RAGTIME

Howard E. Rollins Jr. as Coalhouse Walker

RAGTIME (1981). Director: Milos Forman. 

A well-to-do couple (James Olson and Mary Steenburgen) live with their young son and her brother (Brad Dourif) after the turn of the century. They take in a homeless black woman, Sarah (Debbie Allen), and her baby, and become friendly with the child's father, Coalhouse Walker (Howard E. Rollins Jr.). Dourif pursues a relationship with Evelyn Nesbit (Elizabeth McGovern), whose husband Henry Thaw (Robert Joy) shoots and kills her former lover, the architect Stanford White (Norman Mailer). Evelyn also encounters Tateh (Mandy Patinkin) and his little daughter, and winds up starring in the silent films he makes when he goes to Hollywood. When Coalhouse is humiliated by a bunch of Irish firefighters, feces dumped in his model T, he tries to get justice. Failing that, he somehow puts together a virtual militia with many weapons and begins bombing firehouses and shooting firemen. Dourif agrees to supply them with explosives. Nothing good will come of this ...  

Elizabeth McGovern as Evelyn Nesbit

For me Ragtime pretty much falls apart about this time as despite Coalhouse's understandable anger at his treatment, his murderous overreaction seems wildly contrived -- it's not as if these firemen killed anyone after all. (Besides, I have never found any kind of terrorism to be justifiable no matter how legitimate the grievances.) Dourif's character and his actions go undeveloped and unexplored, and the whole notion of mingling the Stanford White/Evelyn Nesbit story and its "trial of the century" with the Coalhouse Walker story (novelist E. L. Doctorow based all this on a German novella entitled Michael Kohlhaas, and claimed Ragtime is a homage to it) is perhaps ill-advised to begin with. What might have worked on the printed page doesn't always work in the cinema. 

Mandy Patinkin, Mary Steenburgen, James Olson

There are good performances in the film -- Rollins (who was Oscar-nominated and died of AIDS-related complications at only 46); an excellent Olson; James Cagney (at 81 playing a real-life police commissioner who was actually in his thirties at the time); Moses Gunn as Booker T. Washington trying to convince Coalhouse of the error of his ways --  and a notable score by Randy Newman. But as a whole I found the movie unconvincing and occasionally ridiculous. Other old-time stars in the film are Pat O'Brien and Donald O'Connor. Later this was turned into a Broadway musical. 

Verdict: Has its pleasures, but overall a misfire. **1/4. 

CHILD'S PLAY (1988)

Best Buddies? Chucky and little Alex Vincent

CHILD'S PLAY (1988). Director: Tom Holland.

A very nice widow named Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks) wants to get her little son Andy (Alex Vincent) a popular "Good Guy" doll but finds it too expensive. However, she manages to acquire one from a street vendor and brings it home to her delighted six-year-old son. Neither of them realize that the doll -- Chucky by name -- has been possessed by the spirit of nasty strangler Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif of Dario Argento's Trauma), who is out to get revenge on certain people, such as cop Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon), and anyone else who gets in his way. But both Andy and then his mother will have a tough time convincing anyone that this weird little doll is actually alive ...

Chris Sarandon and Catherine Hicks

Child's Play manages to be both suspenseful and creepy in spite of its absurd premise, thanks to some adroit direction and editing and the casting of Catherine Hicks, who is quite good as the mother, and little Alex Vincent, who is sympathetic and appealing as the innocent and rather resourceful Andy. Chris Sarandon [The Light in the Piazza] plays the cop on the case as the stereotypical blase and gruff detective and is okay on that level. But one might wonder why no one would think Chucky was a pygmy or midget before they would accept a supernatural explanation. It's also a little strange that no one in the subway remarks upon a six-year-old traveling by himself on the subway -- we New Yorkers are not that indifferent to what's going on around us.

Don't make Chucky mad

One of the best sequences has Chucky attacking Norris as he drives in his cop car, desperately trying to keep his body up off the seat when Chucky starts trying to thrust a knife into his private parts. Considering his small size, Chucky manages to inflict a lot of damage on certain individuals, such as Karen's friend, Maggie (played by Lee Grant's daughter, Dinah Manoff), who babysits Alex when Karen has to work and comes afoul of that demonic plastic toddler. An interesting touch is that the spell that put the dying Dourif's spell in the doll will eventually turn him completely human. (Although Dourif tries his damnedest to have his consciousness wind up inside Andy, he might as well stay inside the doll as in either case he'll still be a child.)

Child's Play was so successful that it was followed by several sequels, and also engendered a terrible remake that just came out this year. Tom Holland also directed the memorable Fright Night, which starred Sarandon. Child's Play may have been influenced by a segment of the TV film Trilogy of Terror, which also featured a lively killer doll.

Verdict: Appealing players help put over this pretty exciting horror flick. ***. 

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST

Jack Nicholson and company

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975). Director: Milos Forman.

