Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)

In my review of Parts: The Clonus Horror, I posited that more than a few people have wondered what it would be like to have a clone of themselves. But I wouldn't be surprised if a larger number of people had imagined what they'd do if they could turn invisible. While I doubt people having the ability to become invisible will happen in any of our lifetimes, it's definitely something that can send the imagination running wild.

Invisible people have been a part of pop culture for seemingly forever. But the concept was perhaps most famously depicted in the 1933 movie The Invisible Man, starring Claude Rains. Based on the H.G. Wells novella from 1897, The Invisible Man was another entry into the batch of classic horror movies starring what's since been labeled the "Universal Monsters." The movie would inspire countless imitators, one of which I remember really enjoying when I was a kid. The movie in question was John Carpenter's Memoirs of an Invisible Man, itself based on a novel written in 1987 by H.F. Saint. I liked the movie a lot in my adolescent years, so when I saw it on HBO recently, I figured I would check it out and see if I liked it as much as I did back then. So what say we dig in, huh?

Meet Nick Halloway (Chevy Chase), a stock analyst so disenfranchised with his life and his job that he spends every waking second trying to avoid his responsibilities. Stuck attending a boring shareholders' meeting with a nasty hangover, Nick sneaks out and tries to catch a nap in an empty room. But thanks to a freak accident in one of the building's laboratories, Nick is caught in the ensuing blast and is rendered completely invisible.

His presence is discovered by the technicians responding to the accident, and word of an invisible man catches the attention of shady CIA operative David Jenkins (Sam Neill). Jenkins sees the potential military applications of an invisible secret agent, but fearing the possibility of being a lab rat for the rest of his life, Nick flees. His only help is Alice Monroe (Daryl Hannah), a woman Nick recently met through a mutual friend and quickly fell for. But her assistance may not be enough, as Jenkins and his goons keep moving in closer and closer.

When my family first got HBO in the middle of the '90s, I remember discovering Memoirs of an Invisible Man and thinking that it wasn't that bad a movie. It wasn't great, but I thought it was an okay little flick. Revisiting it as an adult almost twenty years after its release, the movie's mediocrity is more readily apparent. To its credit, it's a watchable movie that does show a few flashes of potential greatness. But there are so many things that it just doesn't get right, and that really hinders the whole project.

Sitting in the director's chair is legendary horror/sci-fi filmmaker John Carpenter. I enjoy a lot of Carpenter's work, but Memoirs of an Invisible Man marks a shift in his career. He'd reached what was arguably the peak of his creativity during the '70s and '80s, but once the '80s transitioned into the '90s and Memoirs was made, it all started going downhill. Sure, he came close to regaining his previous glory with In the Mouth of Madness, his criminally underrated homage to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, but Carpenter's movies from the '90s on haven't really been all that great.

But we're here to talk about Memoirs of an Invisible Man, so let's stick with that. Though I rag on the movie, Carpenter's direction isn't that bad. His work is actually what makes the film watchable. Even when his movies aren't that good, there's no denying that Carpenter has boatloads of talent. And though Memoirs isn't among his best work, he's still obviously trying as best he can. Unfortunately, Carpenter seemingly can't keep the movie's tone consistent. The movie comes off like it's supposed to be a serious character study, but finds itself bouncing around with romantic and comedic scenes that muddles what I'm assuming was the movie's original identity. It feels like Carpenter was forced to deal with meddling studio executives who wanted a movie with a broader appeal.

I'll get more into that later, but I will say that for all of the movie's flaws, Carpenter at least tries to make things work. It helps that the invisibility effects are good. There are a few moments where they aren't 100% effective, but these instances are few and far between. The effects are really, really good, to the point that they're practically the star of the movie. Carpenter does cheat quite a bit by (more often than not) actually showing Chevy Chase and having everyone else on set pretending they can't see him, but I can forgive that. I imagine that it would be hard to form an emotional connection with a character if they're practically a disembodied voice.

