#stephen young

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

Have you seen Patton (1970)?

Yes

No

Haven’t even heard of this movie

Voting ended onJan 26

[oldshowbiz]

Canadian actor Stephen Young was the person who gave John Candy the word "shmenge."

[abs0luteb4stard]

W A T C H I N G

[lobbycards]

Soylent Green, Italian lobby card (Fotobusta). 1973

[shannendoherty-fans]

The Rendering (2002)

PLOT (May contain spoilers)

Ten years after being attacked in an art school by habitual rapist Theodore Gray (Peter Outerbridge), who is serving 25 years but is now eligible for parole, Sarah Reynolds (Shannen Doherty) leads a happy life in a gallery and with her handsome husband, lawyer Michael Reynolds (John H. Brennan).

As a sketch-artist, she helps police detective, Nick Sousa, with cases. It was Det. Sousa (Stephen Young) who put Gray away. Then, new cases following Gray's M.O. occur, and a victim who got away gives a description that Sarah hesitates to draw because it looks just like Michael.

Once Michael is behind bars, Sarah keeps searching for answers, but is soon blackmailed to plead for Gray's parole or his crime cohorts will torture Michael to death.

Originally aired on January 15, 2002.

Shannen 2002 The Rendering (TV film)

940 new items added to shared album

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/9/2020: DEADLINE (1980)

This is an extremely weird movie. Actually, it's so eccentric and overstimulating that I have a hard time describing it in terms of quality--terms like "good" and "bad" can become kind of irrelevant when a movie's priorities land so far from anything familiar--so I'll just say what I can. DEADLINE is, in modern parlance, cuckoo bananas.

N.B.: Spoilers abound.

I'm tempted to describe this 1980 genre entry from Maltese director and co-writer Mario Azzopardi as an anthology film, but that isn't completely accurate. Insofar as it is focused on anything, DEADLINE primarily concerns pulp horror writer Stephen Lessey (Stephen Young, late of SOYLENT GREEN) on the downslope of his career. His young children struggle to get his attention, and he and his drug-addled wife fall deeper in loathing, as he wrestles with a stubborn new screenplay. His previous success, a movie about kids who kill called THE EXECUTIONERS, seems to have brought him even more trouble than fame, as we discover when a collegiate speaking engagement is met by a veritable lynch mob. As he becomes increasingly embattled on all sides, Lessey's crumbling mental state is emphasized by a series of vignettes depicting his crazed attempts to imagine "the ultimate terror."

In its attempt to offended on all available levels, DEADLINE includes quite a lot of swearing, making me aware of the fact that I usually don’t hear the word “motherfucker” this much outside of the blaxploitation genre, particularly from little kids.

For about the first hour of DEADLINE, Lessey's story shares roughly equal screen time with the most frantic, uncontrolled version of a horror anthology that I have ever seen. The vignettes intrude on the wraparound story unceremoniously, and some of them are only a few seconds long, appearing and disappearing in brief bursts of blood and gore. (They are also decidedly child-oriented, which makes some amount of sense when you know that DEADLINE was shot by Manfred Guthe of THE PIT fame.) A woman drowns in a shower flooding with blood; a telekinetic goat feeds a mechanic to a thresher; little kids burn their grandmother alive; fetuses "decide to commit suicide" in the womb; and, out of absolutely nowhere, iconoclastic new wave band Rough Trade collaborates with Nazis to weaponize their music using the brown sound. This segment was probably the hardest on my brain, which was torn between the pleasure of watching charismatic singer Carole Pope lead the group in this ROCKY HORROR-esque music video sequence, and the dismay of knowing that at any moment, a bunch of drunk bums were going to shit their pants in front of me. (Actually, it was sort of a relief to see that the bums "only" explode) To further DEADLINE's jarring collage effect, we also weave in and out of the movie-within-a-movie, Lessey's new picture about vampire nuns. I have to admit that this cacophony of tasteless ideas definitely had my full attention, and I was just as engrossed when the movie abruptly abandons its anthological structure for an incredibly grim drama about Lessey and his family.

