Throw Momma from the Train (Danny DeVito, 1987)

Struggling with writer’s block, Larry (Billy Crystal) is a teacher at community college nursing resentment toward his ex-wife.

One of his students, Owen (Danny DeVito), still lives with his mother (Anne Ramsey) but dreams of murdering her.

When Owen gets it into his head that Larry has murderous intentions toward his former spouse, the pair find themselves trapped in a spiral of mutually assured destruction. 

Kind of.

For a while.

Danny DeVito’s first theatrical feature, Throw Momma from the Train is a darkly comedic spin on Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.

It also feels like this is the movie that haunted DeVito for the rest of his career.

In Vince D’Angelo and The Ratings Game, it feels like the fledgling filmmaker has a strengthening grasp on what he wants to express.

Throw Momma From The Train feels like a filmmaker who is unable or unwilling to go as dark as his premise teases.

As with Vince D’Angelo and The Ratings Game, this film continues DeVito’s theme of television as a vehicle for fame and as a superficial signifier of success.

This is the first film where DeVito’s visual sense begins to expand: 

In large part a result of collaborator Barry Sonnenfeld as his director of photography, the film benefits from a dynamic sense of movement and comic exaggeration.

DeVito is on low-key form as Owen, a momma’s boy who fantasises about murdering his mother (Anne Ramsey).

The director/star seems miscast. When Owen gets it into his head that Larry wants him to murder his wife (while watching  Strangers on a Train), DeVito conveys a sense of realisation that feels parodic.

Maybe it is the effect of watching DeVito play so many devious characters, but Owen never quite fits him. 

Owen is not smart or devious, and Larry is just depressed and self-absorbed. More importantly, outside of a few moments, their self-absorption is not that funny.

More importantly, the movie does not have the strength of its convictions.

Owen may have dark desires but he ultimately cannot act on them.

Neither character is particularly compelling to watch, so when the film goes for sentiment at the end, it falls flat.

With foreknowledge of DeVito’s later endeavours, it feels like he took stock of the film’s reception, and decided to not pull his punches with his next project.

Get the roses, it’s time to prepare for war…

Related

The Selling of Vince D'Angelo

The Ratings Game

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The Ratings Game (Danny DeVito, 1984)

A New Jersey scumbag with a song in his heart, Vic DeSalvo (Danny DeVito) is living his dream of working in Hollywood.

Given an ultimatum by his brother to sell a show or go back home, Vic finds a home at MBC, a failing TV network.

 

Greenlit by a vengeful executive who has been sacked by the network, Vic’s dream is coming true…

Before transitioning into a feature film director, Danny DeVito practised his craft on a series of short films. 

The Ratings Game was his first attempt at a feature-length story, albeit on TV.

As with The Selling of Vince D'Angelo, The Ratings Game builds off of DeVito’s established star persona from his role on Taxi as the duplicitous Louis DePalma.

As with that short mockumentary, The Ratings Game takes aim at a familiar institution in contemporary society - television.

More than a specific sense of style, what defines DeVito’s work as a filmmaker is perspective.

One of the joys of DeVito onscreen is the sense that he is in on the joke - the character may be a cheat and liar, but there is always something knowing in the performance. It often feels like DeVito is winking at the audience, showing an example of humanity who is not that smart, not that good, not as put together as he thinks he is.

DeVito’s onscreen personality is the inverse of a typical star - whereas a lot of stars’ personae are built on some kind of decency, some inherent moral foundation, DeVito revels in showing how little backbone his characters have. 

He also seems unafraid to show these characters being embarrassing: in a key example from this film, Vic is forced to take over as the lead actor during the shooting of his pilot. 

It is a disaster: Vic reads his lines off cue cards in a stilted manner, constantly playing to his friends in the audience.

DeVito the actor has no qualms about showing off how ignorant and oblivious Vic is, and he takes no prisoners as a filmmaker either.

That sense of cynicism about human nature is the basis of his favoured themes - greed, the role of media and materialism in everyday life.

As with the disgraced politician from DeVito’s previous short film, Vic’s rise is enabled by the greed of others. When an executive promotes his mistress to head her department, Vic’s girlfriend Francine (Rhea Perlman) steals information on the families who the ratings company track for ratings to help Vic’s ratings.

