Lake Placid (1999)

Dir. Steve Miner

Starring: Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson

A diver is bitten clean in half in Maine’s remote Black Lake. This provides the start for monster movie Lake Placid. A hapless band of 'experts' is drafted in to catch the creature responsible. This band comprises Brendan Gleeson’s bad-tempered local sheriff Hank, Department of Fish and Game agent Jack Wells (Bill Paxton), out-of-her-depth palaeontologist Kelly (Bridget Fonda) and the eccentric crocodile-worshipping millionaire Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt)l. And sure enough, they come to the conclusion that a thirty-foot crocodile lurks beneath the calm waters of Black Lake.

So far, so Jaws. But Lake Placid is not afraid to play up the laughs alongside the underwater menace. The dysfunctional interactions of the main quartet (and more than a couple of expert prat-falls) provide moments of humour to lighten the movie. There’s even a tacked-on romantic subplot. So for a horror movie, the film is actually not that, well, horrifying. There’s some suspense, there are a few moments of shock and peril, and there’s some gore, but all-in-all Lake Placid is actually pretty watchable. I certainly enjoyed it.

So what makes Lake Placid different to The Mist, my other Maine horror film? Well, as stated, it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The Mist had a po-faced insistence that it was a Serious Horror Movie. In comparison Lake Placid goes for the lighter touch. The lead characters are a gang of oddballs, sniping humorously at each other. Kelly is a fish out of water who seems to have never been out of the city before and has a thing about mosquitoes, ticks, worms, timber, and the wilds in general. Plus, she keeps getting heads thrown at her (“I will NOT calm down! This is the second time I’ve been hit with a severed head and I DON’T LIKE IT!”). Hank is a deadpan snarker, wearily trying to do his job without interruptions from other US agencies, hoity-toity big city types and lunatic millionaires. Plus, he keeps falling into snare traps (“I could probably cut him down but there’s this odd look of mayhem on his upside-down face.”). Hector is, by-and-large, a nutjob, a sort of mystical Austen Powers. And then you’ve got Betty White, America’s favourite grandma, last seen in Hard Rain, as sassy Dolores Bickerton – there’s nothing like hearing  venerable LOL (little old lady) calling people “cocksuckers” or “Officer Fuck-meat” to keep you amused. The friction between the outdoorsy locals and the academic city-folks provides a lot of the comedy. For instance, when Hank protests that he has never heard of a crocodile crossing an ocean Hector replies “Well, they conceal information like that in books.” Kelly says that she has never been to Maine before – “I have good hygiene. I’m not welcome.” The central premise is some very dark humour – a lady has been rearing giant crocs out in the backwoods). The film knows that the source material is somewhat hokey too – witness the moment the 30-foot killer croc attacks Hector’s helicopter. It plays on B-movie tropes. Hell, it’s practically an homage to Jaws. If only someone had uttered the immortal lines “We’re gonna need a bigger chopper…”

Croc vs Copter:
"We're gonna need a bigger chopper..."

Yet, for all that, the nature of the threat is known. A giant crocodile in a Maine lake might be unexpected, but we are not talking about tentacular beasties from another dimension. The goals of the team can be understood at once: find out what killed the diver, locate it, neutralise it. And whatever the creature is, it has to be trapped in the vicinity of the lake.

 

The action keeps moving. The film is only 75 minutes long (a relief compared to most movies I have been watching, which seem to be two hours minimum). It goes for thrills and spills more than suspense (and the addition of a soundtrack helps to create suspense in the scenes that need it). It remembers that its aim is to entertain the audience, something which The Mist was at times in danger of forgetting I feel.

What have I learnt about Maine?

It really is seen as another world to city-dwellers. Kelly, with her fly-spray and her worries about Deliverance, does not ‘get’ the delights of the wild backwoods. Nor do Hank and Jack have much sympathy towards urbanites.

 

To be fair the rolling hills cloaked in mile after mile of forest are wholly different to anything one might see in NYC. So is the wildlife. We see Maine’s mosquitoes, beavers, moose, bears and crocodiles (though strictly speaking, that last one shouldn’t have been there).

Can we go there?

Black Lake is fictional, and it’s hard to figure out precisely where it’s supposed to be. It’s in Maine’s largest, northern county, Aroostook, some twenty-five miles from the nearest town, but only a mile from the ocean?

