LETTING OFF STEAM: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE HENCHMEN OF 'COMMANDO'

[The below interview originally ran on Cut Print Film in October 2013 to celebrate Commando's thirtieth anniversary. It is reprinted here with only minor updates.]

Commando, written by Steven E. de Souza and directed by Mark L. Lester, turns exactly thirty-five years old today, and yet enthusiasm for the film has never diminished. Perhaps that’s because fans who worship Commando are smart enough to know that John Matrix is not the only bad-ass worth celebrating. It is the film’s array of henchmen and the ensemble of character actors who gave them life that elevate Commando to new heights of pure enjoyment.

Joining me for a very bad-ass discussion are three of the greatest henchmen to have ever worked incongruously to exact the scheme of the evil main bad guy: the big Green Beret Cooke (Bill Duke; Predator, Action Jackson), the very mellow Diaz (Gary Carlos Cervantes; Scarface, Wild Wild West), and funny guy Sully (David Patrick Kelly; The Warriors, John Wick). These three men graciously took the time to reflect on their Commando experiences, including their (death) scenes, their memories of the departed Charles Meshack, who played fellow henchman Henriques, and what the film has come to mean to each of them.

So get ready, Commando fans: all hell is about to break loose.

Let’s party.

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Q: Let’s start at the beginning. How did you end up working on Commando?

BILL DUKE: I auditioned. Joel Silver saw my work. He knew me from my film Car Wash and he liked what I did, so they took it from there. And after that, we worked on Predator together. He liked what I’d done on Commando, so that’s how that got started.

DAVID PATRICK KELLY: The producers were my guys, Joel Silver and Lawrence Gordon, who had done The Warriors and 48 Hours with me. So Joel called me up and asked me to do it, and that’s the way it happened. It was a great deal of fun.

GARY CARLOS CERVANTES: It was a question of perseverance, and making the right connections and having the right friends. A friend of mine, Luis Contreras (Last Man Standing), is an actor. We did about ten things together. He’d been up for the part of Diaz and he called me up one night, drunk as a skunk, crying. “I think I blew it. The producer, Joel Silver, doesn’t like me. But you should go after the part.” So I sat there thinking about it, and I got a picture from my scene in Scarface – of me and the other guy in the Babylon Club and we’re shooting up the place. I sent it to [Jackie Birch] the casting director [for Commando] and I wrote, “Dear Jackie, You’re my favorite hit – Carlos.” The next day my agent called me and said, “They want to see you for Commando.”

I walk into the office and Jackie Birch says to me, “I got your picture, it’s clever. We’re still looking for Diaz.” So she read me for Diaz right then and there in the office, and then [after a couple hours] I met Mark Lester, the director and read for him. He said, “Thanks very much,” and I walked out. I didn’t hear anything for two weeks, and then my agent called me – something about them wanting to know if I can put some kind of toupee on or something to match the stunt guy. And I’m thinking, “What the hell is that? You don’t get an actor to match a stunt guy, you get a stunt guy to match an actor.” But my agent said they wanted to see me again, so I go in, and Jackie’s there, and she says, “Carlos, I want you to meet the stunt coordinator.” And he asks, “Have you shot machine guns and guns?” I go, “Yeah, I was in Scarface,” and this and that. And he nods to Jackie. And just then the director walks in and says, “Carlos, what are you doing here?” And I said, “Well, you guys called me and said you wanted to see me again.” And he said, “No, no. I saw fifty guys. When you walked in, you had the part. You got the job.”

So right then and there I had the job.

Q: What was it like working with Arnold?

DUKE: He’s a great dude, man. No ego. Totally professional. Prepared. Just committed. It was one of the best experiences I’ve had, on both Commando and Predator. He’s a good person.

KELLY: Arnold was really great. He was a wonderful guy who gave me a lot of advice about stuff. He was very humble about his acting. He would go to the dailies and then he’d talk about the different scenes [with me]. I remember he used to talk of meeting Maria Shriver, and he used to talk about his mother, who I met, actually. I met Arnold’s mother, and I also met his best friend from childhood, who was still around and part of his posse.

CERVANTES: I remember meeting Arnold up at the cabin. We filmed up at Mount Baldy in the mountains. I saw him standing across the way with his buddy, Sven[-Ole Thorsen], that big, giant stunt actor. Huge guy. Much bigger than Arnold. And I thought, “Arnold doesn’t look that big.” The assistant director wanted to introduce us, so we’re walking across the set, getting closer to Arnold, and yeah man, he is big. He’s huge! He’s standing next to Sven, who was like a foot taller, and maybe 270. So yeah, I got to meet Arnold and he was great. Making Commando was a real special time. And he took off, man. Who would’ve thought he would become such a huge star and accomplish everything that he did?

Q: How did it feel to die at his hands?

DUKE: The only reason he kicked my butt is because I got paid [laughs].

Q: [laughs] Good answer.

CERVANTES: Oh, it was great, man. I was so into that. I was so high just watching it. I remember when they printed it, the producer and director looked at Arnold, and he said, “Terrific!” You could tell that was it – that we’d nailed it.

When we shot it, they had me in the rocking chair and they hooked a wire to it, and the wall behind me wasn’t a real wall. We shot that part in a studio, so it was made of balsa wood, just in case I hit it. They shot a pellet at my head, and three or four grips just yanked that rocking chair I was in. They’d cut the back legs off. When they pulled me back, boom – I hit the wall. I got up and they started talking about another take, and I said, “Guys, you got one take. That was it [laughs].” 

I didn’t want to do stunts, man. I wanted to act. But we did it in one take, and it ended up in the trailer, so that was it. And it was just awesome, man.

Q: When you really think about it, the death of Diaz is actually one of the most important deaths in the film. Even though he doesn’t have a lot of screen time, his death signifies that John Matrix isn’t messing around. Diaz is so cocksure in front of Matrix and taunting him about his daughter; he feels safe from reprisal, only for him to get his head blown off. That really goes a long way in summing up Matrix’s motivation as a character. He’s not going to negotiate, and he’s not going to mellow out. Diaz basically tells him, “We don’t need guns” and Matrix replies, “Yeah, we do.”

CERVANTES: Yeah, it was great because it was so unexpected. It was a total change from the standard, like [instead of Matrix asking], “Okay, what do I have to do?”

You know, I was in the gym once doing bench presses, and a guy walks up to me and goes, “You died too early in Commando.” That was it. And he walked away.

Q: [laughs]

CERVANTES: I was like, “Wait, come back, man!” I couldn’t believe it. “Yeah! I did die too early!” Son of a gun…

KELLY: [Sully’s death] was a great scene, and it was well prepared. I was on a big cable. I had a harness that went up my leg. It took a long time. I give a lot of thanks to Bennie Dobbins, who was a great stunt man at the time – he passed away [in 1988] – but he harnessed me up there. It was just him, and another guy down below on the cliff who caught me after we did it two times. It took about six hours to film that whole thing.

