Gorilla + Martini = Magic

Before I discuss 1995's Congo, I'd like to introduce those who don't know about it to a very, very important website.

DoesTheDogDie.com

See, as an animal lover, I often find myself being one of those morally confused viewers who watches a film where human beings are tortured and slaughtered without a facial twitch, yet sobs like a baby who stubbed its toe when an adorable puppy is kicked or a likable hamster meets the dark limbo of a household vacuum. Call me a hypocrite in any language, but I was among those in the theater for Cold Mountain that gasped when a hungry hermit slit a goat's throat yet munched on my popcorn when hundreds of soldiers were blasted away.

This kind of attitude is what kept me away from Congo for, it would now seem twenty years. I remember the film being released and thought, as any typical thirteen-year-old girl would, "Neat! Gorillas! Jungles! Volcanoes! Ernie Hudson!" Then I realized the film included a lovable TALKING gorilla who was so clearly going to earn my instant love. Then I realized the film included human characters SHOOTING gorillas. I could connect the dots well enough (thanks, Pee-Wee's Playhouse) to know that this added up to the chance that human characters may very well shoot the talking gorilla that had earned my love.

That did not sound joyous.

Thankfully, twenty years later, I'm married to a man who has seen Congo so when I asked, "Does the adorable talking gorilla die?" he responded, 

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Okay. So I now allowed myself to watch Congo. 

Side note: DoesTheDogDie.com does not apparently care about gorillas, as it has no entry for Congo. I still recommend it for those (like me) who nearly turned off The Caller for fear of that wonderful golden retriever suffering a cruel fate, but if you like gorillas, then I advise you to marry someone like my husband.

Just not, you know, MY husband. Because then I'll have to go all Laura Linney on you.

CONGO!

Quick Plot: A multimillion dollar communications conglomerate something something headed by a paranoid Joe Don Baker sends Ash to Africa to find diamonds that can power laser guns.

No, I'm serious. 

And yes, that's just the first five minutes.

Before you can say groovy, Bruce Campbell is mangled by mutant-ish gorillas and his ex-fiancee/colleague Karen Ross (Linney) is heading overseas to track him down. Meanwhile, primatologist Peter (Dylan Walsh) is also booking a flight to Africa in order to reunite his prized talking ape Amy with her motherland. His travel companions include a nervous assistant and a Romanian philanthropist hammed up by Tim Curry.

Yes, THE Tim Curry.

And yes, THE Tim Curry speaks in what might be the most awesomely ridiculous European accent humanely possible. If Congo gave me one thing, it's the new dream project of seeing Tim Curry cast in a live action musical version of Bram Stoker's Dracula but playing the titular role as if he were Sesame Street's The Count.

In my head, it's life changing.

Because one amazing accent isn't enough, we also get Ernie Hudson as Munro, a black great white hunter (it makes sense, trust me) guiding the missions. Munro is British, I guess, and speaks with a randomly pretentious lilt that seems to delight the man playing him. That's enough for me.

Also, his assistant is played by Adebisi himself, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Here's an actor that always deserves better, but it's still nice to see him show up to fight mutant-ish gorillas.

So. To recap:

Karen Ross goes to the Congo to find Bruce Campbell and maybe laser diamonds that Muppet Count Tim Curry wants while Peter tries to free Amy the Talking Gorilla and political chaos causes a lot of travel problems so we lose a few porters but Laura Linney can fire flare guns at missiles and hungry hungry hippos attempt to eat people which means we lose a few more porters while mutant-ish apes guard King Solomon's mine and we just lost two more porters and there are volcanoes, too.

I think I hit all the major plot points in that beautifully written sentence, but I did not, however, provide you a list of all the amazing things Amy does. 

No, not that Amazing Amy. Better.

Remember, Amy is a gorilla, albeit a puppet one created by Stan Winston, but still an adorable banana-eating gorilla. She adorably does the following:

Hugs a stuffed animal

Plays with a lizard and frog

Wears 3D glasses

Paints a picture

Smokes 

Parachutes with Ernie Hudson

Sips a martini

Yes folks, no matter how sour that 7% Fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating may seem (and the lone fresh bite comes from none other than the late but always great Roger Ebert), Congo is the movie that features a cute gorilla sipping a martini. 

