FRIDAY FOSTER: She’s Just All Woman, Lieutenant

Friday Foster (1975) – Directed by Arthur Marks – Starring Pam Grier, Carl Weathers, Eartha Kitt, Paul Benjamin, Yaphet Kotto, Thalmus Rasulala, Jim Backus, Godfrey Cambrigdge, Ed Cambridge, Scatman Crothers, Shawn Stratton, Jason Bernard, and Ted Lange.

“She’s got more balls than brains.”

“She’s just all woman, lieutenant.”

This exchange comes after Friday Foster (Pam Grier) steals a hearse at her friend’s burial service in order to chase after Yarbro (Carl Weathers), the man who had just tried to kill her. Lieutenant Jake Wayne (Ed Cambridge) is furious with Friday for stealing the hearse, but private eye Colt Hawkins (Yaphet Kotto) thinks it’s good for a laugh because he knows this is just the kind of thing that Friday does.

Growing up in central Massachusetts didn’t exactly expose me to a plethora of blaxploitation films. In fact, it exposed me to exactly zero. The closest I ever came was Live and Let Die. I’ve seen bits and pieces of films over the years but I’ve got no problem admitting I’m still pretty ignorant of the genre, so I have no idea if FRIDAY FOSTER is representative of the top of the genre, the bottom, or somewhere in between.

What I do know is that this is a pretty darn good movie, full of great actors, solid action and story, fantastic music, and the incomparable Pam Grier in the lead.

Friday Foster (Pam Grier) is assigned to take pictures of the airport arrival of Blake Tarr (Thalmus Rasulala), the wealthiest black man in the country, with the explicit orders to “not get involved.” This idea of Friday “not getting involved” is a constant theme throughout the film, as man after man tells her to play it safe and Friday ignores them and goes after the story anyway. Two stories collapse together here; the first is the assassination attempt against Tarr at the airport and the second is the murder of Friday’s friend Cloris (Rosalind Miles).

At the heart of both of these incident is the assassin Yarbro (Carl Weathers), who tries to kill Friday while she’s showering, then shows up at Cloris’ funeral, and later kills Madame Rena (Eartha Kitt), a fashion designer. During the first half of the film, it’s the Weathers vs. Grier angle that dominates the film, but FOSTER has much more in store for us. After Yarbro shoots Rena, Colt goes after him and we get to see Weathers and Kotto go toe-to-toe. Surprisingly, the film offs its main bad guy right here as Colt kills Yarbro.

Friday is determined to keep chasing the story, and our small assassination attempt gone wrong film turns into a political thriller that sees Friday pitted between Senator David Lee Hart (Paul Benjamin) and millionaire Blake Tarr. Each of them thinks the other is behind a program called “Black Widow.” Friday’s investigation first leads her to the Senator; she sneaks her way into a high society party and sweet talks the Senator into finding out that the Hart thinks Tarr was behind his own assassination attempt.

Friday thinks that’s a strange thing for Tarr to do, but that doesn’t stop her from sleeping with the Senator.

I love how Friday owns her sexuality like she owns everything else she does in the story. She’s definitely a person who embraces life, whether that’s getting involved in a story, tracking down her friend’s killer, or hooking up with the Senator and then again with Blake Tarr a short while later. Grier plays it all with a sense of passion and fun; even while hot on the case of Cloris’ death, she knows how to use her charms to help her get what she wants, and when the opportunity comes to hop into bed with Hart or Tarr, or trade quips with Colt, she doesn’t let them pass her by.

Importantly, Friday isn’t some kind of super cool badass. She’s a photographer’s assistant working for a magazine and living with her brother. There’s no parents in sight and no parents mentioned; this is her reality and she makes the most of it, but she makes mistakes (she believes what Hart and Tarr sell her about the other) and she gets scared despite her bravery. But while she might turn to Colt for comfort and while she might believe the stories she hears from these powerful men a bit too readily, Friday is always her own woman, always willing to push forward, and always willing to see things through to the end.

