exactly safe and dull to begin with.

Victoria Tennant plays a woman who moves back home with her four children (the two eldest played by Jeb Stuart Adams and Kristy Swanson) after the sudden death of her husband. It's the only way she can think of keeping everyone in line for a comfortable lifestyle, as she hopes to regain the love of her dying father just in time to get some of that nice inheritance money. Her mother (Louise Fletcher) is unimpressed, and certainly doesn't seem to have any warm and fuzzy feelings towards her grandchildren, for reasons that are soon made clear. It's not long until the kids are spending most of their time in the attic, initially happy to be left alone until it starts to feel as if they are being left up there to rot.

Directed by Jeffrey Bloom, who also adapted the source material into screenplay form, Flowers In The Attic knows exactly what it wants to be and admirably does just that. There's no pretension here, no attempts to twist the major story events into something more palatable and polished, and the fact that it isn't often very cinematic doesn't detract enough from the sheer fun of the outrageous melodrama.

And Bloom made sure that all of his cast were on the same page. Tennant gives one of her most enjoyable turns as the scheming parent, arguably even more fun here than she was while being deliberately comedic in All Of Me. Fletcher gives another fantastically cold performance, and Swanson and Adams always look suitably victimised and affected by their strange, restrictive, upbrining. Ben Ryan Ganger and Lindsay Parker play the two younger children, and do what is asked of them.

Although it's hard to watch this film with a straight face, it's also hard to disagree with how all of the ingredients are mixed into such a gothic-tinged, heady brew. Bloom knows the audience, knows to keep the characters emotionally overwrought, and knows that the dark concepts at the heart of the story are strong enough to offset any potential pacing issues in the middle section.

I am already looking forward to seeing the other filmed version of this tale, as well as the other TV movies adapted from the rest of the novels in the series. Watch this space.

7/10

The shiny new release of Flowers In The Attic can be bought here.
Americans can get this here disc . . . . here.