Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Director: John Carpenter
Writers: Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein, adapted by W. D. Richter
Stars: Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun, James Hong and Victor Wong

Index: Make It a Double.

James Hong’s Double took me from a movie I’ve reviewed before to a movie I can’t believe I haven’t reviewed before. Nowadays, my go to films from John Carpenter have changed from Halloween and Escape from New York to They Live and Big Trouble in Little China, two movies that I enjoy more and more with every viewing.

This was Carpenter’s Hollywood flop, which cost $20m or so to produce but only took half that at the box office. There are probably a lot of reasons for that but one is that the audience really didn’t understand what it was in 1986.

What they probably expected was an action movie full of Chinese weirdness but without a real understanding of what Chinese weirdness actually looks like. It would happen in the U.S. and Kurt Russell would be the action hero who would take care of it all.

Blade Runner (1982)

Director: Ridley Scott
Writer: Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, Daryl Hannah, William Sanderson, Brion James, Joe Turkel and Joanna Cassidy

Index: Make It a Double.

I love it when people choose their Doubles, especially when they introduce me to new and joyous films I don’t know. James Hong had lots of opportunity to do that, as his four hundred and fifty credits go back to Dragonfly Squadron in 1953, and they’re wildly varied.

In 1974, for instance, he went from Dynamite Brothers, an Al Adamson feature, to Chinatown, then made a couple of TV movies, playing U.N. Secretary General U Thant first in The Missiles of October then a major role in Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders, a mystery set in China back in the 7th century, shot with an all Asian cast. And they’re just part of one year in a career that’s spanned seven decades and counting!

Instead, he chose the safest double thus far, picking a couple of very well known films that I’ve seen many times. I’ve even reviewed Blade Runner before, but I will happily dive in again. It’s no hardship to watch these two and I can focus more on Hong’s contributions.

The Assassin (1988)

Director: Jon Hess
Writers: Anthony Peckham and Stephen Katz, based on a story by Beth Glazer and Anthony Peckham
Stars: Steve Railsback, Nicholas Guest, Xander Berkeley, Sam Melville, Pamela Seamone, Jorge Luke, Jorge Reynoso and Elpidia Carrillo

Index: Make It a Double.

While The Stunt Man was always going to be Steve Railsback’s first choice for his Double, he had plenty of alternatives for a second, with a set of strong roles in titles like Lifeforce, Turkey Shoot and the TV mini series Helter Skelter, as a well received Charlie Manson, even something outrageous like Alligator II: The Mutation.

Instead, he went for this thriller, a movie so obscure that it isn’t even available on DVD—I had to watch a rip of a laserdisc copy—and the only critic’s review at IMDb is from my friend Jim McLennan at Film Blitz, who looked at it so long ago that we can’t trust its 2003 date.

Jim rated it a D, suggesting it’s “just another forgettable action flick” and, in most regards, he isn’t wrong, because the action isn’t strong, the characters are clichéd and the mystery is transparent—the bad guy isn’t just who we’re expecting it to be but also who we’re hoping it will be because we dislike him from the start. There’s a big explosion that’s wildly gratuitous and the music, which I really dug, makes it feel like a Beverly Hills Cop knockoff, which it isn’t.

The Stunt Man (1980)

Director: Richard Rush
Writer: Lawrence B. Marcus, adapted by Richard Rush from the novel by Paul Brodeur
Stars: Peter O’Toole, Steve Railsback and Barbara Hershey

Index: Make It a Double.

Now that I’ve seen The Stunt Man, it’s hard to imagine Steve Railsback could have any other picture in his career more appropriate as his first choice for this project. Cameron is a gift of a part for a young actor, the traditional lead character manipulated by the non-traditional lead character, both in this film, The Stunt Man, and in a film within the film, an unnamed war movie set during World War I.

Railsback also goes through what seems like every emotion known to an actor with maybe a few new ones for good measure, and in doing so, holds his own against Peter O’Toole in an iconic award-worthy performance—the latter was Oscar-nominated alongside John Hurt for The Elephant Man and Robert de Niro for Raging Bull. Talk about a tough year!

As we start, Cameron is nervous. There are too many cops in the café with him and, sure enough, one slaps his handcuffs on him, so he runs. He’s not the titular stunt man yet, but what he does would count as an impressive demo reel. On a bridge, he thumbs a ride in a vintage Duesenberg with an imperial German eagle on the side, only for the driver to kick him out of the car then try to run him down, ending in the river. That’s when he realises he has been filmed from a helicopter all along.

