Friday the 13th (1980) and Friday the 13th: Part III (1982)

It was hit or miss in 1980 whether I could get into R rated movies as I turned 16 years old. Some movie theaters looked the other way and didn't bother checking your ID. Other movie theaters were more vigilant and turned you away if you weren't 18 years old (unless you were accompanied by a parent or guardian). Somehow, I got into Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING when it was released in the summer of 1980. The other big scary film of 1980 was Sean S. Cunningham's low budget FRIDAY THE 13TH, released by Paramount. I don't recall if my parents put the breaks on my desire to see it like they had with JAWS or ROLLERBALL a few years earlier. Or was the terrifying feedback from my friends who saw the film plus the gory, color photos from FRIDAY THE 13TH in my favorite horror film magazine Fangoria enough to make me sidestep the second most popular slasher film to be released after John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN (1978). Whatever the reason, I never did see FRIDAY THE 13TH in its initial release. 

As I start this review four days away from Friday, September 13th, 2024 (coincidence?), I don't believe I've seen the original theatrical version of FRIDAY THE 13TH. Even with some basic cable channels like Turner Classic Movies now showing more contemporary movies uncut with bad language and nudity, a recent viewing of FRIDAY THE 13TH last year on AMC revealed it was not the definitive, blood-spattered version. A couple of death scenes that I had heard about and had seen the stills in Fangoria did not show the full gory reveal. AMC's version had been edited. I am determined this Halloween to watch the uncut original FRIDAY THE 13TH and explore one of its early sequels FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III (1982) that first introduced the hockey goalie mask to the seemingly indestructible killer Jason Vorhees (more about him later). 

Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960) is the grandfather of slasher films. Carpenter's HALLOWEEN would modernize the genre to a new generation of moviegoers. FRIDAY THE 13TH would be the first follow up film to cash in on HALLOWEEN'S success. FRIDAY THE 13TH did a few things right. It smartly moved the horny teenage/college boys and girls from the suburbs to a summer camp in the woods - Camp Crystal Lake to be exact. We all remember those scary campfire ghost stories about the escaped prisoner with a hook for a right hand that had been sighted near the summer camp we all attended.  That urban myth's DNA was embedded in the young movie audience that flocked to see this little horror film that cost $550,000 to make and made $59 million at the box office.  HALLOWEEN implied more violence and gore than it actually showed. FRIDAY THE 13TH took advantage of the burgeoning make up effects and hired up and coming make up effects artist Tom Savini (DAWN OF THE DEAD) to create some memorable and gory death scenes. 

With an original screenplay by Victor Miller and directed by Sean S. Cunningham (he produced Wes Craven's 1972 THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT), FRIDAY THE 13TH opens up with a flashback to Camp Crystal Lake circa 1958.  A group of camp counselors sing camp songs in a cabin. Two counselors Barry (Willie Adams) and Claudette (Debra S. Hayes) sneak away to have sex. They are both stabbed to death by an unseen assailant. Flash forward to the present. Newly hired camp cook Annie (Robbi Morgan) hitchhikes her way to the soon to be reopened Camp Crystal Lake. When the locals at the diner hear where Annie's going, they refer to it as "Camp Blood". Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney), the town derelict warns her the camp is cursed. After catching a ride half way with a kind truck driver (Rex Everhart) to the camp's entrance, Annie is picked up by an unseen driver for the last section. The mysterious driver slashes Annie's throat. 

The rest of the victims, er, I mean counselors arrive at Camp Crystal Lake including Jack Burrell (Kevin Bacon), his girlfriend Marcie Cunningham (Jeannine Taylor), the lovable but lonely Ned Rubinstein (Mark Nelson), the extroverted Brenda (Laurie Bartram), and the athletic Bill (Harry Crosby).  They're greeted by owner Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) whose family originally owned and ran the camp and head counselor Alice Hardy (Adrienne King). Steve heads back into town to pick up supplies. The counselors prepare the camp for the upcoming season. They discover a snake in one of the cabins and kill it with a machete. Ned thinks he sees someone go into a cabin and investigates. Bill powers up the generator. A storm comes over the lake bringing torrential rain. Jack and Marcie duck into a cabin and make love in a lower bunk. In the top bunk above, Ned lies dead with his throat slit. As Jack has a post coital smoke, the killer jabs an arrow up through Jack's throat from under the bunk.  Marcie catches a machete in the skull after taking a shower.

In the main cabin, Brenda, Alice, and Bill play Strip Monopoly. Brenda grows tired and heads back to her cabin. She thinks she hears someone calling for help.  Brenda wanders into the archery range. The lights are turned on, blinding her. Alice and Bill hear a scream. They check the nearby cabins.  They can't find any of the counselors, only a bloody machete. Alice tries to call for help but the phone line has been cut. They try to start one of the cars. The engine won't turn over. Up the road, the owner Steve is dropped off by Sgt. Tierney (Ronn Carroll) after some car trouble. Walking toward camp, Steve runs into someone familiar (off screen) who stabs him.  The killer cuts off the generator to the camp. Bill goes to investigate. When Bill doesn't return, Alice searches for him.  She finds Bill impaled by arrows, pinned to the back of a door. 

Alice is now the Final Girl. She barricades herself in the kitchen.  Brenda's bloody body is thrown through the window.  A jeep arrives at the camp. Alice rushes out, thinking it's Steve. Instead, it's an older woman, Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer). She tells Alice she's a former counselor at Camp Crystal Lake. Mrs. Vorhees reveals years ago her son Jason Voorhees drowned in the lake at at the camp. She blames two counselors for fooling around when they should have been on lifeguard duty. His birthday was on Friday the 13th, this very night. Alice realizes Mrs. Voorhees is the killer. Mrs. Voorhees tries to stab Alice. Alice hits her with a fireplace poker.  Alice stumbles across two more of her dead counselors. Alice hides in the pantry.  When Mrs. Voorhees attacks again, Alice knocks her down with a cast iron skillet. Alice thinks she's killed the mad woman and rests by the canoes.  The indestructible Mrs. Voorhees shows up again. In their final struggle, Alice grabs the machete and decapitates Mrs. Voorhees. Alice climbs into a canoe and floats out into the middle of the lake where she falls asleep until the morning when the sheriff arrives. As Alice begins to paddle toward them, the dead and moldy young Jason Voorhees leaps from out of the water and pulls Alice into the water. But it's just a dream as Alice awakens in the hospital, alive but shaken by the traumatic events.

I always had a bias against FRIDAY THE 13TH as a copycat, ripoff slasher film, riding the coattails of HALLOWEEN'S tremendous success. But like a good scary campfire tale, FRIDAY THE 13TH is a decent chiller that copies some of HALLOWEEN'S tropes but distinguishes itself as well. Having the location at a summer camp is its best decision. Rustic cabins surrounded by a thick forest and dark lake just screams for something horrible to happen. Rather than go with a different holiday title like Labor Day or Valentine's Day (MY BLOODY VALENTINE anyone?), the filmmakers chose Friday the 13th, a day associated with bad luck and misfortune. The death scenes are suspenseful, shocking, and surprisingly quick. George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD lingered on Tom Savini's gore effects longer than horror fans were used to.  For FRIDAY THE 13TH, the death scenes are brief. We see a little gore.  Most is left to our imagination. A few murders occur offscreen (most likely budgetary decisions) with their bloody bodies showing up in the finale. Like HALLOWEEN, characters in FRIDAY THE 13TH are killed after having sex while the virginal Final Girl Alice survives.

Another of my silly prejudices against FRIDAY THE 13TH was none of the actors (except Kevin Bacon) went on to have a major film career afterward. HALLOWEEN made Jamie Lee Curtis and P.J. Soles into movie stars. Watching FRIDAY THE 13TH more closely this time, the ensemble cast of new, unknown actors play their young, awkward characters realistically. We're able to distinguish who's who before they start getting picked off. Bacon is the best looking of the bunch so he gets the best looking actress Jeannine Taylor as his girlfriend. Adrienne King as Alice is a strong character who deserves to be the Final Girl, the survivor. And there was one more actor in the counselor group who was from a famous lineage. Harry Crosby who plays the camp painter/fixer upper Bill is the son of actor/crooner Bing Crosby (THE BELLS OF ST. MARY'S).  Harry's rewarded with the best death scene as he's found by Alice impaled on a cabin door with arrows, including one protruding through his eye.

