BATTLESHIP: Hit. Miss. Hit.

There are those who will shrug off Battleship as ridiculous because it's based on a board game.  I will remind them that good movies have been based on flimsier premises.  Val Lewton commissioned a series of horror films in the 1940s with only titles, and depended on real filmmakers to fill in the rest; we ended up with the heartfelt (and Bronte-based) I Walked with a Zombie, the chilling Cat People, and the clever The Body Snatcher.  At a time when the movie business is almost completely premise-based, it's good to see one with only the most minuscule of selling points which depends on good directing, good acting, and good writing to succeed.

Much of what makes Battleship surprisingly entertaining is that it has a real director: Peter Berg, not a graduate of commercials or a Michael Bay clone but a good filmmaker, a former actor who has made real films (Friday Night Lights) as well as rousing action-adventures (The Rundown).  Berg doesn't take his paycheck and leave, but delivers.

The battle in question is between the U.S. Navy and aliens.  Following a signal sent into space five years earlier, several alien warships from a similar planet travel to earth to put the flag in.  "This could be like Columbus and the Indians... except we're the Indians," says the astronomer Cal (Hamish Linklater), paraphrasing the hypothesis expressed more eloquently by Stephen Hawking (and earlier by Jake Johannsen).  They put up a forcefield around the Hawaiian islands and set themselves up to send a signal to the rest of the warships to come.  Humanity's only hope is a set of ships inside the forcefield that may be able to take them down.  There's your gameboard right there.

The battle scenes are effective.  Unlike the Transformers movies, which Battleship will inevitably be lumped in with, we are always sure what's going on where.  And the movie actually incorporates the hit-miss grid of the board game in a way that is not stupid or forced, but actually seems kind of plausible.

It also helps that there are human beings behind the battleships.  Though the story strictly follows formula, the performances are good and the characters believable.  Taylor Kitsch plays Alex Hopper, a former layabout who was pressured by his straight-arrow brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgard) to join him in the Navy.  Alex proves to be a capable soldier but still a stubborn pighead, and it doesn't help that he's in love with Samantha (Brooklyn Decker), the daughter of his commanding officer (Liam Neeson).  The human story is predictable but still helps give a backbone to all of the action, and a very funny prologue involving a bar, a convenience store, and a burrito acquaints us with the characters quite well.

Kitsch's performance does not display a great range, but he's a likable lead.  Tadanobu Asano is also very good as a Japanese soldier who feuds with Alex, paving the way for the two to grudgingly make nice when the aliens touch down, and later to damn well respect each other. (I had to check to be sure that this was the same Asano who played the amoral blond-haired slit-mouthed maniac in Ichi the Killer.  He seems far too nice to be the same person, but he is.)  Though featured prominently in trailers, Neeson is barely in the film.  This is a relief; between fighting off a pack of wolves in The Grey and bludgeoning dozens of henchmen singlehandedly in Taken 2, he needs a rest.  Of Rihanna's performance, the best to be said is that it will not likely harm her music career.

The writing is where the movie comes up short.  The script by Jon and Eric Hoeber, who wrote the dismal RED, is consistently funny but weak in plot.  The aliens are refreshingly humanlike (as would be expected on an earthlike planet), but it's never quite clear why the aliens do what they do.  For instance, why do they send machines out to commit mass destruction but will not personally harm another creature?  On several occasions one of them will look a person in the eye and leave them unharmed; meanwhile, they cause car crashes, destroy bridges, and hurl missiles on a whim.  What's their logic?

One of the key pieces of machinery the aliens possess is a ball of rotating blades which they send around to destroy ships and large structures.  It's an interesting invention, but it renders much of the hit-and-miss missile-firing action pointless.  They may have just used their death spheres to begin with and saved the trouble.

The land-bound sub-plot involving Samantha, Cal the astronomer, and a depressed disabled veteran (Gregory D. Gadson) who's getting used to his titanium legs doesn't contribute much to the story.  It proves itself worthy by introducing us to Gadson, who really is an Iraq war veteran and really did lose his legs.  But never mind that; he has a commanding screen presence.  This is his first movie and will not be his last.

Of course, Battleship comes complete with an undying and unquestioning reverence for the U.S. Armed Forces, and why shouldn't it?  A movie based on a toy isn't equipped to be nuanced.  But Berg and his writers find a way to avoid pandering, in a climactic battle sequence that pays tribute to the Navy in a clever and unexpected way.