Q: David, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but Sully has become such a popular character. At times he even surpasses John Matrix in popularity—

KELLY: [laughs]

Q: —and so the death of Sully is a highlight for all kinds of reasons. Were you aware that Sully had such a rabid cult following?

KELLY: No! I’m just kind of hearing about it now. I knew that people responded to the movie and remembered it. They say that line to me quite often – not as much as “Warriors, come out to play!” but they say, “I promised to kill you last.” I’ve never done autograph shows or those kinds of particular venues. I prefer venues like this to talk about these things, because I understand that people are interested in them on a deeper level. I respect those autograph shows and the fans that come, but it’s not my thing.

I based Sully on two former mercenary guys who were charged with protecting Robert Vesco, who died a few years ago in exile, in Cuba. He was a fundraiser for Nixon, but he had done these financial shenanigans. He made millions before Bernie Madeoff did. This guy was doing it way back in the ‘70s, and maybe earlier than that. He was doing these shell-game financial things and he ended up being pursued by the government, and he ended up in exile – first in Costa Rica, and then in Cuba – and he had this mercenary squad who protected him. I had seen an interview on 60 Minutes with these guys, and I thought that was a fascinating backstory for Sully – to be hired by the dictator guy. That’s where that came from; that’s who he’s based on. There’s an important book written by Christopher Dickey about Nicaragua and the contras [With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua], and the CIA’s work to fight against them. In the 1980s, there was the Freedom of Information Act, and so you got to see manuals that the CIA put out to help overthrow the rebels in South America. These were really interesting to read as background for possible scenarios in Commando. So, as cartoony as it was, it was based on real stuff that was going on in the Reagan America at the time.

Q: Within the context of the film, Sully’s background makes a lot of sense. When you look at the group of guys they got together to play the villains, most of them were pretty much the brawns, but Sully was the money guy. He didn’t need the brawns, because he was more of the intelligence gatherer.

KELLY: Yeah, and there’s the scene where he makes the deal for the illegal passports before the big chase scene with Arnold – before Sully meets his demise – so you’re right. Though you never find out what Sully was going to do with those passports, it was for some kind of terrorist something or other! [laughs]

Q: Do you all have a favorite line from the film, whether it was one of yours or that of someone else?

CERVANTES: [Impersonating Arnold] “Sully, remember when I promised to kill you last?” “That’s right, you did!” “I LIED.”

DUKE: “I eat green berets for breakfast!”

Q: I was hoping you’d pick that one.

KELLY: Steven E. de Souza and the director, Mark Lester, let me improvise a lot of my dialogue that Sully says, especially with Rae Dawn Chong, and at the deal-making session where Sully is buying the illegal IDs.

Q: David, I have to ask you: during that scene in the mall when you’re buying the illegal passports, you sort of offhandedly mention to the guy you’re meeting, “This used to be a great place for hunting slash.” Was that improvved?

KELLY: Yeah, that was me. I put that in. I always have music on in the background for my characters, and the song that was sort of everywhere at that time was Sade’s “Smooth Operator.” That’s who this guy thought he was. He just travels around, does his business, and gets what he can on every level. So that was his worldview, which is pretty demented and perverse.

Q: You can tell just by the way Sully saunters around on screen that he’s sexually aggressive, and he thinks very highly of himself.

KELLY: That’s right. So we put that one in, and then the dialogue with Arnold when Sully meets his demise at the hilltop. That was at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, which is famous because that’s where Rebel Without a Cause was filmed, with James Dean and Dennis Hopper. It was the same place where they had the big knife fight – where Arnold was holding me by the foot. That was near another cinematic shrine.

Q: Looking back on Commando, whether at the finished film or of your time on set, what do you first think of?

DUKE: That Commando was one of my first real bad guys. It was an opportunity to work with Joel Silver, who went on to do incredible things, and so did the director. Everyone went on to do great things, you know? It was an experience that I felt very fortunate to be a part of.

CERVANTES: Oh man, it’s Arnold. I remember I was smoking a cigar on the set – just a regular cigar. And he goes [imitating Arnold], “Oh, you smoke?” And he tells some guy on set to bring him a cigar, and he brings back this giant cigar. The thing looked like a stick of dynamite. And he had a cutter that looked like pliers. So that was cool, sitting with Arnold and having a cigar with him.

KELLY: I think of that Porsche – which wasn’t really a Porsche, since they had to wreck it. It was a Volkswagen, I believe, with the shell of a Porsche over top of it.

CERVANTES: I also remember I was supposed to do the Cadillac scene in the car dealer. That’s what I read for. And Joel Silver changed it on the day of the shoot, and I was like, “Aw man, what are you talking about? That was like…my scene.” And he goes, “Well, you know: a black guy…Cadillac.” Aw, jeeze.

Q: [laughs] Oh no. That’s so, so bad, but you almost have to laugh because that’s perfectly typical Hollywood rationale.

CERVANTES: Yeah, and he tells me this on-set! It was a six a.m. call at the Cadillac set to film it. So I had to sit there and watch them film the scene, because I was needed for something later that night – the trash truck stuff. And my stunt guy, who was going to be driving through the window, ended up doubling the guy who was on top of the car. Yeah, Joel… “What the? Are you kidding?” But I couldn’t rock the boat.

Q: From now on, every time I watch that scene, I’m going to picture Diaz sitting in that Cadillac instead.

CERVANTES: Yeah, Diaz, with that puffy jacket!

So that was a total bummer, because that was such a great scene. But I still got to do what I got to do. It turned out to be a great experience.

As it turned out, I got lucky, because Joel Silver put me in the trailer. “You’re gonna cooperate, right?” “Wrong.” Boom. And that little commercial got me so much work. Suddenly I was a hitman in so many movies, getting killed, killing people, getting beat up. It was fun! And I made good money.

Thirty years later, I’ve done a hundred movies, and it all goes back to Commando. I think, “Wow, if I hadn’t put that stamp on that envelope and mailed it…”

KELLY: Because you were talking about the fans and the people who appreciate it, I’m going to share something very personal now. For a period of time, from the time Commando first came out until about ten to fifteen years afterward, I had a little fan named Jamie, from Philadelphia, who had spina bifida, a very serious spinal nervous disorder – you’re always in and out of the hospital – and he was just an exceptional fan. And like you were saying, and I’m very humbly grateful to you for saying it, he saw me as the lead in the movie, and he talked about how Rae Dawn was Sully’s girlfriend. He was just a little boy. His father just cherished him – took him to things, and showed him Commando because Arnold was just an amazing heroic figure. But Jamie really became enchanted by Sully. I have to think there was something in Arnold holding me up in that way, which is so mythic, and so in his own disorder, his own disease, he identified with that somehow. So he came to visit me – his father brought him all the way to New York City – we had lunch at the Plaza Hotel. He wore a little suit, which looked like Sully’s suit, and his father bought him a toy yellow Porsche. To see that there is something in your work beyond the horrific characters that can touch someone – that means something to them, that there’s something they can take away from it – that’s what I think of when I think about Commando. I think about Jamie. Unfortunately, I think it was about ten years ago that he passed away. I went to his funeral and I sang an old Bob Dylan song, “He Was a Friend of Mine.” It was very moving.