 

It seems unlikely that Asian-Pacific crocodiles could have migrated to the Atlantic side of America. The film wasn’t even shot on that side of the continent however. It was filmed in Canada’s British Columbia at three separate lakes: Shawnigan Lake on Vancouver Island, Lake Hayward, near Mission, 60km east of Vancouver, and Buntzen Lake in Anmore. Highlander and Freddy vs. Jason were also shot at Buntzen Lake, with Roxanne being filmed nearby.

 

Overall Rating: 3/5

The Cider House Rules (1999)

Dir. Lasse Hallström

Starring: Toby Maguire, Michael Caine, Charlize Theron, Paul Rudd

In the cider house on the Worthington farm where the migrant workers lodge there is a piece of paper tacked up on the wall. This piece of paper holds a set of rules for life there. There are five, they are quite fatuous, and they are roundly ignored by the residents. “Someone who don’t live here made them rules” Mr Rose (Delroy Lindo) says. “Those rules ain’t for us. We are supposed to make our own rules. And we do. Every single day.”

The story behind The Cider House Rules is very amoral. Or, perhaps, very moral. It is about deciding who you want to be and making your own rules for life. Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire) is raised at St. Cloud’s Orphanage by Dr Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine). Larch runs the orphanage and acts in a paternal role towards the children under his care. Pregnant women make their way to St. Cloud’s and he relieves them of their unwanted burden – either by delivering the babies or by aborting them. Abortions are illegal, but he has decided that the greatest good is achieved by a trained doctor performing them rather than leaving the women to run the risks attached to backstreet terminations. Homer comes to assist Dr Larch – but he decides that while he will deliver babies he will not abort them. Regardless, Wilbur expects the young man he has come to regard as a son to follow in his footsteps. To preserve the practice he is even willing to forge medical credentials in Homer’s name. It is the best way he can think of to keep St. Cloud’s running.

But Homer writes his own story. He leaves for the coast to work as an apple picker. Having never lived for long outside the orphanage he is very innocent. He has never seen the ocean. He has only ever watched one movie. And his heart has never been exposed to the complexities of the outside world. The people he lives and works alongside teach him to break rules. He betrays a friend. He lies. He kills. The lying and the killing are designed to protect someone but all the same he has learnt that there are no absolutes. “Sometimes ya gotta break some rules to put things straight” as Mr Rose puts it. The world in which we live is one of moral relativism. It is easier to let other people make the rules for you and decide your fate. Writing your own story is the hardest thing of all.

Dr. Larch believes that men should play God with their own lives (given his expressed scorn towards Christianity it is a safe bet that he does not believe that there is a real God). To him, the opposite of playing God is “leaving practically everything up to chance. Men and women of conscience should seize those moments where it’s possible to play God. There won’t be many.” Candy (Charlize Theron) is incapable of deciding what she wants, torn between her feelings for Homer and Wally (Paul Rudd). Her relationship with Homer has not been pre-ordained. It just sort of happens. They “wait and see” and don’t make any decisions about it, and that allows the affair to continue. The imminent return of a wounded Wally changes that. She has to make a decision. But she can’t. And so Homer makes it for her. Homer recognises her state of mind: “Maybe if I just wait and see long enough then I won’t have to do anything or decide anything, you know? I mean, maybe if I’m lucky enough, someone else will decide and choose and do things for me.” He decides to make way for Wally and go back to St. Cloud’s.

Making movies with Michael Caine and Tobey Maguire

I said earlier that in many ways the film is quite amoral. Homer’s various adventures can be preparation for him having to make the right, moral choice – and abort a foetus. The abortion debate is presented quit matter-of-factly: either a trained and qualified doctor will conduct the termination or the woman will resort to a dangerous backstreet procedure. And in actual fact, those unwanted babies that are not aborted, but are kept at the orphanage seem to have quite a lot of fun. I found the opening scenes of children running around the halls while a cheerful soundtrack plays in the background a bit jarring once I realised Dr. Larch was conducting operations. The relationship between Mr Rose and his daughter Rose (Erykah Badu) also isn’t particularly questioned, other than that it would necessitate an abortion. To be honest, there are some things that call for greater discussion really. The situations in the film are presented, but then not ever particularly debated. Still, the screenplay, adapted from his own novel by John Irving, was awarded the Oscar, so who am I to carp? Michael Caine also won an Oscar for his performance as the fatherly Dr. Larch. I didn’t even know that he could do an American accent!

What have I learnt about Maine?

