Cult Oddities: Just Before Dawn (1981)

The Oregon wilderness is the perfect locale for sightseeing, camping, hiking and inbreeding. Pitch a tent, pack a whistle, and heed the advice of the drunk locals: there are most definitely "demons" on this majestic mountain. Deer hunting season's over, but the season for hunting humans begins Just Before Dawn.


Jeff Lieberman's (Squirm, Blue Sunshine) ode to hillbilly horror is a taut and underrated thriller; a film that makes inbred kin like Wrong Turn live up to its title. Both films take their backwoods brawling into the trees, but Just Before Dawn reaches higher and has stronger footing. Lieberman's awareness of slasher movie tropes allow him to cleverly and consistently subvert his suspense scenes. For a film that is in many ways true to form, it actually has its share of legitimate surprise. Dual killers, admirably restrained slaughter, and an atmospheric sense of claustrophobia and dread that lingers amidst the wide open spaces.

Five friends climb the treacherous peaks looking for a weekend escape, but soon spend their weekend planning their escape. Composer Brad Fiedel's (The Terminator) essential, eerie and minimalist soundtrack sets the tone with a haunting, whistling echo calling from the mountainside, luring our naive young fodder into nature's nihilistic trap.


Essentially the film's villains, known only as The Mountain Twins (John Hunsaker), are mindless madmen. They're prone to kill based on nothing more than proximity. It's a marvel then that the film paints them as hefty, dumb country rednecks and still manages to give them a sense of force and fearfulness. It's a bit like doubling Jason Voorhees and adding a bit of incest to his genetic makeup. But as doomed traveler Warren (Gregg Henry) notes at the film's offset, "Where we're going is no summer camp." Camp Crystal Lake was always the place to go if you wanted to see teenagers getting laid, but even they'd frown on making it with your bunkmate if she was your sister. Just Before Dawn has fun with its psychopathic slice-and-dice formula, and these psychos seems to be having fun as well.

It's obvious that these young adults are inexperienced climbers, but you wouldn't necessarily know that they're inexperienced actors. The ill-fated friends are mostly likable, well performed, and less based in stereotypes than is the slasher movie custom; no meathead jock, and even the slutty best friend never sees the softer side of her sleeping bag. There's some nice coloring to the demented local color. Our final girl's arc isn't charted through her revelatory dialogue but the length of her pants and the volume of her hair. Connie (Deborah Benson) is the equivalent of Deliverance's Jon Voight in hot pants.


Connie's evolution is one the film's most confounding but classic elements. She's a strong-minded and experienced climber, fearful of disrupting the peaceful calm of the surrounding nature, yet who becomes immediately frazzled when faced with ominous rustlings and shadowy figures in the night. Connie stands numb of fear while her vain and freewheeling girlfriend is most willing to step up to their defense. Rattled and enraged with herself, Connie describes her moment of weakness, "Megan took the knife, she didn't just sit there.... But Megan! I mean I go camping all the time. I know how to pitch a tent, I know how to start a fire, and I couldn't pick up the knife. " Connie sees the error in her ways and soon enough she's decked out in Megan's Cadillac red nail polish, turning from schoolmarm to sexpot in a matter of minutes -- ready to do whatever it takes to survive the hours just before dawn. Her character makeover is complimented by her character's makeover.

"You never know who you might run into up here."

Rather than sticking to the old adage where the horror heroine survives because she lacks the promiscuity of her pals, Connie sheds her reserved demeanor for something more sensual, but never does the film equate that with her downfall. For Connie her sexuality doesn't equal her death, rather her empowerment. Her technique for deep throating is ultimately what saves her life.


For a film that was devised as your run-of-the mill dead horny youngins' slasher flick, Just Before Dawn is decidedly less interested in punishing morality tales. Its focus is on simple suspense and savage survival; man (or be that ALL woman) versus nature. At odds with mother nature are five young people who've never had the chance to hone their primal instincts. And even more at odds are the inbred twins that overpopulate the region.

