Going Berserk (1983)

Posted on March 26, 2012 at 6:00 am by Jeff Kuykendall

Going Berserk (1983) has one good idea going for it: to cast SCTV‘s John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Joe Flaherty, all of them rarely unfunny in whatever they do. But perhaps they should have written the script as well. Ripe comic situations are set up and abandoned, gag-free. The actors pitch their performances at the broadest level of screwball, but the gestures go unrewarded. Still…if you need to explain to somebody what the 1980’s were, you can just show them Going Berserk, which begins with an opening title sequence that illustrates the film’s story in crude, non-animated drawings and painful early 80’s rap, Comedy Bang Bang-style:

Well John’s the lead in this meaty scene
He’s the Candyman, if you know what I mean
And he drives a long black limousine
With his sidekick Chick [car horn sound]
Now John’s the drummer out in the street
But the man can’t even keep a beat
So he spins his wheels to make ends meet
You got it? [Girl’s voice: “Huh?”] Stay with me now!
John’s got a pretty little fiancé
When her daddy’s trying to pull a power play
And if Big Daddy gets his way
Our man John will be wearing seaman’s shooooooes!

Eugene Levy as the sleazy Sal Di Pasquale. Note the poster for his film "Kung Fu U."

So that’s the plot, if there is one. Candy also has to contend with an aerobics cult led by the Reverend Sun Yi Day (ubiquitous character actor Richard Libertini), who, with his beautiful sidekick (Designing Women‘s Delta Burke), schemes to hypnotize Candy, Manchurian Candidate-style, into assassinating the governor whose daughter Candy is marrying. But the plot is the flimsiest of excuses for one sketch after another, a few of them in the style of SCTV film parodies: the badly-dubbed martial arts film Kung Fu U., a dream sequence which evokes The Blue Lagoon, and a sadistic spoof of Leave it to Beaver. The majority of the film, however, wants to be more Marx Brothers than Kentucky Fried Movie; at least, I assume that was the aim of writer/director David Steinberg, a stand-up comic and prolific director of TV comedy (most recently for Curb Your Enthusiasm), who once had his own short-lived Canadian series, The David Steinberg Show, that featured Candy, Flaherty, and other future SCTV stars. I can admire the intentions. Some of the gags do work, including an extended digression involving a pre-Ghostbusters Ernie Hudson as a convict who “set fire to his family.” For unconvincing reasons, Candy becomes handcuffed to Hudson and they go on the lam, paying a visit to Hudson’s ex-girlfriend. Candy delivers some nice physical comedy as he stands in the apartment building’s hallway while still handcuffed to Hudson, who has violent sex on the other side of the door, an activity that doesn’t stop the amicable Candy from offering to hold some bags of groceries for a neighbor. When Hudson dies of a heart attack, Steinberg stages two very brief scenes which condense all of the laughs of Weekend at Bernie’s into the space of about three minutes. Shot one: Candy in a phone booth, still cuffed to the corpse lying conspicuously outside. Shot two: Candy in a fancy restaurant, Flaherty applying a large hacksaw to the cuffs while an oblivious fellow carries on a one-sided conversation with Hudson; when Hudson’s head falls limply backward, his friend simply looks up and says, “Whatcha’ lookin’ at, bro?” (Even more Bernie’s-esque, the ending credits find the pair taking a vacation at the beach, the conversation continuing.)

"Going Berserk" predicts "Weekend at Bernie's," but effectively keeps the gag down to about three minutes.

For the most part, however, Going Berserk is strangely lacking in laughs. It’s more interesting as a byproduct of the Canadian comic invasion that began in the 70’s and made its full pop-cultural impact in the 80’s. Though SCTV remained a mere cult hit, never quite rising to the mainstream, its stars quickly became familiar faces in 80’s comedies. Going Berserk is one of the first steps in that shift from Canadian television to Hollywood, and an early attempt at designing a John Candy vehicle. Candy, who had already appeared in 1941 (1979), The Blues Brothers (1980), and Stripes (1981), was on his way to stardom with Splash (1984) opposite Tom Hanks; from there he would become an 80’s comedy fixture: Brewster’s Millions (1985), Summer Rental (1985), Volunteers (1985), Armed and Dangerous (1986), Spaceballs (1987), Planes, Trains, & Automobiles (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988)…Hollywood had found a new comic star and had no trouble exploiting his talent. And that talent and charm is very much in evidence in Going Berserk, even if the film can’t live up to it: just watch the scene where the hypnotized Candy humiliates his fiancé by taking to the stage with a microphone, talking of his girl’s sexual prowess as though it were the most sensitive and moving of dedications. He ends his speech with: “This song goes out to you, honey. It’s called ‘Me and My Dick.’ Help me out, because this is a special song. I’m going to sing with my dick. In my hand. For you, honey.” (His fiancé simply holds out a Mastercard to the waiter.) Watch the sincerity in Candy’s face as he delivers his speech, effortlessly pushing past the material’s feeble potential, and it’s no wonder that he was only a year away from being a household name. Still, by this point in time the film’s confusingly-designed poster could only half-heartedly mention the fact that these faces will be somewhat familiar to you: “You’ve seen them before, now see them Going Berserk.” Yes, and thankfully you’ll see them again.