It is famous for its apples, its cider and its lobsters. I think I could survive quite comfortably there on that diet. The Atlantic Ocean breaks right up on shore and is quite, quite beautiful.

Being from Maine is regarded as a desirable attribute (if you cannot be born in Maine, at least be from New England). Anyone from outside Maine is an “immigrant”.

There is full expression of the seasons in Maine. The autumns are golden brown, and snow lies on the ground in winter.

Can we go there?

The locations in the story are fictional. There is no orphanage at St. Clouds because there is no St. Clouds. From the film we are lead to believe that it is on the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad (a real life railroad that lead north from Bangor to cover the north-eastern section of Maine). However the railway used for filming – complete with steam engines – was Vermont’s Green Mountain Railroad. The St. Cloud railway station was actually the Bellows Fall halt near Rockingham.

As for the orphanage, the instantly-recognisable exterior was Ventfort Hall in Lenox, western Massachusetts. It now houses a museum of the ‘Gilded Age’ and can be visited. Interiors were shot in Northampton, Massachusetts – at the former Northampton State Hospital  for instance (which has now been torn down).

Similarly the Ocean View Orchards at Cape Kenneth don’t really exist. Homer’s first sight of the ocean is in Maine however. It is Sand Beach in Acadia National Park. Candy lives by the sea in what is, in real life, Thurston’s Lobster Pound in Bernard. Both are on Mount Desert Island. Certainly seems like a good spot to stop for dinner! The Worthington estate does not have an ocean view however; it is located inland, in Vermont. The Scott Farm north of Brattleboro is used. The cider house is actually the Sugar House, which can be rented for stays.

Overall Rating: 3/5

The Mist (2007)

Dir. Frank Darabont

Starring: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Andre Braugher

I have never read anything by Stephen King. I think I was put off him because of a film I watched when much younger that was not only based on one of his novels but also directed by King himself. The film was called Maximum Overdrive. In it there are strange meteorological phenomena. As a result all electrical items come to life. The film focuses on a raggle-taggle bunch of survivors holed up inside a gas station while outside they are stalked by sentient trucks. It was terrible.

But then I saw some films that were based on his novels that I did like. Misery for example. Or the perennial classic The Shawshank Redemption. So I began to think that maybe I had just seen a really duff example, and King was better than I had long given him credit for.

So today I watched another film based on a novel by Stephen King. The film was called The Mist. In it there are strange meteorological phenomena. The film focuses on a raggle-taggle bunch of survivors holed up inside a supermarket while outside they are stalked by a variety of monsters. It is terrible. Maybe my initial views on Stephen King were the correct ones…

So there seems to be a divide between Stephen King the chronicler of human existence, as in Misery and Shawshank and Stephen King the ‘author, dream-weaver, visionary, plus actor’ a la Garth Marenghi. And in fact the plot of Maximum Overdrive or The Mist would not have been out of place in an episode of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. In Maximum Overdrive it is a strange green comet that gives electrical and mechanical items – from electric carving knives to HGV’s with unusual clown faces – an insane lust for human blood. In The Mist it turns out that it is all down to military scientists punching a hole to another dimension, one populated by horrific semi-prehistoric looking creatures that can survive in earth’s atmosphere and on human flesh. Oh those military scientists and their top-secret projects, when will they learn? And why does Congress never exercise any proper oversight over their work (“An appropriation bill for $8.9 million to research piercing the veil between dimensions you say? Sounds reasonable to me!”)

Anyway, there is a storm that fells trees and knocks out the power and the telephone lines. A strange mist is seen rolling down from the hills. Artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) takes his son Billy (Nathan Gamble) into town to pick up some groceries. The supermarket is full when a bleeding Dan (Jeffrey DeMunn) runs in, screaming that he was attacked by something lurking in the mist. By now the mist (not The Fog – that’s a different film) has encroached right up around the building. The crowds decide to hunker down and wait for ideas. They soon become aware that there really is something malevolent out there in the mist when giant tentacles grab one of their number and drag him out of the loading bay (though I can understand the scepticism of Andre Braugher’s Brent; it is one thing to say that there is a creature out there in the fog, but it is hard to keep a straight face whenever the word “tentacles” creeps into conversation). Those who try to make it out into the mist vanish, bloodily. More horrific creatures are seen. Perhaps most horrific of all is a human, Mrs Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), a religious nutjob, who reinvents herself as a prophet of the end times and manages to turn the majority of the crowd into a murderous cult seeking “expiation” (“Welcome to Sesame Street, kids” assistant supermarket manager Ollie drolly comments; “Today’s word is ‘expiation’”).

