A regular at our horror night suppers is a friend of mine by the name of Jay Wilson. Jay and I go way back to college days where we both majored in theater. Years later during my first years as a middle school teacher I saw Jay working as a manager at a local Wendy's. It was at this time that we reconnected. We often reminisce about the old college days, or rather he listens as I blather on about the college days and he smiles and laughs.
Both of us have been through the wringer known as life and have come out on top. Jay went through a tough marriage and divorce, at about the same time I found myself having a manic episode that left me in the hospital for a week. We are actually much closer friends now than we were in college, now that we've grown up some and amazingly we are still doing theater, I am a fine arts educator who occasionally dabbles in community theater, and Jay now runs sound for events at the local university as well as runs night time community improv classes and is part of the local improv troupe in town. It is nice to see that a few of us who majored in the craft are still involved in theater and are using our degree to improve the communities we live in.
So why am I bringing up Jay when we are here to talk about horror? Well Jay happens to be a vegetarian a result of his years working at Wendy's which left a bad taste in his mouth concerning meat. He also has an improv show this weekend so I felt like it was the perfect time to have a bacon night. Kevin Bacon that is, and serve a spread that is everything and anything, bacon. This will include a build your own bacon burger or BLT center and we will even have a dessert that includes delicious bacon in its construction.
Kevin Bacon has a long and rather interesting history with horror. We've watched two of his movies already during horror night, "Friday the 13th" (which he often pushes aside in order to talk about "National Lampoon's Animal House," "Diner," and "Footloose" as movies that jumpstarted his career) as well as "Tremors," but there are several other horror movies starring Kevin Bacon that we could pair with the artery clogging meal.
For example we could watch the eerie ghost story "Stir of Echoes," which might have been the obvious choice as it's a probably the most terrifying. Based on a novel by legendary horror writer Richard Matheson (Duel, I am Legend. and Hell House) it tells the story of a working joe in Chicago who gets hypnotized as a stunt at a local street party by his amateur spiritualist sister-in-law and as a result is having visions of a murder that may or may not have happened in his house. However the movie is streaming only on Pluto T.V. which would mean commercials, so this one is out.
We could also go for the post-modernism slasher twist on "The Invisible Man," 2000's "Hollow Man," but this was a wretched film in the downward decline of the self-referential slasher trend. These movies were very popular in the 90s but have fizzled out since then, with the rare gem popping up from time to time such as "Cabin in the Woods" and "Happy Death Day." "Hollow Man" minus Bacon's performance is fairly lame.
Kevin Bacon has released two films from the very prolific Blumhouse Productions, ran by successful businessman Jason Blum. The first one was a film called "Darkness." This is a painfully bad film about a supernatural Native American Curse that might be good for a rifftrax night, but it's not good film making.
The second is the weird haunted house story "You Should Have Left" which is worse than bad; it's mediocre. I hate films that pretend to be more than they are, by stealing from better works such as the fantastic confusingly spooky novel "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski. This film's twist reveals that the villain is simply a metaphor we must internalize. Sooo Spoooooky!!! Soooooo...pretentious.
Of course the writer/director of the film David Koepp is known for penning the so average they are nearly forgettable movies, 2017's "The Mummy" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." He's written some very competent scripts as a co-writer, namely "Jurassic Park" with Michael Crichton and "Mission: Impossible" with Robert Towne and Steven Zaillian. But when he goes off on his own we get stinkers like "Snake Eyes" and "Zathura: A Space Adventure." Many of his scripts become great films, though I would attribute that to the directing and not the writing (2002's Sam Raimi's "Spiderman" and "The Shadow.")
David Koepp has skill as a director, (he was also the director of the eerie "Stir of Echoes"), but he writes movies as if he were student in a script-writing class learning about formula. He's a much too often predictable writer, or if he does have a twist it's one that is for him to pat himself on the back for his own cleverness and not for the audience to enjoy as if on a rollercoaster. To prove that point there are two twists in his film "You Should Have Left"(spoilers ahead).
The first one is where we realize the ghost is actually the soul of the main character played by Kevin Bacon as the house is a place that plays with time and space. So the hero is actually the villain who is haunting the house. That's pretty neat and I dug the fact that it threw me off guard and that Kevin Bacon playing both characters actually fooled me. Now the second twist is abysmal that caused me to get a small concussion as I hit my forehead with my palm in a Homer Simpson like "Doh" fashion. This second twist informs the audience that the plot is superior to them in every way. The Kevin Bacon Character can never leave because he is a metaphor. If you are not Stanley Kubrick and it is not "The Shining" you cannot get away with this kind of holier than though intellectualism. This is a haunted house movie masquerading as an elevated horror film and though it succeeds some on the former it fails miserably as the latter.
