A Time for BAMFs

As Footloose taught the world, there is a time for everything. I spend most of my time here deconstructing movies in one way or another in an effort to continually better my understanding of them and, as a result, watch movies with a sharper, more discerning eye than I ever did in my cinematic infancy. But sometimes I just don't have time for that 'cause I'm too busy thinking, "That is one badass mutha fucka!" So alert Kevin Bacon, because it's October and that means it's time for some shout-outs to my favorite BAMFs of horror and sci-fi!

Now this won't be a list per se, more a haphazard collection of thoughts on some of my favorite BAMFs in the horror/sci-fi universe that kind of, sort of forms a list-like thing. Plus, there's no rules. Sometimes it's a character, played by multiple actors, sometimes it's a particular actor playing a particular character. Sometimes it's lead, sometimes supporting. I guess the only thing I'm going to purposely avoid are the characters that are written as badasses, you know, the Vin Diesel or Arnold Schwarzenegger types or what Ripley became to the Alien series. Ah, hell, let's just get started?

- The BAMF that got me thinking up this whole thing in the first place is Peter Cushing as Doctor Van Helsing. Now this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about because Van Helsing's been played a million times, from Edward Van Sloan's unflappable Nosferatu obsessive in the original adaptation of the stage play of Dracula (1931) to Anthony Hopkin's rather loud and excitable vampire hunter in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). But nobody, and I mean nobody, got Van Helsing as undead-on right as Peter Cushing.

When you watch Cushing at work in Horror of Dracula or Brides of Dracula, you see an actor at the top of his form, yes, but also an actor who understands the character he's playing better than anyone else before or since. When it comes to playing Van Helsing, Cushing really is the smartest guy in the room. He's got the analytical side, the blood-vengeance side and, above all, the cool-in-the-face of terror side that makes his Van Helsing the best there is to offer. Take away his hammer, stake and crucifix and this mutha will grab a pair of candlesticks, construct a makeshift cross and bring the curtains down, literally, to do away with your sorry blood-sucking ass. Bite him on the neck and leave him for undead and guess what? He's going to whip out some holy water and a hot iron and burn your filthy disease right out of his body while another couple of vampires look on in stunned amazement. When all's said and done, there's no doubt about it: Peter Cushing's Van Helsing in one Bad Ass Mutha Fucka!

- Now for a character from a series of movies I usually give a pretty hard time here at Cinema Styles: Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars Saga. Now, it's true, I got my problems with the saga overall but there's no questioning old Ben Kenobi's official BAMF status. And for the purposes of this inclusion please understand, I'm not talking expanded universe, I'm talking about the movies that were released. So I don't really care if there's some bigger bad-ass in Jedi Exile: The Journey to Malachor V or if something that happens in the movies is explained away in The Great Sith Encasement, Episode 17. Really, it's not possible for me to give even two shits less than I already do on that front. But Kenobi in the movies is number one, unquestionably.

When Darth Maul takes down everyone who stands in his way, including Kenobi's own mentor Qui-Gon Jinn, Kenobi leaps up from a prone position, grabs his saber in mid-air and slices the Sith shitheel in half. Anakin Skywalker, darkside Jedi at the height of his powers? Ha, ha, that's funny, because while Anakin can kick everyone's ass, from Count Dooku to an entire village of sand people, he can't do shit to Obi-Wan. In fact, when Anakin attempts a leap-in-the-air-from-prone-position finisher like Obi-Wan did with Darth Maul, he gets the legs cut out from under him, literally, and an arm too, just for good measure. Years later, an old Obi-Wan doesn't even break a sweat holding off Anakin, now Darth Vader. It takes Luke giving in to his anger to defeat Vader in Return of the Jedi but Obi-Wan? Sheeee-it, he not only dies of his own choosing but - and think about this - has the situation so under control he can actually take the time to look over at Luke, and mull it over first(!), while in the middle of a lightsaber duel with Vader! Obi-Wan Kenobi - Bad Ass Mutha Fucka!

-Next up, Rosemary Woodhouse from Rosemary's Baby. Yeah, yeah, I know, you're thinking, "Don't you mean Sarah Connor from The Terminator or Ripley from Alien?" No, I don't. See, they're like the Diesel/Schwarzenegger characters, as in, prepackaged badasses, even if theirs were quite a bit better rendered than any Diesel or Schwarzeneggar characters ever were. Besides, you know how every now and then you stumble upon (usually by, in fact, using StumbleUpon) some list of the top ten this or that in the movies and the lists always suck because their choices are SO FUCKING OBVIOUS! That's because they're written by and for idiots who have no real connection to the movies or understanding of dramatic conflict. Well, guess what? Those guys would put Ripley and Connor on their list of badasses and for Star Wars, they'd list Vader, not Obi-Wan. Whew... so, back to Rosemary.