But let's go back to that whole "executive meddling" discussion for a second, this time in regards to the script. Credited to Robert Collector, Dana Olsen, and William Goldman, the script seems like it could have made for one hell of a movie. I mean, I think the movie would have turned out for the better had things been done differently. Drop most of the comedy, rein in the romance, and make it simply a character study about a man who spent his whole life hiding from the world and has now been put in a situation where he desperately longs to be found. That would have been a great movie.

And in watching the movie that was eventually released, I can see that Collector, Olsen, and Goldman were trying to write the movie that I wanted to see. But the inconsistencies in its tone, the continued bouncing between drama to comedy to romance and back again, causes the movie to be unsure of its own identity. If the movie doesn't know what it wants to be, then the whole thing suffers.

It even causes the cast to suffer too. From everything I've read, the movie was intended to be a vanity project for Chevy Chase. The story I heard is that Chase had wanted to use it as a bridge into more serious acting jobs after spending his entire career working in comedy. And I'll confess that I did struggle to buy Chase in a serious role because of how long he's been a comedian. His performance here isn't perfect, but considering that this was his first real attempt at broadening his acting horizons, he's not bad either. In retrospect, I'm not sure if Chase was the right guy for the role, but I honestly can't say he was awful.

Daryl Hannah, on the other hand, didn't really do much to impress me. She seemed way too low-key for my tastes. And I can't say I thought she and Chase had a very believable romantic chemistry together, either. Their whole affair came off to me as being a bit tepid and dull. The way their story was written was lame enough to begin with, but Chase and Hannah simply didn't do anything to make me care.

And last but not least is Sam Neill, who I still enjoyed despite having the feeling that he was playing just another paint-by-numbers sleazeball government agent. It's a character that's been done a million times in a million movies, but Neill does just enough to make it work. 

Memoirs of an Invisible Man is a movie that could have been awesome. It could have been one of the best sci-fi flicks of the '90s. But with less-than-impressive performances and a general inability to decide just what the hell it wants to do with itself, it ends up being disappointing and sadly rather forgettable. I wanted to like the movie, but it was too hard for me to overcome the huge mountain of mediocrity that it builds up. I don't normally call for movies to remade, but I'd actually be okay if somebody wanted to do a remake of this particular little trainwreck. Maybe then Memoirs of an Invisible Man could be awesome.

Final Rating: **

The Thing (1982)

If you went to the movies in 1982, you probably heard of a little flick called E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. But around that same time, you might have overlooked another movie featuring an alien that's gone on to become a cult classic: John Carpenter's The Thing. A remake of the 1951 sci-fi movie The Thing From Another World (which itself was based on John W. Campbell's short story "Who Goes There?"), the movie was a box office failure, thanks to both the E.T. phenomenon and a series of unfortunately bad reviews. However, time has been kind to The Thing, as it has been hailed by fans of both the sci-fi and horror genres as an underrated classic.

Our film begins in the winter of 1982, in the middle of the frozen wasteland of Antarctica. Alone and cut off from the rest of the world, the lives of an American science expedition are interrupted by gunfire, coming from a group of Norwegians with cabin fever shooting at a dog. Unfortunately, none of the Americans have any idea what's going on, as the Norwegians accidentally blow up their helicopter and are shot dead by Garry (Donald Moffat), the station commander. The dog becomes friendly with Clark (Richard Masur), the group's animal handler, but strange things are afoot at the Circle K. (Hooray for Bill & Ted references!)

Confused, helicopter pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Dr. Copper (Richard A. Sysart) decide to check out the Norwegian camp. With a snowstorm beginning to close in, MacReady and Cooper find the camp destroyed, everything apparently dead. They gather anything they can salvage, and head back to their home base. As the temperature begins to fall, the team is surprised by an unwanted visitor, as the Norwegians dog begins to mutate before finally being killed. A second expedition to the Norwegian camp reveals something similar to a flying saucer, buried under the ice for an estimated 100,000 years. The group determines that the dog was not of this world, and that their shape-shifting visitor has the ability to infect any living thing it comes into contact with. Paranoia rips through the station, as each man questions the actions of those around him. Who is human, and who is The Thing? And just who will survive?

