MAGNUM FORCE: A Good Man Always Knows His Limitations

Magnum Force (1973) – Directed by Ted Post – Starring Clint Eastwood, Hal Holbrook, Mitchell Ryan, David Soul, Felton Perry, Robert Urich, Tim Matheson, Kip Niven, and John Mitchum.

MAGNUM FORCE is one of my favorite sequels of all time, and serves as a perfect example of how to make sequels more about story and less about repetition.

Too many sequels, of course, simply attempt to regurgitate the previous film, and the primary way they try to make your experience better is to simply give your more of whatever it is they think you liked the first time.

I was worried that MAGNUM FORCE would simply give us more guns, more one-liners, more people getting shot by Clint Eastwood. To a certain extent, the film does that, but what’s so impressive about MAGNUM is that the story here is built off the story in DIRTY HARRY and forces Inspector Harry Callahan (Eastwood) to confront fellow cops who think they can make a difference by stepping outside of the system.

It’s a bold move and one I doubt many films today would make as MAGNUM runs the risk of alienating those who saw Callahan’s anti-system individualism in a heroic light. MAGNUM takes Callahan from the individual who rejects the system to one who defends it.

At the end of DIRTY HARRY, tosses his badge into the water, symbolizing his rejection of the system he has been sworn to uphold, on the grounds that a systemic failure has put the rights of the criminal over the rights of the victim. As MAGNUM FORCE opens, we see that his rejection of the badge was only temporary. He’s still a cop, though he’s been assigned to Stakeout duty by Lieutenant Briggs (Hal Holbrook), which is designed to keep him off the streets and away from criminals he might shoot. Eventually, as the body count in the city begins to rise, Briggs has to call Callahan in to help with the investigation, and that’s when Callahan ends up defending the system he so dislikes.

Deep in the film, after Briggs has been revealed as the leader of a group of rogue, rookie cops and he has Callahan at gunpoint, he tells Callahan: “You’re a good cop, Harry. You had a chance to join my team, but you decided to stick with the system.”

Callahan grunts back: “Briggs, I hate the goddamn system! But until someone comes along with changes that make sense, I’ll stick with it.”

The key difference for Callahan between his actions in DIRTY HARRY (when he killed a criminal) and the actions of the rogue cops in MAGNUM FORCE is that Harry waited for the system to break down and fail the victims before he killed Scorpio, while in this film the cops are killing people prior to any significant breakdown. Scorpio committed crimes, got arrested, and was subsequently released, while the criminals here may have been in and out of the system in the past, but there is no clear systemic collapse here to justify the actions of the cops.

There’s also a sense of subterfuge here that casts the rogue cops in a negative light. Scorpio knew Callahan was coming for him, and Callahan didn’t hide his final attack. In MAGNUM, however, the cops use subterfuge afforded them as cops to get close to their targets to kill them at close range. The cops pull their victims over as if it’s a routine traffic stop and then pump them full of bullets. Importantly, MAGNUM doesn’t have the cops shoot innocent victims to turn us against them, but rather is willing to have a little moral complexity in the film and forces Callahan to confront his actions with Scorpio.

Still, the film has Harry remind us that he hates the system, too, even though he’s its biggest defender this time around.

The rogue cops are a group of combat vets who have gone through the police academy together. Callahan’s partner Early Smith (Felton Perry) tells him that this set of rookies “came through the Academy after me. They stick together like flypaper, you know? Everybody thought they were queer for each other,” to which Callahan replies, “If the rest of you could shoot like them, I wouldn’t care if the whole damn department was queer.”

There’s a nice cool-in-hindsight aspect to the rookie cops as they’re played by actors who went on to have solid careers: David Soul, Tim Mattheson, Robert Urich, and John C. McGinley. Actually, the fourth cop is played by Kip Niven, who has gone on to have a pretty solid career, too, but it’s not a big part and every time he was on screen I kept trying to figure out if it was McGinley or not, until I remembered I could just look it up on my phone. Other than Soul, the cops don’t have a whole lot of face time (even during the big action sequence at the end it’s hard to differentiate them because they’re wearing their helmeted outfits befitting bike cops), but it’s an effective unit.

MAGNUM FORCE also humanizes Callahan; he’s not just a driven cop here. We see him at the house of a fellow cop’s wife to check in on her, we see a picture of his deceased wife, we see him hook up with his downstairs neighbor, and we get a greater sense of humor. One of the best exchanges of the film comes between Callahan and another neighbor. Harry has detected a bomb in his mailbox and he’s unscrewing the face plate to get at it when another tenant gets all over him for doing it.

“I’ll call the police,” he threatens meekly.

“I am the police,” Harry grumbles back.

MAGNUM FORCE is definitely a bigger film, giving the audience more of what it liked the first time around, but it also gives us things we didn’t see the first time, and while Harry Callahan was a stand-in for every cop in America in DIRTY HARRY, in MAGNUM he becomes his own man. It’s a bit ironic that in the film where he’s less the individualistic gunslinger he also becomes a more well-rounded individual, but MAGNUM FORCE continually challenges Harry’s character and the result is a superior film.

