Extras:

• Commentary by Carnahan and editor John Gilroy
  
• "NARC: Making the Deal" (3:19)
  
• "NARC: Shooting Up" (19:24)
  
• "NARC: The Visual Trip" (12:55)
  
• "The Friedkin Connection" (9:50)
  
• Theatrical trailer (2:32)
  
• Theatrical trailers for THE ITALIAN JOB, LARA CROFT 2, TIMELINE, THE HUNTED
  

Frankly, both as a professional film reviewer and as a true blue fan of action movies, I didn't know what to think about Joe Carnahan's NARC when I first saw it.

I enjoyed watching the film. I was caught up in the plot and did not figure out the surprise "twist" before it happened. Furthermore, I love the cast &$151; Jason Patric and Ray Liotta (who has never received due credit for his amazing work in COPLAND)— and the harsh, gritty, material itself is right up my alley.

Yet there was something about the film that nagged at me. I couldn't figure out what it was.

NARC is about a Detroit undercover cop named Nick Tellis (Patric). He's on leave because he killed an innocent bystander while running down a dealer. A year and a half later, he is summoned back to the force to help in the investigation of a murdered cop named Calvess.

Tellis joins up with the dead cop's partner Lt. Henry Oak (Liotta) and, in order to find some clues as to who killed Calvess and why, re-descends into the drug underworld, which had already caused him so much trouble in the first place. Throughout their investigation there are strong hints that Oak knows more than he is letting on, but in the world of the film Tellis is distracted by the fact that Calvess's problems with temptation and his very fate in the drug underworld may very well have been his own.

NARC is the kind of film that wears its realism on its sleeve. You can feel the debris of disowned city streets under its feet and the icy breath of cold lake-cooled wind on its face. Though the city is Detroit, it could be New York, or Philadelphia, or Los Angeles. It's anywhere that plays host to Darwinian struggles among conflicting groups of sociological entities striving to stay alive. Yet it is also Detroit. It's a different Detroit than Curtis Hanson's city in 8 MILE, more under-populated, more despairing, harder. There is no conventional sense of hope in NARC no recourse to music to salvage one's soul. In Carnahan's Detroit justice, your future, is in the unforgiving streets.

NARC appeared after a long struggle with a wealth of effusive advance word and praise about the film's realism, hailing it as a return to the filmmaking style of the '70s.

And as is typical these days, how the film came to be made &$151; and how it is marketed — is as much, if not more of, the story as the content of NARC itself. But one of the big problems with huge publicity campaigns is that they obscure essential facts about a movie, or foster images — misinformation — about how the movie comes across.

NARC received a lot of attention because it was judged to be a throwback to the "great" crime films of the '70s. I have two reactions to this statement. First, when reviewers note that NARC harks back specifically to Friedkin's THE FRENCH CONNECTION (a great film, by the way), what they really mean is that NARC reminds of them of one scene that appears toward the beginning of THE FRENCH CONNECTION when Hackman and Scheider chase a guy through the streets of Brooklyn and roust him in an alley. The ambiance of Friedkin's decrepit city in that one scene, where crime is fought in the hard-faced, brick-strewn, Cyclone-fence bounded, steam-piped battlefields of night, is recreated in the totality of NARC.

But when you think about it, how much of a "revival" of the '70s cinematic sensibility is NARC? Aren't there an awful lot of new movies and TV shows set in the corrupted precincts of today's police departments? From INTERNAL AFFAIRS to MINORITY REPORT, it seems that we can't go to any mall theater without having the problems and tortures of being a cop thrust in our faces. Programs such as THE WIRE, ROBBERY HOMICIDE DIVISION, BOOMTOWN, and especially THE SHIELD, that SOPRANOS-level masterpiece of serial storytelling, do exactly what NARC does, only on a grander (better?) scale. In any case, the only really '70s-ish moment I could detect was the scene in which the frame splits into four and follows the characters, an old DePalma trick borrowed from Frankenheimer and Jewison.

OK, so that's my grousing about how "unoriginal " the film is. Yet, no movie is thoroughly original. What you end up with, what you take away from a movie that has links to so many other films in its genre, is character. And NARC has a pair of thoroughly original, utterly conflicted, and unpredictable characters.