Though Battleship is far from an airtight action film, I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised.  Occasionally a movie with only the most limited ambitions can be more satisfying than a movie that sets the highest bar and fails to reach it (Prometheus, that's you).  Though Berg and the screenwriters leave quite a few holes in their struggle to fill in the gaps of a plotless, characterless game, they have made a real movie out of it.  I was happier walking out of Battleship than I was going in, and that's enough.

** 1/2 out of ****

NOTE: I was warned that there was one scene after the credits of Battleship, and so I stuck around to see the most boring, pointless scene in the film.  It contains no surprises or pleasures.  When the credits roll, you may leave.

TIM AND ERIC'S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE (2012)

It is no small miracle that Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim found each other.  I have a feeling that without each other, they would be alone in this world.  The stars and creators of Adult Swim's "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!", they revel in a type of humor that I must confess is usually beyond my understanding, which is saying a lot.  But as with Andy Kaufman and many misunderstood comedians, you get the feeling that they're making each other laugh, and sometimes that's enough.  That they were each able to find another person with the same sense of humor boggles the mind.

The word surrealist doesn't quite scratch the surface of their style.  Unlike Tom Green, the last mainstream comedian to try to make a surrealist film, they don't seek merely to push the envelope; they are more pointed than that.  True, they do throw a heap of gags at the wall and only a few do stick, but Tim and Eric are not desperate.  Critics might say they're trying too hard, but that is missing the point: they're playing the parts of people who are trying too hard.  Their character is the class clown who has no idea how to make you laugh, but gives it a go anyway.  It's inane, but that he tried in the first place is funny in itself.

What to call it?  Lame-ism?  Unfunny chic?  The funniest bits of Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie are structured like an office team-building video where the boss tries to show you his "lighter side" while still insisting you get that report in on time.  Though not always at the top of their game, Tim and Eric have a spot-on sense of what it sounds like when boring people try to be entertaining.  This sense is present even in their IMDb bios, which I believe they wrote themselves, claiming that their victory in the 2008 Webby awards was "based on excellence in the following criteria: Concept & Writing, Quality of Craft, Integration, Overall Experience." Oh, and Tim "was stabbed twice in the upper back while protecting an elderly woman from her son who was under the influence of hard drugs."

On a laugh-ratio level, Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie has far more misses than hits.  Strung together with only the loosest of plots, it follows Tim and Eric after they've supposedly made the highest-budgeted movie of all time.  More specifically, they took a studio's billion-dollar investment, blew it on themselves, and turned in a five-minute piece of trash starring a Johnny Depp impersonator.  The studio heads (Robert Loggia and William Atherton, good sports) threaten to kill them if they can't pay back the money, so they decide to rehabilitate a failing southwestern mall so they can make the billion dollars back.

Will Ferrell is very funny as the eccentric hustler who sells them the mall.  Twink Caplan is charming as a store owner who immediately captures Eric's attention.  As a preposterous holistic healer, Ray Wise need only appear and smile to get the biggest laugh in the movie.  I enjoyed the prologue featuring Jeff Goldblum (as "Chef Goldblum"), satirizing the discomfort of 3-D movies.  Several bits which satirize self-help and promotional videos are side-splitting.

Other gags don't go so well.  John C. Reilly (who's hilarious on Adult Swim as Tim and Eric's "Dr. Steve Brule") appears as a particularly disgusting character without any redeeming qualities, or laughs.  A sub-plot about Tim stealing the son of one of the store owners gets no laughs and goes nowhere.  Even Zach Galifianakis is more bizarre than funny as a Hollywood guru, and the usually-reliable Will Forte relies too heavily on foul language for laughs as the proprietor of the mall's sword shop.  Scenes which resort to graphic potty humor are the only ones which seem desperate and out of place.

I didn't laugh at many of the jokes in Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie.  I don't particularly "get" Tim and Eric in general.  But I've seen enough comedies to know that not everyone has to be in on the joke.  When everyone is, you get a watered-down piece of slush like Failure to Launch or Bad Teacher.  At the very least, I can say with confidence that the Tim and Eric movie was probably not screened for any focus groups.  Comedy usually represents what one person thinks is funny, or in this case, what two people think is funny.  Tim and Eric made the movie that was funny to them, and no one stood in their way.

** out of ****

PROMETHEUS (2012): Man's origin leads to man's end

Despite how it was originally heralded, Ridley Scott's Prometheus is not really a prequel to Alien, nor is it terribly similar in concept.  Although both are set in the vacuum of space and mine considerable mileage out of the vast emptiness of the universe and the solitude of being one of a few people on an entire planet (and the titular creatures do make an appearance), Prometheus has far greater ambitions.