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And Soon the Darkness (1970)

Posted on March 16, 2012 at 6:00 am by Jeff Kuykendall


Two English tourists – pretty young women – are spending their summer vacation cycling across the French countryside. At an outdoor café, one of them, Cathy (Michele Dotrice, The Blood on Satan’s Claw), notices a handsome local making eye contact. Flirtation never quite occurs, but as the two girls hit the road, it’s not long before he zips by on his moped – and then stands outside a cemetery, ominously watching them pass, not saying a word. Later the two sunbathe just off the road, barely sheltered by the woods. Jane (Pamela Franklin, The Innocents), the more responsible of the two, suggests they leave before it starts to get dark. Cathy would rather catch more rays. Jane accuses her of delaying them on purpose, just in case that handsome man might come by once more; they fight and part ways. But when Jane, remorseful, bikes back to the clearing, Cathy is gone. She’ll spend the rest of her day trying to find help in the search for her missing companion, growing more desperate as she learns that only three years ago another girl went missing – blonde, like Cathy – before she was discovered raped and murdered. When the stranger offers his help, claiming to be a police detective, can she trust him?

Cathy (Michele Dotrice) and Jane (Pamela Franklin) enjoy a summer day in the French countryside.

And Soon the Darkness (1970) is a very unusual British thriller for the early 70’s. While the local horror market was barreling headlong into more explicit, envelope-pushing brands of exploitation, this is a reserved, deliberately spare throwback to the films of Alfred Hitchcock – a fact which the poster boasts proudly (“Remember the Way Hitchcock Kept You on the Edge of Your Seat…?”). It can easily be compared to both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much, as well as Roman Polanski’s later homage Frantic (1988). As in Polanski’s film, a great deal of suspense arises from the fact that our protagonist doesn’t know very much French. She spends much of the film just trying to translate her plight; it’s an extra layer for her to penetrate before she can even approach the mystery at hand. Director Robert Fuest – in the midst of a career-changing turn from Wuthering Heights (1970) to The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) – wisely spends much of the film’s running time wringing as much suspense as possible from his empty landscape: a road, a forest, a plowed field, a café, a police station. He allows you to draw a map in your mind, because the story depends on it. Jane heads about a mile or two down the road and waits for her friend. She never sees her on the road, so she couldn’t have gotten past her, could she? What if she was hitchhiking? What if she went back the way they’d come? Jane starts to double back…

A stranger (Sandor Elès) keeps his eye on the girls.

The fact that the story is so very simple is both the film’s strength and its weakness. Even as the cast slowly expands – though not by much – you’re limited in your choices as to who the villain might be. And, unlike The Man Who Knew Too Much, there is no tangled conspiracy at work, which means that the plot is rather shallow. Still, it’s intelligent throughout and satisfyingly resolved; and perhaps it’s a benefit that the threat is of a more believable, everyday variety: a murderous sexual predator. Fuest holds your attention, and he’s assisted by a good cast, in particular Pamela Franklin, who, as a teenager, stole the show from Bette Davis in Hammer’s superb The Nanny (1965), and would a few years later play the emotionally fragile psychic Florence Tanner in The Legend of Hell House (1973). Fuest directed episodes of The Avengers TV series, and he’s not the only Avengers veteran here: the music is by Avengers composer Laurie Johnson, and the screenplay by Avengers writers Brian Clemens and Terry Nation. Clemens would go on to write and direct the Hammer cult classic Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974). And Soon the Darkness was remade in 2010 with Amber Heard, though films like Frantic, The Vanishing (1988), and Breakdown (1997) all mine similar territory to rewarding results.

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The War of the Gargantuas (1966)

Posted on March 14, 2012 at 6:00 am by Jeff Kuykendall

It was an unexpectedly trippy moment during this year’s Oscars ceremony. In a clip of Hollywood stars explaining their early movie memories, Brad Pitt briefly summarized the plot of a Japanese monster movie in which an evil, green Gargantua battles the good, brown Gargantua. You were supposed to talk about The Wizard of Oz or Bambi, Mr. Pitt, not get breathtakingly honest and dish your childhood love of The War of the Gargantuas (Furankenshutain no Kaijū: Sanda tai Gaira, 1966), Toho’s bizarre Kaiju Frankenstein spin-off. In the middle of a drier-than-usual Academy Awards broadcast, this clip and a later onstage appearance by his wife’s strangely prominent leg were the highlights of the evening. I knew immediately what film Pitt was referencing, but I had never actually sat down and watched it – so it’s a few weeks later and I’ve remedied that problem. I should preface by stating that I’ve never been much of a Kaiju fan. (That’s men in monster suits crushing miniature sets.) I watched Godzilla movies and a bit of the Ultraman TV show as a child, but my deep disappointment in King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) – which replaced Willis O’Brien’s beautiful stop-motion creation with an actor in a lousy-looking ape costume – pretty much had me checking out of the genre for good. As a child, Godzilla movies were fine; as an adolescent, my monster movie needs were a little more demanding. (Of course, I hadn’t been able to view the uncut, Japanese version of the original Godzilla, and wouldn’t until an early-2000’s theatrical re-release. That experience won back my respect for the giant lizard.) Since then, the only Kaiju films I’ve watched are Sandy Frank-dubbed, severely edited, and filtered through the riffs of MST3K. But these days that’s less due to condescension than the fact that the product is so voluminous, its fanbase so rabid, as to make the genre seem daunting.