It is a masterpiece.

High Points

There's no other way to say this: Laura Linney as Karen Ross kicks ass. Here's an intelligent, multi-talented female character who never asks or needs help from her male counterparts, who can take down missiles, outrun a volcano, kill killer mutant-ish gorillas, stick it to her boss, tie her hair back in a soft scrunchie, and assemble a futuristic laser gun in the middle of an African cave. Screw Lara Croft: THIS is what a heroine looks like

Low Points

You can always tell when a script was filmed with some undecided decisions. Here you have Oscar and Tony winning playwright John Patrick Shanley penning the kind of screenplay that gives our main character an ex-fiance without ever discussing what made the ex, which was most likely done because the studio hadn't decided if Laura Linney and Dylan Walsh had romantic chemistry (they don't; Linney is great but you can't compete with a martini-sipping gorilla) or if test audiences wanted a romance. So instead, we have a vague attempt at romantic tension (seemingly more from the actors' instincts than script), confusing dead relationship we don't know if we should care about, and the feeling that it would all be better if Ernie Hudson and Laura Linney ended the film making out

Lessons Learned

The shortage of qualify diamonds is the real reason we haven't yet made lightsabers a commercial product

Unlike pounds of sugar, primatologists don't have prices

Stop eating Captain Wanta's sesame cake

STOP EATING CAPTAIN WANTA'S SESAME CAKE

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, Congo is a mess of a big budget action flick, but it's a RIDICULOUS mess of a big budget action flick and as a result, it's one heck of a good time. Director Frank Marshall (Alive, Arachnophobia) spent decades playing around as a producer on Steven Spielberg's films, and he brings a sort of highly flawed, but super enthusiastic spirit of adventure to this weirdly ambitious summer film. The movie is streaming on Netflix and while there are innocent(ly murderous mutant-ish) gorilla deaths, the spirit is light enough to make this ultimately more about fun than anything remotely political. Sorry, Michael Crichton. I'm sure you hated the final product along with the critics, but when you have Ernie Hudson playing the suave hero, Tim Curry eating scenery with the hunger of Cookie Monster, an unapologetically strong female lead, and an adorable gorilla sipping a martini, you have a winner.

Mr. Clowniverse Conquers the World of Modern Art

As someone with a mild case of coulrophobia, Fear of Clowns is both a thundering disappointment and an astounding masterpiece. On one hand, it’s a dreadful mess of ineptitude. On the other, it presents such a laughably designed villain that I may well be cured of any unease I had attending circuses and children’s birthday parties.

Quick Plot: Artist Lynn Blodget has recurring nightmares about clowns and car accidents, but that pretty much has nothing to do with the rest of the film. She’s a young mother in the midst of a messy divorce from her oily psychiatrist husband. An unstable personal life is no roadblock to an oddly successful career painting surreal (by motel wall standards) pictures of clowns. Like any professional artist, Lynn has a successful gallery opening in The Frame Game and leaves halfway through with the handsome (by low budget movie standards) stranger who buys her most expensive work.

His name is Tuck and he’s made a fair fortune designing roller coasters. Little known fact: the roller coaster business is more lucrative than the dot come industry could ever have dreamed of temporarily being. But I digress. Much like the film does more often than not.

Lynn returns home to find a snarling clown at her door. With a half growling smile and a blood red nose, Shivers (Mark Lassise) could almost be frightening...except he’s wearing this:

Now. A muscular clown, in theory, is a menacing villain. Anybody with even a mild case of coulrophobia would find his carefully painted face unsettling, so the idea that he could then beat you to death with his white gloved hands should maximize that fear to the extreme. But you know what? I don’t care if you’re Hugh Jackman or Jason Statham: no man should be forced to wear puffy pants, a frilly collar, pancake makeup, and...no top. No matter how tough his tits may be, Shivers is a bare chested clown. Just...no.