It seeks to explore a literal confrontation between man and god.  Its themes are similar to Altered States, a film in which a scientist took psychotropic drugs which gave him a vision of man's collective memory of his origin, and found that evolution was a little bit messier than he imagined.  Here, scientists travel to a distant planet to find what may be the engineers of mankind.  What they find is also messier than they expected.

A team of explorers is commissioned by Weyland Industries to travel to a distant planet which, according to numerous identical ancient cave paintings, is thought to be the home of those who set life on earth into motion.  While the boss, Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) is mainly interested in the exploration, scientists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) want to make contact with our makers and find out just why we exist.

The answer isn't easy for anyone to take.  In fact, the only one who may have all the answers is David (Michael Fassbender), an android who's spent a long time studying what it's like to be human.  Having already met his maker, he has already faced what the others haven't.  And he may have plans for them.

The android David is the most complex, fascinating character in the film, and Fassbender gives a commanding performance.  When he is absent, the movie suffers.  The human characters, though well performed, are far less appealing: I just couldn't find it in me to care about Elizabeth and Charlie and their relationship, about Elizabeth's ambitions, about the flashbacks with her father (Patrick Wilson).  Theron is fun to watch as the no-nonsense businesswoman who could be mistaken for a robot herself, and the rest of the crew (including Idris Elba and Benedict Wong) are an amiable bunch of working-class schmoes.  Guy Pearce appears in full caked-on old man makeup as the 92-year-old chairman of the company.  Since Pearce looks notoriously unconvincing, and never appears in the film as a young man, the filmmakers might have cast an actual old man and saved a lot of trouble.  I hear that Christopher Lee is still working. (Okay, so a viral video was released with a fake TED talk from the Pearce character as a young man.  But was it still worth it?)

True to its sci-fi nature, Prometheus raises some interesting questions.  What if we could essentially meet God?  How does God feel about us?  Proud?  Ashamed?  Indifferent?  Might our creators feel the same way toward us as we do toward the things we create?  The movie has a great scene in which David poses this question to Charlie.  He doesn't have an answer.

The problem is that once Scott and writers Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof pose such questions, it seems they don't know what to do with the rest of the film.  While the first half of the film is mysterious, spooky, and thought-provoking, the second half turns into a simplistic yawn.  Once the cards are on the table, the movie goes on autopilot.  The emergence of a proto-version of the Alien creature is well-designed (H.R. Giger was brought in to "devolve" his creation a bit), but the scene surrounding it is brief, hackneyed, and suspenseless.  Fassbender is relegated to the sidelines and the movie focuses on Rapace and her less interesting arc.  A character whom we thought was dead--and did not particularly miss--makes an unnecessary late return, and only gobs up the later scenes in the film.  The climax essentially boils down to stop-bad-guy-from-doing-bad-thing, and is a cookie-cutter action scene that is unworthy of the big ideas that Prometheus presents.

The movie ends on a preposterous note of light and hope, setting up the obligatory sequel and casually ignoring that most of what preceded it was a fable about the doom of mankind.  Scott and crew appear to have learned the wrong lesson from the film.  It leaves its characters still proudly in search of meaning in the universe, when the movie has given them only ugliness.  You know it's a bad moment in a sci-fi film when you want to say to the explorers, "Nothing to see here--just go home and mind your own business from now on."

** 1/2 out of ****

THE WICKER TREE (2012): Cowboys for Christ take on heretics from the Highlands

 

The Wicker Man remains one of the most sublime mystery-thrillers ever made, and director Robin Hardy has long been promising a sequel, even before we were treated to the abysmal 2006 remake via Neil LaBute.  Now it has arrived in the form of The Wicker Tree, and, sad to say, it is a big letdown.  Though it boasts the same director as the original, it's a dull, ham-fisted, thrill-less retread with lousy performances and no surprises.  I might even go so far as to say that the LaBute film is better.  At least that one had Nicolas Cage chomping on scenery, Ellen Burstyn decked out as Braveheart, and a fresh take on the story which brought it into modern-day gender politics rather than religious fervor.

The new film follows pretty much the same arc as the original.  Pop singer Beth Boothby (Brittania Nicol), once a boot-stompin' beer-drinkin' man-crazy "Redneck Woman"-style country singer, has found Jesus, reformed her ways and committed herself to chastity until marriage.  She takes off for Scotland along with her similarly chaste boyfriend Steve (Henry Garrett) to preach the Word, and finds herself in a small secluded town where the townspeople take to her very nicely.  Too nicely.  And their oddly pagan springtime celebration is coming up soon...