The killer in the original FRIDAY THE 13TH is not Jason Voorhees who will be the villain for the rest of the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise. Instead, it's his mother Mrs. Voorhees, an early Helicopter Mom.  She seeks revenge on a new batch of counselors, blaming them for Jason's drowning back in 1958 due to a couple of camp counselors negligence. Mrs. Voorhees is reminiscent of another overprotective mother, PSYCHO'S Mrs. Bates. Her son Norman took on Mrs.  Bates's overprotective personality (with wig and wardrobe), killing motel guests who either inflame her son sexually or threaten him. Mrs. Voorhees switches to Jason's childish voice at times, talking to herself as Jason similar to Norman mimicking his mother's voice in PSYCHO. FRIDAY THE 13TH would continue a tradition of casting older veteran actors in horror films like Melvyn Douglas in THE CHANGELING (1980), Rory Calhoun in MOTEL HELL (also 1980), Shelly Duvall in her last film role THE FOREST HILLS (2023) or Vincent Price and Peter Lorre in Roger Corman's TALES OF TERROR (1962). Actress Betsy Palmer who plays the murderous Mrs. Voorhees hadn't really appeared in a theatrical feature film since MISTER ROBERTS (1955) and Anthony Mann's THE TIN STAR (1957).  She turned to TV broadcasting for a while. FRIDAY THE 13TH for good or bad, resurrected her film career.

Just like HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH would spawn numerous sequels, one almost every year after 1980, 12 in total. Like the HALLOWEEN sequels, the FRIDAY THE 13TH  sequels never fulfilled the promise of the original. FRIDAY THE 13TH had the summer camp locale, a young Kevin Bacon for a brief time, some good Tom Savini gore make-up effects, and that creepy music that sounded like "Kill, kill, kill, die, die, die." The sequels just seemed to be a retread of the original, hoping to capture that box office lightning in a bottle a second, third, and seventh time. The sequels never brought any fresh take on the original even when the locale was changed to Manhattan or even outer space. However, FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II (for good or bad) did manage to creatively figure out one dilemma that FRIDAY THE 13TH left them that neither original director Sean S. Cunningham or make up artist Tom Savini supported.

The villain of FRIDAY THE 13TH, the vengeful, psychotic Mrs. Voorhees was dead, her head lopped off by the plucky Alice. Who would take the place of Mrs. Voorhees? In FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II (1981), new director Steve Miner and screenwriter Ron Kurz resurrect the seemingly drowned and dead Jason, Mrs. Voorhees son. It turns out Jason didn't drown back in 1958.  He somehow survived and has been living as a hermit in the woods near Camp Crystal Lake all these years (yes, a bit of a stretch), living on squirrels and berries. PART II implies that Jason may have witnessed his mother's decapitation, transforming him into a killer thirsty for revenge on the next group of unsuspecting camp counselors. 

Amy Steel in FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II (1981)

FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II is set 5 years after the murders at Camp Crystal Lake. A new summer camp is starting up next to the cursed camp (not a good idea but hey, it's horror film logic). PART II spends its first five minutes replaying FRIDY THE 13TH's climax with Alice slicing off Mrs. Voorhees head and Alice's dream sequence (ripped off from Brian DePalma's CARRIE) with dead Jason rising from the depths of the lake to pull Alice underwater from the canoe. The prologue is to remind us who Jason is. FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II is basically the same story as the original except with a slightly bigger budget (allowing for more attractive counselors this time) and the introduction of the previously believed dead, now living Jason Voorhees. Adrienne King as the survivor Alice and Walt Gorney as Crazy Ralph briefly reprise their roles from FRIDAY THE 13TH for PART II. Jason makes sure their appearances are only cameos. Betsy Palmer even returns as Mrs. Voorhees in a flashback sequence as Ginny (Amy Steel) pretends to channel Jason's mother to keep him from slaughtering her.

Just as FRIDAY THE 13TH kept Mrs. Voorhees hidden until the film's finale, PART II does the same with Jason early on besides showing an occasional arm or boot before he kills. As the body count grows, the filmmakers begin to show more of Jason minus his face. Jason finally throws on a burlap sack with holes cut out for his eyes. Jason's a big man, probably in his early 30s, and bald. We still don't know what his face looks like. FRIDAY THE 13TH hinted in the dream sequence that Jason was possibly disfigured or a almost Elephant Man like (it was a dream however). In FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II, Jason's burlap sack hood is ripped off, revealing a disfigured or burned face (it's not entirely clear). HALLOWEEN made sure its killer was recognizable once he began his rampage. Slasher Michael Myers wears a William Shatner Captain Kirk Halloween mask he stole from a hardware store. The FRIDAY THE 13TH filmmakers now have their new franchise killer but they don't have an iconic look for Jason. The burlap sack hood is not going to fly.  That will change with a random decision by director Steve Miner in FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III (1982) that will solidify Jason Voorhees in the pantheon of cinema killers.

Of the first three FRIDAY films, FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III is the weakest of the three. Like PART II, PART III opens with a recap of the finale of PART II replaying PART II's best moment as Ginny stumbles across Jason's shack and discovers the altar to his dead mother complete with her severed rotting head. PART III takes place the day after PART II. A group of friends led by Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmel) take her van to spend a weekend at her parents lake house known as Higgins Haven which just happens to be next door to Camp Crystal Lake. The friends include the couple who will have sex and be slaughtered  Andy (Jeffrey Rogers) and Debbie (Tracie Savage); the comic relief Shelly (Larry Zerner); nice girl Vera Sanchez (Catherine Parks), and stoner hippie couple Chuck (David Katims) and Chili (Rachel Howard). Waiting for them at the lake house is Chris's old flame Rick (Paul Kratka). Naturally, they're unaware that eight counselors have just been murdered at the camp  next door. Jason Voorhees (Richard Brooker) will wander over from his carnage in PART II and proceed to dispatch each character in a variety of grisly ways (pitchfork, spear gun, machete, axe) until only Chris and Jason are left to face off in a battle to the death (or another sequel).

What's wrong with FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III? Plenty. Since it's the 3rd FRIDAY THE 13TH film, the filmmakers (or some VP of Marketing for Paramount) decided to film it in 3-D. In the film, we're subjected to numerous gratuitous objects pointed right into the camera (and if you're not watching it in 3-D, it's annoying). Because the 3-D technology and experts were in Southern California, PART III was filmed in the Los Angeles area even though the story takes place on the East Coast.  FRIDAY THE 13TH was filmed in New Jersey and PART II in Connecticut, more authentic rustic camp locations. Screenwriters Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson's dialogue is terrible (especially at the beginning). PART III even resorts to ripping of the original FRIDAY THE 13TH in a couple of scenes.  Tracie Savage's Debbie has drops of blood fall on her from above before her death similar to Kevin Bacon's Jack in the first film. And like Adrienne King's Alice in the original, Dana Trammel's Chris stumbles into a canoe after killing Jason and paddles into the lake where this time not the young dead Jason but the dead Mrs. Voorhees springs from the water and pulls her under (only for Chris to awake from her dream). Look for thinly veiled homages to PSYCHO (a shower scene) and THE SHINING (an axe breaking down a door scene). 

Dana Trammel in FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III

Fortunately for FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III it will be remembered as the first in the series where Jason dons a hockey mask, a modified Detroit Red Wings to be exact. The film's 3-D effects supervisor Martin Jay Sadoff is credited with having the mask on set and director Steve Miner liked it. Larry Zerner's Shelly actually wears it first as a scuba mask when he comes out of the water and scares Vera. Jason dons the mask later after dispatching Shelly and his hockey mask cinema legacy was born. Former trapeze artist Richard Brooker would play Jason and be the first to get screen billing on the opening credits as Jason. PART III would lose Jason's hillbilly clothes from PART II and opt for a more modern jeans and lumberjack shirt look. PART III does have an interesting backstory on why Chris has trepidations about going back to her parents house. A flashback sequence reveals two years earlier she had encountered Jason in the woods and managed to escape an attack by him. FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III even spoofs itself. Jokester Shelly fakes his own death early in the film with a fake hatchet in the head and blood, scaring his friends.  It's a funny/scary moment that hints at things to come. When Shelly does get his throat slit by Jason later in the film, his friends don't believe him. 