The Thing is great, no bones about it. The first installment in what director Carpenter calls his "Apocalypse Trilogy" (the other two installments being 1987's Prince of Darkness and 1995's In the Mouth of Madness), The Thing is a study in contrasts. Long periods of unnerving silence are punctuated by brief flashes of grotesque horror. With The Thing, Carpenter shows exactly how to illicit primal terror from a viewer. He draws things out for what seems like forever, only to have all hell break loose for just a few moments before returning to that quiet suspense.

Personally, I found The Thing be just as good as its closest contemporary, the original Alien. (Your mileage may vary, of course.) Bill Lancaster's great screenplay is brilliantly humorless, making itself seem like the darkest dark humor ever, with the unexpected moments of violence, and the bickering scientists never managing to actually accomplish anything. The large ensemble cast are all great, with notable highlights coming from Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley (yes, that Wilford Brimley), and Keith David, and Ennio Morricone's minimalist score is reminiscent of many of Carpenter's scores in being bizarre, creepy, and very understated.

Rob Bottin's special effects also stand up and demand to be noticed. Simultaneously mesmerizing and disgusting, the practical effects hold up quite well in today's CGI-dependent Hollywood. They only appear a few times, but his gory creations are some of the film's most memorable moments. From a body opening up and biting off a doctor's arms, to a head ripping itself from its body before growing spider-like legs and running away, the gruesome effects are still repulsive and shocking, even by today's standards.

Even if the movie doesn't have much in the department of social commentary like other Carpenter movies (They Live, for example), it still works as an effectively scary movie. Great special effects, good actors, and several memorable moments abound, so I'll give The Thing a much-deserved four stars. If you get in the mood for an alien splatter movie or a great cult classic, I recommend The Thing; I think you'll enjoy it.

Final Rating: ****

Halloween (1978)

If you're both a fan of the horror genre and a self-professed "child of the '80s" like yours truly, then you probably remember the innumerable slasher films released during the decade of excess. From classics like the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises to lesser-known gems like April Fool's Day and Prom Night, it seems like there were hundreds of these flicks released during the '80s.

But while the "golden age of slashers" was kick-started by the original Friday the 13th in 1980, the sub-genre's basic formula was truly defined by John Carpenter's 1978 opus Halloween. Often credited as the father of all slasher movies, Halloween's legacy as one of the true genre classics has been tarnished somewhat by the seven inferior sequels that have followed it between 1981 and 2002. But no matter, because Halloween is a damn fine horror movie.

Our tale of terror takes us to the sleepy Illinois town of Haddonfield, circa Halloween 1978. A young man named Michael Myers (Nick Castle) has escaped from Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where he had been incarcerated for murdering his sister as a six-year-old. Returning to Haddonfield after spending fifteen years in Smith's Grove, he acquires a mask and set of knives from the local hardware store, before hunting down a quarry to satisfy his bloodlust.

He soon discovers the perfect prey in a trio of friends: socially awkward babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), horny cheerleader Lynda Vanderklok (P.J. Soles), and the equally horny smart-aleck tomboy Annie Brackett (Nancy Loomis). Hot on Michael's trail is his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), who is the only one who understands how truly evil his patient is. Dr. Loomis seeks to prevent Michael's rampage, and with the help of the local sheriff (Charles Cyphers), he attempts to find and stop Michael before he can kill again.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the biggest devotee of the Halloween franchise. It's not that I dislike the franchise or anything, but I'm just more of a Freddy and Jason person. However, I can appreciate a good movie when I see it, and Halloween is awesome. Moviegoers back in the '70s must have realized that too, because the movie racked up 47 million dollars and a spot as one of the highest-grossing independent films ever. Thanks to the movie's small budget, somewhere in the neighborhood of 325,000 dollars, Halloween is a minimalist affair. But this actually works in the movie's favor, allowing the crew to get a little more inventive with how the movie is made instead of relying upon special effects to handle it for them.

