MOVIE REVIEW: COMMUNION (1989)

 

Directed by Philippe Mora 

Screenplay adapted by Whitley Strieber from his own book

Cinematography by Louis Irving

Production Design by Linda Pearl

Costume Design by Malissa Daniel

Art Direction by Dena Roth

Photographic Effects Supervision by Dave Gregory

Special Effects by Richard Ratliff

Alien Effects by A.J. Workman

Edited by Lee Smith

Music by Eric Clapton and Allan Zavod

Produced by Philippe Mora, Dan Allingham, and Whitley Strieber

Starring

Christopher Walken as Whitley Strieber (midlist horror novelist, married to Anne)

Lindsay Crouse as Anne Strieber (author, educator, married to Whitley)

Joel Carlson as Andrew Strieber (Whitley and Anne's son)

Andreas Katsulas as Alex (friend of the Strieber family, partner of Sarah, talks about kobolds)

Terry Hanauer as Sarah (friend of the Strieber family, partner of Alex)

Frances Sternhagen as Dr. Janet Duffy (hypnotherapist, has an immaculately art-directed office)

. . .

"Was there an owl in here last night?"

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Whitley is a Manhattan-based horror novelist struggling to complete his latest manuscript. His big-ass mid 1980s word processor crashes, deleting a day or more of his toils, so he has to start writing longhand. Whitley has quirky habits: he's constantly videotaping himself so as to keep him on task as a writer; he likes to dress up in chic Swing Revival-esque clothing when he writes; he's a bit of a mischievous imp who enjoys startling his wife, Anne, and son, Andrew. Whitley is played by the actor Christopher Walken, and so he is prone to break out into spontaneous tap dance routines, stare with opaque intensity directly into camera, and relate off-kilter jokes and anecdotes in tones which are both fascinatingly precise yet emotionally cryptic. Whitley's affection for his family seems genuine, even though he is also defined all around the edges by that ineffable Walkeny strangeness. 

Whitley, in the depths of writer's block, decides to pack up the fam, and-along with another couple Alex and Sarah-spend a weekend out at a cabin in the woods. The cabin is outfitted with an expensive pain-in-the-ass security system that is prone to false alarms which trigger bright flood lights. One night, Whitley can't fall asleep, and he senses an intrusive presence. He sits up in bed, staring at a door frame until a strange, peachy-colored bug-eyed face peeks at him from just around the frame. Bright white light floods the cabin, which is seemingly that pain-in-the-ass security system, but the memories of that night are weirdly vague and incomplete for Whitley. The next morning, Alex insists that Whitley and Anne drive him and Sarah home because he's freaked out by the white light. Later, Whitley undergoes hypnosis to unearth troubling visions from that abortive weekend at the cabin. 

Communion is a movie which depicts a mysterious power invading the lives of a happy, prosperous artistic family unit-the Striebers-living in Manhattan in the 1980s. And I do mean mysterious. At first, the invading power seems like it could be ghostly or psychological in nature. The bizarre creatures bedeviling the family unit could-in the early going-equally come from Hell or the Land of Faerie as they behave in ways alternately sinister and mischievous. Or these beings could be the creatures of insanity born from a broken mind.  A savvy audience will pick up on the invaders' modus operandi as coming from the Alien Abduction playbook-anal probes and all-but, strictly speaking, Communion refuses to give definitive answers as to who or what the inexplicable intruders are and why they've targeted the Striebers. 

The mysterious forces seem to be focused on the midlist horror novelist Whitley Strieber, author of books such as The Wolfen-a modern take on werewolves-and The Hunger-a modern take on vampires-both of which were made into Hollywood movies, by the way, despite Strieber not being named Stephen King. In this movie, however, no explicit reference is made to Strieber's previous titles or the fairly well-regarded movies derived from them. Another interesting book Strieber had a hand in was Warday, co-authored with historian James Kunetka, in which the authors not only imagined what it would be like to survive in a post-nuclear USofA, but they also wrote themselves into the book as protagonists. Like I said, none of this is mentioned in any detail in the movie itself, but I think it's worth mentioning that the real life Strieber was known for horror novels, a couple of movie adaptations of two of those horror novels, and the one post-apocalyptic novel into which he wrote himself as a fictional character. And then he wrote the book Communion, in which the author is once again also the protagonist, sort of like in Warday, except that Warday was explicitly fictional  whereas Communion was marketed as nonfiction. The movie derived from the book is therefore one of those "Based on a true story" or "Inspired by true events" type of deals. Could it be that Strieber is a man who had a burning need to burrow ever deeper into his novels until he became one with his fiction?