No one will ever confuse the first three FRIDAY THE 13TH films with the first three THE GODFATHER or STAR WARS films.  But I have to give credit to the original FRIDAY THE 13TH with taking the same basic elements from HALLOWEEN and giving its tale a different location, back story, and killer to separate it from all the other slasher films to follow like PROM NIGHT (1980), TERROR TRAIN (1980), and MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981). When director/producer Michael Bay rebooted FRIDAY THE 13TH in 2009 with a bigger budget and effects, his production still couldn't top the original for scares or originality. The original FRIDAY THE 13TH turned out not to be bad luck for the filmmakers, the cast and crew, and Paramount Pictures. To my surprise, this little low budget film that I ignored when I was a teenager and a fan of horror films, deserves to be ranked right behind HALLOWEEN as a classic chiller. 

Shanghai Express (1932)

In the male dominated film world, we often tend to focus on famous and frequent collaborations between male actors and male directors. Collaborations like John Ford and John Wayne (14 films). John Huston and Humphrey Bogart (6 films). David Lean and Alec Guinness (6 films).  Martin Scorsese with Robert DeNiro (10 films) and Leonardo DiCaprio (6 films). Or Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford (7 films). One of the more famous collaborations occurred during the dawn of talking pictures. This collaboration was between a male director and a female actress.  It was Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich.

Sternberg and Dietrich would make seven films together including THE BLUE ANGEL (1930), MOROCCO (1930), BLONDE VENUS (1932), and most famously SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932). Sternberg discovered Dietrich performing in a German cabaret show and transformed her into a movie star (they also became lovers). Complicating matters is that Dietrich would have love affairs with many of her leading men including Gary Cooper and Adolphe Menjou (MOROCCO) and James Stewart (DESTRY RIDES AGAIN). Sternberg and Dietrich's professional and private relationship would come to an end after THE SCARLETT EMPRESS (1934). Dietrich's star was brightest in the 1930s yet her career continued successfully all the way to the early 1960s. Dietrich would collaborate with many other great directors including Billy Wilder (A FOREIGN AFFAIR, WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION), Alfred Hitchcock (STAGE FRIGHT), Fritz Lang (RANCHO NOTORIOUS), and Orson Welles (TOUCH OF EVIL). Sternberg's career would suffer without his muse Dietrich. Nonetheless, Sternberg directed (or co-directed) some interesting projects including CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (1935), he directed reshoots for King Vidor's DUEL IN THE SUN (1944), and he directed most of the Asian themed film noir MACAO (1952) starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell (Sternberg was fired by producer Howard Hughes and reshoots were done by Nicholas Ray, Robert Stevenson, and actor Mel Ferrer).

With a screenplay by Howard Hawks favorite screenwriter Jules Furthman (THE BIG SLEEP, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT) based on the short story Sky Over China by Harry Hervey and directed by Josef von Sternberg, SHANGHAI EXPRESS begins not in Shanghai but the Peiping (aka Peking), China train station in the midst of a civil war. We meet all the key players as they board the train to Shanghai: American gambler Sam Salt (Eugene Pallette), dog loving, boardinghouse owner Mrs. Haggerty (Louise Closser Hale), missionary Reverend Carmichael (Lawrence Grant), French Officer Major Lenard (Emile Chautard), German businessman Eric Baum (Gustav von Seyffertiz), the mysterious Eurasian Henry Chang (Warner Oland), British Officer Captain Donald "Doc" Harvey (Clive Brook), exotic Chinese "coaster" aka prostitute Hui Fei (Anna May Wong), and the infamous and beautiful black veiled Shanghai Lily (Marlene Dietrich) aka "the Notorious White Flower of  China", another lady of the evening. 

The Shanghai Express departs Peiping. During a delay in transit to clear the tracks of cows and chickens, Doc and Lily run into each other. Shanghai Lily (Doc knew her as Madeline) was Doc's old flame until he broke up with her five years earlier. Doc is taken aback that she has turned to prostitution since their breakup. Doc tells Lily "I wish you could tell me there'd been no other men." Lily replies "I wish I could Doc, but five years in China is a long time." At the next stop, the Shanghai Express is stopped and searched by the Chinese army. Passports are inspected. The Chinese army take into custody a suspected rebel spy named Li Fung (Minoru Nishida). While passengers reembark onto the train, a shadowy figure sends a teletype message to the revolutionaries that Fung has been captured.  The Shanghai Express must be delayed at the next stop in Te-Shan.

Doc and Lily catch up on their lives. Lily notices Doc still has the watch she gave him. Doc admits he has not found love since their breakup. A telegram arrives for Lily from a client, possibly a lover. She tears it up in front of Doc. The Shanghai Express pulls into the next village where the rebels wait in the shadows. Gunfire erupts and the Chinese soldiers sitting atop the train cars are mowed down by machine gun. The passengers are forced to disembark again. The rebels bring each passenger to a room to be questioned. Waiting to interrogate each of them is the enigmatic Henry Chang, leader of the revolutionary forces fighting the Chinese army. Chang's looking for a hostage to trade for his right-hand man man Fung. Chang tortures the German Baum for making derogatory remarks toward the Chinese. When Doc tells Chang he's headed to Shanghai to perform an important surgery, Chang decides to make Doc his hostage. The warlord sends a message to the British Embassy in Shanghai to arrange to have Fung brought to him in exchange for Captain "Doc" Harvey. 

Chang questions Lily next and offers to take her to his palace. Chang grabs Lily who rejects his advances. Held in a room next door, Doc overhears the rebel leader and bursts through the door, punching Chang. In retaliation, Fung has Hui Fei brought to him and rapes her (off screen). With negotiations complete, a train with British diplomats and the spy Fung depart to rendezvous with Chang. Hui Fei contemplates suicide by knife for what Chang did to her. Lily steps in and stops her. Chang's jealous and angry with Doc for striking him and plots to blind Doc before releasing him. Lily offers to go to Chang's palace in exchange for Doc's safety. The train arrives. British diplomat Mr. Albright (Claude King) hands over Fung. Chang reluctantly releases Doc.  Doc notices that Lily's luggage has been taken off the train. Chang reveals that Lily will be staying with him. While the foreign passengers prepare to board the train to Shanghai, Hui Fei emerges from the shadows and stabs Chang to death.  Doc retrieves Lily and the train pushes off from the platform. The Shanghai Express finally reaches Shanghai. Doc catches Lily trying to buy another watch for him. He asks Lily for a second chance.  They kiss passionately. 

Part of the fun in watching SHANGHAI EXPRESS is that most of the passengers on the train have a secret. The character with the biggest secret (and one that's revealed early in the film) turns out to be Mr. Chang who's the leader of the rebels fighting the Chinese army. German businessman Baum's secret is he trades in the illegal drug opium not coal as he tells Chang. Baum reveals his secret under intense interrogation by Chang and he's branded for insulting Chang. Under scrutiny by Chang, it's revealed Major Lenard has not been in the French army for a long time even though he still wears a uniform. A dishonorable discharge perhaps. Mrs. Haggerty tries to sneak her dog into first class. A porter catches her and the dog is placed in the cargo section. During the rebel takeover of the train, Mrs. Haggerty will retrieve her prized pooch. When Doc Harvey runs into his old flame Madeline, he's not aware that she's the infamous "Shanghai Lily." Lily will reveal her secret to Doc early in the journey, providing the rest of SHANGHAI EXPRESS for the two former lovers to reconcile during the turmoil. Chinese prostitute Hui Fei will nearly kill herself over her rape by Chang. Lily will suspect her secret when she stops Fei from plunging a knife into her heart. Fei will have her revenge. 

The arc of Shanghai Lily in SHANGHAI EXPRESS is a joy to watch. She begins the adventure a "fallen woman", a courtesan providing her services to rich men up and down the Chinese coast. Her life seems romantically empty. When she bumps into her old beau Doc Harvey on the Shanghai Express, she gets a second chance to win back her true and only love (Lily had tried to make Doc jealous five years earlier to test his love for her. Doc left her over the stunt). Lily's hopes (and eyebrows) raise when she notices Doc still wears the watch she bought him (with her photo inside). She stands up to Chang who makes overtures toward her until Doc busts through the adjacent door and protects her virtue by decking Chang. Lily will return the favor (unbeknownst to Doc) by offering to depart with Chang to his jungle fortress if he will not burn Doc's eyes out for insulting Chang. By the film's end, Lily and Doc are ready to give love another try. They were always meant for each other. 

