Nighthawks (1981)

Title: Nighthawks (1981)

Director: Bruce Malmuth

Cast:  Sylvester Stallone, Rutger Hauer, Billy Dee Williams, Joe Spinell

Review:

Most of the time a films production problems are completely transparent to the audience. A film will arrive to theaters, people will embrace it and make it a blockbuster; but how the film got there, and all the troubles it went through to get made are sometimes never known to the audience. This was the case for me with Nighthawks, a film I have liked ever since I first saw it many years ago as a kid. I wasn’t aware it had gone through a couple of problems on its way to the silver screen. It was one of the first films I saw with a truly evil and memorable villain, Rutger Hauers performance as Wolfgar is one that I have never forgotten, it made an impression on my young mind. What problems did this film face? Well, for one, the films orginal director was to be Gary Nelson, the director behind The Black Hole (1979) and Allan Quartermain and The Lost City of Gold (1986), looking back at his filmology makes me happy that Gary Nelson didn’t end up directing Nighhawks. But moving on, the first problem the project faced came when Gary Nelson abandoned the project. He was then replaced him with Bruce Malmuth, a director who had worked with Stallone before. Everything seems to be running smoothly when suddenly, on the first day of filming, Malmuth failed to appear! And this was the day in which the awesome subway chase was to be filmed! What to do? What to do? Here’s what was done:  Stallone himself stepped in to direct the scene! Interestingly enough, that was my favorite scene in the whole movie, such a memorable chase! Thanks to Stallone stepping in to direct the sequence, the production didn’t fall behind schedule. Stallone was already a director himself, having directed Paradise Alley (1978) and Rocky II (1979) before, so I’m sure he would have no problems in directing the scene himself, and even though the  Directors Guild of America has strict rules about having actors directing a film they are starring in, he was given special permission to do it and so the film moved on. But you wouldn’t know any of these problems from watching the movie because the end result was such a solid film.

 Nighthawks tells the story of Deke DaSilva and Matthew Fox two street cops that work the night beat. Their job? To stop crime by working undercover, in disguise. And they are pretty good at what they do! But things change when their military backgrounds get them chosen for a special task force that is being trained to stop an international terrorist known as Wolfgar. You see, Wolfgar is the kind of terrorist that works doing other terrorist dirty work. And like Deke and Matthew, he is the best at what he does! Unfortunately, when the police in England get too close for comfort, he moves his operations to New York City where he is looking to establish himself as the best damn terrorist in town. Good enough to play with the big guys. This is a terrorist looking to prove himself as the best. And as the tagline for the film says “One man can bring the world down to its knees, and one man can stop him”. And that man is Deke Da Silva!

"You talking to me? That's what I thought!" 

 As I was watching the film, I got this feeling like I was watching The French Connection (1971) for some reason. I guess it had something to do with the films grimy look and feel; it’s not every film that can capture this grimy 'New York in the 70’s' feeling as effectively as The French Connection did. Nighthawks starts out with a sequence in which Stallone chases a criminal up the steps of a subway station, echoing a similar scene from The French Connection.  So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that Nighthawks actually started out as The French Connection III! That film was supposed to have Gene Hackman returning to his iconic Popeye Doyle character, and this time around he was supposed to have a wise cracking partner, who was going to be played by none other than Richard Pryor himself. But when Gene Hackman didn’t return to play Popeye Doyle for a third time at 20^th Century Fox, Universal Studios acquired the rights to the story and turned it into the film we now know as Nighthawks; a film that Sylvester got into as a way to get away from his Rocky character. He didn’t want to be type cast, so he was trying to play roles that were drastically different to Rocky, and that is the reason why on this film Stallone plays a cop with a beard and long hear as opposed to Rocky’s clean cut look. Stallone’s got a “hip” look on this movie, long hair, glasses, scarfs, jackets. He was looking all sorts of cool.

 Nighthawks is also special because it was Rutger Hauer’s first American film. In the opening sequences of the film he sports a beard, same as Stallone’s character does. I guess the idea was that Hauer and Stallone’s characters mirror each other. As Wolfgar points out to Deke at one point, they aren’t so different from each other, a theme that pops up through out the entire film. This mirror image idea between the hero and the villain carries itself even onto the films poster which is composed half of Stallone’s face and half of Hauer’s face. Speaking of Rutger Hauer’s performance on this film, it’s nothing short of awesome. As is to be expected from a Hauer villain, he exudes evil. I guess he was destined to play memorable characters from the get go. What makes this film special is that this is where Hauer’s long streak of memorable villains started.

