Borderline

Borderline

United States – 1980

Director – Jerrold Freedman

Avid Home Entertainment, 1995, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 44 minutes

In the early 1980’s a whole little cluster of border films came out within a few short years. It seemed that suddenly, illegal immigration was contentious again. In Border Cop (1980) Telly Savalas, and The Border (’82) Jack Nicholson each played a jaded Border Patrol agent who threw up his hands in cynical and frustrated sympathy. He may have felt deeply for the plight of the illegals, may have even been good friends with some of them (or even fallen in love), but he still had a job to do. Borderline, which came out just a few months after the Savalas picture was a gap in my Bronson collection that I had long needed to fill, but I was worried that it might be a difficult experience.

You see, I get totally confused when we white people make movies about non-white people. I start to feel like my emotions are being intentionally manipulated, especially when white actors play sympathetic non-white characters. Steven Segal, Burt Reynolds, Marlon Brando, Telly Savalas; the list goes on and on. Even my creasy Polish-American hero Charles Bronson played Mexicans and Native Americans on occasion. Bronson’s may have been the most believable brownface portrayal, but it still felt somehow disingenuous. These characters are repeatedly robbed, abused and even killed with much handwringing, but my feelings of empathy were all too often haunted by an inkling of insincerity which I couldn’t quite place. I don’t like having to think too deeply about what’s going on on-screen, it really ruins my suspension of disbelief.

It turns out I needn’t have been so concerned. Bronson, though he may have been typecast, or facecast as it were, always manages to deliver yet another compelling performance. In Borderline he plays Jeb, a Border Patrol agent much like his cinematic contemporaries; physically and emotionally overwhelmed with the contradictions of the very system which cuts his paychecks. It is such a difficult and thankless job being the responsible, caring zookeeper. But after watching as crowds of immigrants were herded about like frightened cattle in a prison yard for the first few minutes of Borderline, I was once again feeling the early stages of nagging guilt. But moments later, when Jeb’s best friend and fellow agent Scooter (Wilford Brimley) was brutally murdered, I suddenly had a revelation.

Scooter’s killer is Hotchkiss, “The Marine” (Ed Harris), a cold-blooded, uzi-weilding Nam Vet working for a local California businessman in a grand conspiracy to rake in the cash by drowning the U.S. labor market in a sea of malleable brown servants. Now even though the complications and tensions of illegal immigration policy are central to the rivalry between the Jeb and Hotchkiss, Borderline is not about illegal immigration at all. In fact it’s never even discussed. That’s because everything troublesome about immigration is embodied in one unscrupulous and evil individual, Hotchkiss whose elimination “solves” everything. Jeb’s clear-cut moral victory relieved me of any responsibility for the active contemplation of systemic social issues that often makes watching dramatic movies so unpleasant. Pitting these two men against each-other was brilliant. Not only do they play their roles with gusto, but it utterly mystifies one of the most contentious issues in modern U.S. politics. I must say though, if I have to cheer on the retrenchment of the status quo, Bronson’s the guy who’ll get me to do it every time. It’s so much easier when complex moral issues are boiled down into charismatic and easy to digest character tropes. If it had been anyone but him I would probably still be feeling guilty.

Wait, who's the headliner here, the Subject or the Objects?

French, Italian and United States' posters from Movie Poster Shop.
The French one is my absolute favorite, maybe one of the best posters of all time. It perfectly exemplifies the misguided self-deluding quality of white-people making movies about brown-people.

German poster-thing from Movie Poster Database
Why does (almost) every poster have a giant United States' flag on it?

Capricorn One

Capricorn One

United States - 1977

Director - Peter Hyams

Avid Home Entertainment, 1993, VHS

Run Time - 2 hours, 3 minutes
I'll admit that the idea of landing people on the Moon during the height of the Vietnam War is a bit of a paradox if you think about it. It's quite possible that that is one of the reasons conspiracy theorists came up with the whole faked Moon landing story. Here, in a roundabout way, an all star cast takes a whack at Moon landing conspiracies and general distrust of the government by faking a landing on Mars and taking on a federal coverup.

She's Back

She’s Back

United States – 1989

Director – Tim Kincaid

Avid Home Entertainment, 1992, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 29 minutes

Knowing little to nothing about the timeline of Carrie Fisher’s life outside of a basic film chronology makes it difficult to correlate separate events, and thus a bit harsh to make assumptions. However, I think it’s a safe bet that one of her well publicized periods of heavy drug use coincided with this film. The maniacal chatter constantly spouted by Beatrix (Fisher) in She’s Back is either symptomatic of cocaine use or shameless desperation. With all due respect to Mr. Kincaid, I can think of no other reason why a top rung actress with cult status would appear in such a low budget picture. What I’m getting around to is that while this film is largely unnoticed on Fisher’s dossier, for the converse reason it is like a sore-thumb on Kincaid’s. In either case her presence is both toxic and regenerative, it makes what could have been excruciatingly boring into something painfully entertaining.