Q: That’s amazing.

KELLY: People, over the years, have identified with that and recognized that, and saw beyond the horrific characters – and they are terrible, terrible characters – that we were trying to reflect something of the world that exists and tell the story of how someone can be heroic in the midst of that. If you can help do that, and if people identify with that, it really is just the whole reason for doing this.

Q: The shooting of the film made it look like everyone was having a great time. Everyone on screen had great chemistry.

DUKE: Commando was fun. It was – it was a good time. We had a good director and good people. It’s hard enough to do anyway, but it’s ten times harder when there’s drama. But there was no drama.

CERVANTES: Times like that, and even now when I’m on a big movie, it’s like going to Disney World. It’s so nice to be part of something that you know is going to last through the decades.

KELLY: I really enjoyed the crew: the late Bennie Dobbins, the great stunt man, who worked with me on 48 Hours; the great Matt Leonetti, who did the cinematography on 48 Hours; [composer] James Horner, who eventually won the Academy Award for Titanic – he did both 48 Hours and Commando; Mark Lester, who was very gracious.

I just think about those times, you know? Arnold was the id monster for the Reagan era. He was the dream of “We’re gonna solve the problems around the world, and if we have to do it ourselves, we’ll do it.”

Q: Charles Meshack, who played Henriques, died in 2006. What are your memories of him?

CERVANTES: I never met him on the set, but I did meet him later on at something. Maybe it was at the studio or at the screening, I don’t remember. But no, I never got the chance to work with him on set, unfortunately.

DUKE: Talented, funny, and committed. Very clear and committed to his craft. He’d joke around, but when the camera came on, he was a totally different person. We’re losing a lot of good folks, you know?

KELLY: He was a very quiet fellow. We were filming in 1985 at the LAX airport – that’s where we filmed our scene together – and it turned out that Charles Meshack was a decorated Vietnam War veteran. And it was in 1985 when they finally had a parade in lower Manhattan to welcome home, all these years later, all the Vietnam veterans. And he was very moved by that, so he started talking to me about it. We were filming the scene where Arnold gets on the plane when we saw on the TV that this parade was going on, and he said, “I was there, and there were some really terrible, terrible things that went on.” And he told me about some of those things. It was really a watershed for those veterans. I always felt really amazed by him – how he’d survived and gone into acting, so…it’s all props to Charles Meshack.

Q: I was reading up on Charles beforehand and there is very little information out there about him, so I wonder how many people knew about his history beyond those who were close acquaintances of his.

KELLY: I wanted to personalize our relationship in the dialogue [we shared]. I give it to Steven de Souza – he gives you the opportunity by writing this script and putting all these situations together so you can improvise a little bit within them. Shakespeare has these little subplots that sort of echo the main plot, so I improvised a little bit about my “old war buddy, Henriques.” I don’t quite remember the exact line, but it was something like, “there’s nothing like old war buddies,” about the two of us when we’re walking into the airport. I wanted to build up our relationship a bit and I remember Charles being really happy about that – about the fact that we weren’t just bodies walking through there. So we talk about “old war buddies,” but then you see that [kind of relationship] blown up to when it becomes Bennett and Matrix. But Sully and Henriques were at least on the same side.

Q: What was your impression of the film while you were working on it? Did you think it would be just another action film, or did you have a suspicion that it would go on to amass such a huge appreciation and still have people talking about it thirty years later?

DUKE: I guess the business people knew, but I don’t think any of us knew it would go on to become what it became. As actors, we’re there to do a job, but we’re not the editor or the director or the producer. We’re just there doing our job – it’s another gig. But the studio did a good job of marketing it. They did a good job with the music. All aspects of it, really. The feedback we got was incredible – from friends and everyone else. It was one of those experiences that an actor lives for, because, not only for that film, but it helps you get work in other things.

But nobody really knew. Everybody hoped, but nobody really knew.

Q: I think when you’re working on a film, you can tell that it’s special, but no one can ever really know if something is going to capture the kind of lightning in a bottle that most artists hope for.

DUKE: That’s right. That’s the truth. You can speculate, right? You can do your best, but… If it hits at the right time with the right audience, that’s a whole other situation.

CERVANTES: Well, Arnold had just taken off. The Terminator, I believe, had just come out and was going through the roof. I’d seen Arnold’s other films – the Conans and all that. I hadn’t seen The Terminator yet, but I’d heard the buzz. The buzz was huge. I remember Joel Silver running to the set with a Variety and saying, “Look at these numbers! Arnold’s going to be a huge star! We gotta finish this movie!” And I remember them at night doing dailies – I could hear it through the wall, it was on the other side of my dressing room. And I could hear Joel Silver talking about it. “We gotta wrap this up. Cut this scene and cut that scene.”

So I thought, “I think I’m on to something here.” Just from the way everyone treated me, and the atmosphere on the set, I thought, “This is going to be big, man.”

We finished shooting in June of ’85 and it was theatrically released in October of the same year – and they never do that. They were just pumping it out to jump on Arnold’s notoriety. And Commando only made $35 million in the United States, but it made $70 million overseas [$151 million adjusted for inflation]. It established Schwarzenegger as a major international star.

They had the screening at Fox Studios. It was funny, my brother-in-law, wife, and sister-in-law were there. Afterwards, [my brother-in-law and I] go into the bathroom and we’re at the urinals. There’s maybe ten of them in there. Some guy steps up in between us…and it’s Clint Eastwood [laughs]. Clint Eastwood, man! He must’ve been [at the screening] checking out the competition.

Q: Oh, wow.

CERVANTES: Yeah! But I didn’t ask to shake his hand. [laughs]

Man, I remember when the DVD first came out – just the DVD. I was at Walmart and they had this big cardboard cutout of Arnold from Commando, with all his movies on DVD. I was standing there looking at it and this little kid walks in with his mom and says, “Oh man, Commando! I want it!” So his mother gets it and puts it in her cart. And someone else comes over. “Oh, Commando! I gotta have that!” I thought, “Wow!” Two people bought it during those two minutes I was standing there. It was amazing.

That movie, thirty years later, people still play it over and over again.

KELLY: I think there are a lot of reasons why people relate to it still. There are some really great performances. Rae Dawn Chong was such a charming leading lady. It was the first movie that, I believe, tried to humanize Arnold, like in John Wick, that offered just a basic story that everyone could relate to. And who can’t relate to someone wanting to rescue their child? So it’s this really elemental thing that continues to make people watch it and be interested in it. I know the style was cartoony – well, Arnold is kind of cartoony anyway, just because of what he’s achieved – but there are other reasons, too. [Writer] Steven E. de Souza was very much into political conscience and scenarios of things that could possibly happen, you know, so it pre-stages a lot of stuff that’s still important to the world, whether it’s about mercenaries – and mercenaries are just everywhere these days. And Sully and his gang are these ex-guys and Matrix was a former Special Forces guy. And all these independent armies are doing things for these mercenary reasons around the world now. So I think that’s one of the reasons people still think about it.