There’s plenty of liberated 1970s feminism on display in FOSTER (and we know this because one character tells Colt to get “this liberated woman out of here”) but the film doesn’t force this agenda down the audience’s throat because Friday rarely comes off as “I’m doing this to make a point,” but rather she’s embraced who she is and doesn’t feel the need to hide it. You get the sense that “this liberated woman” is leading the movement by doing, rather than following through mimicry.

There’s a ton of great actors sprinkled throughout FOSTER. Ted Lange shows up as a sweet-talking, gift-giving pimp trying to recruit Friday to his stable of women. Friday smiles and jokes with Fancy but lets him know “you don’t have anything I want” and that “welfare’s not for me.” Fancy assures her that “all the white boys will breaking down your door” but Friday’s not swayed. I like, too, how Fancy keeps giving Friday’s brother Cleve gifts for her, but the kid always keeps them for himself and tells Fancy that he needs to start bringing higher end gifts if he wants a shot. The kid keeps the gifts to sell them on the sly. “You’re a hustla now?” Colt asks him. “New black capitalism,” Cleve replies.

Scatman Crothers shows up as a dirty horndog priest, Godfrey Cambridge as Cloris’ contact man in D.C., Eartha Kitt as a fashion designer, Jim Backus as the white money man behind Black Widow, and Jason Bernard (who isn’t something with big signature roles, but believe me, when you see him show up on screen, you’ll know him) plays Charles Foley, Hart’s assistant who’s really running Black Widow.

Just look at all that talent; FOSTER is always giving you something new to propel the film forward, whether it’s a cameo from someone you know or an action sequence. I’m impressed by how this story starts small and finishes big and I’m impressed with how what starts as a murder mystery evolves into a political film, as Tarr and Hart believe the other is responsible for Black Widow, yet come together in the end when they realize they were both wrong. But mostly, I just love watching Pam Grier and Yaphet Kotto work their way towards a resolution. Kotto is terrific as the super cool P.I., and his relationship with Grier works really well to give this narrative a backbone it risks losing when the storyline shifts after Madame Rena’s death.

FRIDAY FOSTER is 90 minutes of awesomeness.

ALIEN: A Survivor, Unclouded by Conscience, Remorse, or Delusions of Morality

Alien (1979) – Directed by Ridley Scott – Starring Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto.

Ridley Scott’s atmospheric masterpiece ALIEN is one of the most influential American films ever made.

For all of Scott’s varies success with films like Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, and Gladiator, it’s ALIEN that endures most strongly in the work of other film makers. Sci-fi films and slasher films are still aping Scott’s style because it relies on a minimal narrative and a dark atmosphere. That means you can do it on the (relative) cheap.

It’s a well deserved aping, however, because ALIEN is a brilliant movie about a group of working class men and women being terrorized on their ship by an alien menace that they willingly brought aboard and then spend the film trying to eliminate.

Beginning slow and quiet, ALIEN builds as it goes, becoming faster, louder, and more intense with seemingly every new sequence. I think it’s improper to call ALIEN a rollercoaster ride because it’s much less a series of action sequences linked by quieter, character and plot driven sequences than it is a rock rolling downhill, gathering steam as it gathers distance. There are a few instances where we get the action-release-action structure, but like a typical slasher film, once people start getting murdered there’s not much time for quiet reflection.

I see ALIEN as a three act play in which both the alien (designed by the legendary H.R. Giger) and Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) grow in prominence, headed for the inevitable collision of their respective arcs.

In Act I, neither the alien nor Ripley play much of a role. In this first part of the film we see the crew of the Nostromo woken out of their slumber by the ship’s computer. They slowly awaken (and Scott lets his camera linger) and immediately drag themselves to the kitchen for food and smokes. It’s only once they return to duty that they realize they’ve been woken up too early. The Nostromo has intercepted a signal and the crew is required to follow up on it.

The crew is a smart assemblage of quality actors given only a few things to do, and they all do it well. Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) is a concerned, thoughtful man who’s willing to give his crew some rope to act on their own but doesn’t shy away from making decisions or verbally smacking them back in line. Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) and the ship’s engineers, constantly complaining about their pay. After they’re reminded that they’ll get paid exactly what their contract says they’ll get paid, Parker throws it back in Dallas’ face when he asks them to do something above and beyond. Kane (John Hurt) is a curious, determined explorer and Lambert (Veronica Cartright) is his antithesis; he wants to keep investigating the distress call and she wants to go back to the ship. Ash (Ian Holm) is the science officer with plenty of secrets, and Ripley is the most well-rounded character, willing to make the tough decision, fight for herself, and still not hiding that she is occasionally scared out of her mind.