"You people are never prepared, there is no security"

 Instead of Richard Pryor playing the comedy sidekick, we get Billy Dee William’s playing Matthew Fox, Deke’s partner. Matthew and Deke do sort of have a comedic back and forth between them, but it’s nothing overtly comical. They simply act as two buddy cops, I’m sure Matthew Fox would have turned out to be a completely different kind of character had Richard Pryor played it, certainly a bit more inclined towards the funny side of things. But not here, Nighthawks is a deadly serious film, the kind of movie that could have come out of the late 70’s early 80’s, where people where angrier and their anger bled into their art. Crime was certainly something that was annoying people to the max, it’s something that’s portrayed in films from this era as being a real problem. The Deathwish films are a good example of this. On Nighthawks we have Deke and Matthew dismantle a drug lab and save a woman from being raped in the first fifteen minutes of film! There is one scene in which Billy Dee Williams gets his moment to shine, where he finds these kids running a drug lab and he smacks the drug dealers around and tells them “I should kill you motherfucker! For all the lives you’re taking away with this shit!” He looks like he was going to do it too had Deke not stopped him! My only gripe with the film is that at one point they drop Matthew Fox and suddenly it’s all about Deke while Matthew is on the sidelines. It would have been cool to have them be together all through out the film, but it’s a minor hiccup in an otherwise great film. So we get a solid cast here, I mean Stallone, Hauer, Billy Dee Williams and we even get Joe Spinnell whom some of you might recognize from Maniac (1980) as the Police Lieutenant that screams and barks  orders at Deke and Matthew. So rest assured, we get a solid cast here.

 Some last words on the film: it has some great action sequences! Actually, I see this movie as going from one awesome sequence to the next. We get some cool street cop action when were introduced to Deke and Matthews every day job stopping crime on the streets, then were introduced to Hauer’s terrorist escapades in England, then we get to see him carry his terrorist work to New York City, and here’s the cool thing about this movie: it was shot entirely on location; something that adds to the realism of the film. The streets of  New York look just as grimy as they really were back in those days, nothing tops realism and shooting on location. This film was shot in 174^th Street, in the Bronx, in Queens, in Manhattan and the actual Roosevelt Island Tram System  Hell, if were going to get down to it, the film also shot scenes in England and France! So we got a film that’s infused with lots of realism to it simply because of the choice to shoot in the actual places the story takes place in. For example, there are a couple of awesome action sequences that take place in New York Subway System, wow, that whole sequence is fantastic! Deke and Matthew chase Hauer all through the subway, then the sequence carries on into a train! The whole sequence is very kinetic, very action packed. What makes these scenes special is that they where shot in an actual New York Subway with actual trains that were decommissioned, but look awesome. If you look carefully, you will notice the train they used for these sequences was so old that it had ceiling fans in it! The films most memorable sequence takes place aboard the Roosevelt Island Tram, when Wolfgar takes everyone in it as hostage! Stallone did his own stunts on those scenes where he was lowered from the Tram into a boat! Stallone was really gung-ho about doing his own stunts on this film, again showing us that the filmmakers were going for lots of realism with this film.

 So what we got here my friends is a gritty as hell cop flick with lots of realism infused into it and a solid, solid cast. I mean, this film is terribly underrated. It’s not a complex or “deep” film, but it’s a solid thriller with an extremely memorable villain. Sadly, audiences at the time didn’t accept Stallone in other roles that weren’t Rocky Balboa, which is why quickly after this one “bombed” at the box office, Stallone went straight for the safe move and did Rocky III (1982). I say “bombed” because even thought the film made its money back (it was only made with a mere 5 million dollars if you can believe it!) it still didn’t make as much money as the studio expected. Stallone himself has said that this film was ahead of its time, and that audiences weren’t really ready for it. To top things off, the studio itself didn’t believe in the film. The film has found its audience in thanks to the home video market, I consider it one of Stallone’s best films and certainly one of his most underrated ones, so if you haven’t seen it I’d recommend checking it out for a night of solid action and thrills with an extremely satisfying ending.