"Maybe something in the water...?"

"...Or maybe something to do with making it with your sister."

Double your pleasure, double your fun. Whatever gets you through the night.

A Signature Distraction

Anyone still reading Club Silencio knows that I (in)frequently contribute to Film Experience a series called "Signatures:" my most beloved actresses momentarily captured in awkward still photos and overindulgent praise. If I were to write a "Signatures" on myself, it would be that I laugh in the face of being prolific, and that my readers are lovely, patient and/or bored.

Here's my latest output/distraction, and look forward to more Defensive Cinema and Cult Oddities in the coming week!

• Patricia Clarkson is one of the finest supporting actresses alive, so why is she never supportive?

• Catherine Keener says "fuck off" in the most charming way imaginable.

• Uma Thurman is out for blood in the most charming way imaginable.

• (Literally) brace yourselves for the bitter comedy stylings of Lisa Kudrow!

• Laura Dern is our guiding light through the darkness of monogamy, prostitution and Nicolas Cage.

Lovely, Still, Trailer, Watch

This is the trailer for Nik Fackler's debut film Lovely, Still. It's a new holiday fable about finding love in the twilight years, starring legends Ellen Burstyn and Martin Landau. I worked on the film crew and am proud to say the trailer hits well on the film's fantastical flights of fancy and sweet sentimental side. Even if I hadn't worked on it, I'd still be curious to see it. Drop your hardworn exterior at the door and embrace the Christmas spirit!

Defensive Cinema #5: Marie Antoinette (2006)

Defensive Cinema is a series devoted to films seemingly dismissed by the greater population. And me getting all defensive like and telling you why my opinions hold more water than yours.

"I want to be forgotten,

and I don't want to be reminded."

'What Ever Happened' - The Strokes

The youthful girls of Sofia Coppola's films simultaneously try to escape and thrive in their environments. The Lisbon sisters of The Virgin Suicides laze about in hazy daydreams set to records steeped in longing as they pray for saviors to a stifling homelife. Charlotte of Lost In Translation plans a literal escape attempt while forging a connection that could sustain her through an overcrowded isolation. Coppola successfully finds a similar side to Marie Antoinette. We witness a child thrust into a political power position at its most lavish. Instant pleasure everywhere but in her arranged marriage.

"The problem of leisure...

What to do for pleasure?"

'Natural's Not In It' - Gang of Four

A marriage to a king who would rather make keys than an heir is a good starting point. Marie's pregnancy alone is held as a point of uniting families and countries. If she can't conceive of a male child to carry on the legacy, she's failed as a woman and someone of her high position. And yet we remember her best throughout history for, "Let them eat cake." Good comedic timing was clearly one of Marie Antoinette's best features, to compliment her stylish boots and hairstyles that would cripple a woman of weaker pedigree.


Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) has a celebrity experience not dissimilar to those of current times: a breakthrough ingenue with an adoring public, but give it some time and she's lucky to be harassed by a torch-wielding mob. Here a historically maligned woman is given second glance at the level of humanity that floods all of Coppola's work. Her portrait is sympathetic, loose of the historical staples, free in form and function. Her films dissolve into maturity as they progress, much like the females at their center, and gain unexpected emotional weight given their ethereal atmospherics at times. Amidst all that costumed drama, Coppola defies labels and tone in order to make a biopic of real value. It's one thing to tread a historical timeline and define a figure through their era, it's another thing to have their purpose really reflect modern dilemmas. She finds the soul in someone skewed by history as not having one.

"Rousseau says, 'If we assume man has been corrupted by an artificial civilization, what is the natural state? The state of nature from which he has been removed? Imagine wandering up and down the forest, without industry, without speech and without home.'"