The females Lily and Hui Fei are the most heroic characters in SHANGHAI EXPRESS (with Doc Harvey the one heroic male figure). When Lily learns that Chang plans on maiming Doc for humiliating the warlord before turning him back over to the British and Chinese authorities, Lily's willing to sacrifice herself to Chang for Doc's safety. Lily with Reverend Carmichael's recommendation even turns to prayer to save his love. "I think you're right, if God is still on speaking terms with me," she tells the Reverend. Fei will risk her life by seeking vengeance on Chang. Fei's actions not only free herself physically and emotionally from the sexual predator Chang, it provides the impetus for the remaining characters to safely board the train and continue on to Shanghai.

From the moment Marlene Dietrich as Shanghai Lily lifts the black veil from her face as she boards the Shanghai Express, you can see why her leading men, her director, and audiences fell head over heels in love with the Teutonic beauty. Although Director of Photography Lee Garmes won an Academy Award for Cinematography for SHANGHAI EXPRESS, Dietrich claimed in her autobiography that Director Sternberg and not Garmes did most of the camerawork. Whichever man was involved, the deep soft focus and black and white photography on Dietrich is gorgeous (Madonna would recreate one of Dietrich's poses in her music video Vogue). SHANGHAI EXPRESS's visuals are German Expressionistic. Light and shadow, smoke, steam, shots through door slats and translucent curtains dazzle the eye.  Sternberg incorporates a couple of long tracking shots at the beginning, signaling SHANGHAI will not be a static film. Sternberg uses sound to great effect too. In SHANGHAI EXPRESS'S most suspenseful sequence as Fei kills Chang and Doc searches for Lily amongst the chaos, Sternberg shuns music and uses the train's bell like a metronome, each toll a warning for the passengers to get back on the train and depart before the rebels regroup after the death of their leader.

Upon first viewing, Clive Brook who plays Captain Donald "Doc" Harvey seems too upper stiff lip and British to have been Shanghai Lily's lover.  Watch it again and Brook grows on you.  Doc still loves Lily intensely upon their reconnection.  Doc internalizes his feelings for Lily for most of SHANGHAI EXPRESS until he overhears Chang making unwelcome advances toward her. Doc's crashing through the door and punching Chang is one of the highlights of the film (to be followed by Hui Fei's revenge on Chang). SHANGHAI EXPRESS'S surprise is watching Doc and Lily fall in love again. Lily had become a fallen angel after she broke up with Doc. She offers to forfeit her freedom to have Doc released from Chang's clutches. Doc stands up for Lily's honor twice: once when Reverend Carmichael tries to put down Lily for her profession and later punching Chang to protect Lily's honor. Brook mostly worked in Great Britain during his film career and may have played the first talking Sherlock Holmes in William K. Howard's SHERLOCK HOLMES (1932). 

Anna May Wong who plays the exotic prostitute Hui Fei is recognized as one of the first Chinese-American film stars in cinema. Hui Fei's relationship to Shanghai Lily is as mysterious as Fei herself.  They are both "coasters" i.e. prostitutes. Is Fei a contemporary of Lily, a protege, or possibly even a lover? It might just be a coincidence they're on the same train. There's an unspoken bond between the two women. Lily knows what Chang did to Fei and stops her from killing herself. Fei's shame and rage will bring her to kill Chang, allowing Doc, Lily, and the rest of the passengers to escape on the "Express" back to Shanghai. Wong would face racism throughout her career where "Asian" roles she was clearly perfect for went to better known Caucasian actresses like Myrna Loy. Wong's performance in SHANGHAI EXPRESS is her best. Other films to catch Wong in include Lloyd Corrigan's DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON (1931) with SHANGHAI co-star Warner Oland and Arthur Lubin's film noir IMPACT (1949). 

Besides Dietrich, the second most recognizable face in SHANGHAI EXPRESS is Warner Oland who plays the diabolical rebel leader Henry Chang. Oland would rise to greater fame as Oriental sleuth Charlie Chan in a series of Charlie Chan mysteries for Fox in the 1930s including CHARLIE CHAN IN SHANGHAI (1935). For SHANGHAI EXPRESS, Oland plays a darker character than the affable Chan. At the start of the film, Chang has an international air to him that quickly morphs into a xenophobic, misogynistic coldness when he's revealed to be the leader of the bandits. Chang's disdain for the western world (except for Shanghai Lily) is palatable. Horror fans will remember Oland as the botanist who bites and turns Henry Hull into a werewolf in Stuart Walker's WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935). Ironically, even though Oland played numerous Asian characters throughout his brief career ( he died in 1938 from pneumonia) he was of Swedish descent with no known Asian origins. 

Providing the comedy relief for SHANGHAI EXPRESS is one of my favorite characters actors, the bullfrog voiced Eugene Pallette as American gambler Sam Salt. Salt wants to bet on every single thing that happens in SHANGHAI EXPRESS. Salt's secret? The diamonds he wears are fake. He tells Mrs. Haggerty the real ones are in a Shanghai hotel safe. But is Salt real or a fraud?  We're never sure.  Other great Pallette performances include as Friar Tuck in Michael Curtiz's THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1937) and as Mr. Pike in Preston Sturges THE LADY EVE (1941) with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda.

There's something about the word "express" in a movie that conjures up locomotive intrigue, adventure, movement, and possibly even murder. Just the title SHANGHAI EXPRESS caught my attention immediately. Hollywood has been intrigued by "express" as well, providing the title for many different films.  Film noir director Jacques Tourneur (OUT OF THE PAST) made BERLIN EXPRESS (1948) starring Merle Oberon and Robert Ryan involved in a Nazi assassination plot on a train Post World War II. Mark Robson's VON RYAN'S EXPRESS (1965) takes place in Italy during  World War II. A group of British and American POWs led by Frank Sinatra flee ala THE GREAT ESCAPE from their German captors on a hijacked locomotive. One of the most famous trains in the world is the Paris to Istanbul Orient Express, the setting for Agatha Christie's murder mystery whodunit novel made into two star studded motion pictures. The original MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974) was directed by Sidney Lumet and the more recent 2017 version directed by Kenneth Branagh who also plays Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. 

Mark Robson's final film (he died during post production) would be another "express" adventure film called AVALANCHE EXPRESS (1979) starring Lee Marvin, Robert Shaw (who also died before the film was released), and football great Joe Namath (yes that Joe Namath). Instead of Nazis in Robson's BERLIN EXPRESS, AVALANCHE EXPRESS'S plot involves a CIA agent smuggling out a KGB defector on the Atlantic Express (but avalanches are involved). SHANGHAI EXPRESS was so good and successful that Hollywood remade it not once but two times. The first remake Ralph Murphy's NIGHT PLANE FROM CHUNGKING (1943) starring Robert Preston, Ellen Drew, and Otto Kruger reimagines the plot on both a bus and later a plane traveling from China to India.  The more authentic remake would come eight years later in William Dieterle's PEKING EXPRESS (1951) starring Joseph Cotten, Corinne Calvet, and Edmund Gwenn (MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET) about a group of refugees fleeing Communist China who are attacked by outlaws on a train. Neither remakes leading lady would come close to Dietrich's performance.

Some final SHANGHAI EXPRESS tidbits. A thousand Chinese extras were used to provide the film's foreign atmosphere. The language heard in the film is Cantonese. Director Sternberg would later make MACAO with numerous Asian extras and 2nd Unit footage shot by a cameraman of the Chinese island of Macao. SHANGHAI EXPRESS was made Pre-Code meaning that the film could get away Dietrich and Wong portraying prostitutes and the pre and post implications of Chang's rape of Fei. If SHANGHAI had been made a year later, Dietrich and Wong's characters would have been changed to dancers or cabaret singers. When the 1986 adventure/romance film SHANGHAI SURPRISE came out with on and off screen couple Sean Penn and Madonna at the time, I assumed it was a remake of SHANGHAI EXPRESS even though I hadn't seen either film. Never assume. Although a period film set in 1938 Shanghai, SHANGHAI SURPRISE has nothing to do with SHANGHAI EXPRESS except for the word "Shanghai". Madonna plays not a prostitute but a missionary. 