While the premise fits the filmmaker, the material as written feels a little underwritten.

Maybe this is the result of my greater familiarity with DeVito’s later work, but The Ratings Game is a little toothless.

There are some great moments: In one scene, Vic assembles truckers from around the country in a parody of a Bond villain meeting (complete with a slideshow and John Barry-esque musical score).

In a forerunning of Death to Smoochy, the film includes Captain Andy, a deranged version of a children’s TV host who seems to be under the spell of his ventriloquist dummy (a parrot).

During a cruise, passengers try to talk to each other but can only speak about the TV shows they watch. 

Unlike the amoral powerbroker of Vince D'Angelo, The Ratings Game tries to present Vic as more of a three-dimensional being, by putting him in a fish-out-of-water romance with another Jersey transplant, Perlman’s Francine.

The real-life couple have great chemistry, and Francine is never treated as an add-on. She does not exist solely to make the lead character look better, and her role as a hardworking woman (who ultimately initiates the scheme) is probably more pointed in its critique of Hollywood power structures than Vic’s struggles to break in.

As with Vince D'Angelo, DeVito ends the movie with the same message that money and fame will win out: despite his arrest for fraud, Vic’s success means he remains a celebrity and gets to live the high life in prison. 

Appropriately dark and cynical, despite the sincerity of the romance, The Ratings Game is amusing rather than truly funny.

Related

The Selling of Vince DeAngelo

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Heat (Dick Richards, 1986)

Former mercenary Nick Escalante (Burt Reynolds) is sleepwalking through life in Vegas, dreaming of escape but unable to find the means.

When his ex-girlfriend Holly (Karen Young) requests his help, Nick sees trouble - but it might also give him the means to fulfil his dream… 

Dick Richards' name may be on the credits but apparently six people were involved with getting Heat over the line.

According to the trivia I read, Richards directed 41% of the final film, while Jerry Jameson directed 31% - which leaves 28% for the other four.

I am sure one of those names was the star, who reportedly caused this BTS problem by punching Richards during an argument.

Despite the directorial musical chairs, Heat never feels incoherent. 

It is not particularly stylish, but the movie has a functionality that lets the story and the characters breathe.

Based on a novel by William Goldman (who also wrote the adaptation), Heat is a meal of a movie.

A noir, action movie, and character study of a sad sack, Heat is fantastic.

While it came out in 1986, the film feels like it could have come out in any particular era.

This movie reaffirmed how poor my knowledge of Burt Reynolds’ filmography is.

I have seen Smokey and the Bandit and Boogie Nights, but for some reason, they did not pique my interest in him. Instead, this movie - the other Heat - caught me.

Part of the film’s magic is the lead character: Nick is such a sad sack.

Over the course of the first half of the movie, we watch Reynolds peel apart his persona to reveal the vulnerability underneath.

The character initially comes across as a familiar tough guy.

He is on the margins, but he is not a criminal. Morally he also rides a line.

The movie is not plot-focused: in the first couple of sequences, the film feels like it is setting up a couple of potential premises.

In the first, Nick helps Holly (Karen Young) get revenge on a sadistic gangster’s son (Neill Barry) who assaulted her. In the second, he has a business providing bodyguard services, and is dealing with a new, green client (Peter MacNicol).

At the halfway point, these plot lines appear resolved, and Nick is on his way toward fulfilling his dream of escaping to Venice. 

And then the film shows its hand.

Nick takes his $10k and starts betting at the casino.

The longer the scene plays out, the more tense the scene should get, as the amount of money, and the bets, get larger and larger.

But Reynolds plays against those stakes

He appears relieved, almost like he is resigned to this behaviour.

After racking up and losing a fortune, Nick is back where he started. 

Nick’s self-defeating and addiction are present from the beginning but this sequence immerses the viewer.

Part of it is a function of the script but it also serves as both a counter to Reynolds’ assuring presence (there are no winks at the camera or any equivalent gestures) and an output for his inherent sense of pathos.

It is the high point of the movie. 

The third act is enjoyable, but a little familiar: our hero turns the tables on the villain. The final confrontation is legitimately underwhelming, but it does not deflate the movie as a whole.

And as for our hero, Nick ends the film wounded but victorious.

Sadly, for Reynolds, Heat was another bomb.