No points for guessing what the town is up to.  The two lead characters certainly don't.  One reason why the original worked so well was that its main character (a policeman played by Edward Woodward) was no dummy, but was closed-minded, boorish, and curious enough to get into the plot over his head anyway.  Beth and Steve, contrarily, are two dim bulbs who make every wrong move even when everything is spelled out for them.  The original film was about how religion blinds smart people to the truth; this film is about naive people who do stupid things.

For a film whose predecessor was constantly surprising, The Wicker Tree has considerably little suspense and no surprises at all.  The film has no thematic element that wasn't explored in the original, nor any particular plot point that differs.  The only thing new about the film is the character of a local prostitute (Honeysuckle Weeks--yes, it's her real name) who falls in love with Steve, I think, or at least feels sympathy for him and tries to help him, I think.  Her "warnings" to him, suitable for sloppy horror films like this one, are needlessly ambiguous when she might have just come out and told him what the danger was.

The one redeeming aspect of the film is the return of Christopher Lee, who played a cult leader in the original and appears briefly here as the same character.  His cameo has almost nothing to do with the story, but look at him.  Pushing 90, he looks great and can still act.  Even with a two-minute appearance his presence is deeply felt.  For the rest of the movie we are dearly missing him, as well as Nicolas Cage, and the angry bees.

* out of ****

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE II (FULL SEQUENCE) (2011)

To call The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) one of the most disgusting films ever made is probably a misuse of the phrase "one of." This pronouncement would no doubt be music to the ears of Tom Six, its director, who desires so desperately to offend that he didn't blink once when the UK banned his film from release.  They claimed it could actually cause harm to audiences.

Shock filmmakers like William Castle used to market their films with promotional gimmicks: The House on Haunted Hill featured "Emerg-O," in which a fake skeleton emerged from behind the screen; and the producers of The Screaming Skull famously offered free burial services to anyone who died of fright from watching their film.  Six should have taken their cue and offered vomit bags at the entrance and a free therapy session on the way out.

The British Film Council's claim does more than lend Six's film intriguing notoriety and free advertising: it plays right into his theme.  The Human Centipede, you remember, was about a mad surgeon who surgically attached people together mouth-to-anus in order to create the title creature.  The Human Centipede 2 is about a mentally unstable man who's obsessed with the original film and decides to create his own.  You see?  They were right.

Martin (Laurence R. Harvey--no relation to the other Laurence Harvey, I assume) is the archetypal psychotic case.  He's a parking garage attendant living with his abusive mother (Vivien Bridsen), who constantly derides him for ratting out his pedophile father.  Oh, and he loves The Human Centipede.  In the first few minutes we see him watching the end of the film, then he dutifully rewinds all the way back to the beginning and starts again.  Of all the atrocities committed in the film, I think this is the most horrifying.  Very soon he gathers victims of his own and puts into action his plan to create a bigger centipede.

The point--I suppose--is that violent movies inspire violence in those who already have a predilection toward it.  This idea comes not without a huge portion of ego.  The notion of someone being driven to murder by a movie is interesting, but the possibility that anyone could be inspired as such by The Human Centipede is slim.  It may have had a dastardly premise, but it was the biggest bore of a shock film I've ever seen.  It lacked the courage of its convictions to be either a classy suspense film or a splatter fest.

Six avoids that pitfall this time around by upping the gore ante extensively.  While the first film surprisingly pulled its punches in the disgusting department, this sequel delivers what many were probably expecting all along.

One of the most disconcerting things about The Human Centipede II is how well-made it is.  It's beautifully shot in black and white.  The atmosphere is chilling and Mr. Harvey's performance is quietly affecting (he never speaks a word).  A tongue-in-cheek appearance by Ashlynn Yennie (the C spot from the original) is surprisingly clever.

Mr. Six is, I fear, not a rabid splatterer but a legitimately talented director whose cinematic ambitions have been outweighed by his desire to offend.  The movie doesn't simply offend; it's exceptionally good at offending.  Six shows quite a bit of restraint in his use of gore, as many brutal moments are left off-screen.  But rest assured that this is not because of any human decency; rather, it's because he knows that what's implied is often more disturbing than what's shown.  He knows that too much in-your-face violence is numbing, so he is careful only to show what is necessary.  Here is a movie that is finely tuned to be as squirm-inducing as it possibly can.