Decadence becomes Marie's temporary satisfaction and means of escape, and she distracts herself with the childish gossip that stretches the vast hallways of Versailles. But as she grows and evolves, so does the film. Once Marie finally fulfills her role of baring children, she's then condemned for living amidst the very luxury she'd been ritualistically forced into. The ravishing work of Coppola, cinematographer Lance Acord and costume designer Milena Canonero, has a poignantly subtle way of placing Marie at odds with her environment -- always the center of focus but almost indiscernible from her surroundings. In an attempt to blend into her world, she's consumed by it.




Marie's eventual end doesn't leave us with the bitterness of her real-life beheading, instead her withdrawal into nature and a solemn acceptance of her fate. She sacrificially bows to her public and fades into the sunset. It's a period-piece at its most feeling and playful. Anachronistic, without dialects, opulent and detailed -- yet not particularly interested in the details. It's especially refreshing when we consider films like Milk, Ray, La Vie en Rose, or any number of biopics that stick to a base formula, and see that Coppola's take is far more adventurous and far less defining. Marie Antoinette isn't manufactured here as a hero, villain or tragic figure, even if Coppola finds each of those beats quite effortlessly. History has already labeled her, so it's Coppola's job to uphold those tags, challenge them and toss them aside completely.

In keeping with her own burgeoning legacy, Coppola compiles another soundtrack fit for a queen. It's unusual for a film set in royal Versailles, but it takes to Marie's emotions with dreamlike ease and killer beats. From partying to prose, it features intoxicating tunes from the likes of New Order, The Cure, The Radio Dept. and Bow Wow Wow. Shoe-gazer music for literally gazing at shoes -- really extravagant shoes.

If Marie Antoinette was a product of her time, her surroundings and her stylist, Sofia Coppola aims to re-brand her. In a celebrity culture, anything can so easily be taken out of context. If Marie Antoinette really said with such sly disregard, "Let them eat cake," Coppola gives us time to digest that beyond simple condemnation. Lucky for us it's elegant, layered and entirely fulfilling. Coppola has her cake and we eat it, too.

Cult Oddities Special Delivery

Rodman Flender's The Unborn (1991) is better titled "Rosemary's Baby on the D-List." Pre-natal terror is its raison d'etre; a comment on the blessings and curse of fertility drugs that would make Octa-Mom seem only moderately perverse. What could come of scientific tampering during the very fragile formation of life? A race of ugly freak genius babies who know nothing more than to study and draw shapes from inside the womb -- before they devour their mothers, naturally.


"Evil Kids" movies are their own genre. The likes of The Omen, Village of the Damned, Children of the Corn and It's Alive tap into that tender crux between pristine innocence and the gestation of pure evil. This month saw the release of Orphan, a film which looks to be a variation on The Good Son for the unwanted child set (clarification: unwanted child not named Macaulay Culkin), and it's merely the next film in line to remind us that kids are not to be trusted, from conception to college. The Unborn graciously joins those ranks with a notable recipe for bad taste, and it's memorable for the fact that it keeps the "evil kid" element primarily within the womb.

Actress Brooke Adams lends an air of class to the proceedings as a mother plagued by depression in her bloodline, and a husband whose interest in having children may go deeper than initially perceived. Adams has a substantial history with disturbing material (Shock Waves, The Dead Zone, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the CBS series Touched by an Angel) and always manages to find the elegance in the mayhem that surrounds her. As Virginia Marshall, she descends from a modest and mild-tempered children's author to a kitten crushing madwoman bent on destroying a master race of homicidal super-babies. Her performance grounds the film's first half, before the film takes a turn for the deliciously worse and no graceful line reading could spare it.

"Come on, wake up. You lazy cat, come on.
You're such a sleepy head.
I know... where's your little mouse?
That'll perk you up! You love your little mouse."