We basically learn everything we need to know about them during that eat and smoke table session, which is one of my absolute favorite sci-fi scenes of all time. I don’t love it for its science or even for its particular cleverness. I love it because it comes after a whole set of long, slow, quiet establishing shots that tell us the Nostromo is empty. I love it because it’s so full of life. But mostly I love it because it’s dirty. Blade Runner often gets cited for its dystopian aesthetic, but I prefer the functional, working class future depicted in ALIEN. We don’t see space travel as being glamorous. We don’t see a table full of heroes or moralists or philosophers.

We see working men and women who are paid to do a crummy job at a huge distance from Earth. My dissertation is on 19th century whaling narratives, and the world of the Nostromo resonates in the same way: dirty, dangerous, decidedly unromantic. This is a hard life for hard people.

They’re really not even friends. There’s pairs of friends, of course. Parker and Brett are pals, though it’s more like Brett is the tag-a-long sidekick/Yes Man than an actual pal. There’s a small vibe of a relationship between Dallas and Lambert in the way she pleads with him. But other than that, you get the feeling that these people share the same space but beyond the Nostromo they are not part of each others’ lives.

In order to investigate the intercepted signal, they head to a planet, where they find a massive, abandoned ship. Inside the ship, they find a large dead being sitting in a chair. (And it appears Scott’s upcoming film, Prometheus, will tell a bit of this story of the ship.) The ship’s interior is pure H.R. Giger awesomeness. The settings look both familiar and alien and equally cool and menacing.

Kane finds some big eggs and then a facehugger alien forces itself through Kane’s helmet and attaches itself to his face. They haul him back to the ship where Ripley refuses to let them inside because she’s following quarantine protocol. (Scott doesn’t show any of this rescue and return, negating a potential action sequence which could throw his atmosphere for a loop before it’s even firmly established.) Dallas orders her to let them in, but she refuses. Ash ignores her, however, and lets them in.

Both the alien and Ripley, then, make a show of force that’s ultimately brushed aside by the crew. Kane doesn’t realize the threat the alien poses to his people, while Ash and Kane don’t recognize Ripley’s authority.

This gets us to Act II, when the facehugger pulls off Kane only to have a second alien come bursting out of his chest. It’s still small at this point but obviously it freaks everyone out and they decide to go hunting for it. Both the alien and Ripley begin to take a larger role in the film as they begin to assert the power they do have, and this means it’s time for the killing to start. The crew goes hunting, but it’s Brett and Dallas that end up getting taken out. Lambert wants to cut and run, but Ripley reminds her that the escape shuttle won’t hold four people, so the killing option is still their best bet. Once they take out Ash, and the alien then takes out Lambert and Parker, Ripley is left as the Last Woman Standing.

The most interesting character in this middle portion of the film is Ash, the scientist who has a secret mission to bring the alien back alive. It turns out Ash is a robot whose loyalty lies with the company, not with his fellow crew mates. (The crew has been deemed expendable by the company.) He’s impressed by the resiliency and efficiency of the alien, which horrifies Ripley. Ash describes the alien as “a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.” Ash is, of course, also describing himself. As a robot, his actions are simply evidence that he’s fulfilling his programming, meaning he has no conscience, no remorse, no morality. In this sense, he sees the alien as a natural version of himself. For her part, Ripley’s investigation and realization of what Ash is doing, and then her physical confrontation with him firmly asserts her position in the film. It doesn’t even matter that Ripley needs help to defeat Ash because she’s clearly the force that will drive the rest of the film.