SHANGHAI EXPRESS would pave the way for more movies about a group of different people thrown into some kind of crisis.  Movies like Alfred Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES (1938), John Ford's STAGECOACH (1939), Robert Aldrich's THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (1965), and Ronald Neame's THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) all owe a debt of gratitude to SHANGHAI EXPRESS. SHANGHAI EXPRESS is director Josef von Sternberg and actress Marlene Dietrich at their best, taking us to an alluring part of the world during a tumultuous time in China's history with a love story as fascinating as the events and episodes that occur in the film. 

Field of Dreams (1989)

Timing is everything.  The baseball fantasy FIELD OF DREAMS was released in 1989.  Set in Iowa, the story of a farmer who turns his corn field into a baseball field that attracts the spirits of baseball icons from 1919 captivated American audiences including myself.  But I was also attracted at how beautiful a stalk of corn looked (they don't call me CRAZYFILMGUY for nothing!). So imagine my delight when one of my oldest and best friends Dan announced he was getting married in 1991 and the wedding was to be in Iowa. When we played golf for his Bachelor's Party, what surrounded the golf course and fairways?  You guessed it. Corn fields. Ray Liotta's Shoeless Joe Jackson asks Kevin Costner's Ray Kinsella if the baseball field surrounded by corn is heaven?  Costner replies, "It's Iowa." But for a kid from Oregon, those endless corn fields were heaven. 

Baseball is known as America's past time. If you ask two different people, one would tell you baseball is a great sport to watch with plenty of strategy, punctuated by strikeouts and home runs.  The other person would tell you baseball is boring. It's too slow.  It doesn't have enough action. As a kid, baseball was the first sport that I fell in love with and played.  I was a pretty decent player for the first few years I played until we switched to metal cleats and I became afraid of getting spiked in the ankles at second base. I switched to basketball as my new favorite sport. When I became a father and had a son, baseball was the first sport he was introduced to.  It was my first opportunity to share something in common with my son (besides STAR WARS movies). It was also a chance for myself and all the other fathers to relive our glory years playing catch and hitting batting practice with our offspring. 

Baseball would not seem like a sport suited for the cinema yet the late 1980s was an amazing decade for the sport. It all started with Barry Levinson's THE NATURAL (1984) starring Robert Redford that was one of the most beautifully photographed films I had ever seen.  John Sayles EIGHT MEN OUT (1988) would explore the story of the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson who were bribed to lose the World Series . "Shoeless" Joe focuses prominently in the plot of FIELD OF DREAMS. Kevin Costner caught the baseball bug appearing in another baseball film a year earlier than FIELD OF DREAMS in Ron Shelton's comedy BULL DURHAM (also 1988) about a minor league baseball team with Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. And David S. Ward's MAJOR LEAGUE (1989) about a fictional ragtag group of players playing for the Cleveland Indians including Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, and Corbin Bernsen would come out the same year as FIELD OF DREAMS. 

Based on the novel Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella and written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson (SNEAKERS), FIELD OF DREAMS begins with a clever, quick voiceover montage as husband, father, and neophyte farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) tells the audience about his father's love for the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox and his favorite player "Shoeless" Joe Jackson before scandal ruined Jackson's career, Ray's strained relationship with his father, and a brief history of Ray's life including attending college at University of  California-Berkley during the late 60s, meeting his future wife Annie (Amy Madigan), the birth of their daughter Karin (Gaby Hoffmann), and how they came to buy a farm in Iowa. We cut to Ray walking through his fields of corn at sunset when he hears a voice whisper, "If you build it, he will come." A little startled, Ray asks Annie back at the house if she heard a voice. She didn't. Ray hears the voice at night in his bedroom, repeating the same words. The next day, Ray hears the words again only this time in the distance he sees the image of a baseball field with lights and a lone player in a white uniform. Ray realizes the voice is telling him to build a baseball field in the middle of his corn field. 

Ray tells Amy his crazy vision and asks her if he's lost his mind. Ray doesn't want to lose the spontaneity in life that he felt his father did. Annie encourages Ray to follow his dream. Ray begins to plow up part of his corn field to the chagrin of his neighbors and Annie's brother Mark (Timothy Busfield) who works for the creditors that provided the loan. Ray and Annie build the field and bleachers and put up the lights. The corn stalks beyond the outfield serve as the home run fence. Annie keeps an eye on their finances. They may almost break even with part of their income now a baseball field. Little Karin breaks up their dinner discussion. Karin tells them there's a man standing on the baseball field. Ray walks out to find "Shoeless" Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) standing before him in his White Sox uniform. Ray and Joe play catch.  Ray pitches to Joe who  nearly hits Ray with a line drive. Joe reminisces about what it was like to play and travel as a Major League ball player and have that taken away from him. Before disappearing back into the corn stalks, Joe asks if he can bring his teammates back next time. 

Mark and his wife and Annie's mother visit the farm to talk sense into Ray and Annie. They can't see the rest of the 1919 Chicago White Sox team playing baseball behind them. The voice returns and tells Ray "Ease his pain." Ray and Annie attend a school board meeting where parents want to ban several books including one by Pulitzer Prize winning author Terence Mann (James Earl Jones) who was the voice of the 60s movement. Annie sticks up for Mann and denounces the censorship. Ray researches what happened to Terence Mann. He learns Mann lives in Boston and loved the Brooklyn Dodgers and had not gone to a baseball game in years. Ray believes it's Terence Mann's pain he needs to ease. Ray drives to Boston and locates Mann's apartment. Mann is not very friendly or happy to have Ray at his door. Ray tells Mann his crazy story and insists he has to take Mann to a baseball game. Mann gives in and they go to watch the Boston Red Sox. Nothing happens at the game until Ray hears the voice tell him "Go the distance." He looks up at the scoreboard which flashes the statistics for a "Moonlight" Graham.  He played half an inning in the Major Leagues but never got to bat. Ray apologizes to Mann for bringing him on a wild goose chase. He drops Mann back at his apartment. As Ray turns his VW Bus around, Mann blocks his way. Mann has heard the voice too. 

They head together to Chisholm, Minnesota to find "Moonlight" Graham. In Chisholm, they discover he's known as Doc Graham (Burt Lancaster) as he became a doctor. He's also been dead since 1972. Ray walks around town that night, a mist transporting him back to 1972. Ray meets Doc Graham on the sidewalk. They return to Graham's office where Graham wishes he had one at bat in the Majors. Ray asks him to return to Iowa with him but  Graham declines. Ray and Mann head back to Iowa. Along the way, they pick up a young hitchhiker trying to make it as a baseball player. His name is Archie Graham (Frank Whaley). Back home, Mann is incredulous at all the old time ball players on the field. Shoeless Joe asks Archie to join the game. Archie has one at bat. Mark makes a final offer to Ray and Annie to sell the farm. They argue and Karin falls off the bleachers. She's not breathing. Young Archie crosses the first base line and transforms into the older Doc aka "Moonlight" Graham. Karin is choking on the hot dog she was eating. Doc clears her airway. Graham can't go back to his younger self. He thanks everyone and disappears into the corn field. Now, even Mark can see the baseball players. Shoeless Joe invites Mann to see what's beyond the outfield. Mann promises to write a book about it. One ball player remains on the field. It's Ray's father John Kinsella (Dwier Brown) as his young self. They talk and play catch as the sun sets and cars from all around the county with their headlights on begin to arrive to see the baseball field in the middle of a corn field. "Build it and they will come."

When I first saw FIELD OF DREAMS in 1989 (two years out of college), the whole father/son theme flew over my head which is crazy as I was fortunate enough to have a father who was around to play catch and shoot baskets with me during my formative years. In 1989, I was more captivated by the fantasy aspect of a disgraced group of baseball players from the early 20th Century returning as ghosts via a corn field portal to play baseball. Director Robinson sets the stage when Ray first hears the voice amongst the corn stalks tell him "If you build it, he will come." There's a sense of mystery to those words much like Charles Foster Kane whispering "Rosebud" on his death bed in Orson Welles CITIZEN KANE (1941). What does "If you build it, he will come" mean? Who will come? What does he need to build?