Rosemary's a badass because, in the end, she takes control and doesn't look back. Her husband, her doctor and seemingly every member of the AARP do their level best to marginalize her out of existence but when it comes time to walk the walk, Rosemary does a full-on strut! Keep in mind, this is a woman who was roofied by Satan and had her baby stolen by the Beelzebub Chapter of the Boynton Beach Club and she still has enough guts to 1) yell at everybody for what they did to her baby, 2) shove Roman's lies right back in his face ("Shut up. You're in Dubrovnik, I can't hear you.") and 3) in the middle of listening to a bunch of old witches bitch about how she's unfit, pick that baby right up and say, "Fuck it! It's here, it's mine and I'm taking care of it." She owns the situation and everyone present. Only one thing left to say: Bad Ass Mutha Fucka!

- And speaking of mothers, how about Diane Freeling in Poltergeist? Seriously, think about how much she does in that movie. First, she handles the loss of a pet with aplomb. Second, she's naturally curious, not scared, of the strange phenonemon taking place in her house. And on top of that, she never looks exhausted and worn out like hubby Steve Freeling does even though she's handling much more. When her daughter gets taken she bucks up, brings in people to explain the options and stands at the fore (remember when the ghosts start descending the stairway and she's right there, ready to go up those stairs to meet them?). When someone has to go into the void to get their daughter, Steve says he'll do it but she gives him some malarkey about how they need him to hold the rope and yadda, yadda, yadda. We all know the real reason is because he'd fail. Here's why (and I say this in all seriousness): Once, at work, I heard two people talking, one of them complaining about a seemingly impossible series of tasks that would have required either several people or one person with eight arms. That's when the other one said, "A mother could do it." She was, of course, a mother. That was before I was with my wife and our children but now that I am let me just say, "Yup."

So anyway, she goes in, gets her daughter and comes back out. Later, the gates to hell relocate to the closet in the kids' bedroom and Diane is thrown against the floor, walls and ceiling of her bedroom to prevent her from reaching her kids. She gets out. Then, the hallway elongates to the point where running gets her nowhere. But she keeps running anyway and eventually, she gets out of that one too. Then, when she swings the door open to the kids' room she damn near gets sucked in to a full-fledged vortex. But she doesn't. Know what she does? With one arm on the door frame and one arm holding onto her kids against 200 mile-per-hour sucking winds, she pulls those goddamn kids out, that's what she does. And I didn't even mention the monster in the hall, the corpses in the pool or the completely useless idiot neighbor. Diane Freeling gets everybody out to safety, no exceptions. After doing all the dirty work all hubby Steve has to do is get everyone in the car and drive them to a motel. Lucky for him his wife is one Bad Ass Mutha Fucka!

- Let's top out our first five with Father Damien Karras in The Exorcist. Karras is different kind of badass because everything that makes him a badass comes as the final culmination of taking one flying turd in the face after another. Damien Karras is a priest the world has decided to shit on, daily. He's stressed out and broke, has to go to New York weekly, from Washington, D.C., to take care of his ailing mother, then deal with her being in a horrible nursing home until she dies alone and depressed while he's 300 miles away. If that weren't bad enough, he's brought into a bad situation with a demon-possessed girl who insists on vomiting on him when he asks her to back up what she's saying about his dead mother. And through it all, he follows the rules. He does his duty, to a fault. He psychoanalyzes and when that doesn't work he goes to the church and asks for special permission to conduct an exorcism. When he's told "No, but you can assist this old bastard we know who'll run the show," he doesn't complain. When he tries to fill the old guy in on what they're about to walk into ("The demon seems to have three distinct personalities") he's rudely cut off ("There is only one!"). While most of us would respond with, "Hey, fuck you, I'm just trying to help," old Damien keeps quiet. When he walks in the room and the demon looks like mom and he yells "You're not my mother!" and starts crying and the old guy says to leave, he does.

But then, when he comes back in and the old guy's dead and the demon possessed girl is on the bed, giggling, brother, he's done! He's tried talk. He's tried following church procedure. He's tried doing what the old guy says. And now, finally, Karras' true badass self emerges as he quietly says in his head, "Man, fuck it, it's clobbering time!" What follows must surely be the only time in cinematic history that the sight of a grown man viciously pummelling the face of a 12 year old girl is not only welcome, but encouraged. But that wouldn't make Karras a badass of the Mutha Fucka variety. No, you know what it is that does that, right? It's when he makes his whole goddamn life worthwhile in one single instant by saying to the demon, "Come into me! Take me!" He's saving the girl and sacrificing himself at the same moment. People, that's not just a hero, that's a Bad Ass Mutha Fucka!