It all culminates in a final half-hour that is the closest a movie has ever come to making me vomit.  But to willingly watch a movie like The Human Centipede II is to ask for it.  The titular creature is cobbled together in sloppy and sick fashion.  Martin, being no doctor, screws up from time to time, sometimes at the expense of his subjects.  There are scenes here which are a trial to sit through.  The bit involving the pregnant woman is particularly unforgivable, which I'm sure was precisely Six's intention.  The supposed climax involves the brief addition of the color brown to the palette.

In its own way, The Human Centipede II is an effective social comment, though a tad self-defeating; it brutally mocks anyone who watches it by equating their curiosity with that of a mentally challenged lunatic.  But Six's work here is less graceful than, say, Michael Haneke's Funny Games, in which the movie never quite lowered itself to the level of its villains.  Here, the movie drags us right down into depravity with its lead character.

So what do we make of The Human Centipede II?  Is it a good film or a bad film?  Well, let me put it this way: there's not a thing it sets out to do that it doesn't accomplish.  It's without a doubt the Human Centipediest movie that's ever been made, and if you watch it, you get exactly what you deserve.

Note: I've been predicting ever since the release of the first Human Centipede that Tom Six has a career ahead of him.  Not unlike John Waters, as soon as his notoriety as a purveyor of trash jettisons him into the mainstream, he'll make some actual good films.  The IMDB reveals that his next film is... The Human Centipede III.  For Christ's sake.

See also:
Shock and Yawn: THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) (2010)

THE CINEMASOCHIST: Ghost Dad (1990)

The Cinemasochist takes a look at movies that have been notoriously rejected by the mass populace, and tells you if you might perchance be missing a classic. Or not.



Ghost Dad assembles a top-notch cast, some of Hollywood’s best screenwriters, Sidney Poitier (yes, Sidney Poitier) behind the camera, and America’s greatest father figure, all in the service of a premise that is completely grotesque. I shudder to think what Hollywood executive dreamed it up and thought it was a good idea. It certainly cannot have been Cosby or Poitier, who seem far to cheerful to invent something so morose. Nor could it have been writers S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, who seem to be trying to wring all they can from this unfortunate story. Whoever invented it must be a sad, lonely person who has trained himself to deal with misery by laughing at it.

The notion of Bill Cosby playing a ghost isn’t in itself so bad. One can imagine mining some comedy from Cosby getting stuck between worlds and trying to make his way around.

But, well... okay, let me put it this way. You’re one of the children in this film. Your mom passed away a few years earlier, and your dad (Bill Cosby) has been struggling to raise you and your two siblings ever since. He’s a few days away from securing a new promotion that will make things a whole lot easier. And then he shows up one afternoon and explains to you that he’s been killed in a car accident, and is now a ghost.

I know--barrel of laughs, right?

Of course, humor can always be found in the gallows, but that is not the kind of movie that Ghost Dad seems to want to be. It wants to be a silly family comedy. We’re even treated to a scene where Ghost Cosby, unable to communicate with his children, develops a goofy game of charades to explain to them that he’s a ghost. We see the children take delight in playing the guessing game, and then we see their faces drop when they figure it out.

Hold on--my sides are splitting.

So what we have is a silly comedy in which three kids are on the verge of being orphaned. The movie avoids the real gravity of the situation by progressing from set-piece to set-piece without much thought. Ghost Dad has to go on a date. Ghost Dad messes around with daughter’s stupid boyfriend. Ghost Dad needs to go get a physical. The most befuddling is the show-and-tell sequence, in which Cosby’s son gets on his case about helping him with a magic trick.

Hello? Kid, your dad is dead. Forget about the magic trick and cry or something. That the kids do not quite grasp what has happened to their father makes the movie even sadder.

The movie is competently made. Cosby is much more at home here than in the dismal Leonard Part 6. The role of a hapless father trying to keep his family together suits him quite well, and he even wrings a few funny moments out of trying to parent from beyond the grave. I must admit that I laughed at a scene in which he is forced to undergo a physical, which he manages to do quite believably (with the help of Arnold Stang--yes, Arnold Stang).  The usually reliable Ian Bannen appears as a scientist named Edith, and the fact that his name is Edith is one of many jokes that the movie insists is very funny.

It should be mentioned--spoiler alert!--that the Cosby character is thankfully not really dead, and he finds a way to put himself back in his body and reunite with his family, and the movie has a happy ending. This is a relief. There is absolutely no way to accept a version of this movie where the character actually dies, and where the kids grieve for their father in a normal way. Such a movie would be tragic, and to try to make it into a comedy would be unconscionable.

