Cowboys & Zombie Thingies

In the realm of straight-to-Netflix-Instant horror, we find a lot of repeated patterns. Pretty young people traveling to a supernaturally haunted location. Saw ripoffs with single three-letter word titles. 

We’ve seen a lot.

It’s why any time a movie with an uncommon setting or preference will catch my attention. In today’s case, that means a horror western starring Wesley Snipes (in between IRS hearings) as a gunfighter forced to battle the rising undead whom he has already killed.

Yeah, I’m in.

Quick Plot: Aman (Snipes) is a whispery badass in fringe who issues some serious vigilante justice to baddies. The problem, as so many of us experience in our daily lives, is that every time Aman puts a rapist or murderer down, the body eventually comes right back up. Such creatures, as you might guess, are known as ‘gallowwalkers.’

Yes, it’s one word, and yes, SpellCheck is having a major freakout about it.

Thankfully, Aman befriends the amazingly named Fabulos. There’s nothing that amazing about Fabulos aside from his fabulo(u)s name, but having a handsome sidekick provides Aman a sounding board for exposition. Here’s the scoop:

A pregnant prostitute found herself in a nunnery that happened to be located in a gateway to hell (or to the Sunnydale smart, a hellmouth). There, she gave birth to a son who was then sent away to wander the world until he befriended a slaughterhouse owner who raised him beside her daughter, whom he eventually fell in love with. One day, the man (I’m sorry: Aman) left his lover alone for a few hours and came back to find her gang raped and impregnated by a band of nogoodniks. Aman left her to seek vengeance, during which time she had a blond dreaded hair son and died. Meanwhile, Aman found the villains and killed them (including the leader’s loyal hooker), only to quickly discover that his place of birth now causes any man who dies at his hand to come back.

That sounds vaguely interesting, right? We’ve got hell-guarding nuns, slaughterhouse mamas, black hats, hookers with hearts of gold, hookers being shot in the heart, and zombie bad guys. THIS SHOULD BE AWESOME.

It could be, if aforementioned sequence wasn’t narrated by Snipes with less tone variance than Brad Pitt’s entire performance in Interview With a Vampire. Still, we stick with Gallowwalkers because, you know, horror western.

Honestly, a lot of it is. This is the kind of film that has, for no real reason, a beautiful Old West prostitute being kept around by the big bad villain because her skin texture will be perfect to garb the resurrected corpse of his beloved son. For goodness sakes, said beautiful prostitute is called a “painted cat” and later kills a priest with the line “forgive me father, for I have skinned.” There is very little reason why Gallowwalkers isn’t the greatest film since 7 Mummies.

Nah, I kid. VERY FEW THINGS come close to the glorious ridiculousness of Seven Mummies. Directed by the fabulo(u)sly named Andrew Goth, Gallowwalkers is a far better film than the one that involved stock footage tarantulas and kung fu flying mummies dressed like jawas. Henner Hofmann’s cinematography is genuinely gorgeous, and some of the design choices (particularly in the villains’ bag/bucket/alien twizzle headed garb) offer a surprisingly surreal touch. I say, without irony, that Gallowwalkers has some chops.

It’s also a little silly. From the Village of the Damned-styled villagers to the never-effective use of the big bad demon voice, some viewers will find a lot to chuckle at in this film. Snipes was right in the middle of his IRS criminal proceedings, and perhaps the real-world stress of that contributed something to his bizarrely listless performance.

Gallowwalkers is not, by any means, of high quality in conventional terms, but it tries to offer something new. In the world of modern horror, that’s always welcome.

Also, there are A LOT of beheadings. Beautiful, ridiculous, hilarious beheadings.

High Points

Filmed in Namibia, the setting of Gallowwalkers is positively stunning. It’s always nice to see a genre movie embrace sunlight, and while it doesn’t always flatter the CGI head explosions, the bright pallet is genuinely refreshing

Low Points

While I appreciate any film that tries to include a strong female character or two, Angel (that’s the ‘nice’ hooker) is ultimately such a wasted opportunity

Wesley Snipes is a good action star. Wesley Snipes is not a good narrator

Lessons Learned

Wearing a hat in the rain is a good idea

Trouble with the damned is they never stay put

Makeup in the Old West held up amazingly well to the elements

One just can’t go wrong with a white shirt (particularly if you one has no skin)

Skullbuckets present quite a few challenges to peripheral vision, even if you’re Diamond Dallas Page

Rent/Bury/Buy

Hey, for a 90 minute stream on Instant Watch, Gallowwalkers has a lot more to offer than most of its competition. No, it’s not a ‘good’ film per say, but it’s visually quite striking and in terms of its story, there are a lot of fresh choices. Know what you’re getting, then, when the mood strikes you, go get it.

Swing and a Miss

Ever wake up one day and realize, much to the horror of your very existence, that you’ve never seen the mid-90s thriller wherein Robert De Niro plays a crazed baseball fan obsessed with Wesley Snipes?