And that's it for now. Sure there are millions more I could have done but I'm hoping these were the less obvious choices than, say, Taylor from Planet of the Apes (although I in no way deny his status as a fully licensed BAMF). Also, another non-obvious runner-up: Dave Bowman from 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL kills everyone on board and then tells a stranded Dave that he isn't going to open that pod bay door and that Dave is screwed because he doesn't have his helmet so he can't come in manually. And you know what Dave does? He comes in manually anyway, without a helmet, and takes HAL apart! After that he follows his own destiny to beyond the infinite and becomes the star child who will provide the next step in our intellectual evolution. Awww, fuck yeah!

And so I leave you with dreams of your own favorite BAMFS of sci-fi and horror. To paraphrase the immortal words of Mr. Bacon, there is a time to laugh and a time to weep, a time to mourn and there is a time for BAMFs. Everybody dance!

It was always Peter

I recently watched The Curse of Frankenstein again and was once again impressed with how boldly Hammer Film Productions, director Terence Fisher and write Jimmy Sangster all worked together to produce such a splendid reboot of a story (before they were called reboots and one year before their Dracula reboot) so familiar to so many fans. How they took the basic framework of the story and twisted it around just enough to make a story they could call their own while still enjoying the benefits that come from attaching the name "Frankenstein" to the end product. I was again impressed with how well Christopher Lee does in evoking sympathy for the pathetic creature he must play, much more pathetic than his original literary counterpart or the 1931 Universal creation. But more than anything I think I realized, or perhaps better put, finally let myself accept, that without Peter Cushing Hammer films would have never succeeded. That is high praise indeed and I intend it to be the highest praise I can give to an actor underrated by legions of non-horror fans and deified by those in the fold.

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are associated with Hammer more than any other two names but the two films that put Hammer on the horror map were this one and the previously discussed Horror of Dracula and in both, even Dracula, Lee is but a supporting player. It is Cushing that carries both films. It is Cushing that makes both films. Without Cushing neither film would have been the success it was and Hammer, perhaps, would have moved on to other things. Goddamit, it was Peter. It was always Peter.

And it's not just that this film, this Frankenstein, wouldn't have worked without Cushing. The 1931 Universal Frankenstein wouldn't have worked with Cushing in the role of the doctor. That role needed an actor who could exhort wildly that his creation had life and then recede into the framework while we follow the monster and his doings. Colin Clive played that role and did it well. But this Frankenstein is Cushing and nothing else. The creature is damn near an afterthought. In fact, he could have never succeeded in bringing the creature to life and it wouldn't have hurt the movie. He could have just kept on killing people and kept on trying and that would have been enough. With another actor it wouldn't have been but with Cushing? Yes, easily.

Peter Cushing had an intensity as an actor that few like him have possessed. Critics and actors like to use the word "intensity" to describe the Marlon Brandos or the John Garfields of the acting world (or any actor associated with Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler or Sanford Meisner), actors playing a brutal or brutalized working class American raised on the streets of Brooklyn. But Peter Cushing had an intensity that put all of them to shame - And NO, I am not just saying that for the sake of hyperbole, October celebrations or to give respect to a disrespected genre. I am saying it because it is true. How many people remember Peter Cushing in Star Wars? Everyone! He has but a few lines and yes, I know it's among the most popular films ever made so even minor characters are known, but still, with all the action and starfights and light sabers and Darth Vader roaming around all moody-like there's Grand Moff Tarkin, and he stands out. Now, think back to the movie, the whole saga in fact. There is no character working for the Empire, save the Emperor himself of course, who does not tremble in Vader's presence, except Tarkin. Cushing's intensity was such that he simply wouldn't have been believable fearing anyone.

It is that intensity that makes his Dr. Frankenstein such an astonishing creation. His face, his eyes, his build, his manner of speaking all signal to the audience far beyond the machinations of the script that this Doctor is mad. Homicidally mad. And that becomes our story, and would further become the story of more Hammer Films Frankensteins because fans couldn't get enough of this great yet sadly unheralded actor playing crazy. Peter Cushing changed the way horror fans thought of Doctor Frankenstein. There was the Doctor from the Universal films, the Doctor from the television productions that followed the novel more closely or even the Doctor from Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. They all had a madness to them, an obsession that drove their desire to create life from dead tissue. But they were all also, at their core, decent human beings who loved and felt guilt and revulsion at what they had wrought upon the world. And then there's Cushing's Frankenstein. No guilt, no revulsion. This Doctor is a bastard.