Robinson plays it close to the vest, keeping the real mystery all the way until the last five minutes of the film. At first, it seems obvious. Ray's father's favorite baseball player was Shoeless Joe Jackson. When Ray and Annie build the baseball field, Shoeless Joe appears one night to their astonishment, later bringing his Chicago White Sox teammates with him to practice. The wish has been granted. Then, Ray hears the voice tell him "Ease his pain." Those words take him on another journey away from his field of dreams, to reclusive 60s author Terence Mann. Ray doesn't find Mann in pain. Mann just wants to be left alone from former hippies who knock on his door, looking for the answer to life from him. Ray thinks taking Mann to a Red Sox baseball game will "ease his pain." Nothing happens until Ray hears one last instruction, "Go the distance" and sees a message on the scoreboard about a little known Major League player named "Moonlight" Graham. Only this time, Mann hears the voice too. 

Ray and Mann go the distance to Minnesota to find former Major League ball player "Moonlight" Graham to help them with their mystery. Graham had only one appearance in the major leagues, played half an inning and never got to bat. Only they learn Graham died in the early 70s. Since this is a fantasy film, Ray walk back into time that night and encounters Doc Graham on the street. The two men chat in his office. Ray offers him the chance to return to Iowa and have that at bat. Doc declines. The mystery seems to have come  to an end. Ray has gone the distance from Iowa to Boston to Chisholm, Minnesota with nothing gained. On the way back to Ray's farm, Ray and Mann pick up a young hitchhiker. His last name is Graham. Archie Graham. When they return to the baseball field, Shoeless Joe and his teammates are expecting Archie.  He gets his one at bat before turning back into older Doc Graham to save Ray's daughter. All the phrases have come full circle. "If you build it, he will come" is for Shoeless Joe and young Archie "Moonlight" Graham. Shoeless Joe's pain is eased by playing baseball again. Moonlight Graham's pain is eased by having one chance to swing the bat at the plate. Only at the end does director Robinson answer the real mystery by revealing the last player on the field, wearing catcher's gear. Ray's father as a young man. The field was built to reunite Ray with his father. 

Ultimately, FIELD OF DREAMS is about second chances. For Shoeless Joe Jackson, it's a second chance to play the game he loved, a game that was taken away from him by fix he never had his heart in. For Terence Mann, it's a second chance to be excited about life after the 60s fervor faded away, a chance to see what's beyond the corn stalks in center field, inspiration to write another novel. For Archibald (Archie) "Moonlight" Graham, it's a second chance to step up to the plate and have a swing or two at a pitch or even get a hit (Graham hits a sacrifice fly). When young Graham turns back into older Doc Graham to save Ray's daughter from choking, Doc is content with his one and only opportunity to face a pitcher and swing a bat. And for Ray Kinsella who thinks he built the baseball field to bring back his father's idol Shoeless Joe Jackson, it becomes a second chance to play catch with his father, the younger John Kinsella he never knew, a young man who loved baseball and tried to pass on the passion to Ray with limited success. The baseball field was built to bring Ray's father back, a second chance for father and son to play catch and reconnect.

Known as the Black Sox Scandal, the story of the 1919 Chicago White Sox , Shoeless Joe Jackson, and his role in the World Series has all the makings of a Shakespeare tragedy. The White Sox were accused of fixing the Series by intentionally losing the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for monetary payments from gamblers. Two years later, a trial would ensue and although the jury would bring back a verdict of not guilty, eight White Sox players including Shoeless Joe would be banned from baseball by new Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Shoeless Joe Jackson's involvement has never quite been confirmed as Jackson set a World Series record at the time with 12 base hits, a batting average of .375, and committed no errors. If the fix was on, Jackson didn't get the word or refused to comply. But he was made an example by Commissioner Landis.

Kevin Costner who plays Ray Kinsella would have quite a meteoric rise in the 1980s.  Costner's cinema debut would be almost entirely cut out in Lawrence Kasdan's comedy/drama THE BIG CHILL (1983) as the former college classmate who commits suicide that brings his friends back together. Only shots of Costner's funeral attire and wrist are shown at the start of the film. Kasdan would repay Costner for that sacrifice by giving him a lead role in the his adventure western SILVERADO (1985) opposite Kevin Kline and Danny Glover.  A star was born. Costner would catch fire with back to back  hits in Brian DePalma's THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987) and Roger Donaldson's NO WAY OUT (1987). Going against the grain, Costner would surprise everyone by appearing in two baseball movies one after the other.  BULL DURHAM would come first. In most of his early and subsequent movies, Costner usually played confident, sometimes cocky characters.  But in FIELD OF DREAMS, Costner's Ray Kinsella is an every man, not very confident about farming or razing part of his crop to build a baseball field. Costner's goofy and charming and it's one of my favorite performances by him.

Usually the role of the wife to a film's big star is a thankless role. Amy Madigan blows that concept out of the water in FIELD OF DREAMS. As Annie Kinsella, Madigan is a ball of energy delight. She believes Ray's heard a voice and joins Ray in following his crazy inspiration to build a baseball field even at the risk of losing the farm. Because she believes, she can see Shoeless Joe and the other White Sox players just like Ray.  Madigan's best scene is when she challenges Beulah (Lee Garlington) an angry PTA mother who wants to ban books at a school meeting. Like Costner, the 80s was a good decade for Madigan with interesting roles in Walter Hill's STREETS OF FIRE (1984), John Hughes UNCLE BUCK (1989) starring John Candy, and Robert Benton's PLACES IN THE HEART (also 1984) where Madigan would co-star with her future husband actor Ed Harris (THE TRUMAN SHOW). 

One of the keys to FIELD OF DREAMS success are the triumvirate of actors who play key supporting roles in the film: a Hollywood legend, a consummate Broadway and movie/TV actor, and a rising star. Casting Burt Lancaster as Doc Graham was a stroke of genius.  Lancaster made a career playing morally dubious characters in films like Alexander Mackendrick's SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957) and Richard Brooks ELMER GANTRY (1960). But in FIELD OF DREAMS, Lancaster's Graham is a grandfatherly soul. Watching newcomer Costner act with veteran Lancaster is a dream. James Earl Jones has the most fun arc in FIELD OF DREAM as writer Terence Mann. Mann's journey will take him from angry reclusive writer to giddy baseball fan when he sees Shoeless Joe and the others on the baseball diamond. In the book, Ray kidnaps real author and recluse J.D. Salinger of Catcher in the Rye fame. The character was changed to fictional Mann for the film. Jones became famous to millions of young filmgoers as the voice of Darth Vader in the STAR WARS films. Jones's film breakthrough came as a champion boxer in Martin Ritt's THE GREAT WHITE HOPE (1970).  His illustrious career includes roles in Stanley Kubrick's DR. STRANGELOVE (1964), John Badham's THE BINGO LONG TRAVELING ALL-STARS & MOTOR KINGS (1976), John McTiernan's THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (1990), and the voice of Mufasa in Disney's animated THE LION KING (1994).

I had a man crush on Ray Liotta the moment I watched his performance as Melanie Griffith's just out of prison, ex-boyfriend Ray Sinclair in Jonathan Demme's SOMETHING WILD (1986).  You couldn't take your eyes off Liotta's smoldering performance. Liotta followed that film up with FIELD OF DREAMS and soon after Martin Scorsese's GOOD FELLAS (1990).  Not a bad start. Liotta would play a lot of psychopaths and crooked cops throughout his career. With FIELD OF DREAMS, Liotta shows us another side as a street wise but playful Shoeless Joe Jackson, thankful for another opportunity to play the game he loved.  It's just a supporting role yet Liotta makes us care for Joe the first moment we meet him (and hear Liotta's infectious New Jersey laugh).  Rounding out the stellar cast are three small but important roles.  Timothy Busfield (TV's THIRTYSOMETHING) as Annie's brother Mark has the toughest role. Busfield's the heavy and Annie's brother.  We don't want Mark to stop them from chasing this wild dream but we understand his angst.  His sister and brother-in-law might lose their house. In the end, Mark becomes a believer too.  Frank Whaley (PULP FICTION) as young Archie "Moonlight" Graham brings a nice Midwest innocence to his role.  And Dwier Brown (THE CUTTING EDGE) has the Rosebud moment.  He's not the sled from Charles Foster Kane's childhood in CITIZEN KANE. He's John Kinsella, the young version of Ray's father. Brown brought tears to thousands of grown men's eyes as he plays catch with his now grown son Costner. He's the reason the baseball field in the middle of a corn field was built. 