Rating: 4 out of 5  

       

Star Crash (1978)

Title: Star Crash (1978)

Director/Writer: Luigi Cozzi (aka Lewis Coates)

Cast: Caroline Monroe, Christopher Plummer, David Hasselhof, Joe Spinell

Review:

For lovers of cheesy b-movies, Luigi Cozzi’s Star Crash is like the long lost Holy Grail of cheesy space operas. I’d been hearing about it for years and years, and I was dying to finally get a glimpse of it. Thankfully, Shout! Factory has just released it on a jam packed double disc special edition as part of their “Roger Corman Cult Classics” collection. Finally I was going to get to see what has been labeled for years and years as the “Italian Star-Wars”! The film that had David Hasselhof battling stop motion animation robots with a light saber! That’s right, Knight Rider wielding a light saber! Hey, I’d buy that for a dollar! And I did! I finally got my hands on this special edition dvd. Question is, after all the expectation and the wait, was it all worth it? Or was I building up my hopes for something that was ultimately going to disappoint me? Read on…

Caroline Monroe channeling Jane Fonda as best she can

For those that are not up to date on how a lot of Italian genre films were made during the 70’s and 80’s, here’s a bit of news for you: most of the Italian genre films from the 70’s and 80’s were rip-offs of successful American films. And so it went something like this: Alien spawned a film called Contamination (1980), JAWS made way for Great White (1981), Clash of the Titans and Conan spawned Conquest (1983), The Exorcist’s Italian antichrist baby was called Beyond the Door (1974), Escape from New York mutated to 1990 Bronx Warriors (1982) and these are just some of many rip offs that were produced. Actually, if you ever have time in your hands, go ahead and try and find out just how many Escape from New York Italian rip off’s exist, it’ll take you a while. Star Crash comes to us as a direct result of Star Wars. Like Star Wars, Star Crash (notice the similarity in the title?) is a space opera, it’s got light sabers and it’s got villains who want to destroy worlds. We get lightsabers and chatty robot companions. You could safely say that for every character in Star Wars you can find its Italian counter part in Star Crash. The producers had money in their minds, and doing a Star Wars rip off was definitely the way to go for them.

Any similarities with the poster for Star Wars is purely coincidental

But director Luigi Cozzi had other ideas in mind. Like any self respecting director, Cozzi didn’t want to rip-off or re-make anything. Most directors hate the idea of walking over tired territory. Most directors will want to do something different. Influenced by the films they love, but not exactly the same. And so, this is why Star Crash, though groomed to be a Star Wars rip off by its producers actually ended up being more of a homage to Barbarella (1968) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963), two films that influenced Luigi Cozzi as a filmmaker. One can definitely see the influence of both of these films on Star Crash. Caroline Monroe walks around the first half of the film in a skimpy bathing suit, emulating Jane Fonda’s revealing attire in Barbarella. Funny story about that: half way through filming, American investors asked Cozzi to change Monroe’s attire. They didn’t want her to be so revealing because they wanted to be able to play the movie on television and where afraid they weren’t going to be able to do that if Monroe was walking practically naked through out the whole film. And so, this is why about halfway through the movie, suddenly we don’t see so much of Miss Monroe’s attributes anymore. Bummer. Curse those damn producers!

There are a lot of funny stories involved with this production, for example, David Hasselhof kicked an Italian actors tooth right off while filming a fight sequence! Hasselhof’s character and Caroline Munroe’s characters were supposed to kiss during the last scene of the film but didn’t because the actor playing the robot was actually Monroe’s husband! Hasselhof got food poisoning while filming in Italy and so some of his scenes involve his character wearing a giant mask, because it wasn’t him acting beneath it! But by far, the funniest thing in this movie is the films dialog. To start things off, Stella Star (the character Munroe plays) is always accompanied by a robot that talks like he is a honky tonk cowboy with a Southern accent! In fact, he behaves like a cowboy holding his two guns as if he was a character from a Sergio Leone movie. Many compare this film to a Spaghetti western, and they aren’t far from the truth.

"I got my eye on you Hasselhoff! Keep your hands off my wife!"