Q: Rumors have persisted for a while that 20th Century Fox has been pursuing a remake of Commando [which most recently had Sabotage director David Ayer attached]. How do you react to that?

DUKE: Well, I’m old school and old fashioned, and to me, there are certain things…

I understand the business component of it. There are all kinds of things being remade now, you know? But like I said, I’m old school and old fashioned, and why remake it? You know, why remake It’s a Wonderful Life? Why remake The Godfather? I guess that’s just old-fashioned stuff, but I believe in classics.

Q: It’s easy to remake a film, but you can seldom recapture the kind of magic that makes that film special.

DUKE: Yeah! I feel that. I think there’s something that happens at a point – the right combination of people, the right actors and producers and the director – you shouldn’t touch it.

My daughter, and her generation, thinks I’m crazy. [laughs]

They think, “Why not? Why not redo it?”

CERVANTES: [A remake would be] kind of weird, because Arnold was so much a part of that movie. If you remake it, it’s not Commando. Walter Hill, the director, told me once that he was going to remake The Magnificent Seven, and I was going to have a nice part in it. But later on he said, “I’m not doing it. I can’t do a better job [than the original], so I’m letting it go.”

I mean, who would you get [for Commando]? A karate guy? The Rock? It would be more of the same.

DUKE: It’s almost like [the belief is] anything can be replicated and that’s not my particular belief. There are certain things… Take Miles Davis, or take Tony Bennett, who is one of my favorite singers of all time. He’s in his ‘80s or something and he’s still got chops. When Tony Bennett goes, there’s not going to be another. There’ll be other singers, but how do you replicate Tony Bennett or Whitney Huston or Frank Sinatra or Pavarotti? They have a certain magic, and how do you explain that magic? How do you replicate it?

There are certain things…leave ‘em alone.

KELLY: I think it has been remade, in many, many forms, for thirty years. I think the Bourne movies and the Transporter movies owe a bit to it. Some of Tarantino’s. I think a prequel would be interesting. Where did all those guys come from before the story of Commando?

CERVANTES: There had been rumors, a long time ago, there was going to be a sequel, but it never happened. I don’t know why, because Commando made money.

Q: What do you all have coming up next?

DUKE: I’m directing a number of things now. We just finished a TV pilot called Blexicans, which you guys will hopefully see on TV in the next year or so. I was in Chicago for a while working on that. I’m working on developing my own content and those kinds of things.

CERVANTES: Well, I did [season two, episode two, of] True Detective, where I get my ass kicked, and I just did an episode of Murder in the First. It’s the last episode of season two. It should air either late August or early September. It’s on TNT; I think they did twelve of them. There’s a chance I could come back. I play a fat cat political guy in a suit. I’m doing a lot of suit guys now. I wore a suit in True Detective, even though I was getting my ass kicked.

Q: David, Lionsgate is going ahead with John Wick 2. Will we see the return of Charlie the clean-up man?

KELLY: I hope so! There’s a lot of work to do for John Wick. He takes care of business, and he’s got to have his reliable team there. It was a great deal of fun with those guys. No one has called me yet, but Charlie survived, and I still have the gold coins in the other room, so I hope so.

Q: Last question: If I were to tell you that I’ve watched Commando more than a hundred times, what would you say to me?

CERVANTES: [laughs] Well, I would say that I understand how you can, because I have movies that are personal favorites and I could watch them a hundred times. And I probably have. Like Scarface. Christmas Vacation. I’ve seen Commando at least a hundred times – maybe not in its entirety, but my kids, they loved it, because when I did it, they were young. And they watched it, and got older and watched it again. It’s always on TV, man, and I’ll stop and watch some of it. So I understand.

KELLY: Watching it a hundred times is amazing. It makes me happy that people can find interesting details and appreciate the work that goes into movies. All of those involved go their separate ways developing their skills and when it all comes together to make something people want to see again and again, well, that’s wonderful. It’s like a painter whose work can be appreciated and grow in value as time goes on.

DUKE: [laughs] I think you have good taste! And thank you. Thank you.

FOUR FROM HITCHCOCK

Throughout his career, Alfred Hitchcock directed 55 feature films, along with numerous shorts and documentaries. That’s not a bad haul, nor a bad legacy to leave behind to the world. Having said that, even the most ardent film fan couldn’t possibly name you half of his films in total. In fact, if you look at his filmography starting from the beginning, it would take you seventeen films before arriving at 1935’s The 39 Steps, really the first film, chronologically, that still enjoys discussion to this day. I’m not picking on Hitchcock, though – this is more just a reminder of the reality. Not a single director has a flawless track record when it comes to output (and if the names Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino just flashed in your mind as a challenge to that, I’m laughing at you). But by now, Hitchcock has reached legendary status, and not just from the strong crop of films he left behind: there’s his larger than life persona as a morbid spokesman for his work; there’s his reputation for being a hard-nosed director unwilling to compromise his vision; and there’s also his penchant for victimizing his cast for reasons both professional and personal. 

Because of his infamy, he’s achieved mythic status, and as such, we assume everything he touched shocked audiences, changed cinema, and left an indelible mark. Not quite. If you asked that same film fan from before to name ten Hitchcock films, undoubtedly these four titles would be among them: Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds. They are sacrosanct, legendary, backbones of their respective genres, and sterling examples of a director fully in control of his talents and resources. 

Photographer L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies (James Stewart) is in the midst of recuperating from a broken ankle and is confined to a wheelchair in his apartment. Sheer boredom leads him to watching his neighbors across his apartment complex’s shared courtyard, keeping up to date on the various comings, goings, and personal dramas unfolding in everyone’s tiny homes. It’s through this passive observing that L.B. begins to suspect that one particular neighbor across the way may have murdered his wife. With the assistance of his “girlfriend” Lisa (Grace Kelly), who L.B. uses as a mobile quasi-avatar, they investigate to see if L.B. really does live across the courtyard from a murderer.

Like the other films in this set, Rear Window would inadvertently create an oft visited trope in genre cinema going forward, either through presentation or in conception – in this case, the idea of the voyeur, and of large open windows serving as movie screens that depict the actions of those inside their own bubble, generally unaware of their being watched…or sometimes being complicit in their “performances.” John Carpenter would riff on this concept with a clever reversal in his 1980 television movie Someone’sWatching Me! with Lauren Hutton and soon to be wife/ex-wife Adrienne Barbeau. Australian filmmaker Richard Franklin, who would eventually helm the extremely undervalued Psycho II, would make a road-set homage with Road Games with Stacy Keach alongside a post-Halloween Jamie Lee Curtis (daughter of Psycho’s Janet Leigh). Finally, following his accident that left him paralyzed and wheelchair-bound, Christopher Reeve would produce and star in a Rear Window remake in the late ‘90s for ABC, with Daryl Hannah taking on the Grace Kelly role of the adventurous troublemaker. It was…fine. Also like the other films in this set, Rear Window is one of many Hitchcock films that sees a pretty blonde girl (Hitch’s fave) really going above and beyond to make an impotent or uninterested man commit to her beyond mere petty flirtations and casual trysts. With L.B. prone and imprisoned in his wheelchair, he’s powerless to stop Lisa as she decides to take full control of the situation and break into the suspected murderer’s apartment in order to validate L.B.’s beliefs – and this after the film opens with Lisa basically nagging L.B. to marry her, which he declines with reasoning that makes the very concept sound entirely objectionable despite the fact that he’s twenty years older, has the physique of a snapped rubber band, and he’d be incredibly lucky to have her.