Compound Fracture (2014)

Director: Anthony J. Rickert-Epstein
Writers: Renae Geerlings and Tyler Mane
Stars: Tyler Mane, Muse Watson, Derek Mears, Leslie Easterbrook, Renae Geerlings, Daniel Roebuck, Todd Farmer, Jelly Howie, Susan Angelo and Alex Saxon

Index: Make It a Double.

This horror movie may open in slow motion and black and white but it quickly finds colour and regular speed and all artsy pretentions are ditched. It’s a confined movie, though, almost all of it unfolding within the compound that Gary Wolffsen calls home, so claustrophobia is a key focus, especially given so many cameras monitoring the place, inside and out.

It turns into a good opportunity for Derek Mears, who plays a particularly nasty monster of a villain, and Tyler Mane, another big scary dude, best known for playing Michael Myers in the Rob Zombie Halloween movies, as well as Sabretooth in X-Men. That’s surely one reason why both chose it for their Doubles—yes, I will be covering it again in Make It a Double Vol. 4—but it’s a Mane Entertainment film too, so it’s also Mane’s film as producer and co-writer; he wrote it with his wife, Renae Geerlings, who’s also his screen fiancée in the film.

The Aggression Scale (2012)

Director: Steven C. Miller
Writer: Ben Powell
Stars: Fabianne Therese, Ryan Hartwig, Dana Ashbrook, Derek Mears, Jacob Reynolds, Joseph McKelheer, Boyd Kestner, Lisa Rotondi and Ray Wise

Index: Make It a Double.

I met Derek Mears, like many of the people who kindly chose Doubles for me, at a horror convention and that’s where you might expect to find someone who’s 6’ 5” and missing all the hair on his body. Needless to say, he plays a lot of screen monsters, including Jason Voorhees in the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th.

However, Derek, like many of those people, didn’t choose two horror films for his double, as his first choice is an unusual action thriller.

It grabbed my attention quickly, lost it again and then, as I wondered if it was going to get it back, did so with style, turning this into a film I wasn’t expecting to see.

Fright Night Part 2 (1988)

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace
Writers: Tim Metcalfe, Miguel Tejada-Flores and Tommy Lee Wallace
Stars: Roddy McDowall, William Ragsdale, Traci Lin and Julie Carmen

Index: Make It a Double.

It’s easy to see why Stephen Geoffreys chose the first Fright Night over the second; he’s not in this one. He was asked back but he didn’t particularly like the script, so chose to do 976-EVIL instead.

It’s easy to see why William Ragsdale chose the second Fright Night over the first; he has a much better part, one that allows him to really get his teeth into the role, if you’ll pardon the unintended vampire pun.

He’s still Charley Brewster, of course, but he carries the film this time. He was the lead last time out, even though Chris Sarandon got top billing, but he was a pretty routine high school kid unworthy of much attention, if you ignore the whole vampire next door thing. Geoffreys and Roddy McDowall were both far more fun to watch. Here, McDowall has the top billing, and he’s as great as always, but I was primarily watching Ragsdale this time.

The Reaping (2007)

Director: Stephen Hopkins
Writer: Carey W. and Chad Hayes, based on a story by Brian Rousso
Stars: Hilary Swank, David Morrissey, Idris Elba, AnnaSophia Robb and Stephen Rea

Index: Make It a Double.

William Ragsdale was also in Fright Night—in fact he was its lead actor—and he did choose its sequel for his Double, but he chose this first and I wonder why.

For a start, he doesn’t have a huge role in it, playing the sheriff in the small town of Haven, which is proving anything but, given that it’s experiencing a rerun of the twelve plagues of Egypt visited by God on the Egyptians for their persecution of the Jews.

For another, it’s not a well received movie, with a pitiful 7% rating on the tomatometer, a single point above The Hottie and the Nottie and under half the remake of The Wicker Man. It’s a low enough score to worry going in.

However, while it’s certainly not without its flaws, I think it’s been given a bum rap. It’s set up well with an interesting lead character and the imagery is impressive, not just the visuals but the impact behind them. And AnnaSophia Robb, Violet Beauregarde two years earlier in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is a revelation.