Enter Act III, which is the alien vs. Ripley showdown. This is the loudest and most intense act in the film. Ripley decides it’s time to take Lambert’s advice now that only her and the cat are alive, so she starts the self destruct sequence. She tries to stop it when the alien has blocked her path to the shuttle, but she can’t get it stopped so she has to get to the shuttle. When she returns, the alien has left the cat unharmed, allowing Ripley to jump in the shuttle and get the heck out of Dodge. As the shuttle flees, the Nostromo blows up, and then (as you might have guessed) it turns out the alien is inside the shuttle, allowing one final confrontation that Ripley wins by opening the exterior door and letting the alien get sucked into space.

ALIEN doesn’t muck around with too many clever plot twists and narrative turns. Ash being a robot who’s also willing to see the crew killed to get the alien home is it, and they come right on top of each other. Instead, Scott focuses on the dark, moody atmosphere. If you want to note that it’s a male crewman who gets raped and impregnated and the female crewman who ultimately defeats the alien you can do it, and get a lot of mileage out of it, but I am more impressed with having male and female characters who exhibit a wide range of roles and attitudes. These sorts of plots can feel formulaic, but ALIEN never suffers from this because it puts the emphasis on Act I, on the mystery and the tone.

Blade Runner is a more literary film, but I think ALIEN is every bit as brilliant.

________________

ALIEN / PREDATOR Review Index

ALIEN: A Survivor, Unclouded by Conscience, Remorse, or Delusions of Morality
ALIENS: My Mommy Said There Were No Monsters. No Real Ones. But There Are.
ALIEN 3: A Bunch of Lifers Who Found God at the Ass-End of Space
ALIEN RESURRECTION: Must Be a Chick Thing
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: I Think This is a Manhood Ritual
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM: Small Town America Kills Two Franchises at Once

LIVE AND LET DIE: Take This Honky Out and Waste Him

Live and Let Die (1973) – The 8th James Bond Film; The 1st (of 7) Roger Moore Films – Directed by Guy Hamilton – Starring Roger Moore, Jane Seymour, Yaphet Kotto, David Hedison, Gloria Hendry, Julius Harris, Clifton James, Earl Jolly Brown, Geoffrey Holder, and Bernard Lee.

I stopped over to the Never Wrong to lift the movie poster for LIVE AND LET DIE, and noticed, way down at the bottom of the page, that Entertainment Weekly listed LIVE AND LET DIE as the third greatest Bond movie of all time, which is a pretty severe stretch for a film that more rightly belongs closer to the middle than the top.

The reason I can’t rank LET DIE higher is that it has plenty of things I don’t want in a Bond movie: awful locations, bad chase scenes, half-ass gadgets that turn out to be exactly what Bond needs to get out of a tight jam, ugly cars, uninspiring villains, weak females, and ridiculous, one-note types.

Aw, you thought I was going to say “Roger Moore” in there somewhere, didn’t you?

On the contrary, whatever faults lie on the perimeter of this film, at it’s heart LET DIE has Roger Moore, who slips into the James Bond role like he was crafted just for this moment. To his credit, Moore is not attempting to play Connery’s Bond (which is a good thing since Connery’s Bond was memorable only for the wrong reasons over his last three films). Rather, he’s doing his own take on the character and it’s highly impressive how comfortable Moore seems in the role. It’s sort of like when Sammy Hagar took over the lead singing duties in Van Halen from David Lee Roth; Van Halen stopped sounding like Van Halen, but they still sounded supremely confident in what they were doing – 5150 is a fantastic album, brimming with confidence, playfulness, great songwriting, and fantastic songs.

Just like Hagar, some people will never fully accept Roger Moore – or anyone not named Sean Connery – as James Bond. And you know, that’s fine. I’m not here to convince you that you’re wrong; I’m here to explain why I think the way I do.

I love Roger Moore as James Bond, just like I love Sammy Hagar as the lead singer of Van Halen. That doesn’t mean I hate Connery or David Lee Roth, but it does grate my brain when others can’t do the same in return. There’s a lot to like in Moore’s performance, just like there’s a lot to like in Van Hagar.