Heavy, sweating, ill-shaved, and wearing cheap suits, Ray Liotta's Oak (as in, strong as an Oak?) is in that middle range of movie characters whom we both dislike yet find fascinating. Always ready with the advice, presumably born of years of direct street experience, he turns out to be just as affected by the horrors he has seen, just as sensitive as his partner-opponent, Tellis (tell us?). The whole concluding sequence, with its echoes of the (popularly exaggerated) horrors in Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS, is a drama of two tired, scared, weak characters struggling to see who will crawl slower toward the finish line.

Now that I have seen it a couple of more times on DVD, I think it's safe to say that NARC is a great film. The film works on you better if you watch the actors instead of try to outwit the plot. In that respect it's interesting to compare the film to the vaguely similar

One of the reasons I like the film better now is that its scale seems suited to the TV frame. Also, the disc is packed with great supplements that go into frank detail about the production history and which overall treat the film as a work of art instead of solely a commercial enterprise.

The commentary by Carnahan and editor John Gilroy is very good. Carnahan talks more, and in the tradition of quiet tradesmen who silently do their job without much acclaim, Gilroy often just chuckles along. Carnahan has the virtue of being unable to censor himself so he just barrels through and tells you everything. Some of his private sources for the film come as a surprise.

There is also one big long making-of featurette, artificially broken up into four parts. This is also highly informative, and as I say treats the film as an art object rather than a fun commercial enterprise. Basically, the four featurettes walk you through the production history, culminating in "The Friedkin Connection," in which the director offers his views of Carnahan's movie.

Finally there's the theatrical trailer, accompanied by trailers for THE ITALIAN JOB, the second LARA CROFT movie, TIMELINE, and Friedkin's THE HUNTED.

Wedlockdown

JUST MARRIED

Original Movie:

• Theatrical premiere: 10 January, 2003
  
• 95 minutes
  
• PG-13
  
• 20th Century Fox
  
• Directed by actor turned director Shawn Levy (BIG FAT LIAR)
  
• Credited writer: Sam Harper (ROOKIE OF THE YEAR)
  
• Cast: Ashton Kutcher (Tom Leezak), Brittany Murphy (Sarah McNerney), Christian Kane (Peter Prentiss), David Rasche (Mr. McNerney), Raymond J. Barry (Mr. Leezak), George Gaynes (Father Robert), Veronica Cartwright (Pussy, Mrs. McNerney)
  
• Cinematography: Jonathan Brown
  
• Editing: Scott Hill
  
• Significant music: Christopher Beck
  
• Awards: None
  
• Budget: NA
  
• Stated initial box office returns: $56 million

Plot in one sentence: Young newlyweds fight during their honeymoon.

Disc Stats:

Extras:

• Commentary by director Shawn Levy, Brittany Murphy, and Ashton Kutcher
  
• Comedy Centrals Reel Comedy: JUST MARRIED (20:55)
  
• Four deleted scenes (7:43), with optional director commentary
  
• Making of (3:14)
  
• Theatrical trailer (2:19)
  
• Trailers for LE DIVORCE, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN
  

Shawn Levy directed JUST MARRIED.

Shawn Levy is a generous, talented, intelligent man who in his small way has made the movie industry a better place. That's the Shawn Levy I know. Unfortunately, it is not the Shawn Levy who directed JUST MARRIED.

The Shawn Levy I know is the movie reviewer for the daily OREGONIAN. He wrote a biography of Jerry Lewis, and has a hit play on the London stage based on his second book about the Rat Pack. He's also published a popular history about swinging London and is currently at work on what should prove to be his most interesting biography yet.

For years, the writer Shawn Levy has been confused with the actor-(episodes of THIRTYSOMETHING)-turned-director Shawn Levy. This confusability is the source of late night calls from relentless creditors and witless humor among his local colleagues.

I know Shawn Levy. Shawn Levy is a friend of mine. And Shawn Levy is no Shawn Levy.