Fright Night (1985)

Director: Tom Holland
Writer: Tom Holland
Stars: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse, Stephen Geoffreys and Roddy McDowall

Index: Make It a Double.

After Heaven Help Us, Stephen Geoffreys was given the lead part in Fraternity Vacation, then found the role for which he’s most known, Evil Ed Thompson in Fright Night. It made his name and it doesn’t shock me that it was his second Make It a Double pick.

What shocked me was how much (and how little) I’d remembered of this film from my last viewing many decades ago.

I remembered the core of the story, about a teenager, Charley Brewster, who realises that his new next door neighbour, Jerry Dandridge, is a vampire, but nobody believes him. So he turns to his hero, Peter Vincent, a horror actor and host of the TV show Fright Night Theatre, who is a renowned vampire killer. Of course, Vincent thinks Charley’s mad too as vampires aren’t real. Until he realises that they are.

Heaven Help Us (1985)

Director: Michael Dinner
Writer: Charles Pupura
Stars: Andrew McCarthy, Mary Stuart Masterson, Kevin Dillon, Malcolm Danare, Jennie Dundas, Kate Reid, Wallace Shawn, Jay Patterson, John Heard and Donald Sutherland

Index: Make It a Double.

While Stephen Geoffreys’s second choice for Make it a Double was the film he’s best known for, Fright Night, he picked this first. It’s an odd mix of comedy and drama that gave a number of young actors early roles: it was the third for Andrew McCarthy and Mary Stuart Masterson, but the first for Kevin Dillon, Patrick Dempsey and, indeed, Geoffreys.

The version I watched still had the original title of Catholic Boys intact, but I can see why it was changed for the American market. It may have misled a lot of viewers, given that half of it is serious drama, exposing everyday life in a strict Catholic school, St. Basil’s in Brooklyn, but the other half is wild comedy, not quite to the degree of Porky’s but far closer than would be guessed with a title like Catholic Boys.

The lead character is Michael Dunn, who we watch transfer into St. Basil’s and try to find a place in the established pecking order, which ends up being as one of five boys who coalesce into rather than naturally form a group. That’s them on the poster.

Tru Loved (2008)

Director: Stewart Wade
Writer: Stewart Wade
Stars: Najarra Townsend, Matthew Thompson, Jake Abel and Tye Olson

I find it fascinating that Vernon Wells chose Tru Loved for his double and it speaks volumes about how he must feel about its message.

For one thing, his part is pretty flimsy and ruthlessly one note. Coach Wesley has a brand of bigotry and, when it manifests, it manifests just how we expect. There’s little opportunity for any actor to get his teeth into the role.

To be fair, the Coach may be just as bigoted about other things that simply don’t arise in this film. Tru Loved is an indie LGBTQ+ drama, so it’s his homophobia that comes out to rage and it does so without subtlety. Maybe that’s why he played up his Australian accent.

Circuitry Man (1990)

Director: Steven Lovy
Writers: Steven and Robert Lovy
Stars: Jim Metzler, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Dennis Christopher and Vernon Wells

Index: Make It a Double.

If I was on autopilot, I’d start this review by pointing out that Circuitry Man is a “bad movie, but...” and then talk about all the things I liked about it. However, it really isn’t a bad movie. It is, however, a cheap movie, whether I buy into IMDb’s suggestion that it cost a mere $5,000 or not. Then again, if it started life as a thesis film at UCLA, maybe that’s true.

So, Circuitry Man is a “cheap movie, but...”. It isn’t hard to come up with negatives, starting with the opening credits that run weirdly long and alternate with imagery when they should have overlaid it. The text scrolls up as we head down, through the layers of post-apocalyptic underground L.A. But hey, a $5,000 budget. In that context, these negatives are forgettable.

We’re underground because the atmosphere is gone and what air remains is unbreathable. Climate change concerns were big in 1990 and we can only dream about rich politicians who craft policies after watching straight to video sci-fi flicks instead of reading Ayn Rand.

Rampage (1987)

Director: William Friedkin
Writer: William Friedkin, based on the novel by William P. Wood
Stars: Michael Biehn, Alex McArthur, Nicholas Campbell, Deborah Van Walkenburgh, John Harkins, Art LaFleur and Billy Greenbush

Index: Make It a Double.