Anyway, Lynn’s fainting spell catches the attention of homicide (“yeah, that’s when somebody dies” wait: no it’s not) detective Peters, a gum snapping slickster she’d met previously when questioned about the family that had been murdered next door. Don’t worry about that plot thread: the writer certainly didn’t. Peters doesn’t believe Lynn’s visions of intruding funnymen, but maybe that’s because he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt and concentrating too hard on channeling the spirit of Bruce Campbell. 

Back at the gallery, Lynn accepts a commission job to paint a husky voiced old man’s dead clown father. Later red herrings will reveal the subject to have been a convicted child molester. And that’s all we learn about that.

In case you haven’t guessed it yet, there’s a whole lot going on inside Fear of Clowns. Writer/director Kevin Kangas apparently was under the impression he was making the straight-to-DVD equivalent of The Usual Suspects. Between Lynn’s divorce, creepy client, and icky stalking suitor, there’s enough to establish her character without two murderous maniacs and at least three unfinished subplots thrown in the mix. IMDB lists the running time as 106 minutes, while my Netflix disc jacket claimed an even 2 hours. I drifted in and out of sleep while watching the film (shocking, I know), but my dedication runs so deep that I kept waking up to rewind and catch what I missed. Hence, I can’t tell you which is the right length but I’d be prone to side with Netflix simply because the film felt more endless than the director’s cut of Return of the King. Either time is longer than Fear of Clowns should have been, but even the given amount couldn’t resolve all the ambitiously plotted stories. 

Fear not, those still wondering about the lukewarm romance of Lynn and Tuck and the whereabouts of the escaped Shivers: there is a sequel. Praise Bobo.

High Points

Perhaps a film that makes such a strong point about its lead character being a dedicated mother should develop its parent/child relationship, but I applaud Fear of Clowns for not subjecting its audience to an inevitably awful performance by a young actor

It’s very kind of director Kangas to cut to a shot of paint ominously sitting on a palette when Det. Peters says the word “greasepaint” to report his findings at a murder site. It’s also nice of Peters to explain that “greasepaint” is something clowns, not painters use. Sensitive touches for the less intellectually inclined in the audience

Low Points

The full body nudity during Lynn’s friend’s death scene feels sleazy and unnecessary in an otherwise tame film

Why does not one character acknowledge the fact that the clown is not wearing a shirt? You’re being questioned by a police officer. “Describe him.” “He’s a clown.” Um, and he's got a ripped body he likes to show off under a floppy spangled collar?

Lessons Learned

$20,000 will buy you a lot of bandwidth

A good detective questions anybody he meets about his/her whereabouts the night of a mass murder. Pity the Starbucks barista, mailman, and housefly he's bound to run into during his day

Being commissioned for one painting will spread the word of your art across the nation

A white clown is not Caucasion: he is clown

Your friend will never believe that you played shuffleboard with the wealthy art buyer who drives a Porsche

Don’t get all ‘apoplectic’ on your soon-to-be ex-husband. You’ll only inspire him to take you for everything you’ve got in the divorce and send homicidal clowns in your direction

Winning Disclaimer

“No animals were harmed during the making of this film. We wish we could say the same about the children.” This is buried in the end credits, leading me to believe that perhaps Lynn’s son had indeed originally played a larger role before being brutalized by clowns, commercial actors, or the sheer poor quality of the film he was in. Perhaps I could credit the filmmakers for having a sharp sense of humor and enough confidence to stick a joke in a place few people would see, but based on Fear of Clowns, I just don’t think anyone associated with the film is that smart.

Rent/Bury/Buy

There’s a lovable badness to Fear of Clowns that makes it oddly watchable, even when nothing onscreen makes any sense or offers any scares. I enjoyed noting how actress Jacky Reres had to kill screen time while waiting for a sound cue, or why the clock that should have read 11:05 had a minute hand on the 2 and the hour hand just a hair before the 11. Still, this is not a film to spend money on, despite the extremely thorough making-of featurette that shows the scariest part of the entire process (including the finished product) was making a face-cast of one of the female victims. If you love those awful but somewhat competent boxes usually in stock at Blockbuster and always available on Netflix, give it a whirl. Then come back and tell me if any of the nineteen subplots are resolved in the sequel.