Shawn Levy the director apparently wants to do romantic comedy hack-work on the level of a bad Jennifer Lopez film like THE WEDDING PLANNER. JUST MARRIED, which was something of a modest hit at the time, is only his latest execrable comedy, with nary a laugh to be had between its first frames and its last, 95 minutes later.

The first thing that's terrible about the film is that the stars have to smile. And they don't just grin. They open their mouths wide and stretch their gaping holes left and right and bare as many gleaming teeth as they have hidden in their oral cavities. Their eyes also try to join in the act, and attempt a sparkly wrinkly good humor, but since those orbs are buried beneath several mounds of make-up, the authenticity of their eyes is eroded. Basically they look like a bunch of Mentos ad actors, and you instantly don't like them.

They have more fun with what they say than we do. But even some of the "famous" jokes, inevitably spoiled in the trailer, such as the giant cockroach in the Italian hotel room, don't go anywhere. They are presented as jokes. They have the form and the outline of jokes. They are meant to be laughed at. But they are not funny.

Tabloid resident and HEY DUDE WHERE'S MY CAR star Ashton Kutcher is a big smiler, which has the result of making him the modern equivalent of Robby Benson. He is winsome and honest and wholesome and doesn't swear, and is an utter bore. He has the obligatory "outrageous" friend, who is unmemorable, has only two scenes, and passes like wind out of your life. Meanwhile, Brittany Murphy, whom I thought had aspirations to being another Jennifer Jason Leigh, shocks with her willingness to do bad teen comedy.

Yet the disc version comes to us as if it were CITIZEN KANE. The supplements begin with a standard issue commentary track by director Shawn Levy, Brittany Murphy, and Kutcher, in which everyone is happy to be together. The point of historical interest is that Murphy and Kutcher started to date around the time they made this movie, and so the salacious gossiper might be eager to hear fireworks. There are none.

Worse is the Comedy Central’s Reel Comedy special on JUST MARRIED with the two stars sharing a bed with the show's host and fawning on each other and being public about their intimacy. It's quite simply appalling. Worse, it's no funnier than the movie.

There are also four deleted scenes that don't even seem to be truly deleted, with optional director commentary. And there is also a brief making of featurette that, as usual, consists mostly of clips from the film.

There's also the theatrical trailer. But the most interesting feature on the disc is the trailers for LE DIVORCE and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, which gives you a glimpse of a leather clad Peta Wilson going all vampiric on you.

Vamping

WES CRAVEN PRESENTS DRACULA II: ASCENSION

Original Movie:

• Theatrical premiere, on video: 7 June, 2003
  
• 85 minutes
  
• R
  
• Neo Art and Logic
  
• Directed by Patrick Lussier
  
• Credited writer: Joel Soisson and Patrick Lussier
  
• Cast: Jason Scott Lee (Father Uffizi), Jason London (Luke), Roy Scheider (Cardinal Sisqueros), Craig Sheffer (Lowell), Diane Neal (Elizabeth Blaine), John Light (Eric), Khary Payton (Kenny), Brande Roderick (Tanya), Stephen Billington (Dracula), Rutger Hauer (Dracula in a flashforward)
  
• Cinematography: Douglas Milsome
  
• Editing: Lisa Romaniw
  
• Significant music: Kevin Kliesch
  
• Make up: Gary Tunnicliffe
  
• Awards: none
  
• Budget: NA
  
• Stated initial box office returns: NA

Plot in one sentence: New Orleans med students experiment on a captive vampire.

Disc Stats:

Extras:

• Commentary with Patrick Lussier, writer Joel Soisson, and make up artist Gary Tunnicliffe
  
• Four deleted Scenes
  
• Cast auditions Brande Roderick (3:29), Khary Payton (4:30), Diane Neal (12:08), John Light (2:07), Daniela Nane
  
• Cast and crew bios
  
• Production notes
  
• Trailers for DRACULA 2000, ASUNDER, TANGLED, KILL BILL
  

Speaking of vampires, an actually good vampire movie has sneaked onto video without much fanfare. Though it bears a proprietary name, Wes Craven's in this case, it has little to do with his world view. Instead it is made by Patrick Lussier, an editor of some of Craven's films, including SCREAM) who has turned director. It's not scary, but it's not bad.