Director John Carpenter doesn't let the meager budget get in his way, as he manages to do a fantastic job. Take the film's prologue, for example. Carpenter opens the film with an amazing five-minute Steadicam sequence, actually three shots carefully edited together to create one long one. It serves as a long point-of-view shot, as we see through someone's mask-covered eyes as he enters sneaks into a house and hacks a young woman to death with a butcher knife, before running into the front yard and having the mask pulled off. The camera spins around to show us that the murderer is none other than a six-year-old boy in a clown costume. I thought it was a perfect opening scene, because it exemplifies the movie's entire attitude. You know something is going to happen, but you don't know how and you don't know when. You just know that when it does happen, somebody's gonna end up in a world of pain and we're gonna be privy to every second of it. The movie's concluding seconds are also show this, as we get a montage of all the important locations we've seen during the movie. These don't show where Michael could be, but where he has been. Michael was pretty much everywhere, like an evil that simply could not be escaped.

There are also two very excellent moments with Michael near the end of the movie. Both of them are simple, but both of them are truly frightening. In one, the Laurie character has discovered all of her friends dead, and in her hysteria, she begins sobbing with her back to an open door, the darkened room it leads to completely devoid of light. And ever so slowly, the lifeless features of Michael's mask slowly take form in the shadows behind Laurie, almost as if Michael was appearing out of thin air. We see, ten minutes after this, the second scene I'm referring to. Laurie believes she's gotten the better of Michael, quietly trying to catch her breath and compose herself in the camera's foreground. Michael lies motionless in the background for a few moments before quickly, unexpectedly sitting up and staring at Laurie with those black, soulless eyes. If Michael Myers were a shark, those two moments would be where they cued up the theme song from Jaws.

And on the topic of music, how about Carpenter's score? If one thing can be agreed upon in regards to Halloween, it's that the music composed by Carpenter (who listed the fictitious Bowling Green Philharmonic Orchestra in the credits as the music's "performers") is one of the movie's strongest assets. Using only a piano and a synthesizer, Carpenter has created the genre's most iconic, enduring scores. The music is just as simplistic as the rest of the movie, but it is nothing short of haunting, taking what would be mundane scenes and making them terrifying. Seriously, the movie would only be half as scary, if that, without the music. Go rent the movie and watch it with the volume turned down if you don't believe me.

Carpenter's fingerprints are all over this bad boy, as he and frequent collaborator Debra Hill co-wrote the screenplay too. I don't believe anyone is ever going to argue that the script for Halloween deserved any awards, but it does have some great dialogue and some great scenes, as well as two great horror movie characters in Michael Myers and Dr. Sam Loomis. Their story is very much a Van Helsing tale set in 1970s suburbia. But unlike the fearless Van Helsing, who is sure of himself and knows exactly how to defeat the vampire menace, Dr. Loomis is unsure of just how to stop Michael. And never let it be said that Dr. Loomis does not know fear, because it sure looks to me like he does. While the good doctor doesn't fear for his own life, he instead fears for the lives Michael might take instead. And if he can't stop Michael, he's going to at least try to make sure Michael is slowed down. And that's a pretty good hero, if you ask me.

