Tagarchief: Dungeon Classics

Dungeon Classics #29: The Getaway

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon’s Chief Editor JK sorts through the Dungeon’s DVD-collection to look for old cult favorites….

The Getaway (1972, USA)

Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw, Sally Struthers, Al Lettieri
Running Time: 101 mins.

Seventies classic with a terrific Steve McQueen as bank robber Carter ‘Doc’ McCoy who goes on the run with his wife (Ali MacGraw) after a job went awry. Both the police and criminals are on their tail. What makes this movie work is that it is in fact a love story. McCoy was in jail for five years and his wife had to have sex with a parole board member to get him out. This man – Beynon – was also the one who ordered the bank job and assigned two amateurs to Doc’s team. They are the ones who screwed it up and one of them (Rudy played by The Godfather villain Al Lettieri) is now after them. McCoy can’t forgive his wife for what she did, despite her good intentions, and this psychological drama makes the movie rise above the routine lovers on the run story. Director Peckinpah’s trademark slow motion violence is on display during the finale in a memorable sequence in a hotel.

Dungeon Classics #28: Dead Man

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon’s Chief Editor JK sorts through the Dungeon’s DVD-collection to look for old cult favorites….

Dead Man (1995, USA, Germany, Japan)

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Crispin Glover
Running Time: 121 mins.

A meek accountant called William Blake (Johnny Depp) travels through the old West. His destination is a place called Machine where he is supposedly hired for a job. But is this journey real, or is it a metaphorical journey undertaken by a dead man? He is in hell, a fellow passenger assures him. Things don’t get better when he arrives in Machine. There is no job for him, and he is soon forced to kill a man in self defense, which leads to him becoming a wanted man. He is then taken on a journey to nowhere by an Indian called nobody who believes he is the poet William Blake. Underway, he meets a long list of stupid white men to kill, played by well known actors/artists, including Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott, Iggy Pop and Alfred Molina. Dead Man is a so-called acid western, a subgenre of the western that ‘subverts many of the conventions of earlier Westerns to conjure up a crazed version of autodestructive white America at its most solipsistic, hankering after its own lost origins’ (Wikipedia). It is another mesmerizing piece of art by writer-director Jim Jarmusch. The beautiful black and white imagery, accompanied by a moody electrical guitar score composed and performed by Neil Young, serves to create a truly unique atmosphere. Dead Man is best described as film as poetry. The images are the words and – like the poetry of William Blake – powerful words they are.

Dungeon Classics #27: Clerks

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon’s Chief Editor JK sorts through the Dungeon’s DVD-collection to look for old cult favorites….

Clerks (1994, USA)

Director: Kevin Smith
Cast: Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti
Running Time: 92 mins.

Writer-director-comedian Kevin Smith once said in an interview that Reservoir Dogs influenced him to make Clerks. “A bunch of guys talking about movies and making dick jokes, that counts?!?” So he maxed out his credit cards, sold his comic book collection and filmed at night at the quick stop grocery store where he worked. The protagonist is Dante ‘I’m not even supposed to be here today’ Hicks. An appropriate name because Dante literally thinks he’s in hell. He hates the store, the stupid customers and basically his whole existence. His partner is the foul mouthed Randall who ‘runs’ the video store next door, which means bitching about movies, abusing customers and playing hockey on the rooftop. Clerks follows Dante’s and Randall’s misadventures as they deal with weird customers, (ex-) girlfriends and two deaths happening that very same day. Now Smith is no Spielberg, but two things he can do: write a screenplay that is funny as hell and find the boys and girls who know how to deliver these great lines. Clerks started a whole franchise of Kevin Smith comedies with many of the cast members frequently returning. Some movies are good (Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back!), but like with Bond Girls, the first one is still the best. Clerks is clever, original and very, very re-watchable.

Dungeon Classics #26: The Running Man

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon’s Chief Editor JK sorts through the Dungeon’s DVD-collection to look for old cult favorites….

The Running Man (1987, USA)

Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto
Running Time: 101 mins.

The Running Man is an adaptation from a book by Stephan King (published under his pseudonym Richard Bachman) and it’s another cult classic from Schwarzenegger’s golden years. It is about a futuristic game show (the film is set in 2017-2019) in which contestants have to escape violent hunters – who go by names such as Buzzsaw and Fireball – who try to kill them. Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger), who was framed by the totalitarian government for a mass killing at a protest, is forced to participate. That’s bad luck for the hunters! The film is shot as a typical American game show and it’s very enjoyable. Truth be told, the film didn’t age extremely well, but in Schwarz’s eighties/nineties action movie benchmark, it still manages to almost score a position in the top tier. And that is saying something! When Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for governor, he rode around in a campaign bus and named it after this film. Unfortunately, this was the final movie for Richard Dawson (who plays gameshow host Kilian) and Erland van Lidth (who plays hunter Dynamo).