At first glance, Michael Biehn’s second pick is pretty much the same movie as his first. It’s another story about a psychopath, like Deadly Intentions, with Biehn in the lead and we see it unfold from the act to the pursuit to the trial. However, it doesn’t take long for a whole slew of differences to manifest. And, in the end, it’s a very different movie, often a mirror image.

Sure, his wife leaves him here too but it isn’t because he’s the psychopath tormenting her; it’s because he’s the prosecuting attorney who is given the task of seeking the death penalty for the psychopath, even though he personally opposes it for moral reasons. His wife Kate is a lawyer too who also doesn’t believe in capital punishment and she sees this as a step too far for her to accept in a relationship.

He’s Tony Fraser, who heads Major Crimes either for the state of California or the city of Stockton, and his personal struggle with the death penalty echoes that of the director, the reason why there are two different endings.

Deadly Intentions (1985)

Director: Noel Black
Writer: Andrew Peter Marin, based on the book by William Randolph Stevens
Stars: Michael Biehn, Madolyn Smith, Morgana King, Jack Kruschen, Kevin McCarthy, Cliff DeYoung and Cloris Leachman

Index: Make It a Double.

Deadly Intentions wasn’t a feature film nor a straight to video slasher, as you might expect from the poster. It was a three and a half hour TV movie that unfolded over two nights, 19th and 20th May, 1985 on ABC. It was based, as so many such things seem to be, on a true story.

In real life, in 1977, a airport clerk in Tucson triggers a major investigation when he sees A. Donald Vester in a weird disguise. It turns out that he’s Dr. Patrick Henry, a dermatologist at a Baltimore hospital, in Dallas for a conference but on an incognito side trip to Tucson to kill his wife, Christina Bellios. However, he didn’t do it, for some reason, and so he’s tried not for murder but for attempted murder, given how far he’d gone to do it and how close he’d come.

The prosecutor was the chief prosecutor for Pima County, William Randolph Stevens, who received an Edgar Award nomination for Best Fact Crime for his 1982 book about the case. In 1985, that became this two part TV movie.

Roller Boogie (1979)

Director: Mark L. Lester
Writer: Barry Schneider, based on a story by Irwin Yablans
Stars: Linda Blair and Jim Bray

Index: Make It a Double.

OK, this was ripe for a fresh look. I’ve seen it before and I reviewed it back in 2008, finding a lot of bad and very little good. However, Linda Blair chose it for her double very deliberately. After the impactful Born Innocent, one of many such films she made in the seventies, she saw this one as pure unadulterated fun.

And she isn’t wrong. Sure, this has less of an actual story and more of a collision of tropes with a cliché barging in halfway through just because it can. Sure, there’s a reliance on plot convenience that boggles the mind. Sure, her co-star wasn’t even an actor, Jim Bray clearly hired because he was a champion skater. But, like Rock ’n’ Roll High School, another 1979 film I needed to see in a fresh light to appreciate, it ultimately counts as a seventies beach movie. There’s a pride in fun and goofiness.

Born Innocent (1974)

Director: Donald Wyre
Writer: Gerald Di Pego, based on the book by Creighton Brown Burnham
Stars: Linda Blair, Joanna Miles, Allyn Ann McLerie, Mary Murphy, Janit Baldwin, Nora Heflin, Tina Andrews, Sandra Ego, Mitch Vogel, Richard Jaeckel and Kim Hunter

Index: Make It a Double.

Linda Blair didn’t start her screen career in The Exorcist but it launched her to stardom in a way few fourteen year olds ever experience. It speaks volumes for her attitude that she took up this tough TV movie next and continued to accept tough roles in TV movies like Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, Sweet Hostage and Victory at Entebbe. She took the harder road.

Born Innocent aired on 10th September, 1974 as an NBC World Premiere Movie and became the highest rated TV movie of that year. It looks at mental and physical abuse, pushing the edges of what network television was willing to do. Its notorious lesbian rape scene was removed from reruns, even though it’s key to the story.

And that story revolves around Chris Parker as she follows a brutal story arc. Arguably the most powerful scene isn’t the rape at all but a closing shot of the face of a counsellor as she realises she’s lost another one because of the system. What we see is how she entered it and how she gets lost within it.

Two Heads are Better Than None (2000)

Director: Michael Grossman
Writer: Kevin Kopelow and Heath Seifert
Stars: Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell, Ken Foree, Teal Marchande and Vanessa Baden

Index: Make It a Double.

