The dead wanted to vote, alright. They just didn’t want to vote for us.

Masters of Horror:

Homecoming

(2005)

(SPOILERS) Joe Dante’s debut contribution to anthology horror show Masters of Horror was widely acclaimed as the first season’s standout episode, all eyes fixed on its overt political message. It even snagged the No.19 spot on Vulture’s 25 Best Horror Movies since The Shining (although, since Tarantino’s atrocious Death Proof featured, there’s no accounting for taste). I’ve got to admit, though, as disposed as I am towards venerating Dante, I found the episode so lacking in any form of subtlety or nuance as render it entirely rote. Indeed, the most interesting aspect of Homecoming ends up being the retro-noir narration, like a zombie apocalypse version of Double Indemnity.

Sam Hamm, who penned Tim Burton’s Batman, furnished a script where everything is on the surface. The subtext is the text. These zombies don’t represent consumer society, commies or anything so Romero-ish; they’re straight-up soldiers, back from the dead because they’re pissed off about being sent to wage a meaningless war and determined to vote the Republican president out of office. Dante sounded off that he was incensed by the Iraq situation, and couldn’t figure out why it was left to Homecoming to act as the lone voice of protest. The problem with this is, expressing a noble sentiment so audibly doesn’t necessarily make the vehicle well-expressed. The extent of his uncharacteristic seriousness is seen in the relative absence of in-references (aside from Jacques Tourneur rising from the grave).

Homecoming’s at its best with the sub-Network antics of media manipulation (something Dante has explored before, in the likes of The Howling and The Second Civil War), but even then the writing is too forward to be considered really smart or subversive. Thea Gill is an Anne Coulter-esque right-wing pundit reeling off renta-quotes berating liberals, when a mother comes on air to explain she was detained by the Secret Service for heckling the President (“I stood up and asked him, why did my son die? The WMD weren’t there, the nuclear program wasn’t there, the threat wasn’t there”). At which point, possibly weaving some unintended spell, fellow guest and presidential speechwriter David Murch (Jon Tenney), who lost a brother to Vietnam, pipes up, stating that if he he had one wish “I would ask your son to come back”.

Political advisor Kurt Rand (Robert Picardo, essentially Karl Rove) compliments Murch on his inventiveness, incorporating the dialogue into the President’s next speech, and before we know it soldiers are rising from their coffins. Picardo’s is a suitably relishable Dante turn, and he has some of the pithiest lines (“Private Wheeler died on the operating table, after which he put up a hell of a fight”). When Murch notes the dead man feels pain, Rand rejoinders, “Ah hell, he volunteered”. Pondering why they have come back, he concludes “Couldn’t be the disability benefits”. And, like a typical Dante opportunist, he sees potential in the situation rather than cost (“If we could keep the same dead GIs out on the battlefield forever, that’s like the answer to a prayer”).

The problem is, the bright idea has nowhere left to go after it has been set up, and includes such maudlin scenes as a couple tending a lost zombie GI, telling him “We want you to know that somebody does appreciate you”, complete with treacly music (the flashback, in which Murch as a child shoots his veteran brother, is so overwrought as to be unintentionally funny).

Amid his bid for topicality, Hamm is forced to recognise the logical restraints he’s set himself, the implication that all other wars must be assumed to have been fought for good reason, by way of suggesting those veterans who haven’t returned believed in their fights (before backtracking and including Vietnam). There’s the occasional sharp swipe at the electoral system (scoffing that a couple of hundred votes wont change anything, someone counters by mentioning Florida), but this is a piece that, to be really on-point, ought to have had the GIs conclude it was useless voting for anyone as they’re all as bad as each other.

Homecoming isn’t a dodo by any means; it’s proficiently made, and quite watchable, but the hype it received far outweighs its actual merit. Strange as it may sound to say it, it’s actually rather shallow, and could have delivered its salient points in half the running time.

Comments

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

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You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

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Schnell, you stinkers! Come on, raus!

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It’s not as if she were a… maniac, a raving thing.

Psycho (1960) (SPOILERS) One of cinema’s most feted and most studied texts, and for good reason. Even if the worthier and more literate psycho movie of that year is Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom . One effectively ended a prolific director’s career and the other made its maker more in demand than ever, even if he too would discover he had peaked with his populist fear flick. Pretty much all the criticism and praise of Psycho is entirely valid. It remains a marvellously effective low-budget shocker, one peppered with superb performances and masterful staging. It’s also fairly rudimentary in tone, character and psychology. But those negative elements remain irrelevant to its overall power.

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

I tell you, it saw me! The hanged man’s asphyx saw me!

The Asphyx (1972) (SPOILERS) There was such a welter of British horror from the mid 60s to mid 70s, even leaving aside the Hammers and Amicuses, that it’s easy to lose track of them in the shuffle. This one, the sole directorial effort of Peter Newbrook (a cameraman for David Lean, then a cinematographer), has a strong premise and a decent cast, but it stumbles somewhat when it comes to taking that premise any place interesting. On the plus side, it largely eschews the grue. On the minus, directing clearly wasn’t Newbrook’s forte, and even aided by industry stalwart cinematographer Freddie Young (also a go-to for Lean), The Aspyhx is stylistically rather flat.

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

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Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) (SPOILERS) Bryan Forbes’ adaptation of Mark McShane’s 1961’s novel has been much acclaimed. It boasts a distinctive storyline and effective performances from its leads, accompanied by effective black-and-white cinematography from Gerry Turpin and a suitably atmospheric score from John Barry. I’m not sure Forbes makes the most of the material, however, as he underlines Séance on a Wet Afternoon ’s inherently theatrical qualities at the expense of its filmic potential.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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