Moore’s Bond is the epitome of British cool. A bomb could go off during dinner and this dude isn’t going to drop a single pea from his fork. In the best scene of the movie, Bond enters the Fillet of Soul restaurant in Harlem like he’s entering a five-star restaurant in Paris, which we know he’s not supposed to do because when he enters the all-black customered establishment, everyone gets quiet and stares at the white guy. Bond doesn’t acknowledge there’s anything different or more odd about him walking into this establishment than if he’d walked into a five stat Swiss hotel for dinner with Grace Kelly. He simply walks to the bar and asks for his bourbon (neat, which he has to explain to waiter) and then takes a seat like he’s sitting down for a late lunch at Le Bernadin. When the table (which is set against a wall) spins around to deposit him in a secret room surrounded by bad guys, Bond’s momentary look of surprise at the table spinning is gone by the time it’s stopped.

It’s a great scene that both acknowledges that the super secret world of Bond is becoming a bit anachronistic and that Bond doesn’t see any need to change. Managing to be tragic and confident at the same time, the scene casts Bond as both timeless and out of touch.

LET DIE is an incredibly dated movie in this regard; released during the blaxploitation era, it seems determined to be both a Bond movie and something completely different, too. It’s like a Bee Gees album – there’s the familiar resonance of what came before tricked up to meet whatever’s cool at the moment. Unfortunately, the result is bleak and uncomfortable, as the producers take Bond and stick him in a blaxploitation plot, but then don’t have the stones to see it all the way though, so they muck the opening half up by introducing a bunch of ridiculous plot points and familiar Bond beats in the second half, thus rendering the whole film conflicted and stunted.

Worse is their decision to start the Roger Moore era with a film like this, which either screams out for the more aggressive masculinity of Connery or Craig or for the elimination of all the rotating tables and shark tanks. It’s easy to see the parody that Moore’s performance will engender in later years, but here he’s so relaxed and so assured that the usual Bond elements (the gadgets, the elaborate traps) actually work against the film. Moore’s Bond doesn’t look like he could beat up Miss Moneypenny, but he has enough self-confidence in his charm that he could sweet talk M and Q into a threesome.

There’s no reason why Bond can’t stop a wannabe drug kingpin, and there’s no reason why that drug lord can’t also be a politician hanging out at the United Nations, but if you’re going to go the “gritty” route with the bad guy, don’t give him a secret lair with its own shark tank and henchmen wearing the same outfits. Make him a bad ass through and through. Instead, we get to the cartoonish underground hideout with the shark tanks and the henchmen that look like they stole their outfits from the Nautilus.

LET DIES also gives us an incredibly awful chase sequence (powerboats through the Louisiana river system; it’s a dull chase and interminably long), and the image of Solitaire from being potentially sacrificed to a poisonous snake in front of screaming, gyrating, voodoo practicing islanders.

Yaphet Kotto is nearly wasted as Dr. Kananga/Mr. Big because the role is so silly. Still, Kotto tries to make this pap bearable as his interactions with Bond are fun and his interactions with Seymour are chilling. One wonders how great he could have been if he had a part equal to his skills as an actor. Instead, he’s forced to wear a latex mask when he’s pretending to be Mr. Big, and Bond, at no point, says, “Oh, by the way, old chap, what the f*ck is up with your face? I would suggest you moisturize once or twice a year.”

Kananga likes to keep his distance from his henchmen when on the island, issuing orders through phones in his hideaway as they carry out his commands and Bond, at first, seems like nothing more than a typical distraction to him. Just another MI6 agent for Kananga to off, like the three he has killed before the opening credits. As the film progresses and Bond keeps coming back, Kananga becomes angrier and more dangerous. But not to Bond. Nope. He becomes more dangerous to Solitaire, and it’s here that Kananga is at his most chilling. When he visits Solitaire’s quarters at his island estate to threaten her about her visions, the force of his personality is on full display and it’s great to watch.

In a more deft director or screenwriter’s hands, they’d push at this idea just a bit more, and we’d get something about how the bad-ass drug kingpin who wants to get the world hooked on his heroin is himself already hooked on his psychic’s visions of the future. I get the feeling, however, that Kananga is created as a paint-by-numbers villain, that the film’s creators were looking at a formula and went, “Right, now here we need him to threaten Bond, and 10 pages later we need him to threaten Solitaire” without any real thought to the words that were coming out of his mouth.