The Saint of Soy vs. The God of Groovy

Bruce Campbell is the most beloved B-movie actor of the modern era, and rightfully so. With his boomstick-sharp chin and rubber-made expressions, he's a tad too quirky for leading man roles and far too conspicuous for character actor status.  A Bruce Campbell movie is always A Bruce Campbell movie, so it's only fitting that he would direct himself in the very funny, very goofy, quite imperfect and mega meta My Name Is Bruce, a sort of JCVD by way of The Three Amigos.


Perhaps the best initial decision of My Name Is Bruce was to make the character of Bruce Campbell an absolute jerk. This is the kind of celebrity you giddily approach at Chiller Theater, not for a $25 signed photo, but simply to get an honest handshake. His reaction? Avoid eye contact and extend limp wrist as if it weighed more than modern Val Kilmer (*cough cough Tom Savini New Jersey 2004). This Campbell feeds whiskey to his son-of-a-bitch dog, slobberly hits on his co-star, drunk dials his ex-wife (Ash's first unlucky Cheryl) and occasionally sends disabled autograph seekers to the emergency room (and they occasionally deserve it).

Mixed in with our early introductions of Campbell are a few scenes establishing small town terror in Oregon. A pair of punky teenagers--one a diehard Evil Dead-head who won't accept liking Bubbah Ho Tep as BC cred--do as horror teens do and unleash an ancient demon in a graveyard. The only logical solution to save the quickly dwindling population (the emergency is made more serious as the official Welcome sign painter is running dangerously low on population marking paint) is to kidnap the man behind the chainsaw and hope that three go arounds with Sam Raimi are enough experience to fight a decapitation happy monster. Since business in Hollywood is slow (although Cave Alien 3 + 4 are already greenlit for a Bulgarian shoot), and the fanboy's mom is single, Campbell agrees.


What follows is a good time that never quite reaches greatness. Campbell is a hoot as a Hollywood has-been (or never-was), but the script isn't quite tight enough to truly render it a classic. There are certainly moments of grandeur--Campbell's initial confrontation with the demon finally answers the question I've always had about movie characters running away and firing behind blindly--but I guess when I hear that Bruce Campbell is playing himself battling the Protector of War and Bean Curd, I expect brilliance. Don't get me wrong: I genuinely enjoyed this movie, and anyone with a sense of humor about horror will too.

High Points
Nobody can pull off gloating quite like Bruce Campbell

...the same could be said for shooting spitballs at small town mayors

Guan-di’s love of tofu makes this the best vegetarian propaganda since Troll 2

Ted Rami's performance as a Frenchish sign painter dedicated to his art is obvious but charming

Low Points
Ted Raimi's performance as an elderly Chinese man is obvious but borders on Mickey Rooney level offensiveness


The incredibly twangy theme song left me wanting more moments of ridiculous musical interludes

As a big fan of tofu, I think the Protector of Bean Curd could have been, I don't know, a tad more soyous

Lessons Learned
Bruce Campbell is the only man alive who can utter "Give me some sugar baby" and actually get it

Violence against old people has a pretty darn high rate of funniness


Chainsaws are indeed very heavy

Winning Line
“I’ll be right back. Don’t do anything quaint until I return.”

Rent/Bury/Buy
Buy for Bruce. It’s a silly horror spoof made for fans and it’s impossible not to crack a few smiles. Maybe I’m slightly jaded from having just viewed Severance--a better made film with more complex jokes--but My Name Is Bruce is a light and fluffy good time. It won’t change your life, but seeing Bruce Campbell decked out in a Hawaiian shirt showing off his dance moves, abusing old women and orphaning children without consequence will make your day a little brighter.