It was a joy to revisit FIELD OF DREAMS, a rare gem of a film that touches the heartstrings more than I remembered the first time I saw it. It's hard to believe that a baseball fantasy film like FIELD OF DREAMS ever got made in the first place. The only other previous baseball fantasy film that comes to mind is 1958's DAMN YANKEES based on the Broadway play about a frustrated Washington Senators fan who makes a deal with the devil to help the Senators win. After FIELD OF DREAMS, five years would pass before another filmmaker would attempt a baseball fantasy film. William Dear's ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD (1994) about celestial angels assigned to help the California Angels win a pennant would be released starring Danny Glover, Tony Danza, and newcomers Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Adrian Brody, and Matthew McConaughey. 

Like most sports films, it's the story outside of the baseball theme in FIELD OF DREAMS that grabs the audience. The scenes of throwing and catching and hitting the baseball are just icing on the cake. FIELD OF DREAMS was blessed with an excellent adapted screenplay by Phil Alden Robinson, experienced producers in Charles and Lawrence Gordon, and a Hall of  Fame cast of Costner, Madigan, Jones, Liotta, and Lancaster. Besides a talented group of Hollywood filmmakers and actors, there's no question that the image of a baseball field surrounded by those stalks of corn that so captivated me in the theater and later my visit to Iowa had a role in the magic and success of FIELD OF DREAMS. 

Starman (1984)

When Steven Spielberg's E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL burst onto movie screens in the summer of 1982 and became a huge success both critically and at the box office, audiences waited in anticipation to see what other films about aliens (both good and malevolent) visiting planet Earth would follow. Hollywood was never one to shy away from a hit film about a cute little extraterrestrial without capitalizing on its success with similar cute alien films. One of the surprise and underrated movies that spawned from E.T. was STARMAN (1984) directed by the most unlikely director to make a romantic, uplifting film about a visitor from outer space. That director was John Carpenter.

At the time, Carpenter was the horror film king of the late 70s and early 80s with hits like HALLOWEEN (1978), THE FOG (1980), and THE THING (1982) which intentional or unintentional was the polar opposite (no pun intended) of E.T. THE THING was about a frozen space alien that thaws out and terrorizes a U.S. Science Base in Antarctica. Carpenter films were not warm and fuzzy. Perhaps looking for something to make outside his wheelhouse, Carpenter chose STARMAN. What differentiates STARMAN from E.T. is that the alien that crash lands on earth isn't an adorable space creature. The outer space visitor takes on the appearance of a recently widowed woman's dead husband after cloning itself in his image from a strand of the husband's hair kept in a photo album.

Carpenter is a film aficionado and one of his favorite directors was Howard Hawks who besides directing great westerns like RED RIVER (1948) and RIO BRAVO (1959) made several romantic screwball comedies as well including BRINGING UP BABY (1933) and HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940). In STARMAN, Carpenter has the opportunity to play with some other genres besides horror and science fiction.  STARMAN is part buddy film, part road trip film, and in a strange way, a romantic screwball comedy with Karen Allen (RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK) as the grieving widow and Jeff Bridges (THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS) as the fish out of water alien who takes on her dead husband's appearance and tries to make sense of this brave new world he has come to visit. 

Directed by John Carpenter from a screenplay by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon (and uncredited re-writes from Dean Riesner), STARMAN begins with the United States launching Voyager 2 into outer space in 1977 with an invitation to visit Earth.  Among the items on the probe are a gold phonographic record with greetings from 54 nations and musical recordings including the Rolling Stones "Can't Get No Satisfaction." The probe passes by an unknown planet that intercepts it and sends an emissary to take up mankind's invitation. The alien ship enters Earth's atmosphere where it's mistaken first for a meteorite by NORAD before National Security Agency director George Fox (Richard Jaeckel) orders the UFO shot down by two fighter jets. The space ship crash lands in northern Wisconsin in a fireball. Fox orders Mark Shermin (Charles Martin Smith) with SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) to fly to Wisconsin to investigate. A blue light aka the Star Man emerges from the crash and heads toward a cabin on a lake. Inside, Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen) watches home movies of her deceased husband Scott Hayden (Jeff Bridges) before going to bed. The blue light enters the cabin, floats around the living room, and finds a lock of Scott's hair in a photo album. It completes a full symbiotic transformation and clones itself to look like Scott. Using one of seven silver spheres he carries, the Star Man sends an emergency transmission to his home planet to pick him up in three days at a pre-determined location. Jenny is awakened by a noise and investigates. She finds her dead husband naked in her living room. Star Man hears helicopters in the distance. The Army are looking for the space visitor.

Jenny tries to flee in her '77 Mustang but the battery is dead. Star Man touches the ignition and it starts. Star Man explains he's from another planet, a high evolved civilization. He needs  her to take him to Arizona. Jenny reluctantly agrees to take him to his rendezvous point. When Star Man scares her by quoting "Satisfaction," Jenny tries to cause an accident with another a van to be rescued. Star Man scares the other driver Brad Heinmuller (John Walter Davis) away by melting his lug wrench and causing a tree to explode. Back in Wisconsin, Shermin inspects the alien craft. The meteorite turns out be hollow aka a space ship. He finds the gold phonographic record inside. Star Man observes Jenny as she talks and drives. He learns about restrooms, becoming hungry, speeding through a yellow light, the joy of apple pie, and making obscene gestures. Star Man reveals to Jenny if he misses his pickup, he will die. They stop at a truck stop diner. Scott is intrigued by a dead deer tied to the hood of a car by a redneck hunter (Ted White).  Star Man revives the dead deer. Drawing the ire of the hunter and his pals, they beat him up before Jenny fires a pistol she brought along in the air. They race away from the hunters only to be followed by a pair of state troopers (Dirk Blocker, M.C. Gainey) to a Holiday Inn.

While Jenny sleeps, Scott watches FROM HERE TO ETERNITY on TV, taking particular attention to the famous love scene on the beach. Jenny and Scott slip by the state troopers the next morning. The troopers give chase and Star Man naively brandishes the gun at them. Jenny is shot by one of the troopers.  Star Man uses another silver sphere to protect them as he crashes the Mustang into an overturned tanker.  Star Man carries the dying Jenny away from the fiery inferno. They hide in an empty manufactured home pulled by a flatbed. Star Man uses his second to last silver sphere to bring Jenny back to life. When the flatbed stops at a diner, Jenny discovers Star Man has left her behind, catching a ride out west with the diner's cook (George "Buck" Flower). Jenny calls the police to tell them she has not been kidnapped. Her call is transferred to Shermin. Shermin has a road block set up to catch the Star Man. Jenny hitches a ride with a young Hot Rodder (Sean Stanek). They cause a small explosion to distract Shermin and the army at the checkpoint.  A Native American family take Jenny and Star Man to a railroad yard. During the drive, Jenny reveals to Star Man she can't have children.  They jump onto an empty railroad car heading to Arizona.

Star Man and Jenny make love on the train. The Army figures out Star Man is headed for Arizona.  They set up a mobile command center. Shermin reports to it and discovers the center includes an emergency autopsy room. The Army doesn't want to interview the alien visitor. They want to kill and dissect the Star Man. Star Man tells Jenny she's pregnant with his and Scott's baby. He will know everything Star Man knows and grow up to become a teacher. Star Man and Jenny get off the railroad car to discover they're not in Winslow, Arizona. They're in Las Vegas. Jenny realizes she has lost her wallet.  Star Man uses his powers to win $500,000 on a slot machine.  They buy a Cadillac and continue toward Winslow. Director Fox orders the helicopters looking for Star Man and Jenny to be armed. Star Man and Jenny stop for directions to the crater outside Winslow. The police arrive and detain them for Director Fox. Shermin arrives first and tells the trooper they have the wrong people. Shermin has them released. Star Man and Jenny hike down into the crater.  A group of helicopters swarm the crater, firing rockets at the couple to stop them.  A miniature version of the Star Man's planet arrives to pick him up. It begins to snow in the crater. Jenny wants to go with Star Man. He tells her she would die on his planet. He gives her his last silver sphere and tells her to give it to their child.  Scott aka the Star Man rejoins his spaceship.