HERCULES: Of Pleasing Daddy, Selling Merhcandise, and a Motown Chorus

Hercules (1997) – The 35th Walt Disney Animated Classic – Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker – Starring Tate Donovan, Danny DeVito, James Woods, Susan Egan, Rip Torn, Bobcat Goldthwait, Matt Frewer, Hal Holbrook, Paul Shaffer, Wayne Knight, Keith David, Frank Welker, Roger Bart, and Charlton Heston.

HERCULES is what happens when you push your formula one step too far.

Disney’s 35th Animated Classic comes near the end of the 1990s Disney Renaissance, and I think the film works as Litmus Test of sorts. If you love all things Disney, there’s enough here to make HERCULES a rather enjoyable film, while if you are not a fan of the Renaissance, my guess is that HERCULES is going to grate on your ears and eyeballs rather harshly. For me, I like the movie without embracing it fully. There’s an overwhelming sense of the ghost of other films’ ideas here than adds a sense of sameness to the film.

To be clear, there are parts of HERCULES that I love. The Motown-singing Greek chorus is fantastic and adds both an interesting and unique vibe to the movie. When these talented, toga-wearing ladies are singing, HERCULES sparkles with energy and cleverness. Unfortunately, they’re not the focus of the movie. While there semi-frequent appearances help the film, they’re in a secondary position to Hercules’ story, and that’s where the film comes up short.

Hercules (Tate Donovan does the talking, Roger Bart does the singing) is the son of Zeus who gets poisoned by two minions of Hades (James Woods) and loses his immortality. Hades wants to conquer the world or Olympus or Canada or something and the Fates tell him the only person who can stop him is Hercules and only on one specific night 18 years from that moment when the planets are in alignment and Hades can free the Titans.

Of course.

Your patience with that level of plot contrivance is just the kind of Litmus Test I was referring to up above. When Disney movies are working, it’s easy enough to accept this kind of set-up as the necessary foundation that allows for the enjoyable story to take place on top of it. When a film isn’t working, however, the foundation sticks up like an eye sore, and that’s what’s going on here. By telling us that Hercules is destined to save the world (or Olympus or Canada or whatever), the film renders it’s big training sequences kinda irrelevant. Hercules wants to be a hero in order to regain his godhood, which will allow him to live on Olympus with the other gods. (Plus, because it’s a Disney movie, he has the requisite Daddy Issues that plague many of our heroes and heroines.) Herc trains with Philoctetes (Danny DeVito), a satyr who earns his place in the world by training heroes.

Phil is in career crisis mode, however, as his past champions – Achilles and Odysseus (or maybe he calls him Ulysses – it’s not important) – have let him down. Hercules proves himself to Phil, however, and his training begins. These training sequences are incredibly common in the sword and sandal films, of course, and HERCULES does score some points by echoing those films.

It’s one of the few times in the movie where there’s something for older fans, because whatever else HERCULES is, it’s a Disney film that’s clearly aimed at a young crowd. There are some adult issues in the film, but for the most part, this movie is going for as young a crowd as any modern Disney movie. Characters have very little sense of grey; other than love interest Megara (Susan Egan), the HERCULES is populated with folks who are overblown in their attributes. Even the characters shapes and sizes are exaggerated, and Zeus’ big, smiling face is creepy in its intense, bug-eyed jocularity.

Hercules himself isn’t very likable, either. He’s a nice kid with big powers and a clumsy persona, but as soon as he finds out his human parents aren’t his real parents, he ditches them to go off and make his biological daddy proud and win his way back into Heaven. His instant decision to ditch his adopted parents makes him come off as a bit of a dick and his relationship with Phil just sort of happens.

Which isn’t to say there’s no enjoyment to be had watching Phil and Herc run through obvious routines, just that it’s the kind of enjoyment I get from a program when I fall asleep watching something else and then wake up and don’t have the energy to get off the couch to get the remote to get my TV to another channel.

James Woods is entertaining as Hades, but it’s a typical Disney Big Ugly villain, just as Bobcat Goldthwait and Matt Frewer are good as Panic and Pain, but they’re typical wacky henchmen.

The one shining star of HERCULES is Megara, the love interest with shady intentions. She made a deal with Hades to save her boyfriend and then that boyfriend ran off with someone else, leaving her without her lover and with a debt to pay to the God of the Underworld. Meg gets run through the standard plays-him/falls-in-love-with-him plot, but there’s some actual conflict and character development here.

At the end of it all, HERCULES is neither good nor bad. Or rather, it’s both good and bad, with some enjoyable moments tucked in among a lot of familiar territory. What brings me back to HERCULES is the enjoyable mix of the Motown sound with the Greek setting. Unfortunately, the songs are mostly forgettable and the Greek setting rarely stands out. Watching HERCULES isn’t a waste of my time – it’s just not the best way I can spend it.

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And hey, if you like all ages stories, check out my kid’s novel ADVENTURES OF THE FIVE: THE COMING OF FROST. Available now in both paperback and for the Kindle.