The premise is simple. A group of New Orleans medical students stumble upon the body of a vampire (apparently the body of Dracula, burned at the end of DRACULA 2000, which I haven't seen). It is brought into the morgue where med student Elizabeth Blaine (Diane Neal) works. She and her partner discover that the body's liver is white, i.e., free of blood, and that this mysterious person has big vampire teeth, one of which nicks Elizabeth's finger. Being a ravishingly beautiful woman, Elizabeth also dates her professor (like Julia Roberts in THE PELICAN BRIEF, also set in New Orleans). He is a deformed wheelchair-bound asshole named Lowell (Craig Sheffer, slightly slumming, but doing a good job). She calls him when she is worried that they have a real life vampire on their hands, and he seems skeptical. Meanwhile her partner (who has a crush on her) gets a mysterious phone call from a guy offering multi-millions of dollars for the corpse. And third, there is a priest (Jason Scott Lee) on the premises, who is also looking for the corpse. Elizabeth and her fawning assistant smuggle out the body, and then meet up with their other medical friends at Lowell's parents' house (this detour is sort of jerry-rigged but at least explained in the script). There, they meet up with moneybags guy on the phone, named Eric (John Light). He's an English jerk who looks like Richard Chamberlain. In any case, the vampire is strapped to a table and kept submissive with sunlight level lights. The doctors and ur-doctors so some experimenting with the vampire's blood, a couple start turning into vampires, and hidden agenda are revealed. More happens than this but it's all clear, with the priest also in pursuit of the vampire.

The film ends on a rather grim note, with the absolute triumph of evil, but that's because there's already a third DRACULA, filmed at the same time (in Budapest, with the same cast). On the commentary track the producers reveal that they see the DRACULA films as one big story. In that case, ASCENSION is just vamping until the climax in the third film.

Oh, by the way, Roy Scheider is also in the film, for about twelve seconds. He's looking a little old and frail. According to the IMDB Rutger Hauer is also suppose to be in the film, but I didn't seen him.

DRACULA has the feel of DAY OF THE DEAD, in which Romero's zombies are studied by science, and also of FLATLINERS, with over-reaching young people tempting the gods by meddling in matters of life and death. What's interesting about the film is that it's actually about something other than the pure vampire thrills. Issues of moral choice and medical propriety, of the value of experimentation and the weight that the power to change the body accords, are all seamlessly mingled into the movie. In the context of the movie, vampire blood could be a miracle cure for disabled people such as Lowell. But of course the film is also a thriller, so everything has to go awry and good people lured to the dark side.

The disc comes with an informative and jovial commentary with director Lussier, co-writer Joel Soisson, and make up artist Gary Tunnicliffe. Aspiring film makers who have a cheap horror movie coming up will get a lot out of this track.

Finally, there are a few trailers, for DRACULA 2000, ASUNDER, TANGLED, and KILL BILL.

What Just Happened?

TSUI HARK'S VAMPIRE HUNTERS

Original Movie:

• A.K.A.: The Era of Vampire
  
• Hark and Company
  
• Theatrical premiere: 30 May, 2003
  
• 90 minutes
  
• R
  
• Directed by Wellson Chin
  
• Credited writer: Tsui Hark
  
• Cast: Chan Kwok Kwan (Choi), Ken Chang (Hei), Suet Lam (Kung), Michael Chow Man-Kin (Fat), Ji Chun Hua (Master Mao Shan), Chan Koon Tai (Zombie Wrangler), Horace Lee Wai Shing (Dragon Tang), Lee Lik Chee (Butler), Wang Zhen Lin (Young Maser Jiang), Wong Yat Fei (Undertaker), Yu Rong Guang (Master Jiang), Zou Na (Ling)
  
• Cinematography: Joe Chan Kwong Hung, Sunny Tsang Tat Sze, Herman Yau Lai To
  
• Editing: Marco Mak Chi Sin
  
• Significant music: J.M. Logan
  
• Awards: None
  
• Budget: $1 million
  
• Stated initial box office returns: NA

Plot in one sentence: xxx

Disc Stats:

Extras:

• Theatrical trailer, and trailers for NATIONAL SECURITY, TIME AND TIDE, and COWBOY BEBOP
  

Not so, TSUI HARK'S VAMPIRE HUNTERS. Something has been bothering me about HK action films for a long time and either I have never been able to put my finger on it, or it really was obvious but impossible to reveal in a climate of Hong Kong fever. It's that the films rarely make any sense. I thought it was just me, not paying enough attention at the start of the films and failing to sort out all the players. Hark's TIME AND TIDE is a good example. I watched that film in a miasma of confusion. I've never figured it out.