A near-death experience leaves former police detective John Ferguson (a returning Stewart) with acrophobia, a debilitating fear of heights, and very retired. An old acquittance, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), hires him out of the blue to follow his wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), who believes that she’s the reincarnation of another deceased woman named Carlotta. Being we’re in Hitchcock territory, after Ferguson begins his reconnaissance, it doesn’t take long for him to discover, whether or not Elster’s beliefs have any merit, that he’s definitely not on a routine job. And he couldn’t possibly have anticipated how obsessed with Madeleine he would become.

At 130 minutes, Vertigo is one of Hitchcock’s longer features, and most of that running time is filled with heavy exposition and twisting/turning developments that, at times, feel almost more appropriate for a James Bond caper mixed with brooding noir. Hitchcock once again reigns over his use of cinematography to deeply unsettle his audience, using camera tricks and extreme points of view to take away our balance and feeling of stability. The opening scene has Stewart’s Ferguson hanging for dear life from the top of a very tall building as the gutter he’s grasping slowly tears off the wall, and as a nearby officer reaches down to help him, the poor schlub slips and plummets to his death – in just one sequence, both Ferguson and the audience confront the ultimate fear: not just impending death, but our front-row view of our only salvation being whisked away.

Poor Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) steals a bunch of cash in hopes of buying the domestic freedom of her secret beau, Sam (John Gavin), and blows town. After stopping at a desolate roadside motel, she leaves the worst Yelp review in Bates Motel history, causing perfectionist Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) to respond in…let’s call it an exaggerated manner.

Look, no one needs the plot breakdown of Psycho; considering it’s widely considered Hitchcock’s crowning achievement as a director (these things are subject to opinion, of course, but…it is), Psycho is a masterclass in filmmaking in just about every way – from expert casting (Martin Balsam!) to maximizing low budget filmmaking (the crew was almost entirely comprised of Alfred Hitchcock Presents personnel) to wrenching tension out of every scene through the use of slow-moving cinematography and off-putting angles. Psycho should be taught in film classes exclusively for its use of the camera. There’s the slow opening push into Marion and Sam’s hotel room window (which, while possibly borrowed from 1955’s Dementia aka Daughter of Horror, is still expertly crafted), and obviously there’s also that whole shower-scene thing, but my favorite shot comes as the camera slowly pushes in on Norman standing by the side of the swamp and listening in the dark as Sam calls out for him back at the motel. It’s chilling and perfectly engineered. Honestly, I could go on and on about the 1960 classic that inspired four sequels, a (failed) television show, a remake, another successful television show, the next generation of filmmakers (Brian De Palma, John Carpenter, Richard Franklin, Brad Anderson), and a perpetual mark on the genre, not to mention the permanent ruination of the sense of security one feels while taking a shower in a motel room…but we all know this already. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Robert Bloch, Hitchcock and screenwriter Joseph Stefano improve the well written source material in every way. Stefano’s screenplay changes Norman Bates from a monstrous killer to a sympathetic figure, and Hitchcock had the forward-thinking idea of casting someone with charming, boy-next-door features instead of someone who more closely matched the unsightly, stocky, balding, and frustrated virgin present in the novel. Even the shower scene is a complete rebuilding, in which Marion Crane’s demise is limited to a few sentences: “Mary started to scream, and then the curtains parted further and a hand appeared, holding a butcher's knife. It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. And her head.”

Loosely based on the 1952 short story by Daphne Du Maurier, Hitchcock’s adaption depicts a world being overtaken by angry hordes of birds, atypically flocking together in every species to wage an unexplained revenge against mankind – presumably for being the earth-raping assholes we always are. One of many folks caught in the swarm are Melanie (Tippi Hedren), who’s attempting to charm her way into the life of Mitch (Rod Taylor), who lives in an isolated coastal home. The attacks from the bloodthirsty birds increasingly mount until they find themselves trapped in Rod’s house and fending off the birds that manage to find their way in. Who will survive, and what will be pecked from them?

Truth be told, and in spite of its (deserved) reputation, The Birds is a mixed bag. As a youngin’ obsessed with JAWS and all the animals-run-amok films that it introduced me to, I used to consider The Birds my favorite Hitchcock film, but later viewings re-introduced me to a kind of silly film that’s actually at its best when the birds aren’t on screen (school playground scene notwithstanding, because that’s the kind of thing Hitchcock did so well). However, once the opticals of marauding flocks are overlain into the sky and birds both real and dummy are being thrown into Tippi Hedren’s face, it all seems pretty nonsensical. It’s also hard to mentally dismiss how much Hitchcock mistreated Hedren on set, which was the stuff of Hollywood legend for years before HBO’s The Girl made it mainstream knowledge in the earliest beginnings of the #MeToo movement.

Alfred Hitchcock is part of cinema history, taught in universities and film schools, still the subject of modern documentaries like the Psycho-deconstructing 78/52, and conjured in the modern descriptor “Hitchcockian.” The four films above are the top reasons why. Even if Hitchcock had directed four or four hundred films throughout his life, the merits alone of Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds would’ve been more than enough to secure his legacy. 

DEAD DICKS (2019)

If David Cronenberg had a sense of humor, he would’ve made something like Dead Dicks. Pushing aside, of course, the obvious connection that Dead Dicks is a Canadian genre production, I’m actually focusing more on the large, otherworldly, interdimensional vagina that’s growing out of the apartment wall modeled after the opening that protrudes from James Woods in Cronenberg’s Videodrome, but which acts like Phantasm’s space gate. In the same way that the Tall Man sees his comeuppance throughout the Phantasm series and a fresh copy of the Tall Man re-enters the world through said space gate, removes his corpse, and takes over for him from there, Richard (Heston Horwin) is caught in a never-ending cycle where he’s desperate to end his own life inside his cramped apartment, but each time he does, a fresh copy of him is borne from this giant vaginal opening in his bedroom.