Kotto lets Kananga’s hurt come through when he gives Solitaire a psychic test that she fails. He realizes that Solitaire has slept with Bond and thus lost her ability to see the future. After he tells her he made the test as easy as possible, that he gave her a 50/50 chance “and you still weren’t even close” (which, yeah, I don’t know what that means – if it’s 50/50, how can you not be close?), and then delivers a violent backhand, he admits to her that “I would have given you my love when it came to it.” It just makes you wish the film was interested in this aspect of the character instead of trying to force it to fit some pre-conceived notion of how a Bond villain should act. Just like Moore, Kotto gives a performance that greatly out-distances his part.

There’s enough sex in LET DIE that the mission is almost an afterthought. Or rather, that the mission exists for Bond solely for him to talk new women into bed. When the movie opens he’s in bed with a missing Italian spy, and then later he has sex with CIA operative Rosie Carver. Carver is the first black woman Bond beds, and she also appears to be the worst spy in history, but that only lasts until you realize she’s actually the worst double agent in history.

Later, Bond charms Solitaire into bed by rigging her tarot deck in one of those seduction moves that would get you hauled in front of the Dean if you pulled it on a college campus. Bond knows that Solitaire absolutely believes in tarot and that she has some true sightseeing abilities. When she gives him an impromptu reading at their first meeting, she turns over the Lovers card, surprising herself because she’s a virgin who will lose her abilities if she ever lays with a man. Bond doesn’t know that last part until after he’s sexed her over. There’s a great bit when they’re in bed and she’s almost in tears about the gods breaking their connection to her and he’s looking at her like she’s completely bonkers, but then slowly realizes that while she may be in this crazy spy-ridden life, she’s not experienced (and I don’t mean just the sex) with the pitfalls of this lifestyle. When they meet again, Bond tells Solitaire (which, when you think about it, is a pretty stupid name for a psychic tarot reader; when she does a reading she’s practicing her religion, not killing time at the office) that if she really believes in the cards then they’re destined to be lovers. He tells her to pick another card and it’s the Lovers card again, but when he puts the deck down we see that he’s rigged it so that every card in the deck is a Lover’s card.

It’s a complete dick move, but then you realize he’s a spy and she’s a criminal and it’s an occupational hazard, even if she didn’t fully realize the dangers of the world she’s living in.

What’s great about the use of sex in the movie is that Bond has two sex drives – the occupational seduction and the shared victory romp. It’s the victory romp with the Italian spy, the occupational seduction with Carver, and both with Solitaire. He beds her at first simply because he believes it’s the key to getting information from her; by sleeping with her and stealing her powers, Bond realizes that she’s no good to Kananga anymore, which forces her to work with him instead of against him.

Solitaire’s attitude towards Bond is a bit inconsistent. At first she’s the stone cold psychic, but then the cards tell her she and Bond will be lovers, which weakens her resolve. Then he seduces/tricks her into the sack and she runs around with him. Then Bond gets captured and she’s all, “Ha! Bad guys rule!” Then she realizes her powers are gone and Bond is right back saving her. If we got a little bit more of her character this might seem like the complex turmoil of emotions I’m sure it is for Solitaire, but again, the film is just kinda doing a surface-oriented, paint-by-numbers bit. And why waste time with character development when we have an 83-minute powerboat chase to get to? Why would we want to spend time with the main characters when we can watch a fat, racist, redneck, tobacco-spitting sheriff run around calling everyone “boy” and generally acting like a caricature?

The action sequences are unforgivably bad, too. There’s a “car chase” scene at the beginning when Bond has to steer a runaway car from the backseat and a boat chase through the Louisiana swamps that goes on longer than the entire Smokey and the Bandit movies.

Ultimately, a pretty bleak, boring film that doesn’t take advantage of Moore, Kotto, and Seymour.

Note to time travelers: 1973 was a very good year for Jane Seymour.

Note to music fans: The use of McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” throughout the film is pretty kick-ass, but I don’t think the song sets a great tone for the film. In fact, I think it’s a pretty mediocre song, in general, as I love the slow parts of the song and find the fast parts a bit tedious.