Author Ken Kesey reportedly hated this film version of his novel, which takes place in a state mental institution. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), arrested for statutory rape, is sent from a work farm to the institution, but it is suspected that he is faking his alleged mental illness. McMurphy provides some inspiration and leadership for other inmates, and finds himself in a deadly tussle with head nurse Rachet (Louise Fletcher). The odd thing about the movie is how conventional it is in many ways, despite the lead character being an anti-hero (and despite some intelligence and good qualities he is basically a loser -- I mean look where he is!) Some of the sequences are dramatically dubious to say the least, and the movie comes off (deliberately, I believe) as more of a black comedy than a serious expose of conditions and attitudes in mental hospitals. Nicholson won an Oscar and is fine, although the role is not in any way out of his range. Louise Fletcher also won an Oscar and is excellent as the nurse, who is less evil than misguided. The film introduced Brad Dourif as young Billy, and he's been playing odd types in the movies ever since. Danny De Vito (who is only adequate) and Christopher Lloyd later wound up on Taxi, where their talents, especially the former's, were better utilized. William Redfield, Scatman Crothers, and especially Sydney Lassick are all quite good in important supporting roles. The movie presents women and black men, traditionally oppressed and victimized, in positions of authority over the exclusively Caucasian patients, but really does nothing with the premise, and the other female characters, such as hooker friends of McMurphy's, are presented basically as cartoons. Fletcher's next film was the ill-received Exorcist 2: The Heretic.

Verdict: At times quite arresting, but nothing really special here. **1/2.

SEED OF CHUCKY

SEED OF CHUCKY (2004). Written and directed by Don Mancini.

Tiffany: "Jennifer Tilly is playing me in a movie! What perfect casting!"

Chucky: "But that voice!"

Tiffany: "I think she sounds like an angel."

The offspring of the killer doll Chucky and his equally psychotic mate Tiffany makes his way to Hollywood where they're making a movie about his folks, but -- in a nod to Ed Wood -- there's some confusion as to whether his name should be Glen or Glenda. Used as mechanized props in the movie, Chucky and Tiffany come back to life and try to bond with their little son or daughter, who is appalled by the way they slaughter people indiscriminately. Meanwhile the real Jennifer Tilly (who plays herself and is -- Lord save us -- the voice of Tiffany), a freak of nature if ever there were one, is hoping that the blubber-lipped rapper-director Redman (played by Redman) will cast her in his next picture, a biblical epic. "You're prostituting yourself so you can play the Virgin Mary!" argues Tilly's assistant when she learns her boss has "plans" for Redman. You get the picture ... Initially entertaining, this very, very black and grossly gruesome comedy eventually becomes way too silly and rather tedious. It serves chiefly as a vehicle for actress Tilly to spoof herself and prove she's a good sport. At the end Tilly says "I'm a star!" Well, if you're starring in movies like Seed of Chucky you're probably not a star. Anyway, Tilly is amusing but she needs a better script. Brad Dourif is fine as the voice of Chucky.

Verdict: A real moron movie. *1/2.

THE EXORCIST III

THE EXORCIST III (1990). Director: William Peter Blatty.

“[God] goes waltzing through the universe like some kind of cosmic Billie Burke” -- Detective William Kinderman.

Blatty adapted and directed his novel Legion for this second sequel to The Exorcist (although this wisely ignores the events of Exorcist II: The Heretic). Detective Kinderman (now played by George C. Scott) investigates a series of murders that have the same M.O. as atrocities committed by a fiendish serial killer, Gemini (Brad Dourif), who was executed the very night the girl Regan was exorcised. Kinderman ties these events to a mysterious patient in a psycho ward known only as “X” but who looks just like his old friend Father Damian (Jason Miller), who supposedly died fifteen years before on the night of the exorcism. The movie works up its own internal logic but seems to break it and become a little more confusing than it needs to be and there is too much gratuitous humor, but it has a good basic plot and is seriously disturbing at times. There's a long, creepy sequence in a hospital corridor that works up to a quick shock, and Viveca Lindfors figures in a near-climactic kitchen scene that involves a terrifyingly large surgical blade used for amputations. You have to see the old lady crawling across the ceiling to believe it (a wild sequence, but one better left on the cutting room floor?) George C. Scott is as ferociously good as ever as Kinderman, although he might have registered more upsetment at his friend, Father Dyer's, bizarre murder. Ed Flanders is on-the-money as Dyer, and there's excellent support as well from Nicol Williamson (an exorcist), Lee Richardson (university president), Brad Dourif, and Nancy Fish as a very saucy, borderline bitchy nurse. Although she is uncredited, the demon seems to be voiced by Colleen Dewhurst. Dopey Fabio shows up in a purgatory dream sequence. The obligatory exorcism scene is fairly exciting. It's interesting to contemplate what Hitchcock would have done with this material.

Verdict: The movie has its moments but the book is better. **1/2.