Michael, on the other hand, is pure evil. He is listed as "The Shape" in the credits and is referred to as the boogeyman throughout the actual movie, both fair assessments of the character. Michael might have the shape of a man, but inside, he's completely soulless. His plain white mask is emotionless, with deep black eyes that have no life inside them. He's just a heartless, soulless killing machine. While the character's motivations have been brought up in the sequels, Michael's a million times scarier when he has no motivation. A killer that murders his victims just for the sake of it is, to me, much more frightening than one that has some sort of lame excuse. If Donald Pleasence ran up to me one day and said, "Look, there's this whackjob that killed his sister for no reason when he was a kid, and he busted out of the loony bin last night and he's gonna kill half the town and I don't know why, and we're all pretty screwed if we don't find him and stop him right the hell now," I'd be on the first plane to Timbuktu until the whole thing blew over.

The other characters, meanwhile, are typical slasher movie characters. Laurie is your standard "Final Girl," the intelligent stick in the mud that is the complete opposite of her friends. She isn't a sex-addicted drunk like the others, and unlike her friends, she actually gets to defend herself instead of getting killed due to making stupid decisions. Annie and Lynda, on the other hand, are our comic relief for the evening. Neither of them are all that bright; Lynda would rather drink beer, have sex with her super-annoying boyfriend Bob (played by John Michael Graham), and use the word "totally" in every sentence whether she needs to or not, while Annie has no problem pawning the child she's babysitting off on Laurie so she can go get laid. Not only that, but at one point, she feels the need to strip down to nothing but her skivvies because she spilled a little something on her shirt. Who does that?

Last but not least is the cast. Jamie Lee Curtis does a wonderful job as Laurie, despite not having a whole lot demanded of her outside of acting nerdy before acting scared out of her mind. You'd never notice that this was only her first movie by the way she holds the screen, and she proves to be deserving of the "Scream Queen" title that was bestowed upon her. Nancy Loomis and P.J. Soles, meanwhile, play characters that are a little annoying and kinda stupid, but are still likable and entertaining in their own ways. Loomis and Soles look like they're having a lot of fun playing a pair of airheads, so I won't so I won't fault them for that.

But I believe it goes without saying that the true stars of the movie are Donald Pleasence and Nick Castle. This is their movie, and both of them are excellent. Castle stays mostly in the background and in the shadows for the majority of the movie, but when he gets to stand front and center, he has an intimidating, almost inhuman presence that really fits the character. Pleasence, the movie's most accomplished actor, is pitch perfect as Dr. Loomis. His dialogue would probably sound pretentious if delivered by anyone else, but Pleasence delivers them with a dramatic sense of urgency, as if every second that passes while Michael is loose is a second that moves us closer to the end of the world.

Halloween has earned a reputation as being one of the horror genre's most enduring modern classics. A remake and bunch of grossly inferior sequels are never going to change that. It's a brilliant movie, and an important benchmark in the horror genre. And thirty years after its initial release, it still holds up. That's why I'm so bummed that newer generations of horror fans that have yet to see it only know of the most recent entries in the franchise. So yeah, I guess what I'm saying is that if you haven't seen Halloween, what's the deal? Why not? Halloween isn't flawless, but it's very, very close. So I'm giving it four and a half stars and a hearty seal of approval. Go check it out, and don't let the boogeyman get you while you're out trick or treating.

Final Rating: ****½

They Live (1988)

In the pantheon of directors that use their films to make social commentaries, one of the most underrated is John Carpenter. While he may have gained fame from such cult classics as Halloween and Escape from New York, perhaps some of his best work comes in films where he had a statement to make. Take movies like The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness. One can view The Thing as a movie about McCarthyism, while In the Mouth of Madness can be seen as a cautionary tale about losing yourself in fantasy while reality crashes around you.

Another of these movies is They Live, a near-parody of the "Reaganomics" society of the late 1980s, where wealth ends up in the hands of a yuppie minority while the working class get poorer and poorer. While not as famous or acclaimed as some of his other films, I'm of the opinion that's it's up there as one of his best. It also marks his return to the realm of science fiction, serving as a nod to classic sci-fi movies from the 1950s, along with a dash of nihilism to boot.