So why all this talk about "You Should Have Left?" This film is a Blumhouse produced feature same as "They/Them." "They/Them" is premiering this weekend on the Peacock streaming service and we are going to watch that film. I thought this film would pair perfectly with it, but as the film is neither bad enough to mock and make fun of nor good enough to be entertaining we are moving on to something else. I watched this bowl of slimy oatmeal for you so you will never have to.
I truly believe it's worse to be average than to be bad when it comes to making a film. A failure usually implies risk and risk has to be taken to succeed. Something safe is rarely worth doing. A bad film I can make fun of. An average film merely wastes my time. Yes Tom Cruise you stole two hours from me that I will never get back when I saw your incredibly formulaic "Mummy" movie, luckily you redeemed yourself in this years sequel to "Top Gun."
So what are we going to watch? We are going to watch 1994's thrilling "The River Wild." This is a story about a dysfunctional family (the Hartmans) going on a river rafting trip down the Salmon River in Idaho. They meet up with two cocky immature tourists who seem to be in over their head, Wade and Terry, played by Kevin Bacon himself, and John C. Reilly. They claim their guide left them stranded after a disagreement and thus they need help getting down the river. Well it just so happens that Gail Hartman, the mom of the previously mentioned family, played by Meryl Streep, is an experienced former river guide. But not is all as it seems as Wade and Terry become more and more brazen and creepy and when the family decides to separate from their new companions they realize that the men they've picked up harbor a dangerous secret and they will get to the end of the river no matter the cost, even if they have to kill members of the family to do so.
This is a riveting movie that I will call a thriller. Usually a thriller is a horror movie that critics liked before the elevated horror movement we are still experiencing in 2022, that started in 2014 with such films as "The Babadook" "Goodnight Mommy" and "It Follows." Before then it was often uncouth for a critic to celebrate any horror movie, hence why the Academy Award winning "Silence of the Lambs" is always referred to as a thriller in the critic reviews, when it is obviously a horror film instead. A thriller is a movie that may still scare you, and at the least it should leave you in suspense. So how do we describe a movie that actually is classified as a thriller?
There are really four movie genres and everything else is a sub-genre of these films. They include: drama, comedy, adventure and horror. Everything else is a subgenre. When you watch a movie you are suspending disbelief and fantasizing in some way. The difference between adventure and horror is that in adventure you want to be the characters in the movie and that's where the fantasy goes, but in a horror movie the fantasy is in experiencing something horrific vicariously lived through someone else, probably someone who is dead. We reach catharsis, and when the movie is over we are happy we are alive even though we may have experienced death in the closest way a living being can safely. There is also a chance that you might fantasize about being the villain. Slashers do this. Italian Giallo films do this as well.
So how is a thriller a sub-genre of horror? What is a thriller precisely? Often times these labels become so muddy and intertwined, but I believe there are rules that these movies must follow in order to fit into a certain criteria, even if it's not a perfect fit all the time, there are exceptions to every rule and it is silly to focus on the zebra instead of the horse.
Here is the difference between a straight horror film and a thriller, which is still a sub-genre of horror. A horror movie has a sense of doom within it. We are not going to escape, the killer is going to murder us, if we do survive we are traumatized and broken because of the experience. In a thriller the outcome is unpredictable. You as an audience don't have a sense of doom, but rather one of hopeful anxiety, praying that the heroes find the bomb or survive an attack. The thriller is the movie that rides the line between horror and adventure, as they can be either. They include such movies as: Strangers on a Train, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, James Bond's Live and Let Die, Anaconda, Congo, Jurassic Park. This includes "The River Wild."
"The River Wild" is a beautifully shot film, directed by Curtis Hanson. Cinematographer Robert Elswit takes advantage of the scenery of where it was shot in Northern Montana, as well as along the Colorado River itself, and finally Southern Oregon and Idaho. The hymnal musical score by Jerry Goldsmith just adds to the majesty of the film.
I love that this film was shot in is a time where CGI was not the norm. The performers are in the river doing stunts. Though for the really rough stuff doubles who were experienced in white water rafting replaced the actors, this is still about as real as you can get. It was so real in fact that Meryl Streep nearly drowned because of exhaustion from the incredibly physical scenes.
