The Visitor – 1979

Oh, hello, welcome back. You kind of caught me off guard, I wasn’t ready to drop another rare import on you so soon. Let me dig around and see what I can find… Oh! Here we go, this is a weird one. What do you get when you mix The Omen, The Birds, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, maybe a little Star Wars and why not some of the The Exorcist while were at it, together? You get the 1979 sci-fi film, The Visitor.

This film was made in America, but the crew and distribution company were all Italian so I’m going to classify it as a rare import. Don’t let the American sounding name of the director, Michael J. Paradise, fool you; it was actually an Italian man named, Guilio Paradisi in disguise. I’m not even going to attempt to explain the plot of this movie, you just have to figure that out on your own. Simply speaking, it’s just the movies I mentioned above if you put them in a juicer. That being said, even though it’s mostly incomprehensible, the movie is a whole lot of fun. It’s got a pretty great sound track, fun visuals, and solid performances from Hollywood legends like John Huston, Glenn Ford, and Shelley Winters as well as one of the early appearances of Lance Henricksen.

A film teacher I had once told me that, “good directors borrow; great directors steal.” I think he was twisting a T. S. Eliot quote, “immature poets imitate; mature poets steal” or something along those lines. The point is, this movies steals and it doesn’t care who knows it.I call this type of film-making, DJing. I mean, there isn’t anything new under the sun so why not take things that are great or that have worked in the past, mix them together and try to make something that stands on its own. A type of story collage, if you will. Now, don’t go thinking I’m condoning plagiarism, I’m not saying that at all. Here, maybe an example will help clear this up. You ever hear of Quentin Tarantino? I’m betting you have. That man knows how to DJ a movie. He wears his influences on his sleeve, lifting things from spaghetti westerns all the way to blaxplotation films, but he does it to great effect. The Visitor was one of the first times I noticed the employment of this DJing method and it taught me a lot of the right and wrong ways to steal. I hope it’ll make sense if you take the time to check out the movie.

Tune in next week folks for another rare import. Next time, maybe, give me heads up so I don’t have to pick something on the fly.

Hausu (House) – 1977

I want you to come with me on a trip. I have weird and wild things that I think might interest you. I absolutely love movies which is how I find myself clumsily making my way down the path of a screenwriter. I’d love to tell you about all the movies that have inspired me to take this path or have contributed to my style, but that would be a little boring because I’m sure most of us have seen a lot of the same movies. That’s why I want you to come on this trip with me. We are going to the far reaches of the filmscape, looking for those rare imports that you might not have seen. That way I can share my inspirations with you and at the same time introduce you to something unique or odd that you might not have seen otherwise.

Today, we are heading for that wacky wonderland, Japan. Our rare import is the 1977 horror film, House. Basically, the movie follows a girl and her six friends as they visit her aunts house. The girls start disappearing, consumed by the house and the evil spirit of the aunt who died years before. The story doesn’t really matter. The movie is very dream like with outlandish visuals.In fact, you can see the influence these visuals had on modern filmmakers like Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi. I don’t want to give the impression that this movie is a legitimate horror film. It is very funny and doesn’t take anything too seriously so you shouldn’t expect a serious kind of movie if you ever watch it. It has killer lamps, killer pianos, dancing skeletons, and a maniacal cat. It’s just pure lunacy. The aspect of it that influenced me the most as a writer are the characters. I love having a group of characters in one location interacting with a problem. You see it a lot in TV shows when they run out of money and do what is called a “bottle episode” which is just an episode that takes place in a single location; the TV equivalent of 12 Angry Men. The characters in this film are all pretty simple and are just named after what position they fill in the story. For example: the main character is named Gorgeous, the smart character is named Professor, the token fat girl is named Big Mac, the muscle character is named Kung Fu, etc. I really like this approach, it’s like having a kitchen drawer with all the tools you need to make and eat a meal. Each tool has a different strengths and weaknesses and it’s interesting to see how you can use them to tell a story.

Well, that was a good introduction, I think. Stay tuned as we dig deeper, trying to find those weird classics, those rare imports.

January Update

Hello everyone, I just wanted to give you all an idea of what I’m working on this month. This month I’m working on two screenplays that I’d love to share with you as I progress. The first film is entitled, “Once Upon a Time in Vietnam”. It tells the story of four Marines pulled out of the brig and promised reduced sentences if they can complete a suicide mission that involves transporting arms and ammunition through the dense Vietnamese jungle. My next projects is called, “Tocumcari”. It’s a western about a mysterious gunfighter who enters the the town of Lago escorting a man in chains. He claims to be a Texas Ranger taking the prisoner to be executed in the town of Tocumcari, but is he really who he says he is? Stay tuned folks! I’ll keep you posted on any thing else I start working on or any professional progress I make.