Her dilemma is on par with Rosemary Woodhouse as we begin to query if this maternal dread is more a form of pre-partum depression than any sort of legitimate threat growing from within. Also in tune with Rosemary's Baby is Dr. Meyerling (James Karen), a variation on the evil Dr. Sapirstien, who's a bit more involved with Virginia's conception and a bit less reliant on Satan's dirty deed. That parallel of course quickly disintegrates as the film loses all silly notions of substance and foregoes Rosemary's restraint. It's more on par with a recent film like Drag Me to Hell, which similarly takes to kitten slaughter slapstick and is all the better for it. That film pronounces its comic elements from the get go, while The Unborn more or less dissolves into its more manic, twisted side. Much like the decision to abort your monster child, once it's done there's no turning back.

A face only a mother could obliterate.

And the film does take on the abortion issue with a vengeance. Quite literally when the aborted fetus returns armed with a knitting needle. But when Virginia ultimately regrets her decision and attempts to rescue the fetus from a back alley dumpster, she's greeted by a homeless gimp on a skateboard -- no explanation whatsoever. Never taking a side on the issues, The Unborn prefers its descent into oddball, gruesome absurdity. It's not so much pro-life as it is pro-inane.

Blink-and-you'll-miss a pre-Friends Lisa Kudrow collecting sperm samples. Apparently at this stage in her otherwise brilliant career, it hadn't been Lisa's day, her week, her month or even her year. There's also a surprise supporting turn from the likes of a pre-Suddenly Susan Kathy Griffin, on the D-List long before she made that concept famous. Kathy's a stellar stand up comic, and even with her penchant for sick humor, I've never heard her speak of playing this role as the teacher of a man-hating, lesbian birthing class who is bludgeoned by her lover with a telephone. It's pretty evident Kathy's calling was for stand up, where the laughs are at the expense of others.


And that's basically what to expect when you're expecting. The Unborn is a film that holds its B-movie origin close to the chest, embraces it warmly, and then gives it a little shake just for good measure. Ill-conceived? Maybe. Raised under questionable guidance? Most definitely. And it grows up to be a big freakshow you're embarrassed to introduce to your friends. Even so... this baby's still on board!

Cult Oddities: Friday the 13th Part 3: 3-D (1982)

"Meet Jason in a whole new dimension" prompts the tagline for Friday the 13th Part 3: 3-D. Naturally the joke is on the 3-D visual gag, but I take it to refer to the irony involved in a film with zero dimensions. Then again... no one cares, myself included. There is pleasure to be found in disgust, and this series proves it consistently with bad acting, extraneous bloodshed, rip-off scripts, and maybe a moment or two that is genuinely memorable or new. The first Friday is a pretty solid genre film, and other sequels in the series do show signs of a knowing wit towards the bludgeon-by-numbers plot formula (Part VI: Jason Lives is just as much a comedy, and pathetically so is Freddy vs. Jason.) Stupid, simple, lighthearted slaughterhouses, maybe still with a hint of suspense; Friday the 13th did invariably add some new elements into American horror in its heyday. The real challenge in being the third part in a series is to be THE sequel with the distinct dilemma of combining a burgeoning horror legacy with easy money and disco.

"Make it work."
Even backwoods fashion evolves.

I had to give an ode to this film upon seeing it for the first time within that touted third dimension -- with those eye-deteriorating paper 3-D glasses no less. It was a viewing filled with laughter, headaches and tears -- mostly from the paper 3-D glasses. But something is still so very special about these films for just how worthless they are. You go in expecting dead teenagers and you leave sa-tis-fied. And 3-D is a tried and true gimmick that I've felt could be exploited brilliantly by filmmakers interested in showing great depth of field. Imagine the long tracking shots in a film by Gus Van Sant or Paul Thomas Anderson, or through the windows and colors of Wong Kar Wai. Even inessential films like this or My Bloody Valentine 3-D gain some interest in the way that inessential moments look surprisingly roomy, visually speaking. Even without 3-D a bad movie seems somehow knowingly so. Objects are thrust at the camera with reckless abandon. Watch out for that child's baseball bat! Venomous snakes! Flying arrows! Hippies! If Friday the 13th Part 3 passes you the joint, you take it.