CREEPSHOW: It’s Father’s Day and I Got My Cake!

Creepshow (1982) – Directed by George A. Romero – Starring Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson, E. G. Marshall, Stephen King, Ed Harris, and Tom Atkins.

Movie anthologies are a tough sell; you’ve got a trapped audience that you’ve got to keep entertained for two hours or so, and because you’ve chosen to tell a bunch of little stories instead of one big one, you’ve got to constantly keep winning them over. It’s a much safer strategy to pull the Robert Altman or Paul Thomas Anderson card and let your small stories intertwine, so they spread out over the course of the film, weaving in and out. CREEPSHOW doesn’t do this, but it does have a clever linking strategy of presenting the movie as one issue of a 1950′s-styled horror comic book.

George A. Romero serves up five rather tasty short stories over his two hours, with a framing device involving a little kid having the comic we’re watching taken away from his by his dick of a dad (Tom Atkins).

While technically a horror movie, there’s not a whole lot of scary in CREEPSHOW. There is a good amount of creepiness, though, which the title promises, so it’s all good.

The first story, “Father’s Day,” sees a mean, dead old bastard (Jon Lormer) come back from the dead to enact revenge on his crappy family. His daughter Bedelia killed him because he was a loud-mouthed ass who kept yammering for his cake. Sounds reasonable. But now, poor Bedelia feels moderately bad about it, and returns to the family estate every year on Father’s Day to sit on daddy’s grave and suck down some Jim Beam. Everyone else in the family thinks it was a good turn to kill the old bastard because now they get to live in his house. Ed Harris shows up playing the new husband of one of his grandkids or great-grandkids and he’s the only halfway decent member of the family.

This year turns out to be special because Daddy Dead Guy comes back from the grave to enact his revenge – which means to kill everyone. It’s all sort of blah, but Romero paces it quickly so the story never stalls out. When the walking corpse shows up with a head on a plate blathering that he finally got his cake, though, I was glad this story was done.

“The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” is next and it stars Stephen King, who wrote the movie. It’s … an uneventful piece. Jordy finds a crashed meteor in his backyard, touches it, dreams of riches, and then starts growing grass all over his body. Again, it’s not a very good story, but it’s quick and interesting enough. There’s something nice about how King plays Verrill like a total idiot whose dream of wealth consists of getting $200 out of the local university, but the best part of the story is the end, which first sees Jordy blowing his own head off, and then a shot of the highway hints that the grass will extend out away from Verrill’s farm and towards the city.

While the two stories haven’t been all that great, so far, the change-up that CREEPSHOW throws at you – these are not nice people and these are not people who survive – gives the movie both an old-timey feel and a fresh approach. Maybe because the stories are so short we’re allowed to simply watch the carnage and suffering and not feel too bad about it.

The next two stories are the reason to watch CREEPSHOW, however.

First up is “Something to Tide You Over,” which stars an incredibly bad-ass Leslie Nielsen burying Ted Danson up to his neck in beach sand. Ol’ Leslie is p*ssed off because Danson was screwing his wife, so he comes up with this plan to bury both of them in the surf, then let Ted watch the woman drown as the tide comes rolling in before dying himself. It’s a really dark story and I’m not lying when I say Leslie Nielsen has never been better. Even the ending, where the drowned victims come back to life to bury Nielsen in the sand works. As the story comes to an end, we can still hear Nielsen defiantly yelling, “I can hold my breath a long time!” Great story, which is matched by the fantastic story that follows.

“The Crate” is the longest story in CREEPSHOW and also its best. Professor Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver) comes into possession of a crate that’s been stashed in a hidden alcove beneath a stairwell. The only reason the janitor finds the crate is that he’s dropped his last quarter and he’s jonesing for a soda pop. Dexter and the janitor open the crate and some weird kind of abominable midget yeti comes out and tears the f*ck out of the janitor. Dexter panics and runs to his pal Henry’s place. Henry (Hal Holbrook) is married to a younger harpy (Adrienne Barbeau) and has a passive, schlubby approach to life. Wilma totally dominates and emasculates him, but while he fantasizes about taking revenge, he always ends up shrugging his shoulders and saying, “Yes, dear.” When Dexter tells Henry about the abominable midget yeti, Henry devises a plan to solve his problem, getting Wilma to come to the university where he sacrifices her to the crate monster.

It’s a really fantastic story, put over the top by the great Hal Holbrook as a passive man turning into an active man.

Last up is “They’re Creeping Up on You!” which sees E.G. Marshall playing a rich, bug-phobic assh*le who gets eaten by bugs. It’s gross and sort of awesome.

The film ends with our little kid taking a voodoo doll to his dad as revenge for throwing away his comics.

And really, who hasn’t been there with their parents?

What’s most impressive about CREEPSHOW is how well paced everything is – the stories that work take up the most screen time and the ones that don’t help fill out the two hours. Leslie Nielsen and Hal Holbrook give fantastic performances, Romero’s directing is totally solid and professional, and the overall idea that we’re watching a comic book come to life makes CREEPSHOW a solid, somewhat unique film, and well worth a watch.