But now I think I have a solution to the dilemma. These films really are bad. It's not me, it's the film's failure to make sense. I got a clue about this from reading David Bordwell's book PLANET HONG KONG, from Harvard University Press. In a generally laudatory tome, Bordwell spends a certain amount of time discussing HK script writing techniques. The Chinese approach is simple. They don't use a script. Films often begin production with only a long outline. Dialogue is improvised or written the night before. This approach is common and may well be the cause of subsequent confusion on the part of westerners (or at least me) over HK narratives. Even Wong Kar-Wei's improvisational approach to IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE caused the stars to complain, at least during production, and there were different endings to the film.

So I wasn't too bugged when I started to watch Hark's VAMPIRE HUNTERS and it failed to make sense from the get go. Hark only wrote and produced it, he didn't direct the film but maybe that's why it made the little sense that it did.

It may be that Hark's — or the Chinese — view of the vampire is wholly different from the Western heritage of Dracula in book and film. Hark's vampire is more of a demon, with gas coming out of his mouth and an overall mien of worms and pus. He also doesn't bite anyone, he just turns on his blood sucking feature and can absorb his victims corpuscles from a distance.

After an incomprehensible prelude in which a bunch of warriors are searching for and find some demonesque vampires, the film skips ahead and seems to center on four monks who are also vampire hunters. They seem to go under cover in a small village or temple where the villagers seem to be wax-covered figures hidden in the cellar. There is also a woman in red running around. The monks finally do battle with a demon vampire in the climax which builds and builds and goes nowhere comprehensible (at least to me).

My main objection to the movie is that it looks so much like a video. In fact, it has the appearance of an erotic thriller more than a vampire movie. The whole movie looks blue, and the forest scenes have back light (blue, of course) and smoke or mist going by all the time, just as in every erotic thriller ever made. Though Hark is credited with writing the thing (he must have given the credited director 12 pages of notes and an outline), having his name in the title is misleading. Visually, the film just doesn't have the visual flair that his work enjoys, even the incoherent TIME AND TIDE. It's a good transfer, but it just looks like a straight-to-video effort.

Christmas Jeer

BREAKAWAY

Original Movie:

• A.K.A.: CHRISTMAS RUSH
  
• Sony television, TBS
  
• Theatrical premiere: 1 December, 2002
  
• 100 minutes
  
• R
  
• Directed by TV movie director and writer (GYMKATA) Charles Robert Carner
  
• Credited writer: Charles Robert Carner
  
• Cast: Dean Cain (Lt. Cornelius Morgan), Erika Eleniak (Cat ), Eric Roberts (Scalzetti)
  
• Cinematography: Michael Goi
  
• Editing: Marc Leif
  
• Significant music: John Debney
  
• Awards: None
  
• Budget: NA
  
• Stated initial box office returns: NA

Plot in one sentence: Thieves take a Chicago shopping mall hostage on Christmas eve.

Disc Stats:

Extras:

• None
  

BREAKAWAY is a TV movie released on DVD in the gowns of a theatrical release, with a (good) widescreen transfer and better sound. But you can tell that it's still very much a TV film because every 11 minutes the film stops, fades out, then fades back in on the same scene or setting. I suppose we should be grateful for the lack of actual commercials between those fades, but in reality they provide the only real evidence of the film's TV movie roots.

It starts out as a not bad tale of a cop (Dean Cain) driven by his desire to rectify the sins of his on-the-take father. When a stakeout outside a Chinese restaurant goes awry, he finds himself not only on suspension pending an investigation, but part of a suit brought about by a pain-in-the-ass innocent bystander who happened to be a prominent and rich citizen.