On top of the star’s offscreen behaviour, Heat has been buried by its title, and how synonymous it is with Michael Mann’s 1995 crime epic.

While it is no hidden masterpiece, Heat ‘86 deserves a better reputation than relative obscurity.

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In the Line of Fire (Wolfgang Petersen, 1993)

In this season of The James Bond Cocktail Hour podcast, we are covering the six year gap between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye, covering everything James Bond-related, from books to comics to video games, to non-Bond properties which tried to fill the gap.

We take in a Sixties icon dealing with age and relevance in the early nineties, as Clint Eastwood tries to prevent a presidential assassination in In the Line of Fire!

Check out the episode at the link below:

No Time To Die (review)

No Time To Die (commentary)

Pierce Brosnan - The Bond In Waiting 

GoldenEye & Spymaker - The Secret Lives of Ian Fleming

Nikita

Total Recall

Fire, Ice and Dynamite & Bullseye!

The Russia House

BrokenClaw

Lethal Weapon & Die Hard

If Looks Could Kill

Hudson Hawk

The Rocketeer

Black Cat

Timebomb

Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country

The Man From Barbarossa

James Bond Jr 

James Bond Jr. and other lost adventures, with Mark Edlitz 

Timothy Dalton's Bond 17 (Mark I) 

Permission to Die

Memoirs of an Invisible Man & The King's Man

Live Wire 

Sneakers 

Blue Ice

The Harry Palmer Trilogy

Freddie as F.R.O.7 

Death is Forever

Timothy Dalton's Bond 17 (Mark II), Part 1

Timothy Dalton's Bond 17 (Mark II), Part 2 

Serpent's Tooth

Timothy Dalton's Bond 17 - comparing the different visions 

The Man who almost killed James Bond 

Point of No Return 

Death Train 

In the Line of Fire

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BITE-SIZED: Annihilator (Michael Chapman, 1986)

 After he discovers his girlfriend and the other passengers on Flight 508 have been replaced by killer robots, journalist Robert (Mark Lindsay Chapman) is forced to go on the run to unmask the strange conspiracy encircling him.

With only the flight manifest from his girlfriend’s flight to aid him, he is in a race against time to reach the remaining human survivors before the diabolical machines terminate them…

Sometimes it is fun to check out the ripoffs of something you love.

I am a big fan of James Cameron’s original The Terminator, particularly the look and feel of the LA sequences. It is unlike anything else in Cameron’s filmography.

Annihilator is an unsold TV pilot that replicates some of the familiar aesthetics and iconography of The Terminator, and juggles them into a new configuration:

Some elements, like the chiaroscuro, the synth score (by Udi Harpaz and Sylvester Levay), and the LA locations, can be read as tasteful influences.

Others are clear signposts to the audience that they can replicate the thrills from the big screen on the Google box:

Characters wearing trench coats, stubble and shotguns; the glowing eyes and exposed metallic skulls of the robots; and even a familiar cast member (Earl Boen AKA the smug Dr Silberman from the first three Terminators).

Even the show’s pitch, of following a list of names, is an inversion of the Terminator hunting Sarah Connor through the phone book.

The cast (Mark Lindsay Chapman, Catherine Mary Stewart, Lisa Blount and Susan Blakely) are fine, although the only real standout is Boen as a put upon newspaper editor.

The big issue with the film is that it is a TV pilot, and leaves itself open for new adventures.

It has been padded out with repeated footage, and despite its premise, it goes in a few circles before adopting what I assume would be its format, as a man-on-the-run thriller in the mould of The Fugitive and its supernatural equivalent The Invaders.

The other issue, and this partly has to do with comparing it to its inspiration, is that the machines are a little undefined. They are both incredibly strong and weak as the plot requires, and their goal is too vague to feel threatening.

The film is intriguing: The robots are presented as different types (there are even evil robot children), and one machine (Susan Blakely) seems conflicted about their mission.

And the film’s use of computers - including hacking into and deleting information - is prescient, and could have helped the show build some (then) unique suspense.

I tried looking up more about the show, but it does not look like there is any material indicating the show’s broader direction.

It is no lost masterpiece, but Annihilator is fun in its own junky way.

Related

The Terminator

The Terminator -Tempest

Terminator - Dark Fate

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