With all of that firmly in mind you might anticipate some real shit-pitching monkeys-at-the-zoo type of shrieking insanity here, and it comes damn close. Indeed, the constant harping and nagging of a coke-addled hypochondriac housewife would, in normal circumstances drive any person to homicide, but in She’s Back, it fills the vacuum left by the other, less capable members of the cast. The story comes directly from the mind of Buddy Giovinazzo, a man familiar with wailing claustrophobia as writer and director of the heroin steeped, post-‘Nam sensory assault Combat Shock. In the static atmosphere of a Kinkaid film, Giovinazzo’s Jersey-cynicism and Fisher’s narco-chattering actually turn She’s Back into a skincrawling minimalist performance piece. All of this proved critical to my ability to continue watching the film.

In fact, Beatrix’s (Fisher) needling does drive someone to homicide, namely her spineless husband Tom (Robert Joy), with whom she shares a constant exchange of wheedling psychological abuse, and the thugs who invade her home and really do kill her. What there is of a script really resembles a free for all improvised to make use of Fisher’s condition. Actually, this is the perfect way to explicate Bea’s return from beyond the grave to henpeck Tom into revenging her against the thugs. Like a pair of cheap co-dependent pet birds Bea and Tom batter themselves silly against the walls of the films crippling budgetary cage, bickering and pecking each other into a neurotic mess.

With these two caught in a literal death-struggle of symbiotic nagging, there’s no room to develop any other characters, not that anyone was trying. I always got the impression that Kinkaid simply cast his films with the first people to call back about the advertisement. These folks are no exception and they’re just as stunned with the proceedings as I was. With the exception of Tom and Bea’s neighbor, a Korean War veteran who’s been through the shit and isn’t fazed by anything, (and is thoroughly sauced), everyone stands there with a mixture of amazement and discomfort that makes their stilted acting seem more like a healthy fear of the mentally unstable. Considering the similarity of my own reaction it’s hard to blame them. Once again a Tim Kincaid movie is actually made rational and even tenuously brilliant by the selfsame lack of acting and logic that would otherwise be its downfall.

Millenium

Millenium

United States - 1989

Director - Michael Anderson

Avid Home Entertainment, 1990, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 48 minutes

Gumby and the Wild West

Gumby and the Wild West

United States

Director - Art Clokey

Avid Home Entertainment, 1991, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour

This volume is a mixture of anything remotely referring to the mythical American west and a few that don't. A confusing mix of naive racism and naive empathy and Gumby's usual childlike association with fantastic nonsense. I cannot find exact dates for any of these episodes. Amazon has this tape listed as "volume 4", though I can find no such label on the cassette or box. As with Gumby Magic, I think it's just an arbitrary designation particularly because the tapes with actual volume numbers are released by F.H.E.

Episodes:

• The Kachinas

• The Glob*

• School For Squares

• Goo For Pokey

• The Golden Iguana

• A Groobee Fight

• Hidden Valley

• Tricky Ball

• Ricochet Pete

*features the same public domain music that is featured prominently in Night of the Living Dead.

Land of Doom

Land of Doom

United States - 1984

Director- Peter Maris

Avid Home Entertainment, 1992, VHS

Not very many movies have the guts to boldly declare on the back of the box, which movies they knocked off. Land of Doom is one such movie. its awesomely alluring painted cover by Renato Casaro which promises the beginning of a battle (involving a gauntlet-crossbow with five fingers and no thumb) and has at least one scene from the movies that inspired Land of Doom.

The battle begins with an extensive raid scene which goes on and on with numerous killings and rapes. Amidst all the screaming, in one fiery hut a blonde woman, Harmony, fights off a caveman with a meat cleaver and escapes to another nearby cave where she encounters a wounded foxy dude named Anderson. Bent on building a better wasteland, Anderson lays a heavy peace and love trip on Harmony, overcoming her outright hostility enough to convince her to travel as a team. They are shortly caught by a goofy/crazy bad guy who laughs and taunts them, but repeatedly emphasizes his goofy/craziness, and frosts that little cupcake of irritation with stupid. Saved by Harmony, Anderson works on his own bakers dozen of unrelenting irritating utopian babble-ass, and Harmony understandably tries to ditch him again.

They wind up at some rock houses carved out of cliffs and boulders, and there is a battle which they watch from afar and then steal a motorcycle with ridiculous “post-apocalyptic” scrap metal armor welded on, using it to run away. Moments later, the bike runs out of gas right near some other rock-houses. These ones inhabited by French post-apocalyptic hillbillies whom Harmony and Anderson ask for food.

Discovering that the French have served them human meat, H & A flee again and watch another battle from a hilltop.

Some movies are not very good but have a few exciting set pieces or scenes to wake you up and make the rest of the movie worth sitting through. Land of Doom has none of those. The interesting scenery and typical, if entertaining apocalypse gear is worth a laugh or two. But sadly, like Anderson's droning future-hippie psycho-babble, this uniquely terrible movie is little more than an exercise in monotony.

This poster from Wrong Side of The Art is way better, but it looks like Harmony is accidentally discharging her weapon.

The concept art for the sequel from the directors website Maris Entertainment.

Turkish Land of Doom box art from Post Apocalypse.

And some Australian box art from Rolfens DVD. I'm sure the Aussies loved the taint of this movie on their homegrownpost-apoc franchise.