His wife (Erika Eleniak) sticks by him (possibly because of the cross she wears prominently around her neck) despite their money troubles, but she urges him to get out of the cop rat race and enter private police work. They have a little TV spat about that, and then we are introduced to the film's foe, a thief whom Cain and his partner arrested some time before. They encounter him at the school both their children attend. Played by Eric Roberts with baleful intensity, this man is a thief but also the father of a child with leukemia. With that in mind, Roberts comes up with the scheme of robbing a popular Chicago mall on Christmas Eve when the take will be high. Fate being what it is, that is the same mall where Eleniak works in a jewelry store. She ends up being one of the hostages when the gang's scheme goes awry, and Cain ends up pulling a Bruce Willis and harassing the team, knocking them off one by one.

It's just a TV movie, but BREAKAWAY has a few things to recommend it. For one, it is unusually edited. The pacing is much more lively and unpredictable than the usual TV fare. Perhaps director Carner was influenced by NYPD BLUE a little, but the opening sequence is well put together. Second, the conflict between the good cop and the bad guy is ambiguous, as it might be in real life. There is a level of sympathy between them that you don't usually find in cop dramas. The very, very end of the film is somewhat contrived in a mega-happy manner, or perhaps just convenient from a screenwriter's perspective, but until then the duel of wits and morals between the two guys is much more interesting than we're used to (and much more interesting than the action). A visual quote from THE THIRD MAN indicates that Carner has a buff's eye for antecedents.

The relations among all the characters do not have the predictability and obviousness of other similar types of stories or settings (COLLATERAL DAMAGE comes to mind), and the marital relationship of Cain and Eleniak is closer and mostly tension-free. Basically, it tries to show how a relationship could work rather than put it in jeopardy in order to squeeze out unearned suspense. BREAKAWAY is no masterpiece, but to students of noir or the heist genre might find a modicum of interest in it, and it certainly suggests that Carner is an unrecognized film toiler of the type whom Tarantino has spent the last three years researching.

What a Long Boring Trip It's Been

PSYCH-OUT/THE TRIP: MGM MIDNITE MOVIES DOUBLE FEATURE

Original Movie:

• Theatrical release: PSYCH-OUT, 6 November, 1968; THE TRIP, 23 August, 1967
  
• 101/ 85 minutes
  
• NR
  
• AIP
  
• Directed by Richard Rush/Roger Corman
  
• Credited writers: Betty Tusher, Betty Ulius, E. Hunter Willett / Jack Nicholson
  
• Casts: Susan Strasberg (Jenny Davis), Dean Stockwell (Dave), Jack Nicholson (Stoney), Bruce Dern (Steve Davis), Henry Jaglom (Warren), Gary Marshall (Plainclothesman), Barbara London (Sadie) /Peter Fonda (Paul Groves), Susan Strasberg (Sally Groves), Bruce Dern (John), Dennis Hopper (Max), Luana Anders (Waitress), Dick Miller (Cash), Peter Bogdanovich
  
• Cinematography: László Kovács/Arch R. Dalzell
  
• Editing: Renn Reynolds/Ronald Sinclair
  
• Significant music: Ronald Stein, The Seeds, The Strawberry Alarm Clock/American Music Band
  
• Awards: none
  
• Budget: NA/$450, 600 (Corman says $300, 000)
  
• Stated initial box office returns: NA/$5.5 million

Plots in one sentence: An innocent girl goes to San Francisco in search of her brother and falls in among hippies./A commercial director going through a mid life crisis drops acid.

Disc Stats:

Extras: Side One

• Theatrical trailer (2:48)
  
• "Love and Haight" (19:29)
  

Extras: Side Two

• Audio commentary with Roger Corman
  
• AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER article, March 1968 (27 screens)
  
• "Turn In, Trip Out" (17:14)
  
• "Allen Davieu, A.S.C: Psychedelic Film Effects" (7:58)
  
• "Psychedelic Light Box" (5:43)
  
• Theatrical trailer (2:27)
  

PSYCHE-OUT and THE TRIP, films about the drug and hippie subculture of the '60s, were made by two of the squarest guys in Hollywood.

Naturally, the results are as square as they are.