Written and directed by first-time feature directors Chris Bavota and Lee Paula Springer, Dead Dicks is a wild way to break onto the scene, and that it’s being distributed by Philadelphia label Artsploitation Films is both a minor victory for the filmmakers and a way of labeling Dead Dicks as certainly outside the norm. In case you’re unfamiliar with the label (and you should really dive deep into their catalog if you are), Artsploitation Films releases uncompromising international titles that defy genre conventions and will never be caught dead screening at your local multiplex. While some of their titles veer way outside normality at the expense of the story being told, their most successful titles are those that play with strange and wild ideas while infusing their stories with real, relatable, emotional backbones that make such wild ideas wholly approachable. Germany’s Der Samurai, a previous acquisition from the label, is a perfect example of this balance (and, honestly, is a favorite of my own), and Dead Dicks eagerly follows in its footsteps. A little bit horror, science fiction, comedy, and drama, Dead Dicks is obviously hard to categorize. What it very much is, however, is about something – in this case, mental illness, depression, suicide, and how those things can affect a family that’s not prepared to deal with it. Bearing the brunt of Richie’s burden is his sister, Becca (Jillian Harris), who has spent her adult life trying to offer support to her sullen brother but feels her patience running out and wanting nothing more than to, for the first time, focus on her own life. The giant vagina and an apartment filled with copies of Richie’s dead body certainly puts the kibosh on that.

Based on the collection of genres that it bandies about, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Dead Dicks’ tone gets a little schizophrenic at times, exacerbated by inconsistencies with how “serious” the characters are taking the very surreal events of the story during certain times. Through a weakness in the writing or a strange choice to convey Becca’s initial ambivalence over Richie’s shocking reveal, it’s hard to tell, and harder still, whether or not to determine if this was intentional to maintain the film’s point about a family’s failure to notice the warning signs about suicidal behavior, but once we move beyond this initial point, the amount of seriousness over the siblings’ surreal new reality begin to take centerstage, which allows for moments of perfect humor to balance out the story’s darker themes. Indeed, unlike most genre films, Dead Dicks’ second act is the most effective in the film, allowing the audience to settle into the film’s surreal concept and also allowing them to find humor in the situation. (There’s a pretty great moment when Richie looks down at one of his own dead bodies and laughs immaturely at how it looks – you’ll have to see the film to understand why.)

Horwin and Harris are capable leads, with Horwin having to do much of the emotional work. He proves himself highly capable of carrying such heaviness in his performance even in the midst of the R-rated cartoon his life has become, while Harris struggles at times to offer a consistent performance. I wouldn’t ever describe her role as being poorly presented, but she seems more comfortable with the smaller moments than the ones dependent on dramatic bravado. (Her comedic timing, however, is perfect.) Still, being that we’re dealing with low budget filmmaking, the ensemble is up to the task in ways you might not expect from reading the plot synopsis, and that goes for every performer. In keeping with the wackiness, the last few moments of Dead Dicks are, to be honest, befuddling, and I’m not sure how the ending will land with most viewers (I’m still working it around in my head), but one thing is for sure: if the out-there breakdown of Dead Dicks’ plot appeals to the part of you that’s become bored with mainstream genre filmmaking, then you’re already the intended audience and likely more willing to put the extra work into determining what it all means. If you can and do, be sure to drop me a line and tell me because I’m still in the dark.

Dead Dicks is now on Blu-ray and DVD from Artsploitation Films.

HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981)

Second only to Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci is likely Italy’s most infamous and highly regarded director of horror, murder, and the macabre. Though Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling is considered to be the director’s masterpiece, it never achieved the same amount of adoration as Argento’s own masterpiece, Suspiria. Having said that, the bulk of each director’s filmography has very different goals. While Argento was more interested in sexualized murder-mysteries, Fulci, though his earlier work explored similar material, eventually became indebted to the “monster” sub-genre. Perhaps best known as having directed the famous unofficial Dawn of the Dead sequel Zombie, he also helmed what’s known as the unofficial “Gates of Hell” trilogy. Not quite zombie movies, City of the Living Dead aka The Gates of Hell (1980), The Beyond (1981), and House by the Cemetery (1981) tread familiar ground about a remote or infamous location concealing a literal doorway to hell that becomes inadvertently open, unleashing sentries of the dead to kill in extremely gruesome ways. This theme and the presence of lead Catriona MacColl in all three entries are the sole ties that bind them together, along with Fulci’s unrelenting dedication to executing the goriest and most surreal deaths you’re likely to see in Italian horror.

As usual with “trilogies,” every fan has his or her own favorite (I’ve always been partial to City of the Living Dead, even with its hilariously nonsensical and unfinished ending), so I honestly don’t know where House by the Cemetery lands with fans. I do know that it’s among the director’s most unintentionally amusing, mostly thanks to the character of Bob (Giovanni Frezza), an unnaturally cherubic looking young child dubbed in post-production by what sounds suspiciously like a grown woman putting on a “kid’s” voice. A line of dialogue as simple as “My name is Bob” shouldn’t be as funny as it is, but it’s part and parcel with how charmingly clumsy all of House by the Cemetery is. Each film in the trilogy isn’t known for its concrete and fluid storytelling (The Beyond is downright befuddling), and House by the Cemetery continues the trend by presenting a story that somehow feels both incomplete and overstuffed, seemingly propelled by the movie operating by its own rules. Zombies, ghosts, potential and otherworldly co-conspirators – Fulci is ready and willing to throw them all against the wall to see what sticks – if it does: great, and if it doesn’t: whatever. This is and always has been the Italian way: directors feeling more indebted to atmosphere and style than presenting an air-tight story with every t crossed and i dotted; so long as there is forward momentum that eventually leads the audience to the conclusion, even if they stumble through the dark for most of their journey, then that’s good enough.

As far as generating genuine terror, there are moments that work as intended, and sometimes, it would seem, in spite of the flick’s clumsiness. None of it ever makes much sense, like young Mae (Silvia Collatina) hallucinating walking nightmares of headless, bloody mannequins or the extended bat attack that goes on forever. When Bob has his final-act encounter with the walking terror that haunts his new country house, the sequence goes on for so long that the action turns from suspense to tedium before turning back to suspense again, and it’s because Fulci reinvents the sequence with added horrific imagery during a chase scene that is already horrific enough. (I’m just speculating, but this sequence seems to have informed how James Wan directed one of the creepier scenes in The Conjuring, featuring Vera Farmiga’s Lorraine Warren cowering from a hanging specter in a farmhouse cellar.) Also helping the scary agenda: Italian horror has never shied away from not just gore, but from committing on-screen taboos. Children aren’t safe from their film’s respective boogeyman threats, and neither are the lead characters whom we are brainwashed to believe that just because their names are first in the opening credits that they’ll walk away terrified but relatively unscathed. Anyone can bite it at any time, and when it comes to Fulci, everyone normally does.

Italian films, especially horror films, have their own look, feel, and complete disregard for a cogent story. Because of this, the style is upped significantly to at-times overbearing degrees. Characters rattle off more extraneous dialogue than is necessary; the camerawork, though fluid and beautiful even when capturing moments of the grotesque, can sometimes come off as excessive. Take that, add in all the aforementioned gore, and there you go: Italian horror. There’s nothing like it, and that’s both good and bad. House by the Cemetery, for better or worse, is the prime example of that.

House by the Cemetery is now available in beautiful 4K UHD and 3-Disc Blu-ray editions.

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

Z (2019)

[Contains minor spoilers.]

