Until I sat down to write about it, it didn’t occur to me that the character potrayed by Harvey Keitel in this film didn’t have a name.  The power of the material and the performance Keitel gives to it distracts from everything else.  What’s in a name anyway, when the title says it all.  He’s BAD LIEUTENANT.

He’s a cop in New York City.  He wakes in the morning and drives his kids to school and for the moment he looks almost normal.  But when the kids are gone, it begins.  He takes bets from his cop buddies and then bets against them.  He uses drugs and more than his share, coke, crack, booze, and heroin.  He hires prostitutes.  He steals from those who he is supposed to protect.

I came to this film through Keitel, after reading an interesting interview in a recent issue of Premiere Magazine (The one with Natalie Portman on the cover if you want to pick it up).  He is a man whose work I respect and admire, particularly in the films of Martin Scorsese; more particularly in MEAN STREETS and TAXI DRIVER.  I’d always appreciated Keitel as a type: he’s the heavy with a dark, tortured soul.  What caught my eye in the interview was nothing he said but a brief comment from the interviewer that revealed that Keitel was Jewish.  Suddenly I realized how I had underestimated his talents; he had so utterly convinced me as an on-screen Italian (frequently a Catholic one) that I simply assumed that he was drawing upon his real life. 

The lieutenant is another of Keitel's violent Catholics, but this one is a cut above (or perhaps below) the rest.  Part of a movie star's power is to lend the reality to what they create on the screen and by this measure Keitel is one of the greatest of his generation.  He's so chillingly real as the lieutenant that if he hadn't appeared in other pictures you could almost take some scenes as lifted from a documentary.

In the film, the lieutenant is put in charge of the gruesome case of a nun who has been raped by a gang of punks.  Instead of using this material as a means to tell a detective story or a gritty thriller director Abel Ferrara is only concerned with the plot as far as it can explore the nature of Keitel's character.  The lieutenant is shocked by the crime, but not entirely committed to solving it; morally, he is no position to anyway (he is a bad lieutenant).  Shortly after he has left the hospital to visit the nun, the lieutenant pulls two young women over in their car on a traffic stop and forces them satisfy his own unique sexual kink.

So we follow the character, not the case. Ferrara's unwillingness to satisfy the audience's desire for conventions help make the film as provocative as its star.  As a director, Ferrara is not interested in simple answers or easy metaphors, and that makes BAD LIEUTENANT a great film to talk about with friends after it is over.  What made the lieutenant this way?  What is the full meaning of the baseball games that play out on televisions and radios around the lieutenant?  Do one of the teams mean to symbollize Keitel?  Do they both?

Its unusual elements, along with some graphic violence and sexuality (Keitel famously appears completely nude in one remarkable scene involving some prostitutes), will turn off some viewers.  But I was impressed.  Particularly by Keitel.  Who knew the guy was Jewish?!?

IF YOU LIKED BAD LIEUTENANT, CHECK OUT: ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (1974), an largely forgotten Martin Scorsese film, about Ellen Burstyn as a woman trying to make a new life for herself and her son after her husband is killed.  Harvey Keitel gives a powerful, scary performance as suitor for Alice’s affections who is revealed to be somewhat, shall we say, dangerous.

THE BAD

When he finally confronts the mad genius behind the zombie outbreak in HOUSE OF THE DEAD, Rudy, our lead hunky zombie hunter barks, "You created it all so you could be immortal?  WHY?"  "So I could live forever!" the mad doctor replies, indicating that in addition to discovering the secret to eternal life, he does indeed know the dictionary definition of the word immortal.

And that's one of the smarter moments!  This is a movie in which a character actually utters the phrase "It's almost too quiet," and means it unironically, and where another named Simon adds the phrase "Simon says" to casual conversation.  It is a movie where people can watch their friends rendered limb from limb from ravaging hordes of flesh-craved monsters one moment, and find time to make out with tongues the next.  Who says modern romance is dead?  It’s just undead, baby.

It begins with a lone survivor, Rudy (Jonathan Cherry) whose voice-over informs us that he has just undergone a nightmare.  He introduces us to his friends while narrating moments he did not witness and has no knowledge of, and tells us they will all die. 85 minutes later we return to the exact same moment, and indeed Rudy lives and everyone else dies, making it clear that on the remote chance you hadn't thought you'd been wasting your time, you most certainly were.

Rudy and his friends go to rave located on an island that is known as Isla Del Muerte, which I believe, roughly translates to Island of the Morty (The Dead now have their own island, having traded up from just the house of the video game).  Unfortunately the rave goes sour faster than Woodstock '99 and by the time they arrive the place is lousy with zombies. The crew is ferried to the island by a boat captain named Kirk (Jurgen Prochnow, poor guy), whose weapon smuggling comes in handy when they are stranded on a island full of flesh-crazed dead, and by his sidekick Salish (Clint Howard, who I can’t help feel deserves this), whose bright yellow slicker comes in handy when it starts to rain.

If HOUSE OF THE DEAD has the ear for dialogue of a deaf person, it should come as no surprise that the director is a German named Uwe Boll who, since transplating himself to the States, has made a career of turning mediocre video games into horrendous films (According to my sources, his version of ALONE IN THE DARK is another standout moment in his unique oeuvre). He has a love of helicopter shots that come swooping down over the ocean toward a land mass or boat; if I had a nickel for every one of them in HOUSE OF THE DEAD I'd have fifteen nickels, which still isn't enough for a roll, but is a lot all things considered. This must be the "strong auteurist vision" he's described as having in the DVD booklet. 