There's something in the mist!
Sadly for Toby Jones, it's a crap film...

 Let’s focus on the strengths of the film. The special effects are great. When the bugs and four-winged pterodactyl-things break into the store the action is seamless. Mrs Carmody is a horrible villain. And Toby Jones is great as Ollie, the meek assistant manager with a hidden inner hero. He turns out to secretly be a crack marksman, have an inner steel that allows him to make big decisions (he soon overshadows the store manager), and he also monopolises the best lines in the script (“Fine, write down your names. And in the mean time shut the fuck up and listen”).

Negatives? Well, it’s a load of old bollocks really isn’t it? Thomas Jane is rather bland as the leading man. He doesn’t seem particularly concerned that he has a wife back home out in the mist. And what is the survivors’ goal? I suppose with an unknown threat the goals have also to be unknown. Compare this with 30 Days of Night. In that film the threat is a known quantity: vampires. What is a vampire’s weakness? The sun. What’s the twist? The sun won’t rise for thirty days. So what’s the goal? Hold out for thirty days until the sun comes out again. In The Mist the threat is unknown, and so the weakness of the threat is also unknown. As a result the goal is unknown. All they can do is survive as long as they can. They have no way of eradicating the threat. By default the heroes are reduced to passivity, waiting there for the monsters to pick them off. Sure, they may have small victories to win – beat off the tentacles, kill the flying things, get the medicine – but they are not in control of the situation. Any salvation has to come from external forces. Deus ex machine as Mrs Carmody would no doubt have it. This does not make for great suspense. And the lack of a soundtrack for the vast majority of the film does not help. I admit that sometimes I get annoyed with the score for soundtracking what I am supposed to be feeling (tension / relief / dread etc). But here there is nothing. The film has gore but very little suspense.

But I refuse to blame the director too much. Frank Darabont also helmed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, both successful stories based on King’s novels. The cast too are generally fine with the genre – it seems that half of them went on to star in the TV series The Walking Dead (Laurie Holden, Jeffrey DeMunn, Melissa McBride); Darabont also directed and produced a number of episodes of the series. The problem is the source material. Frankly I think I’m going to leave it a while before I take another chance on a Stephen King horror movie.

What have I learnt about Maine?

Not much is said about Maine in the film. Really all that I can pick up on is that there is a tension between locals and out-of-towners. Wealthy individuals move to Maine to get away from the city. This can be either permanently relocating or just having a summer house / weekend getaway. The locals don’t seem to like these out-of-towners much.

The inhabitants do not seem as gun crazy as in other parts of the U.S. Only one local has a gun, which he keeps in his truck. New-in-town teacher Amanda keeps a handgun in her handbag at the insistence of her husband. Wallet, phone, keys, tissues, handgun etc…

Can we go there?

The film is nominally set in Bridgton, Maine, inland to the north-west of Portland. The wrecked road sign seen towards the end of the film places that moment somewhere near Falmouth.

However, in reality we haven’t travelled very far from Louisiana at all. In fact we are still there. The film was shot on set in Shreveport, Louisiana. Exterior shots of the store were Tom’s Market in Vivian, just north of Shreveport.

Overall Rating: 1/5

Week 20: Maine

"Third box-car, midnight train;
 Destination Bangor, Maine..."
 - 'King of the Road',
 Roger Miller

We've got a long train journey ahead of us as we hobo all the way up the eastern coast of America to our next destination: Maine. So pull up a crate, get as comfy as you can, watch out for the rail company bulldogs as we discuss what we know about Maine.

Maine is America's most north-easterly state, tucked into a crook of the Canadian border. I'm envisaging wild Canada-like terrain too: miles and miles of crags and hills, coated thickly with forest. Moose and bear coming down to the lakes and fast-flowing rivers. And those rivers running on to a splintered and shattered coast, mile after mile of bays and inlets, harbours and islands. Fishing fleets and lobsters. Towns, I would imagine, are not very large and scattered widely. The further from the coast one goes, the thinner the population and the wilder the terrain.

And there's possibly something in the air in Maine. All these isolated villages surrounded by deep, dark woods and old clap-board sea-captains' houses down in the coves must breed myths and ghost stories. Why else would Stephen King live there?

My three films for Maine are:

• The Mist (2007)
• The Cider House Rules (1999)
• Lake Placid (1999)