It’s hilarious to hear the robot say things like “Look! Amazonian women on horses! I hope they are friendly!” Pay no mind that they are on an alien planet with no Amazonian jungle which can only exist on earth! Speaking of this films dialog, wow, holy smokes I hadn’t laughed this much in a long time. Here’s an example of the kind of dialog you can expect to hear on Star Crash:

“I wouldn’t be Emperor of the Galaxy if I didn’t have a few powers at my disposal! Imperial Battleship: Halt the flow of time!”

“For the space of three minutes, every molecule on this planet will be immobilized, but after the third minute, the green ray looses its power. Time will flow once again and everything will explode”

"Dont kiss me, my husband is watching!"

Now if that isn’t laugh inducing dialog, I don’t know what is. And this is exactly why I love this movie. For that and seeing David Hasselhoff having a sword fight with two stop motion animated robots! This was Hasselhoff’s first feature film ever, so he was extra sober, just to make sure he didn’t screw up his lines. As for the rest of the cast, we get Joe Spinell, whom some of you might remember as the psycho killer in Maniac (1980). On Star Crash he plays Count Zarthan. This villain looks like a mix between Satan, Dracula and Ming the Merciless! He cares about one thing and one thing only: becoming the master of the universe! Maybe he should talk to Skeletor about that! Another essential part of the cast is Christopher Plummer who plays the Emperor of the Universe. Plummer got paid 30,000 for shooting all his scenes in one day, then his scenes where spread out through the rest of the film. His dialog is the funniest. He plays his character by speaking everything in a whisper, really cool and calm, cause you know; he’s the emperor of the universe! It’s his job to play it cool!

The multi-colored universe!

Other hilarity inducing scenes are those that take place in space. For some reason, the director wanted the stars in space to be multicolored. So whenever we get a shot of the universe, it’s filled with multicolored stars! Not at all a realistic representation of the universe, but whatever. I was having fun. Plus, the multicolored universe is what gives this one its unique look. One thing I will say about the space battles in this movie, they seem to be never ending! I mean, there is this one scene where there’s supposed to be this battle in space, and spaceships are shooting lasers at each other and flying left and right. This is all fine and dandy in a science fiction film, the problem is that the director kept showing the same scenes of the spaceships flying by over and over again. You’ll see a spaceship whiz by Whoosh! And seconds later, you’ll see the same exact scene with the spaceships passing by. Whoosh! And Whoosh! Again! And just when you think it’s over: Whoosh! Yet again! It gets kind of repetitive after a while.

Hasselhoff with a light saber!

I will say that this was a successful homage to Jason and the Argonauts as a result we get stop motion animated monstrosities on this one! At one point Stella has to battle a giant robot that looks a heck of a lot like the Achilles statue that Jason and the Argonauts fight in Ray Harryhausen’s film. We also get these two robots that the good guys have to battle with their light sabers. The film was to have more stop motion animation creatures, but at the end of the day director Luigi Cozzi wasn’t happy with some of the stop motion animation for some scenes, so he scrapped them. But I will say this, Star Crash is a film that did a lot with very little. They didn’t have the budget that George Lucas had for his space opera, yet Cozzi and his crew managed to create an entertaining, funny, fast-paced science fiction film. I mean, this film has spaceships, aliens, planets blowing up, giant robots, space battles, spaceship cities, kamikaze soldiers, and Amazonian babes! All achieved with a meager budget. In my book, it is a movie that crammed as many ideas as it could into the film, hoping that at the end of the day some of them would end up being good. By the way, the DVD is jam packed with extras! I highly recommend buying the double disc special edition. It has a trailer for the film that was edited by Joe Dante! In depth interviews with Luigi Cozzi and Caroline Monroe! And you can even see Eli Roth dissecting the films trailer. I think its one of the best DVD’s that Shout! Factory has produced to date.

Half of the films budget went to Hasselhoffs perm.

Buttom line is that Star Crash wasn’t filmed as a comedy, but it actually ends up being funnier then a lot of space comedies like Spaceballs (1986) and Ice Pirates (1984). I love the hell out of those two movies, but Star Crash is funny without even trying! Things go from ridiculous, to ludicrous in the blink of an eye. We go from battling Amazonian women who control giant robots with the power of their minds to having entire space cities crashing on our heroes! Star Crash is a non stop barrage of craziness, but its funny and fun every step of the way. Its one of the best “so bad its good” films out there that serves at the same time as a loving homage to old science fiction films.

 

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5