|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
3
|
|
 |
|
8 |
|
10
= Highest Rating |
|
Guest
Review by Rod
Barnett |
Last
House on the Left was a watershed moment for
American low budget filmmaking. Basically a variant
on the minor classic The
Desperate Hours crossed with the more horrific
elements of Wait Until Dark
and Straw Dogs,
it touched nerves that most films shy from both
consciously and unconsciously. There was a concerted
effort by the creators of Last
House
to make its audience squirm in discomfort over
and over until the viewer is coerced into rooting
for the grisly death of several scummy characters.
It succeeded very well, even with some incredible
bad and pointless redneck comedy thrown in for
no good reason. Of course, nothing exceeds like
success so before long there were many copies
of the basic premise and as you might expect most
of them were bad. The producers of these grindhouse
favorites were drawn not just to the high profit
potential but also to the fact that they could
be made on the extreme cheap. Very few sets or
locations were needed, acting ability wasn't really
necessary and a little fake blood was worth its
weight in gold. Just ratchet up the violence,
find a few taboos to break and full steam ahead.
Into this arena we are tossed with Fight
for Your Life.
Upping the ante from simple
torture, murder and rape this film seems to have
taken the bad redneck comedy of Last
House to heart and makes it a part of the
'dramatic' action. Here the leader of our group
of criminal scum is a white southern man with
plenty of hatred for everyone. I'm not sure if
the character misses any ethnic group with his
barrage of insults but I know it's not for the
lack of trying. The screenwriter even makes his
two fellow escapees a Hispanic and an Asian so
the standard racial slurs can be slung about.
Maybe this was their idea of balance or they were
just trying to be equal opportunity offenders.
In this DVD's accompanying audio commentary the
writer makes no bones about having set out to
"play the race card" but for me he does
it so forcefully that it quickly becomes a joke
and not a very good one.
The film begins very strongly
with three convicts taking advantage of a New
York City traffic accident to escape from the
police. Grabbing a pimp's car they decide to try
to get across the border into the supposed safety
of Canada. After knocking over a gas station they
realize that they need to wait until night for
cover. They rob a liquor store and kidnap a young
black girl, forcing her to take them to her home.
Here the three criminals hold the girl's family
hostage and plot their eventual getaway. This
situation gives the leader of the group (William
Sanderson) the opportunity to verbally abuse and
humiliate his captives for the next 50 minutes.
This is where the film fell apart for me. Through
a combination of poor production quality, bad
blocking of scenes and occasional poor acting
I could never get caught up in the story once
the action shifted to the house. For some of these
elements I can't really blame the filmmakers but
it really doesn't matter. I never once felt any
tension or unease because I couldn't take what
I was seeing seriously. I never felt any of the
family members were in danger and Sanderson's
character Jesse Lee Caine just wasn't threatening.
He seemed more nervous than dangerous and his
endless stream of racial epithets finally became
comic. When the New York cop who has been pursuing
the escapees finally locates them in the house,
we've seen enough to know how things are going
to end and I found myself wishing they'd just
hurry up already. By the time the family patriarch
(Robert Judd) manages to shake off his pacifist
beliefs and turn the tables on the convicts I
was rolling my eyes and simply hoping the ending
would be outrageous enough to justify the dreary
set up. It wasn't.
Fight
for Your Life is
clearly trying hard to shock and offend its audience
but in the end I just found it laughable. It does
start off well but once it loses its way it never
recovers. There is only one moment of real horrific
tension in the last hour of the movie. It involves
a helpful young boy and his brutal fate is shocking,
but it's the only time I felt like the filmmakers
had touched a nerve. The rest of the time it feels
both too deliberate in its attempt to push every
button it can and too slapdash in it's execution
to be effective. It ends up feeling mechanical
and sloppy at the same time. Almost none of the
bits of physical violence between the criminals
and the family looks like anything more than poorly
choreographed bits of acting and each one took
me right out of the movie. This only adds to the
lack of tension in the hostage sequences. Another
misstep is the inclusion of a completely extraneous
flashback from the point of view of a very minor
character. A white woman who was to marry into
this black family until her fiancee died in a
car accident is shown in a torrid interracial
sex scene. This sequence is a complete non sequitor
and is so obviously in the film to break one more
taboo that it is hysterical! It has nothing to
do with the story being told but it's as if they
just couldn't stop themselves from wedging it
in. Before the end of the film I began to feel
that at any moment a standup comic was going to
step into frame and ask if there was anyone in
the audience they hadn't insulted yet! They also
spend a lot of time setting up how strict the
New York cop "Rulebook" Riley is about
obeying the law to the point of calling down other
officers for small infractions. But they can't
resist having him go completely out of character
near the climax to let the family enact their
revenge with his knowledge and approval. That's
not to say that there aren't some good things
present on screen. The film is capably edited
and the look of the production is quite good considering
the 14 day shooting schedule. The first 20 minutes
are first rate, exciting storytelling with a pace
that only slows when we reach the black family's
house. If the energy level had only been maintained
this might have been great, grungy fun. None of
the films performances are 100% but Sanderson
and Judd come off best with Judd's stoic dignity
shining through (even in master shots that cry
out for close ups).
|
|
|
|
Even
though I didn't like Fight
for Your Life very
much I'm glad it's been preserved and released
on DVD. Blue Underground has done another great
job polishing a film that has been very hard to
see for decades. The picture looks sharp and is
letterboxed at 1.85:1 with a clear, punchy mono
soundtrack. I would hazard a guess that the film
didn't look this good in its initial theatrical
run, even though there are a few odd-looking blurry
moments that I suppose stem from the low budget.
Blue Underground head man William Lustig's enthusiasm
for this film shows on the one big extra the disc
sports — an audio commentary with screenwriter
Straw Weisman and director of photography Lloyd
Freidus. Lustig moderates the track like an overjoyed
kid; at times I found his enthusiasm buoyant but
the film ultimately stifled my cheer. Weisman
confirms most of my guesses about the motivations
behind the film's origin and I admire his frankness
about the process. Fans of the movie will find
the track invaluable and even those who dislike
it might enjoy listening for its behind-the-scenes
perspective. I wasn't surprised by the director's
absence from the disc, or Sanderson's either.
I'm sure they both want to put this as far behind
them as possible. The extras also include the
"black" and "white" versions
of the theatrical trailer, TV spots and as a small
poster/still gallery. A solid DVD presentation
of a poor film. 3/14/04
|
HOME
| REVIEWS
| TOP
|