When I was a kid, I had an imaginary friend named Mr. Suit. I called him that because of the old looking clothes that hung from his tall and lanky body, completed by a matching bowler hat and a beard so thick that Grizzly Adams would’ve felt genetically deficient. I never told my parents about Mr. Suit, and I made sure never to “play” with or talk to him when they were around, because, by that time, I was already feeling a little ostracized by the other kids at school and I didn’t want to engage in any further behavior that might seem weird. You see, I somehow knew Mr. Suit was imaginary, and no one else could see or hear him, so why complicate my life even more? Still, he was my only friend, so I almost always did the things he’d tell me to – most of which were pranks, and fairly harmless. He used to make me pinch clothespins around the tail of a neighborhood cat that often wandered my small town’s backyards looking for food, or he told me to dig up large shrubs from the neighbor’s garden and plop them down in the middle of the busy road so cars would come along and plow into them in the dark. One night, very late, Mr. Suit told me to go stand next to my mother and stare at her as she slept; eventually, he said, I’d know what to do, because he would guide me. I did what he said, but after a while, no epiphany came, so I merely stood at her bedside and stared at her in the dark until she’d woken up on her own and, upon seeing me, let out a half scream of surprise. This was the most dramatic show of influence Mr. Suit ever perpetrated over me, and as time went by, he visited less and less until he never came again; I assumed he’d dismissed me as a disappointing protégé and moved onto a more promising kid. For a long time after, I questioned what Mr. Suit wanted from me until the day came when I finally understood that I was Mr. Suit, and I was the one telling myself to do these things. I wrote it off as childhood nonsense and eventually forgot about the whole thing. A few years ago, I was reading online about area serial killers and that was when I first learned about H.H. Holmes, known, infamously, as the first serial killer discovered in the United States and subject of the non-fiction book The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (the adaption of which is allegedly coming from Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company and possibly director Martin Scorsese). Upon seeing the last photograph taken of this murderer of 27 people before he was hung in 1896 in Philadelphia, roughly fifteen minutes away from my childhood home, I would’ve told you, without a moment’s hesitation, that this H.H. Holmes had been my childhood friend, only his name back then was Mr. Suit, and he’d slept standing up behind the curtains in my room at night while softly laughing at the funny dreams I assumed he was having, or maybe at all the weird, dangerous things he was conjuring in his imagination for me to do.

I’m obviously kidding. My point is: imaginary friends are creepy, aren’t they? And in horror, they are typically one of two things: the devilish, dangerous side of a child’s personality, or a walking entity masquerading as childhood fancy. The imaginary friend is an under-explored concept in horror, generally utilized in haunted house movies (The Conjuring, The Grudge) where it ceases being referred to as such after the first act, because by then it’s revealed that said imaginary friend is actually a trapped spirit or something much worse. Rarely does the imaginary friend concept stick around for the duration; the closest exception I can drop is, hilariously, Drop Dead Fred.

And that’s what makes co-writer/director Brandon Christensen’s Z so refreshing. Elizabeth (Keegan Connor Tracy) is one of many parents in the world who accepts the fact that her son, Josh (Jett Klyne), has an imaginary friend, this one named “Z.” Over time, however, Elizabeth begins to realize that “Z” has an unhealthy hold over her son, and may be persuading him into doing increasingly dangerous things. “Z,” also, becomes much more than imaginary, in that she begins to see him in the flesh, and with everyone else in her life, including Josh’s father, Kevin (Sean Rogerson), not experiencing the same things she is, her battle against “Z” soon becomes one she has to fight on her own.

Z seems to have picked the bones of the last ten years of supernatural fright flicks, including Lights Out, Sinister, and especially Insidious, but that’s not necessarily a complaint. The horror genre has always been cannibalistic, perpetuating itself by living off previously explored ideas. Ironically, even Insidious is a perfect example, in that it’s story of ghostly events leading a scared family to obtain the services of mystics and paranormal investigators has been lovingly borrowed from Poltergeist. On the surface level, Z is familiar territory – the peculiarly acting child and his creepy drawings, the lone parent who begins to question her sanity – but as Z plays on, it begins to forge its own identity. There’s a genuine attempt at establishing histories for our characters, which not only help us to sympathize with them, but which also provide just enough personal trauma to make us wonder if the creepy goings-on are actually the result of our lead character’s psychological break with reality instead of a surface-level supernatural infestation. 

The titular boogeyman is only spotted a handful of times, and only for a few frames. All told, “Z” appears on screen for less than three seconds across its entire running time, but what you see is genuinely unnerving. The golden rule in the haunted house sub-genre is the more you see the specter, the less effective it becomes. In that regard, Z presents its creepy figure in just the right way. (Resist all temptation to press pause on the figure, believe me.)

As a horror fan, I’m glad to see Keegan Connor Tracy enjoy a lead role, as she’s been a constant part of the genre since the 2000s, with turns in White Noise, the loony Final Destination 2, Bates Motel, and a handful of appearances on the CW’s never-ending Supernatural. (Amusingly, she was also in the direct-to-video sequel The Net 2.0, where she played a character named Z.Z.) As such, she’s well practiced as someone playing against a horrifying threat, which makes her turn as a beleaguered mother an easy and effective sell. Though she plays a familiar archetype, Z imbues Elizabeth with a history that moves the story into a more mythical and emotional direction, and thankfully, she doesn’t just play “the mother” or “the wife” – a bystander observing the action and offering a zero-hour nugget of advice that guides the hero to victory. She’s the hero, or at least she’s the only one who can vie for that role because she’s the only one who can, and when she descends into pure mania before film’s end, Tracy throws everything she has into the role with impressive dedication. That she spends the first act of the flick caring for a terminally ill mother alongside her sister, Jenna (Sara Canning), helps to both ground the movie’s wackier events and add an additional twist on the concept. In genre films, someone always dies, but in Z, someone is already in the process of dying, which helps it to feel different and poignant while basking in the cemetery of other films that came before it.

If you don’t expect a reinvention of the wheel, then give Z a fair chance. Though it makes a few of the same mistakes that its brethren often do, depending on visual effects it can’t quite afford, and with an ambiguous ending that borders on mean-spirited, Z still manages to offer a fair amount of creepy imagery, dense atmosphere, and a fresh twist on an old concept. 

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

CASTLE ROCK: SEASON TWO (2019)

[Contains spoilers for both seasons of Castle Rock.]

If anyone deserves the shared-universe approach to a large accumulated body of work, it’s Stephen King. The author of over ninety novels and who-knows-how-many short stories and novellas has spent the last forty years creating a rich and intricate history with his many characters doing ghastly things in the fictitious town of Castle Rock. His most well-known Castle Rock-set stories include the mammoth Needful Things, his early effort The Dead Zone, and his novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, which inspired you know what.