At this time Jason Voorheas wasn't even the homicidal horror icon or backwoods-rotted-muscle-man that he is today. Jason was just starting out; defining his look and methods for splatter. As far as we knew he was just a little mama's boy who drowned in a lake, revived from the dead only to see his avenging mother beheaded, and returned solemnly to his cabin in the woods. Props to his memorial ode to Mom being that of her severed head as home decor. Thoughtful, bold... loving. He seemed so modest and wholesome with a bag over his face. Part 3 is NOT the series' highpoint, but by god is it NOT the series' lowpoint. What it lacks in inspiration and worthwhile characters, it all but surpasses in those singular moments lost to the eighties -- like a "previously on Friday the 13th" intro, convenience store biker gangs, and a scary soundtrack that will make you want to step out on the floor and dance!

"Is this your rubber?
Didn't your Mama teach you manners?
If you want something, you ask... Nice."

It was an innocent time to be a franchise serial killer. Torture porn would seem so tedious to a killer like Jason - who offs kids with the same passion he gives to doing laundry (which he ironically neglects in pursuit of offing kids). It's work as usual 'round these parts. He knows this campground like the back of his rotted hand, and he certainly knows there's no dearth of stupid, horny youth.

Screenwriting 101: Establish character through dialogue...

Chris: Sex, sex, sex. You guys are getting boring, you know that?

Andy: What would a weekend in the country be without sex?

Pregnant Friend #1: Cool it Andy.

Andy: I didn't mean it that way.

This most recent batch of hormones is young, fresh, and lacking in personality. Our final girl, Chris, is dreadfully boring, but she's... pretty. Sure, she's a prude and would rather unpack than skinny dip with her pals, but she has her reasons. After running away from a family feud at this lakeside cabin two years prior, Chris was attacked by a "hideous looking man!" Inexplicably Jason chose not to kill Chris, instead returning her safely to her cabin bed. (Still so wholesome he was...) The attack has left her wounded and scarred, yet Chris's somehow surprised at feeling uncomfortable upon returning to this very same locale just to fuck and party with friends. Reason enough so that she can tease her beefcake boyfriend, and be distracted from her non-descript pregnant friends, stoners, and your standard doom-and-gloom country bumpkin...

"Go back from whence ye came! I have warned thee! Warned thee..."

Stock characters seems too complimentary a description. It's at this point in the series where the formula was solidified and the audience would identify more with Jason than his disposable income of hapless youth. Jason's most notable quality in this sequel is the first appearance of THE hockey mask that would ultimately define him. Unfortunately he has to give credit to the film's most grating creation, Shelley, for leaving this new look behind. Shelley is the resident prankster, but for all that fun he seems to be having, he's a total downer. ("Would you be yourself if you looked like this?") A frizzy-haired sad clown with an inevitable end... Whether that makes you cry or laugh, it's probably just those paper 3-D glasses.


Director Steve Miner has a long history with horror, having worked on the sets of The Last House on the Left and the original Friday. He then took the reigns on the second and third in this series, as well as the seventh outing for Michael Myers, Halloween: H20. If this entry seems at all uninspired, it's also a marvel of how streamlined these films had become at this stage. In due time Jason would have his Final Chapter, only to return for a tour of Manhattan and the outer realms of space. Friday Part 3 is the modest side of that spectrum. Its pleasures come in those "death by handstand" moments, the careless T&A, and extreme yo-yo action. And if that ending seems at all familiar, its just been "borrowed" from Friday the 13th Part 1 - alongside other needless aspects such as setting and plot. Friday Part 3 looks a lot better in that third dimension, seeing as any lack of depth is fully exploited and thrust into the audiences' faces. Jason's dead in a whole new dimension... Let's disco.

Watch this Movie online at iReel.com.

(Also watch Part 2.)

"Cheers!" from a Snotty Jude Law

Cheers for returning to the Club while I was summering on my yacht in Southern Italy sans internet. You can tell I own a yacht because I use words like "sans." Snotty Jude Law and I thank you!