While the movie contains many scenes that make this clear, including a scene early on where the good doctor kindly ushers a brilliant scientist guest to his death over the second floor railings just so he can use his brain for his reanimated creature, the scene that projects it best and brilliantly is one of true horror and perversion. Frankenstein has dug up his first failed creature and brought him back to the lab where he has chained him to the wall and brought his former tutor and mentor to the lab to show him off. He orders him thuggishly to "Stand up!" "Sit down!" and so forth while the creature performs these rudimentary actions with oafish inexactitude. His mentor, and the audience, see a pathetic and horrifying display. A mentally disabled man, chained to a wall, clearly afraid, being yelled at to perform like an organ grinder's monkey. But one look at Frankenstein and the audience knows he's thinking, "Isn't this great?! Look at this! That son of a bitch does whatever I tell him - And he was DEAD before! Goddamn I'm good! Aren't you stunningly impressed?" Peter Cushing's Frankenstein cannot, will not, see that he has done something morally repugnant. He can only see personal glory no matter what the cost has been to others (Cushing would have been superb as Colonel Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai - not that Alec Guiness wasn't mind you).

The Curse of Frankenstein put Peter Cushing in the public eye but he never achieved the peer recognition that an actor of his immense talents should have. The Curse of Frankenstein is a fantastic reboot of the Frankenstein story but without Cushing it would have been so much less. The Curse of Frankenstein and The Horror of Dracula that followed set Hammer up for life but none of it would have happened like it did without Cushing. It was Peter. It was always Peter.

This. Is. Horror.

Dracula is horror. He's not the first horror figure by a long shot, that role belonging to some long-forgotten figure spoken of in the caves and drawn on the walls, probably some part mammoth, some part monster. And he's also not the oldest passed down in writing either, with such figures as the golem far surpassing his longevity. But Dracula is horror. He is monster, myth and menace, sexual menace, rolled into one.

Dracula is dread. He's the guy who comes into your home, into your bedroom, and takes care of your wife or fiance while you're away, or just in another room. When he leaves she has a disease, one that you can't cure unless you kill him before she dies and if she dies first there's nothing to do but drive a stake through her heart and cut off her head. But the part that really stings is... she can't wait for him to come back. And it's not like you can compete with him because you can't. See, it's not about looks because he doesn't have any. He's dirty, has a foul odor, sleeps in a coffin and has hairy palms... and she can't wait for him to come back. But it gets worse: He is most decidedly not a subject of the British Empire. Oh no, he's one of those swarthy types, an Eastern European lacking the refinement of a well-bred, well-educated Anglo-Saxon man. That's right, your girl has the hots for a foreigner. A foreigner who spreads disease and can disarm you physically in seconds, throwing you to the ground or out the window while your best girl pants in expectation and pulls back the sheets. You. Are. Impotent.

Dracula is the Victorian man's worst nightmare. And Dracula can be or mean almost anything. He can be the sexual predator, he can be the untrustworthy foreigner or he can simply be the monster hiding under the bed. The fact that Dracula can stand in for so many ills and dreads of our society as the perfect scapegoat is a testament to how well drawn he is in the epistolary novel written by Bram Stoker and first published in 1897. But I'm not here to talk about his multiple meanings or vampire symbology or why people are so afraid of the whole sense of "other." Rather I am here to state boldly and without reservation that the movie that best understands everything stated in the first two paragraphs is 1958's The Horror of Dracula (Dracula in Britain), directed by Terence Fisher and starring Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Doctor Van Helsing.

The Horror of Dracula is a reboot, only they didn't call such things reboots in those days. It takes the basic, very basic, story of the novel and runs with it. The names are changed, the relationships are changed, the plot points are changed. But what they do is more extraordinary than providing a faithful adaptation (that was done by others later and didn't prove very interesting). What they do is cover the themes and ideas of Dracula and throw everything else away. Look not here for a deep reflection upon Van Helsing or Dracula or any of the characters. Look here for the bewitched damsel getting up to open those windows and unlock those doors because he's coming back tonight. Look here for a vampire woman attacking a good English man only to be thrown to the floor by Dracula and later to be staked, through the heart that is, by that very same good English man, already falling victim to the disease himself. Look for children led astray, burned impressions of crucifixes on foreheads, blood spurting death scenes and sunlight sending the unwanted one, that goddamn dark, stinky, swarthy son of a bitch, to his grave, as it were. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Horror of Dracula is about the idea of Dracula. It couldn't give less of a damn about the story of Dracula and that's why it's my favorite of the vampire genre. Because sometimes the best way to adapt a work of one medium to another is to interpret, not transcribe.

Dracula the vampire, and all of his ilk, will play strongly into the ideas and themes discussed this month here at Cinema Styles and so it seems fitting to introduce the month by introducing the Count but make no mistake: There will also be madmen and monsters, witches and ghosts, corpses and killers. It's October and we here at Cinema Styles welcome you and bid you good morning. Let the horror begin.