The first season of Hulu’s Castle Rock successfully fulfilled its mission statement as being a brand new story set in the world of Stephen King’s creations, borrowing characters (or relations of characters) and giving them new conflicts to contend with. Certainly not hurting is the casting of at least one prominent actor from a previously heralded King adaption, with Carrie’s Sissy Spacek fulfilling that role, and which resulted in one of the best episodes of any television show ever (that would be “The Queen”). Overall, the first season of Castle Rock was a well-made, unusual, ambiguous, and creepy new yarn that somehow managed to capture those Stephen King vibes without the author serving as an active part of the show, as it contained the usual Kingisms we’ve come to expect from our favorite master of the morbid: the strained father/son relationship, the conspiratorial town, the secret that soon becomes public and threatens to destroy everything in its path, and, of course, the horror. It was also filled with a bevy of easter eggs – not just as they pertained to the story it was telling, but as fun quick glimpses in the background, designed for the most ardent and eagle-eyed King fan. (If the shady man-and-boy duo of Odin (Charles Jones) and Willie (Rory Culkin) weren’t meant to channel Dick Halloran and Danny Torrance from The Shining, I’ll surrender my geek card right now.)

Whereas the first season of Castle Rock relied on the mystical and the mysterious, season two backs away from that approach, vying to tell a more easily digestible story, even if its elements border on the absurd and the silly. Season two embraces the more supernatural aspects of King’s work, setting the bulk of the action in Jerusalem’s Lot. Salem’s Lot, one of King's earliest works (and my personal favorite of the author), as you might well remember, was about a small New England town being slowly overtaken by a vampire disease, started by the arrival of the unseen Kurt Barlow and his human familiar, Richard Straker (played by James Mason in Tobe Hooper's 1979 miniseries adaptation).

Season two jettisons the novel's vampire threat, replacing it with a similar kind of monstrosity that acts in much the same way: an awakened evil takes refuge in the long-abandoned Marsten house and begins to “turn” members of the town one by one, an effort led by the recently possessed Ace Merrill (Paul Sparks, House of Cards), a character who previously appeared in the Castle Rock short story “The Body,” which was adapted into Stand By Me and featured Kiefer Sutherland as the switchblade-twirling character. Meanwhile, unknowingly driving head-on into the conflict is Annie Ingalls (Lizzy Caplan, Cloverfield), real name Annie Wilkes, a nurse on the run alongside her teen daughter, Joy (Elsie Fisher, The Addams Family). A freak accident strands them in the town of Jerusalem’s Lot, where they end up in the dangerous cross-hairs of Ace Merrill, nephew of “Pop” Merrill (Tim Robbins, returning to the land of King following The Shawshank Redemption), seemingly the town’s Irish godfather. A confrontation between Annie and Ace leaves the latter dead, and Annie, who is on the run and can’t simply call the police, instead dumps his body beneath a local construction site, unwittingly awakening a dangerous and dormant evil that begins to transform the town.

The second season of Castle Rock experiences moments of greatness, almost entirely relegated to Annie Wilkes’ subplot, especially when it goes back in time to her childhood to shine a light on her neuroses. Normally, we like our “horror” villains free of such backstories, as we prefer the mystery to speak for itself and our imaginations to fill in the gaps of what happened to make a person so monstrous. However, the writers have provided a very rich, poignant, and emotional trip into the past, dedicating more than an episode’s worth of running time to exploring Annie’s origins, presenting her as a troubled student with a learning disability, leaving her a pariah at school and forcing her to be home-schooled by her father. The dynamic between her parents, Carl (John Hoogenakker, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan) and Chrysida (Robin Weigert, Deadwood), begins with tension and soon gives way to an unhealthy power struggle, putting further strain on an already emotionally unwell Annie. All of these bits are where season two resonate the strongest and exercise the firmest grasp of the story, and it doesn’t hurt that every actress who brings Annie to life is exemplary (Ruby Cruz as the teenager; Madison Johnson as the grade-schooler), with the top honor going to Lizzy Caplan. Normally, unless we’re dealing with the portrayal of a real person, I’m not a fan of mimicry in performance, as it can be distracting and come dangerously close to spoof, but Caplan’s take not just on Annie Wilkes, but Annie Wilkes as previously and infamously played by Kathy Bates (which netted her an Academy Award), is eerily good. She's nailed the mannerisms, the aw-shucks voice and frumpy wardrobe, and most importantly, the ability to go completely blank behind her eyes during her most extreme moments, losing herself in pure unhinged mania.

What’s interesting about this iteration of Annie Wilkes is, unlike Misery, where she imprisons a crippled man and inflicts all kinds of tortures upon him, Castle Rock turns her into the hero – but one that lacks the straightforward, one-dimensional characterization where she’s always a good person who does the right thing. Annie, actually, seldom does the right thing, falling back on lying, fraud, theft, and even murder to keep from being found out, but everything she does is in servitude toward protecting her daughter from the dangerous person or people she’s convinced are in pursuit of them. (And seeing her wield a sledgehammer again, this time to kill a bad guy, overcomes how obvious an idea it is and still manages to be strangely satisfying.)

The problem with season two is that it’s overstuffed with too many subplots, and eventually, Annie and her daughter soon become bit players in the season’s main conflict – that of the supernatural threat invading the town. Also vying for space is “Pop” Merril’s own conflicts having to do with his two adopted Somalian children, now adults: Nadia (Yusra Warsama, The Last Days on Mars) and Abdi (Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips), a doctor and a construction developer, respectively. Normally, one can overcome a chaotic season with confident and complex writing, ensuring that all subplots eventually connect and never feel forced or extraneous, but season two isn’t up to the task. There are way too many instances of coincidence, convenient timing, extreme abuses of the expression “suspension of disbelief,” and just-go-with-it moments required to drive the story forward, and while a few of these could be forgivable, there are unfortunately many more than a few. To its credit, Castle Rock has a few surprises in store that ferment the conflict and provide additional pathos for some of its characters, one of which directly ties it back to season one (which remains a point of contention, as every season was supposed to be its own unique story); however, to its discredit, every major twist is easily predictable, and though, on the surface they help to enhance the story, it does leave the ultimate impression that season two has very few tricks up its sleeve.

Much like the novel Misery and its film adaption of the same name, season two could’ve easily presented a story that skirted supernatural elements while still being horrific – one fully focused on the story of Annie Wilkes, her daughter, their complicated past, and the possible future that lay ahead for them. To be fair, Castle Rock’s goal from the beginning was to take a “what if?” fan-fiction approach to Stephen King’s universe and put certain elements on a chess board to see how things could play out, and that’s where the series has been the most successful. It is odd, however, to see a character from one of King’s more grounded novels appearing in a new story that’s outright supernatural, as it somewhat cheapens the emotional and mental journey of the Annie character and serves as more of a distraction to the path she has to eventually take, which is the one that, in the end, feels more profound.

In spite of season two’s stumble, I am eager to see what the as-of-yet unannounced season three will bring to the table (and which prominent actor from a previous King adaptation will appear – fingers crossed for Kathy Bates or Christopher Walken). There are a wealth of characters and concepts in King’s body of work to borrow (and in spite of the series’ name, being that Misery took place in Colorado, everything he’s written is up for grabs), so in a way, as long as this series keeps getting the greenlight, Castle Rock has barely scratched the surface of the stories it can tell.