Already, this is enough to qualify HOUSE OF THE DEAD as a really bad movie, but no, it dares to go further.  It cuts in random footage of from the video game to spice up the action or transition between scenes.  It has enough slow-motion footage for a dozen movies, and incorporates it with 360-degree spinning shots which look interesting exactly once in the twelve minute sequence that uses them over and over. Not pretending they have any hint of originality, Boll describes these moments as "MATRIX shots" in his amusingly frank commentary track on the DEAD DVD.

By the end, all the Spyrograph trick photography had given me a serious headache.  I can think of no finer metaphor for the film than the one it provides in the scene where one of the ravers is rescued by his friends, hiding inside an overturned Port-A-Potty.  If I were him, I would have stayed in there than come out and face the rest of this movie.  HOUSE OF THE DEAD is one-of-a-kind.  Just not a good kind.

INSTEAD OF HOUSE OF THE DEAD, CHECK OUT: INVASION OF THE BLOOD FARMERS (1972), cheapo horror in the PLAN 9 mold.  I like the villain, Creton “Druid of the Sangroid,” who dresses like the love child of Stevie Nicks and Elvis.

THE UGLY

Arnold Schwarzenegger has a bad rap as an actor. Because he's lived in this country for over thirty years and still has his grinding, “ree-dee-coo-loose” Austrian accent, and because for years he never appeared in anything requiring him to display any human emotions besides bloodlust, he is perceived as a talentless muscleman.

This is unfair.  When you watch as many Schwarzenegger movies as I have, you come to appreciate just how far he's come; how expressive and powerful his use of his face is, his talent for a range of comedy, from broad physical slapstick to dry wit.  He really matured into a good, if not great, actor; back in 1976's STAY HUNGRY the man was barely convincing playing an professional bodybuilder from Austria.

That said, if you want to see why Schwarzenegger has that bad reputation, you won't find a better example than his genuinely awful performance in CONAN THE DESTROYER.  The first CONAN picture, directed by military enthusiast John Milius, is a deadly serious picture about all the grand themes a manly man like Milius is interested in; mortality, war, honor, revenge, things like that.  Arnold plays it very straight, says very little, and looks every bit the savage barbarian.  The second CONAN picture directed by Richard Fleischer is as silly as the first is serious.  The change in tone lets Arnold show off his range, which at this stage in his career, is like a blind person showing off his marksmanship.

Schwarzenegger's performance have always risen to the level of his co-stars.  When they work with him and his unique energy, things usually turn out well. It takes a talented actor or actress, like Linda Hamilton or Danny DeVito, to push up against him and test him (This is a guy, after all, who loves to compete).  So what master thespian Schwarzenegger shares the screen with in CONAN THE DESTROYER?  None other than Wilt Chamberlain.  The chemistry between the two is about as stiff as my neck after I sat through all of TITANIC in the front row of the theater.

Arnold isn't really even acting at this point, he's posing.  As Conan he has four poses, all involving his massive sword (which he wields with impressive skill): drawn out directly in front of him, held at the side with both hands, held at eye level with both hands, and held at the side with one hand with the other hand outstretched toward the enemy.  Schwarzenegger likes this last pose as lot; he uses it many times when he leaps out from behind enemies while screaming "YARGRUH!" which I think loosely translates from Austrian to English as "Pardon me sir, while I eviscerate you.  Where would you like your remains sent?"

If everyone wasn't so terrified that Arnold would tear the flesh from their bones, someone would have told him how ridiculous this material is.  The man is required to galavant around the countryside in tiny fur underwear (replete with titanic codpiece), with a tan so orange it would give Robert Evans pause.  Since everyone knows blinking makes you look weak in a scene, Schwarzenegger never blinks and whenever possible he does the opposite, opening his eyes as wide as possible, bulging them out as if he smells something fowl in the air and he's trying to swat it away with his sword.

The relentless ass kicking is in the service of a story where Conan agrees to help a Queen regain a jewel and a horn and some other crap, in exchange for her help in returning Conan's lost love to life. Hilariously, the narration has to tell us that "Conan mourned his lost Valeria" since Schwarzenegger himself is incapable of visualizing that sort of intense grief on-screen.  Conan doesn't get his lady back, but he does fight a god and win.  Yes, Schwarzenegger beats the crap out of a god.  No wonder this guy thinks he can be President.

The grunting, the posing, the "YARGRUH!"ing, it's all in good fun, especially when the cutaways in the film are to Wilt Chamberlain in a gigantic dreadlocks wig (trying look to like he's scheming, but mostly looking like he's trying to do long division in his head) and Grace Jones in a buzz cut.  Schwarzenegger's next film was THE TERMINATOR, where James Cameron harnessed the actor's difficulty with emotion by making him play a robot.  He was off and running after that, and getting better and better too.  But back in CONAN THE DESTROYER?  Yeah, he totally sucked.

IF YOU LIKED CONAN THE DESTROYER, CHECK OUT: RED SONJA (1985), Schwarzenegger’s third and last sword-and-sandals epic.  Schwarzenegger was top-billed, but only contracted for a certain number of scenes, which means he basically puts in a couple of well-placed cameo appearances in a way that makes it seem like he’s trying to hijack the film from the grasp of star Brigitte Nielsen, butting in whenever the action gets a little too rough for her.