As the movie begins, we're introduced to Nada (Roddy Piper), a down-on-his-luck construction worker who's just moved from Denver to Los Angeles in search of a job. Living out of a backpack he carries with him, Nada finally finds work at a construction site. But unfortunately, with no money to rent an apartment or motel room, he's forced to camp in a village of homeless people near where he works. While relaxing in the homeless neighborhood after work, Nada glances at the old, crappy television that some of his "neighbors" happen to have. It's never explained how exactly they have electricity, so I'm just gonna assume that they somehow had a generator, or patched into a utility pole. Maybe they even got an extension cord and ran it into someone's house. Just because they're homeless doesn't mean they're not resilient.

Anyway, all that's on TV are crappy fashion commercials until a pirate broadcast interrupts. A gruff middle-aged man with a beard rants off some kind of conspiracy theory, amusing Nada, who compares the rant to a similar statement that a fellow construction worker, Frank (Keith David), made earlier. When Nada notices some suspicious activity around a Presbyterian church across the street from his makeshift home, it arouses suspicions that the conspiracy ideas may actually have merit. He sneaks into the church, where he discovers a large chemistry set, and boxes of seemingly ordinary sunglasses. He takes a box, hiding it in an alley for safekeeping.

When he walks back into the street and puts on the glasses, he makes a discovery that he was never prepared for. Street signs, billboards, and magazines contain subliminal messages like "Obey," "Conform," "No Independent Thought," and "Do Not Question Authority." Money contains the message "This Is Your God."

But it's not until he bumps into a man at a magazine rack that he discovers that he can see the true face of humanity. The wealthy and important are actually aliens that are keeping humans ignorant to their plan of planetary domination through subliminal messages and hypnotism. And by God, Nada's gonna bring 'em down.

Up until the discovery of the sunglasses, the movie's atmosphere is unusual, and is relatively slow. It seems like Carpenter is making an attempt to make a bland, preachy movie about the poor and downtrodden of society. But after ol' Rowdy Roddy finds the glasses (which makes everything look black-and-white, by the way), the movie gets crazy-go-nuts. I think the only other guys that would have worked in the lead role would maybe be Bruce Campbell or Kurt Russell, but I think Roddy does what he does with excellence. His pro wrestling background helped him a lot, as he was super-intense without even looking like he was upset. Besides, I don't believe that Bruce Campbell or Kurt Russell could have made a five-minute street fight look good, nor deliver some of Nada's great dialogue. I don't know who else could storm into a bank with a shotgun and declare "I am here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum" with a straight face. And while there are good performances from Keith David, Meg Foster, and George "Buck" Flower, they're all overshadowed by Roddy Piper. The movie is all his.

The movie's script is great, though its source material helped it a great deal. Based on Ray Nelson's 1963 short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning," They Live could be looked at as being The Matrix (i.e. a man discovers that the world he knows isn't what he thinks) with a smaller budget and less emphasis on flashy, over-gaudy special effects. Carpenter also proves that he can be a master storyteller when he chooses to. With a lesser director, the movie probably would have come off as silly, or unintentionally hammy, but with Carpenter, the movie remains intriguing and suspenseful. I also liked the fact that whenever the hypnotic waves of the aliens' TV broadcasts were interrupted by the pirated broadcasts, those watching got headaches. That was a pretty creepy touch that I never really see anyone mention when they talk about the movie.

Like with the majority of his movies, Carpenter also did the score for the movie. Despite not being as good as some of his other film scores (Halloween and In the Mouth of Madness stand out in my mind), this one is certainly fitting, especially in the beginning. It sounds like music you'd hear in a seedy blues bar, which helped make the characters seem even more down on their luck. If there's one thing I like, it's fitting movie scores.

Combining sci-fi and action, a cool hero, an unusual narrative, and just a ton of entertainment, They Live is one of John Carpenter's most entertaining movies. It's deserving of far more recognition than the occasional broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel or Halloween movie marathons. If you have yet to see it, check it out.

Final Rating: ****