While Two Heads are Better Than None follows a vaguely horror theme, it’s about as different from Leatherface as it could be. Kenan & Kel was a Nickelodeon sitcom, spun off from a sketch show called All That, and this TV movie ended its final season, with the exception of a single clip show released five months later.

Kenan Rockwell and Kel Kimble are a pair of best friends living in Chicago but I believe (as I haven’t otherwise seen the show), Kenan & Kel revolves around Kenan’s family with Kel as the wildcard in the shenanigans that ensue.

Kenan is the straight man, played by Kenan Thompson, now the longest ever serving cast member on Saturday Night Live. Kel is his lively foil, played by rapper Kel Mitchell. Ken Foree was a cast regular, as Roger Rockwell, Kenan’s long suffering dad. His wife Sheryl is played by Teal Marchande and their daughter Kyra by a prolific television actress, Vanessa Baden.

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

Director: Jeff Burr
Writer: David J. Schow, based on characters created by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper
Stars: Kate Hodge, Viggo Mortensen, William Butler, Ken Foree, Joe Unger, Tom Everett, Toni Hudson, Miriam Byrd-Nethery and R. A. Mihailoff

Index: Make It a Double.

I seem to meet a lot of actors who starred in Texas Chainsaw flicks, most of whom don’t pick them for their Doubles. Ken Foree did and so did R. A. Mihailoff, both of them picking III, so I’ll get to review it twice before tackling 2 for Bill Johnson. Nobody so far has picked the first and best, not even Gunnar Hansen.

For those new to the franchise, the first was an indie film in 1974 with a cast of unknowns. Contrary to its provocative title, it features no sex, no gore, no swearing and very little blood, but it still carries an immense impact through bones and screams. It’s a freaky, scary feature. The second, released in 1986, is wildly over the top, an acid trip of a black comedy dressed in horror clothing. It’s outrageous in many ways but it isn’t scary at all.

This third film aimed to restore scariness to the franchise only four years later and it does a decent job of it, the darker script by horror novelist David J. Schow tying in urban legend and grounding it all in effective locations. He also ignored 2 entirely, providing opening text that only referenced the first film. It’s there to tell us that a member of the cannibal clan saw trial, W. E. Sawyer by name, and he died in the gas chamber. Leatherface, the jury believed, is a persona he wore along with his human flesh mask, so he’s long gone.

That Man Bolt (1973)

Directors: Henry Levin and David Lowell Rich
Writers: Charles Eric Johnson and Ranald MacDougall
Stars: Fred Williamson, Byron Webster, Miko Mayama, Satoshi Nakamura, John Orchard and Teresa Graves

Index: Make It a Double.

Fred Williamson’s second Make It a Double choice is a couple of years older than Bucktown but he was already established, especially with blaxploitation staples like Black Caesar and its sequel, Hell Up in Harlem. What surprised me is that this isn’t another of them.

In fact, it rather relishes how it keeps us on the hop as to what it actually is. Sure, there’s a blaxploitation feel at points, but there’s much more James Bond, much more kung fu movie and much more general seventies thriller, the colour of the lead the most unusual aspect.

That Man Bolt is Jefferson Bolt, who’s trying to be Jim Kelly when we first see him, stripped to the waist and working through a kata even though he’s locked up in a Macao jail. He’s not Jim Kelly but he looks good anyway. And then in comes an Aussie to cut him loose and ferry him over to Hong Kong. That’s Carter.

Bucktown (1975)

Director: Arthur Marks
Writer: Bob Ellison
Stars: Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, Thalmus Rasulala, Tony King, Bernie Hamilton, Art Lund and Tierre Turner

Index: Make It a Double.

I’ve reviewed Bucktown for Pam Grier’s First Thirty but it was also one of Fred Williamson’s two Make It a Double picks. While it came at a crucial time for her, it’s definitely a better film for him, giving him a good introduction then building him far more than I expected.

It initially feels like an episode of a TV show. Everything kicks right in: the opening credits, the funky music and the action. The very first scene is cops lusting after a hooker, but they rush off to beat up a black guy at the station as a train pulls in.

Getting off that train is Duke Johnson, who’s in Bucktown to bury his brother. And that’s the Hammer, who sees the cops but doesn’t do anything, just gets a cab to the Club Alabama. “Do you believe in God?” the cabbie asks him. “Then you’re in the wrong place.”