First, a word about the director: Azzopardi's TV-heavy filmography was not remarkable to me, except for one item that happens to be a personal favorite: the 2002 made-for-tv movie SAVAGE MESSIAH. This gruesome and harrowing drama about the real life crimes of Mansonesque cult leader Roch Thériault is, for better or worse, unforgettable, and while its simmering atmosphere has nothing in common with the utter bonkers-ness of the first leg of DEADLINE, it may somewhat prepare you for the intimate apocalypse that takes up the remainder of this movie. In a twist that would give Tipper Gore an orgasm, Lessey's life explodes completely when his neglected sons murder their little sister (Cindy Hinds of THE BROOD fame) in a specific imitation of his movie THE EXECUTIONERS. In the immediate aftermath of this terrible shock, Lessey's cartoonishly ruthless producer (Marvin Goldhar) tries to keep him on track by shipping him off to a mansion with a gaggle of prostitutes. Once the party starts, a boatload of booze and cocaine catalyze Lessey's inevitable nervous breakdown, sparking an all-out war with the women that would be just as at home in an Abel Ferrara film.

There are things about DEADLINE that I really like. I really like psychic goats, and flesh-eating nuns, and kinky new wave music videos. I also really like despairing psychodramas about the collapse of the family unit. But, what really stands out about this movie is the apparent lack of deliberation with which it was assembled. I really have no idea what DEADLINE wants from me, and I don't think Azzopardi knows, either. I will repeat, under the caveat of hearsay, that the blu-ray appears to contain an interview that reveals the filmmaker to be a purely commercial director who vaguely understood that a) horror sells, and b) horror is bad for your brain. So, it's worth mentioning that this may go some distance toward explaining what you see on the screen. But, that material is not in front of me at present, so the only promise I can make is that my understanding of whatever the hell just happened to me remains a mystery. Watch SAVAGE MESSIAH, though, it will totally ruin your life.

[brokehorrorfan]

Blu-ray Review: Deadline

Popping in a new Vinegar Syndrome disc is as close as I get to playing Russian roulette. Since the distributor specializes in restoring obscure genre titles, I never know if I’m getting a hidden gem, a campy B-movie, a so-bad-it's-good slice of fun, or a dud with few redeeming qualities. The unknown is half the fun, and discovering those diamonds in the rough makes it worthwhile. I would happily place Deadline squarely in the elite "hidden gem" category.

Also known as Anatomy of a Horror, the low-budget Canadian film was produced in 1979, premiered in 1980, brought to Cannes in 1981, and finally distributed in 1984 before being largely forgotten. But the arduous journey to reach audiences and its ultimate lack of impact is not indicative of the picture's quality. Directed by Mario Azzopardi (Stargate SG-1: Children of the Gods, Bone Daddy), this macabre sleeper is worthy of permeating viewers much like its subject matter does to the main character.

Reminiscent of a self-referential Stephen King novel, the plot centers on Steven Lessey (Stephen Young, Soylent Green), a famed horror author and screenwriter struggling with writer's block while the pressure of a looming deadline mounts. The scribe's pursuit to evolve beyond B-rate schlock and achieve "ultimate terror" comes at the expense of his domestic life - he's abusive to his adultering wife (Sharon Masters) and neglectful of his young children - and, ultimately, his sanity.

Maintaining a delicate balance between drama and horror, the A-story is interpolated by striking horror set pieces from Steven's latest writing. The lines between fiction and reality blur, with Steven descending into madness as his life falls apart around him. This lends itself to one of the film's greatest strengths: its metatextual angle. Via the film within the film, writers Azzopardi and Richard Oleksiak address the criticisms lobbed at the horror genre as being distasteful as well as the cynicism of the industry as a whole.

A tightly-edited 90 minutes, Deadline's downward spiral lasts all the way through its bleak ending. While virtually every character is unlikable, Young delivers an understated performance, and the cast notably includes Cindy Hinds (The Brood) as his daughter. In addition to atmospheric cinematography by Manfred Guthe (The Stupids), the film offers an abundance of gruesome bloodshed, courtesy of Gordon Smith (X-Men, Near Dark) and The Gore Boys.

Vinegar Syndrome has restored Deadline in 2K for its Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. With the original negative believed to be lost, it was sourced from producer Henry Less' personal 35mm print. Irreparable damage to both audio and visual are occasionally noticeable, but it's still a fine presentation. The disc includes new interviews with Less, who expresses regret over his falling out with Azzopardi during the editing process, and Guthe, who discusses climbing up the ranks to shoot this as his second feature following another Canuxploitation cult classic, The Pit.

Deadline will be released on Blu-ray/DVD on April 28 via Vinegar Syndrome.

[scenesandscreens]

Soylent Green (1973) Director - Richard Fleischer, Cinematography - Richard H. Kline "I know, Sol, you've told me a hundred times before. People were better, the world was better. No, people were always lousy... But there was a world, once."