STARMAN may seem like an adult rip-off of E.T. but there's more to that coincidence than meets the eye (see that story below in Trivia Tidbits). Both films have similarities and differences.  Both the alien E.T. and Jeff Bridges' Star Man have child-like, naive qualities to them. Both visit Earth from their respective planets. E.T. is accidentally left behind by his parents. Star Man has come as an ambassador from his planet, accepting Earth's invitation via the Voyager probe. Both will find human companions that will guide them in this foreign environment they find themselves in. E.T. is discovered by a young boy named Elliott (Henry Thomas). Star Man is accepted reluctantly at first by widow Jenny Hayden. Her trepidation may stem from the fact that Star Man has cloned himself into the image of Jenny's dead husband Scott. Oh, and she had to watch Star Man grow from an infant to a grown, naked copy of her husband in just twenty seconds.

The U.S. Government will be interested in both extraterrestrials. With E.T. it's not clear if the government has nefarious aspirations in capturing E.T. or not.  Spielberg keeps their intentions mysterious until the third act. In STARMAN, there's no question that the NSA and the U.S. Army want to capture and perform an autopsy on the Star Man.  But besides protectors Elliott and Jenny, both films will have one adult who has wanted to meet someone from another galaxy since they were kids and will make sure that the alien visitor will not be caught. In E.T. it's Peter Coyote who plays a government scientist known as Keys (for most of the film we only see his keys jangling from his keyring). In STARMAN, it's Charles Martin Smith as Mark Shermin, consulting for the NSA but his heart is with SETI a non-profit searching to make contact with someone from another world like the Star Man. Shermin will uncover his superiors don't have any intentions of keeping Star Man alive. 

What sets STARMAN apart from E.T. is the adult, romantic relationship that evolves between Jenny and the Star Man culminating in a tasteful sex scene in a traveling rail car. The fact that Jenny gets a second chance to be with a version of her dead husband via the Star Man who has cloned himself into Scott is touching and poignant, after the initial shock wears off. Star Man will find himself moved and touched by the human Jenny. When Jenny confides that she can't have children, Star Man makes it his mission that she will have a baby by impregnating her, giving her a gift that will keep alive both Scott and the Star Man's DNA. E.T. is more about the symbiotic relationship between the alien and the young boy Elliott.

Besides the romantic elements of STARMAN, there are a few not so subtle shots at the behavior of the human species. When Shermin discovers the NSA and Army's plan to dissect and examine the Star Man, Shermin explodes.  "What the hell ever happened to good manners? We invited him here!" He has a point. Earth sent out a probe inviting alien races to visit tEarth. When Star Man arrives in our atmosphere, the first thing we do is fire missiles at his spacecraft. Star Man's encounters with humans does not go well either.  After resurrecting a dead deer strapped to a car, Star Man is beat up by a group of redneck hunters before Jenny comes to his rescue. After watching Jenny handle a handgun, Star Man will later brandish the weapon at the pursuing state troopers resulting in Jenny getting shot. Mankind is not as civilized as we think we are. No wonder the Star Man wants to get back to his home planet. 

One of the credits on STARMAN is actor Michael Douglas who has an Executive Producer credit. Douglas developed the property and was planning on playing Star Man.  He would ultimately choose to make ROMANCING THE STONE (1984) instead directed by Robert Zemeckis. Jeff Bridges would land the role of Star Man. It's a great opportunity for an actor and Bridges makes the most of the part, playing Star Man like a naive, young child as he learns about the human race, his movements almost bird-like as he learns to inhabit a human body. Bridges performance as Star Man will make you think of Dustin Hoffman's Oscar Winning performance as autistic savant Raymond Babbitt in Barry Levinson's RAIN MAN (1988). Just remember Bridges STARMAN came first.  Hoffman would win a Best Actor Academy Award. Bridges was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in STARMAN, the first time an actor had been nominated for playing a non-human aka alien character. 

Actress Karen Allen is the embodiment of the Howard Hawks female that director Carpenter must have watched in Hawks films like Jean Arthur in ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (1939) or Lauren Bacall in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944).  A Hawksian woman is tough, sexy, and can drink like one of the guys.  Allen played that type of woman to a tee in Steven Spielberg's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) as Marion Ravenwood.  In STARMAN, Allen's Jenny Hayden is tough but in a different way. She's just lost the love of her life, her housepainter husband Scott Hayden. She's still in mourning nine months later. When the Star Man turns her life upside down (cloning himself to resemble Scott), Jenny has to hold it together. Does she turn the Star Man in to the authorities or help him get back to his planet. Bridges and Allen may not have a lot of snappy banter like in a Hawks screwball comedy (Star Man talks in a monotone voice), but there's plenty of humor between the two as Jenny tries to teach Star Man humankind's customs, jargon, and rules. 

Two of my favorite supporting actors appear in STARMAN.  Charles Martin Smith made his film debut playing the sweet, goofy high school nerd Toad in George Lucas's AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973). In STARMAN, Smith plays science nerd Mark Shermin. Shermin works for the bureaucratic NSA, but he's really interested in making contact with an alien species. Shermin will get his wish when he encounters Jenny and the Star Man near the large meteorite crater in Winslow, Arizona after pursuing them from Wisconsin. When Shermin realizes Director Fox and the Army's plans for the Star Man are anything but friendly, he will be the catalyst in helping Star Man to get home. Other great Charles Martin Smith movies to catch include Carroll Ballard's NEVER CRY WOLF (1983) in which Smith has the lead role and Brian DePalma's THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987) opposite Kevin Costner and Sean Connery. 

Richard Jaeckel plays Shermin's alien hating superior NSA Director George Fox. I became a big fan of Richard Jaeckel after his Academy Award nominated performance as Paul Newman's logging brother in SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION (1971) co-starring Henry Fonda and Lee Remick. Early in his career, Jaeckel seemed primed to be the next James Dean. I recently watched Daniel Mann's COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA (1952) with Burt Lancaster where a young Jaeckel plays sandy haired high school jock Turk Fisher. Besides bad guy roles, Jaeckel would also play authority figures in films like Robert Aldrich's THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967) as an MP that joins the mission and Sam Peckinpah's PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973) as a Sheriff. In STARMAN, Jaeckel's Director Fox is fairly two-dimensional but his reaction at the film's finale when he notices the giant spaceship above his tiny military helicopter is priceless. 

Some final STARMAN Trivia Tidbits. Even though STARMAN appears like it was created after the success of E.T., both films were in development at Columbia around the same time by different production companies. Columbia took a pass on E.T. which got picked up by Universal and the rest is history. Columbia would greenlight STARMAN a few years after E.T.'s success. It's odd that Columbia would pass on E.T. since they were the studio that released Steven Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) about another alien visitation. STARMAN did well enough at the box office and critically that it spawned a brief television series also called STARMAN. The series ran from 1986-87 for 22 episodes and starred Robert Hays (AIRPLANE!) as the Star Man who returns to Earth 15 years later to reunite with his grown son and find Jenny Hayden (Erin Gray). Lastly, I mentioned John Carpenter was a aficionado of old films.  Carpenter was quoted in an interview with LA Weekly that STARMAN "is a love story. It's IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT", a reference to the Frank Capra 1934 comedy starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert as two strangers who go on a road trip together and fall in love.  Sort of like...STARMAN.

E.T. brought me to tears especially at its finale when the little alien returns to his family and leaves his human friends behind. STARMAN had that same effect on me.  When Star Man brings the dead deer back to life and his farewell to Jenny in the crater, tears well up in my eyes every time.  STARMAN also is the rare film where the romantic leads don't walk into the sunset together or live happily ever after. Like William Wyler's ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953), Richard Linklater's BEFORE SUNSET (1995) or Clint Eastwood's THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (1995), some romantic relationships are fleeting or complicated.  STARMAN is the ultimate heartbreaker.  Jenny cannot go back to the Star Man's planet. He cannot survive on Earth.  STARMAN is John Carpenter's most romantic film.  Yes, it has explosions, some special effects, an armada of helicopters, and car chase scenes. But it has a unique love story that will span beyond our solar system, uniting briefly two people whose future was tragically cut short. STARMAN points out we need to be better as a race. The film offers hope that Jenny and Star Man's future son may be the guide to show us how.