Fearless Frank

Good titles, bad movie

There is not much written about Philip Kaufman's Fearless Frank because there is not much to write about. It is a feeble superhero parody that might have made a good fifteen minute Second City comedy troupe skit, but becomes tedious when expanded to the length of a feature flim. Kaufman adds Felliniesque digressions and vaguely narcotic curlicues as padding. Kaufman partisans would just as soon forget about the film, but since I've never championed his work, I will admit that I got a few laughs out of it; more than I laughed at After the Fox or The Producers.

The main reason for the laughs is the topnotch cast who tower over the thin material. A good chunk of the cast came from Chicago's aforementioned Second City. Second City's Severn Darden and Anthony Holland were in Kaufman's first film, Goldstein, and return for Fearless Frank. Fellow comic troupers Joan Darling and David Steinberg joins them for this one. All four would soon be familiar faces in Hollywood films and television. Jon Voight is the titular Frank, who is reanimated by mad scientist Darden into a superhero. All the leads do what they can with much scenery chewing and mugging. Nelson Algren, who also acted in Goldstein, appears as one of the bad guy's henchmen with the sobriquet, "Needles"; a tribute to Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm. Monique van Vooren appears as eye candy and Frank's dream girl, another character aptly named: Plethora. Cult musical figure Ken Nordine delivers droll narration.

Jon Voight

As one can surmise from this plot summary, Kaufman is borrowing a little from Mary Shelley, but the primary source of this parody is the then popular Batman TV series. This is most obvious when Kaufman punctuates Voight's defloration of Ms. Darling with mod titles of "Wham" and "Pow", but, alas, there is no "Biff". However, it is hard to parody something that already verged on self-parody. The film was first shown at Cannes in 1967 and, unsurprisingly attracted no interest. It was eventually released on a double bill with an obscure Dustin Hoffman B picture after the success of Midnight Cowboy in 1969. Kaufman got a deal with Universal Pictures which eventually released his next picture, the far superior Western, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid. Fearless Frank, at times looks good enough to be a Hollywood feature, but in some sequences, like a superimposed Frank flying over Chicago, it is strictly amateur hour. Kaufman never really evolved into a first rate visual stylist, but his next film would show a quantum leap. Too much of Fearless Frank's widescreen frame contains wasted negative space, meaningless visual clutter that distracts from the players.

I also feel the sophisticated Europhile Kaufman had a rather leaden feel for comedy. There are some amusing bits in ...Northfield and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but he totally muffed Tom Wolfe's satiric jabs at Americana and the space program in The Right Stuff. I find that highly lauded film and his acclaimed The Unbearable Lightness of Being, to be gaseous, over long bores. I do like The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Henry and June, and Quills. The White Dawn and The Wanderers are watchable and the rest is dross; including Fearless Frank.

Resident Evil

Austin Abrams 

Zach Cregger's Resident Evil is a deserved hit with both the critics and the public. The youngsters and gamers seem to like it. My ticket taker gushed that "it was by far the best in the series even if it didn't have Mila." The audience was young and entranced by the sheer gallop of this genre exercise par excellence. I was worried after the polyphonic breakthrough of Weapons that Resident Evil would be monophonic in its adherence to the project's gaming heritage, but it is more than a rollercoaster ride. It is agitatedly, but rewardingly monophonic in following the adventures of dispatch delivery agent Bryan (Austin Abrams) as he encounters carnivorous alien creatures while he tries to deliver the film's MacGuffin to a lab. It does not end happily, but the film's themes are suited to the rat in a maze structure. Cregger leavens the material with sick humor which the cast delivers sublimely.

Some have objected to the prevalent visual schema of slime, often toxic, that fills the screen during the last act. This is silly because the film's sense of horror is that of human putrefaction. The hero, a modern Ichabod Crane, is trying desperately to outrun the onslaught of mortality. The unease of COVID and whatever the heck happened in Russia pervades the air. What mysterious strain will cause us to putrefy? Thankfully, Austin Abrams gives a sly, visually elastic performance that brings out the absurdity of Bryan's plight. The supporting players whizz by before getting slimed. I was most amused by the efforts of Paul Walter Hauser and Zach Cherry. 

I was reminded of a similar genre exercise that traded off then current fears, Spielberg's Duel. The villain stalking Dennis Weaver is a kin to the good old boys that shot up Captain America and Billy in Easy Rider. The villain of Resident Evil is harder to pin down, something more mysterious in the air. Guns and rifles of many varieties do seem easy to find in this film's version of America. It posits that if life is a First-person shooter game then, soon, we will all be dead.

This is for Carla, a horror aficionado and connoisseur of onscreen putrefaction.

The Devil's Bride

Groovy!

Arunas Zebriunas' dotty film The Devil's Bride is a Lithuanian rock opera released in 1974. Mr Zebrunas was assisted in constructing this slice of counterculture kitsch by composer Vyacheslav Ganelin and poet Sigitas Geda who penned the libretto. The plot is loosely based on the folklore fantasy novel Whitehorn's Windmill by Kazys Boruta. The good people at Deaf Crocodile have released this film on a beautiful disc which contains a host of extras in addition to the 76 minute feature. Ten minutes into this picture, you'll feel as if someone has given you a few shots of mead and a dark rye crust with ergot clusters. 

An agent of the dark lord spreads mischief amongst the inhabitants of a lakeside village. Men sell their souls and brides are left waiting at the altar. The thorough composed score drives the frenetic, cartoon like action. The film hurtles along. If you don't like one tune, here comes another. The tone is akin that of Ken Russell in this period, if Mr. Russell had liked people. The invocation of national myth, Catholic imagery, and pagan folklore stands as a finger in the eye of staid, godless Communism.

As with most rock operas, the score for The Devil's Bride is not rock and roll, but a listenable mishmash. Because of his background in jazz, I'd group Mr. Ganelin with jazz composers who went all in on baroque pop when the commercial opportunity arose, like John Barry, Quincy Jones, and Burt Bacharach. Ganelin injects some fuzz-tone guitar whenever Satan's minions cut loose with orgiastic impishness, but he can't compose around an electric guitar like Morricone. The Devil's Bride is much more engaging than such visual atrocities as Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell. And don't get me started about the 1973 Lost Horizon, an all time turkey that put the kibosh to the Bacharach/ David partnership. It was a bad era for musicals, rock opera or not, The Devil's Bride is colorful and kooky fun. The flick is currently streaming on Tubi.