Though Ghost Dad is a bit more bearable than Leonard Part 6, they share one thing in common: both are films that fall prey to a premise that is completely unworkable. There may be a way to make a movie about a dad who dies and comes back as a ghost to set things right for his children, but it would have to be somber and honest and not the fun fest that this film wants to be.

* 1/2 out of ****

Is it really that bad?: It's not completely devoid of humor.

Pain level: Fairly low, rising to intermediate whenever the young children are involved.

On films that did NOT reinvigorate the silent film in America: I WOKE UP EARLY THE DAY I DIED (1998)

In the late '90s, possibly stemming from the newfound interest generated by Tim Burton's fantastic Ed Wood, a film was made from one of Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s, unproduced screenplays.  Wood was the auteur who brought us Bride of the Monster, Glen or Glenda?, and Plan Nine from Outer Space, and is widely considered to be the worst director of all time.  The overt inanity of his movies, combined with the notoriety given to him by Burton's film, shotgunned Wood to high camp status.  And thus we have I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, which aims to be a modern-day faithful emulation of Mr. Wood's style, if you can call it that.  It means to present itself exactly as Mr. Wood would have, had he been given the chance to direct it himself.

Does it succeed?  If I say yes, does that really explain anything?

The mastermind behind it, by all accounts, was Billy Zane, who had just previously given the one non-praised performance in the most successful movie of all time.  Zane was co-producer and editor of the film, and stars in the lead role.  The director is Aris Iliopulos, whose first film this was and who has not directed since.  Was it Zane's intention to put an inexperienced director behind the camera, so he might turn out to be as inept as Wood?  Could be.

And that's not the bombshell.  The bombshell is that Zane gathered around him a gargantuan all-star cast.  To list them would be exhausting, but they include Christina Ricci, Eartha Kitt, John Ritter, Tippi Hedren, Ron Perlman, Karen Black, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and Taylor Negron.  Many of them appear in almost-unrecognizable cameos.

Is this film proof that a good movie can be wrung from the hands of one of the most inept filmmakers of all time?  Certainly not.  I Woke Up Early, I have a feeling, accurately transfers the badness from Wood's script through to the screen.  The fragmented plot and proclivity for debauchery are undoubtedly Wood's, and the film has the grainy atmosphere of a no-budget Z-movie from his era.

The main criticism of I Woke Up Early, upon its release, was that it was an intentionally bad film, and thus couldn't replicate Wood's accidentally bad films.  But the cynicism actually lines up with Wood's work fairly well; many have forgotten just how cynical a filmmaker Wood was, and much of his badness came from his condescension to his own material.  He knew most of what he was making was schlock; many of the films he made were meant to be "moneymakers" so that he could make the really good films.  Glen or Glenda? was an attempt to shoehorn his own struggle with transvestism into a commissioned film about a transsexual.  Plan Nine from Outer Space was a last-ditch effort to turn a few minutes of footage of Bela Lugosi into the horror legend's "last film." Though Wood was reportedly an enthusiastic filmmaker who loved every shot of his lousy films, his intentions were never quite so pure.

At the center of the film is Mr. Zane, who plays an escaped mental patient who robs a loan office, loses the money, and spends the bulk of the film on a killing spree trying to find the money.  The plot makes little sense, but Zane's performance is inspired; he bravely hurls himself violently through every inch of the film.  I've always felt he was an underrated comic actor; he has the pitch-perfect facial mugging of a melodramatic silent film actor, and it's a shame his comic ability is not put to use more often.  He is the film's only real through-line, as most of the all-star cast weaves in and out of the movie as if appearing by accident.

The movie's biggest downside is that it was written as a silent film.  There is no dialogue, and Wood aficionados will confirm that the distinctively clunky dialogue is one of the greatest joys of watching his movies.  The absence of lines like "The future will affect all of us in the future" deprives the film of part of what made Wood an icon.

Still, the movie passes this test: if Wood had actually directed it, I have a feeling it would be like this.  It's certainly not a good movie.  At times it's a trial to watch, though it does have its share of funny moments; with this cast, it would be hard to be a complete failure.

It is what it is.  If you have any aversion to camp, stay far, far, away.  If witnessing the last gasp from America's most legendary talentless artist means anything to you, it will be worth a shot.

** 1/2 out of ****

I Woke Up Early the Day I Died is pretty much completely unavailable on DVD or video.  It is viewable on Youtube here.  As the only available print was a German release, certain captions are in German; the English translation is in the Youtube annotations.