After singing "The Words Get Stuck in My Throat," Kipp Hamilton is rewarded by being picked up by a Gargantua and dropped from a great height.

So I approach with an open mind and with caution, and this is what I get: an outré film even by Toho’s standards. I’m about fifteen minutes into the plot, and I realize I’m completely lost. How can this be? It’s a movie about a giant monster, and another giant monster, and they’re going to battle at some point, probably in a miniature city and then in the ocean. Quickly I hop onto Wikipedia, and discover that The War of the Gargantuas is a sequel. Aha. The original title translates as Frankenstein’s Monsters: Sanda vs. Gaira. It’s a follow-up to Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965), itself a Kaiju take on Mary Shelley, with a Frankenstein monster (actually a Hiroshima-radiated human grown from the heart of the original Frankenstein monster as the result of a Nazi experiment, and this makes as much sense to me as it does to you) that grows to enormous size and wrestles with a horned reptile called Baragon. Frankenstein Conquers the World gave Japanese audiences the kind of Universal Studios monster movie they’d prefer to watch; and American International Pictures dubbed it and distributed it on these shores to thoroughly confuse American audiences. The sequel, by comparison, may seem rather conventional, though it gets there by unconventional means: the Gargantuas (or “Frankensteins,” in the Japanese version) were spawned by the cells of the first film’s mutated monster. They’re Godzilla-sized, and they look like Neanderthals, only they’re covered with fur. And yes, there’s a green one, and there’s a brown one, and the green one is evil. Mr. Pitt’s memory was correct.

Scientists Akemi (Kumi Mizuno) and Dr. Stewart (Russ Tamblyn) offer a theory for the creation of the Gargantuas.

As with the original film, an American star was chosen to help sell the film to American audiences. Russ Tamblyn (West Side Story, The Haunting) sleepily guides us through War of the Gargantuas, with an unchanging expression that lurks somewhere between sarcastic and utterly disinterested. (He dubs his own dialogue with the demeanor of someone who’s already received his paycheck and has only 90 minutes to go before he’s rid of this project entirely.) The Japanese actors are far more engaged, including the lovely Kumi Mizuno (Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster), who shows so much warmth for her brown-furred behemoth that at one point Tamblyn’s Dr. Stewart has to remind her that Gargantua “is not a toy poodle.” Another American, fashion model and sometime actor Kipp Hamilton, belts out the ditty “The Words Get Stuck in My Throat,” before the feral Green Gargantua picks her up in its paw, lifts her high off the ground, then gets distracted by some bright lights and drops her from about fifty feet. Later Mizuno is also dropped by the Gargantua, and although she smacks straight onto some cement steps (seriously – ouch), Tamblyn doesn’t seem that concerned; he picks the unconscious girl right up and carries her off, potential spine injury be damned.

The Green Gargantua attacks an airport.

The special effects are impressive, for the most part. Although, like most Kaiju films, you’re perfectly aware at all times that these are men in monster suits, the miniature cities and forests are exquisitely detailed, and some of the optical effects work impressively, like one unexpectedly convincing shot in which the Green Gargantua stomps off past a seaside village into the ocean. The result is that the monster attacks are entertaining simply because they’re fun to look at: a favorite being a Gargantua rampage at an airport, during which the tower warns a pilot that he shouldn’t attempt a landing, and the airplane dives straight into the Gargantua’s claw anyway (I would’ve turned the plane around immediately, myself); then the monster picks up a girl, chews on her with gusto, and spits a skirt onto the ground – truly the film’s highlight. An opening scene, in which Green Gargantua fights a cool-looking giant octopus, pretty much summarizes the appeal of Kaiju in general. Still, it’s mystifying to me that director Ishirō Honda – who helmed the original Godzilla (1954) – doesn’t go to greater lengths to hide some of the film’s weaker effects and miniatures; when some toy artillery starts opening fire on Green Gargantua, the phony-looking toy soldiers seated in the jeeps are plainly, embarrassingly exposed. I’m not really complaining; this is exactly what you’d expect from a mid-60’s Japanese monster movie. And yes, the two Gargantuas do level Tokyo during a wrestling match, ultimately taking their bout into the ocean, where – for some reason – a volcano suddenly surfaces and swallows them both, which is the Kaiju equivalent of a deus ex machina. It’s 90 minutes, it goes down easy, and apparently it gave the world Brad Pitt, somehow. No, I’m not complaining, and it’s even convinced me that I should wade a bit deeper into Kaiju…mind the volcano.

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