These technical feats are merely the backdrops to the incredible performances in the film. Even Meryl Streep, who I'm typically not a fan of is great here.
Meryl Streep is a practitioner of what is called emotional recall, where you remember something sad and then that evokes an emotion that you portray that on the screen or stage. I abhor this style of acting and will not teach it to my students, even though it was part of the state core my first three years of teaching. I think it's traumatic to think of the worst things in your life just to be able to produce tears, and also children, typically, hopefully, have not experienced the kind of trauma that happens to most characters in say a tragedy. Also thinking about your dead dog is not the same as mourning your lost wife in say "Romeo & Juliet." It will not produce the same emotion. But since Streep has won a billion awards I guess I am wrong here. This role and her other roles in movies has changed my mind somewhat, namely her performances this movie as well as in "Kramer Vs. Kramer," "Doubt," "The Post" and the remake of "The Manchurian Candidate." She is raw and as real as it gets, playing the part of a very restrained stoic former daredevil going through some emotional hurtles in her marriage and on the river.
Kevin Bacon as Wade plays a great villain with a sneer and a smile and that very expressive face. Bacon turning to great character roles is the best thing he could've done with his career. He's played a villain a few other times namely "Hallow Man" frankly his performance and the special effects carry what is otherwise a lame post-modern slasher, and "X-Men: First Class" as the brutal Sebastian Shaw. Here in "The River Wild" he is the perfect manipulator basically love bombing the Hartman kid Roarke, played by Joseph Mazzello, with compliments, gifts and a fake performance as a replacement cool dad compared to his real father Tom Hartman played with ambitious anxiety by critically acclaimed character actor David Straithairn. When Wade and his toothy smile tells Gail that no her son must remain tied to the inside the raft to prevent his escape during the very dangerous nearly three hundred foot drop on a three mile stretch of river where three tributaries combine into one, even though there's a good chance the raft might flip or get caught in a hole "that will turn you around and around like a washing machine" and there's a good chance the kid could drown, he smoothly gives her a pep talk like a tough little league coach with total condescension "No Gail I can't do that. I need you to be at your best." He is one cold shark.
Wade's icy personification is the perfect juxtaposition to Terry who is a bumbling, uneducated, bungler who just wanted things to go well and for no one to get hurt. Again this is a movie filled with character actors and both John C. Reilly and Jason Straithairn have no problem holding their own with two Hollywood legends like Bacon and Streep.
Straithairn's Tom is an architect completely consumed by his job, but also emasculated by a wife who doesn't understand the stress he himself is going through. Tom wants to impress his wife by doing good at his job, Gail berates Tom for not being more present at home, Tom tries harder to impress her by working harder at his job which causes him to ignore his son and become distant with his wife and the spiral downward continues. We cheer as we see the suit give a few sucker punches to Wade during the movie and though we recognize that in a fair fight there's no way Tom could out power the wiry Wade its good to see Tom gain his manhood back during this film. Strathairn usually plays characters who are good with their words but lack a physical presence. He is typically more at home in movies like "L.A. Confidential" as the porn producer of high class smut and the magnificent "Good Night and Good Luck" where he plays straight-laced honest boy scout newsman Edward R. Murrow. These latter roles are parts that require someone with excellent speaking ability but not a real physical presence. But in "A River Wild" Straithairn plays against type and plays someone who can land a punch if he has too, even if at the beginning of the film he is a work-obsessed simp trying to make it to the top so that his wife will think highly of him again.
Curtis Hanson would go on to direct some of my personal favorite films many of them thrillers with a noir influence including: L.A. Confidential, Wonder Boys, and 8 Mile. He would die in 2016 at the age of 71 due to natural causes, in relation to frontotemporal dementia.
Robert Elswit would continue working as a cinematographer. he also enjoyed working on films with noir themes and detested working digitally and was fierce defender of shooting on film. Movies he's shot include: Nightcrawler, Good night and Good Luck, Memoirs of a Geisha and There will be Blood. He is still working today at 72. The last film he worked on was "King Richard," the film that won Will Smith his Oscar.
Jerry Goldsmith would continue to be a reliable composer for film. He would continue his great career with such films as: Air Force One, L.A. Confidential. Mulan, The Mummy (you know the good one with Brenden Frasier). He would pass away in 2004 due to colon cancer at the age of 75.
Joseph Mazzello seems to have avoided the child star curse and though he isn't as famous as he was in the 90s with films like "Jurassic Park" and "Radio Flyer" he's become a fairly reliable supporting actor making appearances in such movies as: The Social Network, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and Bohemian Rhapsody. He has also made television guest appearances in such shows as: Justified, Person of Interest, and Elementary.