It’s a rare, but lethal epidemic of sorts known as The Fandryome. A fast cure is Netflix Instant Watch though tragedy and the FDA’s bureaucratic fascism has since prolonged the waiting period. Write to your senator folks. 

Quick Plot: Meet Gil, a giant Giants fan, struggling knife salesman, and possible inspiration for The Simpsons long-running sad sack. 

Of course, Gil is also played by Robert De Niro or at the very least, the flickering light of Travis Bickle/Max Cady that powered him through the late ‘90s. In addition to creeping towards unemployment, Gil is stumbling through fatherhood via limited custody, an ex-wife who hates his innards, and a son (played in a much less annoying way by the kid who would go on to play The Annoying Anointed One on Buffy’s first season) slowly realizing he SHOULD hate him.

What’s keeping Gil inside the bounds of insanity? Well barely, it’s Bobby Rayburn, San Francisco’s newest center fielder courtesy of a massive $40 million contract. Gil believes in Bobby, and since he’s played by none other than Willie Mays “Wesley Snipes” Hays himself, why should he not? Unfortunately, there’s the little matter of teammate Juan Primo, a blond (!!!) Benecio Del Toro who has already given up his position but refuses to surrender his lucky number 11 to the new superstar.

Bobby hits a slump while Gil’s life continues its downward spiral, helped none at all by his bright decision to abandon his son on opening day and almost beat his ex-wife’s boyfriend with a baseball bat at the kid’s little league tryouts. Oh yeah, and in an incredibly easy series of events, Gil solves Bobby’s Primo problem with a sexy sauna murder.

So much like 51% of Robert De Niro’s filmography, The Fan descends into one unexceptional man’s increasing insanity. It spoils little to say that Gil eventually confronts Bobby while throwing him his own pitches, only to then kidnap his son and demand--like a kid dying from cancer--a homerun hit in his honor. The climax references Naked Gun in ways that makes me giggle as much as, well, watching the climax of Naked Gun. 

But in a very different way. 

See, The Fan isn’t what most people would call a ‘good’ movie. Directed by Tony Scott with a softer sledgehammer than what he’d later come to use in his films, The Fan still bares the mark of a slick, expensive, and self-important thriller that doesn’t let itself have any real fun with its material. Gil, you see, is not a good man. He pushes his wife and almost steps on his very own son in a bid to grab a foul ball. As a salesman, he’s worse than Pam Beasly-Halpert and even his baseball fandom seems more about obsession than actual baseball knowledge. On the flip side is Bobby, played with believability by Snipes at his best. He’s surprisingly sympathetic, a diva more via his slimy Scott Boras-like agent (John Lequizamo) than actual attitude. It’s a testament to Snipes that a hotshot could come off likable.

But likable enough that we want to see him out-bat rival/teammate Benecio Del Toro? Not so much. The Fan stumbles in a lot of places, from losing track of Gil’s humanity to merely flirting with Bobby’s feelings on the game and his fans. Don’t look here for deep insight into major league baseball, but hey...there’s a baseball bat-caused death so at least there’s that.

High Points

His screentime is sadly not nearly long enough, but in an early role, Benecio Del Toro simply oozes charisma and makes every one of his scenes far more interesting than anything else happening onscreen

Low Points

Was this the start of De Niro’s autopilot journey into acting? It’s not that he’s bad in The Fan; he’s just kind of dull, never seeming to really inject Gil with a real human being. He’s not overly aided by the script, which fails to ever provide an actual backstory to his obsessions. Hey, I’m a former softball little leaguer and current fan of a losing team that pays its players too much money, but you don’t see me kidnapping Oliver Perez’s kids in return for him to pitch a perfect game (because gaaaaaaahahahahahahahahaha is the likelihood of that happening and more importantly, the Mets finally let the millionaire go; had they not, I’d probably give The Fan a rave review)

Lessons Learned

Maybe the reason baseball games take so long is because players occasionally spend a full 25 minutes at bat

Pitchers use their brains. Sluggers are stupid

A piece of tattooed flesh will last several weeks when safely stored in a Ziploc bag

Being stabbed in the thigh is one surefire way to immediate death

Fun Face Spottings

Part of why I love ‘90s cinema is because it often gives me a chance to catch a few surprise actors passing by in bit parts. In the case of The Fan, we get a brief Jack Black cameo and a jolly good turn by Lost’s Mr. Friendly

Stray Observations

The fact that Wesley Snipes’ character is named Bobby is probably more a reference to Barry Bonds than anything else, but anybody else find themselves giggling over the fact that De Niro spends about 3/4 of the film shouting/chanting his own name?

Rent/Bury/Buy

As a devotee of all things baseball and horror, it’s kind of embarrassing to only have seen The Fan now. This is a film that belongs on no must-see list, but the fact that it involves Robert De Niro shaving his legs with a hunter’s knife is somewhat awesome. For an almost ridiculous baseball horror movie, I guess The Fan is currently the best we can do.