Dick Clark produced PSYCHE-OUT, and Roger Corman directed THE TRIP, from Jack Nicholson's script. Both are rife with paisley swirls, headbands, crash pads, and beaded doorways. Both have visions of what hippies are like that are hilarious. If THE TRIP is a better film, it's only marginally because the people making it knew what the hell they were talking about.

But both men were sincere, as you learn on the supplementary features on this disc. Clark really wanted to show the world what the young people were doing. And Corman, coming off three years of studio bound Poe films, wanted to get out and get some fresh air.

Both films feature a lot of the people who were hanging around American International at the time: Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Susan Strasberg, Dennis Hopper, Dick Miller. The movies end up being high school yearbooks for the generation that was about to take over Hollywood. Though not of any aesthetic interest, both film's have historical importance, and late night chips and beer fun factor value.

PSYCHE-OUT is about a deaf girl (who can speak clearly) who drops into 'Frisco to find her brother (Dern) who has become a street preacher. She falls among hippies led by Nicholson, who is trying to put together a band. In the manner of the time, he sexes her a few times but starts to withdraw when she becomes clingy. Finally, she finds her brother, who goes up in flames when a bunch of rednecks set fire to his pad.

In the rather streamlined THE TRIP, a facile and vacuous TV commercial director (Fonda) going through a divorce decides to take some acid to gain "insight." Under the supervision of a bearded guide (Bruce Dern), the trip lasts all night and he confronts various sins and failures. Then he slips out of his house and hits the road, at one point going into a family's house and making himself at home, like Robert Downey, Jr. He wanders Sunset Strip, and winds up at the beach at dawn. His night of illusions ends ambiguously.

Both movies are funny in the traditional way: you chortle at middle class actors wearing wigs and trying to act stony. The clothes, the designs on the wall, the "light shows" are all terribly dated. But this kind of amusement can last only so long, and takes on a sad cast when you learn how seriously the filmmakers were about their projects.

PSYCHE-OUT comes with a modest array of supplements. Besides the theatrical trailer, the film features the making of doc "Love and Haight," a 20 minute excursion into the making of the film, with Dern and Clark prominent among the interviewees. Dern surprises the listener with his dismissive attitude to both the drug culture and to the easily satisfied acting ambitions of his co-stars, although he doesn't name names.

Extras for THE TRIP are extensive. They begin with a detailed, and rather modest, audio commentary track with Roger Corman, who among other things is about the drug use of his stars. There's also an article reprinted from AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER from March 1968 (27 screens),and I wish they would do this more often (but better, so you could actually read it).

There are also several featurettes. "Turn In, Trip Out" is an extensive production history of the film, and the other docs go into detail about how the psychedelic effects were achieved. Finally, there is the theatrical trailer

DVD QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Bruce Dern: "I read the script, and I called Jack Nicholson, who I'd just got to know. So Jack says ([Nicholson voice] 'So what are you doing about the drugs, Derns? [SIC]' I said, 'Well, just tell me, what is LSD? I mean, what does it do?' He says, 'Ask Roger. He's the big authority on the drug.' So I said, OK, so I went to the set, and I said, 'Roger, now just give me a little history, because I don't get this drug.' Roger said he took an acid trip. He laid on the ground, face down. He looked into the earth, and he studied what was under the grass, for about … seven hours. And I said, 'There's nothing under the grass,' and Roger said, 'Oh, yeah , oh yeah, I saw all the way to the center of the earth.'" Roger Corman: "Bruce is right. I remember seeing through to the center of the earth, and thinking that I had just invented a new art form. The creator would lie spread eagle on the earth, looking face down into the earth, and his creation, whether it was music, or painting or a motion picture, would transmit through the earth, and anybody else who was laying face down on the earth would receive the piece of art uninterrupted." Bruce Dern: "I said, 'Hey, you saw nothing beyond where the worms and the beetles and shit are. Don't tell me you saw beyond that.' 'Oh yeah. You have no idea what's down there, Bruce.'—Bruce Dern and Roger Corman on making THE TRIP.

NEXT TIME:PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, POPEYE, THE HOURS, and more!

E-MAIL THE AUTHOR | ARCHIVES