John C. Reilly would become one of those amazing prolific character actors who would just pop up and appear in almost any type of movie in any type of role. He would become one of our greatest dramatic character actors and has worked with some of our greatest directors such as: Paul Thomas Anderson (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia), Terrance Malick (The Thin Red Line), Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York, The Aviator). Some other critically acclaimed films would include: Chicago, Wreck It Ralph and The Perfect Storm. His comedy chops would make us laugh, in movies like: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Anger Management opposite Adam Sandler. But he was at his comedic best when teaming up with Will Farrell in films like "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" and "Step Brothers." He would make appearances in big budget action films such as: Guardians of the Galaxy and Kong: Skull Island. Yet his heart would belong to unique independent films like: Cyrus, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Carnage, The Lobster, as well as the bio-pic Stan and Ollie. He is a renaissance man as he's also in a band and in 2000 performed on Broadway in Sam Shepard's "True West." His latest film appearance was in Paul Thomas Anderson's latest critical hit "Licorice Pizza."
David Straithairn would continue to be a great character actor appearing in such films as: Good Night and Good Luck, L.A. Confidential, The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Legacy, Stephen Spielberg's Lincoln, and Nomadland. A man of the stage he would appear in many regional theaters across the country. One of his greatest performances was when he starred in "The Cherry Orchard" at the People's Light Theater in Malvern Pennsylvania. He is a very prolific actor and has recently been seen in the critically acclaimed films Guillermo del Toro's remake of "Nightmare Alley" and the recently released "Where the Crawdads Sing."
Meryl Streep would go on to be one of America's most celebrated actresses. Her resume is impressive and intimidating to say the least. Some major hits are: The Bridges of Madison County, Adaptation, The Hours, The Devil Wears Prada, Doubt, Mamma Mia, Julie and Julia, The Post, 2019's Little Women, BBC's The Iron Lady, Chekov's The Seagull on Broadway, and HBO's miniseries "Angels in America." She's won countless awards and is someone who gives millions to charities, mainly those that involve women's rights and education. She does seem to have slowed down some focusing more on her advocacy and less on her acting career though she was in seven episodes of "Big Little Lies" in 2019.
And finally, the man we are celebrating, Mister Six Degrees himself Kevin Bacon. He would continue to get roles as either a leading man or a as a character actor. He is one of Hollywood's most versatile stars and would end up in such films as: Wild Things, Stir of Echoes, Hollow Man, Frost/Nixon, X-Men: First Class and Black Mass. He would also get into television starring in Fox's "The Following." And this weekend will watch him in the world premiere of "They/Them." Below is the Trailer for the film.
"They/Them" looks promising. It's a neo slasher that takes place at a LGBTQ gay conversion camp. The trailer implies that Kevin Bacon will be playing a villain, which he's done before and remarkably well. It also seems to play some homage to "Friday the 13th" which Mr. Bacon needs to be reminded that he was in from time to time, as it is a billion dollar franchise that he was invoved with.
Blumhouse however is a crapshoot. Basically Jason Blum believes in leaving the artists completely alone. Sometimes we get "Get Out" a brilliant social horror commentary about racism and liberalism and how they are despicably linked. Sometimes we get "Fantastic Island" a trite film with bad performances and an even worse premise of turning the old television fantasy "Fantastic Island" into a horror film. These films are all done on a remarkably low budget so that there is little risk.
My suggestion to Mr. Blum is to become a teacher for new artists and help them succeed. Jordan Peele was experienced in the entertainment world with his comedic sketch program "Jay and Peele." He knew what he was doing. These new folks don't and rather than ruin their career with a bad movie, why not get in there and show them the ropes. I believe this is the difference between the recent "Candy Man" film and the "Firestarter" remake. I can't imagine Jordan Peele as a producer not stepping in to help a new and upcoming talent like a teacher should. If Jason did the same he would produce nothing but good content and not half brilliant work from people who don't need assistance and those that are struggling to find their way in the cutthroat world of entertainment.
Now was I on any of these sets? No. Of course not. Again this is conjecture, but I don't think I am wrong here. I think Jordan Peele is a kind person who wants those he works with to succeed, as he's a giving comedian at heart, while Jason Blum is a businessman who counts beans. Let's just hope that this film is a "Purge" and not a "Ouija."
But even if it is just remember to prepare yourself to have a coronary this weekend as we celebrate all things bacon!
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