Whitley's journey to uncover the truth about the mysterious forces interdicting his life spawns memorable visions and hallucinations. While riding a city bus the other passengers spontaneously manifest praying mantis heads. During a community Halloween haunted house party, Whitley and his son walk down a long hallway at the end of which is both a jack o'lantern and a surprise. Under hypnosis, Whitley recalls being abducted by small hooded humanoids which he later refers to as "little blue fuckers" who may be fresh off a bender at the Star Wars cantina. And, of course, there's the scene where Whitley is stripped nude and anally probed by his hooded captors. Right before the probe is inserted, Whitley asks if they're all gonna sing "White Christmas." I've only laughed harder at Redd Foxx's line about what would make a man "change gods" in Harlem Nights, but it's a close call. 

Eventually, Whitley discovers through hypnosis that the strange beings have always been in his life from age ten onwards. Or, if he is re-authoring himself as a fictional entity, maybe this is the writer doing a flashback chapter to fill in some crucial backstory. It also makes me think of the recursive storytelling of DC and Marvel comics wherein characters would be introduced without clear origins so as to keep the action moving, but then their backgrounds would be revisited/revised to suit continuity in later issues. I could see Communion being incorporated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. James Gunn could definitely write a great scene of Star Lord getting anally probed. I'd be there opening weekend wearing nothing but bells. 

Communion, whether you buy it as a "True Story" or not does indeed attempt to wrestle with intriguing dilemmas appropriate to speculative fiction. If you beheld a being from another reality, how would you know for sure? Would that being allow itself to be seen as itself? Would it be in disguise? If you saw it, would you even be able to make sense of it? If it's a traveler from a distant star, it would have to have overcome massive gulfs of space/time by means beyond all our plausible physics and spaceflight technology-would such a being even have a physical form? Would there be any meats'n'juices to it? Would you only be able to describe it in the melodramatic terms of religion, of myth, of genre fiction, of conspiracy theories-It was the Devil, I say! Or perhaps an Angel of the Lord. In any event, we must sterilize all surfaces contaminated by the alien intruder. No doubt it was trying to infect us with demonic possession to steal our souls and/or Illuminati nanomachines in order to convert us to a cashless society paradigm. Even now, an extraterrestrial/extradimensional fetus could be gestating inside our Collective Abdomen! Cower in terror! Or rejoice in same!

If you were confronted by something genuinely inexplicable, how would you define it? If you were able to explain it beyond that word-inexplicable-wouldn't it become explicable to some degree? 

And how-oh-how would you make a movie depicting such mysteries? Do you evoke the laser light abstractions and cryptic visions of death and rebirth from 2001: A Space Odyssey? Do you structure it as a mystery with a dogged protagonist piecing together clues culminating in a tidy resolution? Maybe it's about confronting the mystery in the form of a terrifying monster to be dispatched with violence like in Alien, Aliens, and Predator. Communion offers mystery, and violence is briefly explored as a possible solution, but then the film turns towards acceptance of the unknown as opposed to a War on the Unknown. Whitley, in the depths of his fear, loads up a shotgun, goes after a phantom enemy, and ends up nearly obliterating his wife Anne. Fortunately, Whitley lays down his arms and is forgiven by his long-suffering wife. Anne ends up being the one to push Whitley towards hypnotherapy, which is the beginnings of a constructive solution.

Whitley's climatic meeting with the mysterious beings involves him making a choice to intrude upon their domain, thus reversing the roles of invader and invaded. But the writer does this with a video camera in hand as opposed to a gun. What transpires is a combination dance party/doppelganger magic show in which Whitley begins to see the various weird creatures as aspects of himself. The onslaught of the Unknown, of what lies around each twist and turn of the labyrinth of one's life, becomes something to be met with playfulness, understanding, and openness to new experiences. Forget the Alien Abduction mythologies. Communion is a little New Agey, a little bit too "perception dictates reality" for my taste, yes, but if taken more as metaphor and allegory it's an unexpectedly optimistic tale. 

Compare and contrast the cinematic projection of Whitley Strieber with some other movie novelists: Jack Torrance, in Kubrick's The Shining never escapes the labyrinth of his murderous hatred of Black people, women, and children;Yukio Mishima in Paul Schrader's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters ends up channeling his masterful wordcraft into the staging of a right-wing suicide fantasia; and William Lee-fictional avatar of William Burroughs-is forever trapped in cycles of addiction and guilt over an accidental killing in David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. I make my little jokes about anal probes and the like, but Whitley used his writer's craft to fictionalize his way through a troubled passage of his existence. Good work if you can survive it.

PROTIP: If you are in a committed relationship with another person, try to avoid shooting at them with a shotgun. Even if you miss, this can create stress and conflict between yourself and your partner.

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #36: GODZILLA: MONSTER OF MONSTERS! (1989)

 

can't make up its mind

is it a board game

or is it sidescroller actioner

I'm willing to take the heat

give it credit for both

a hero is me

you play as Godzilla and Mothra

doing battle 'gainst a gang of giant monsters and future war vehicles that appeared in various Toho produced special effects pictures 1954 to 1984,

so no Biollante,

not yet,

but you've got Mechagodzilla, King Ghidorah, Gigan, and the rest,

but no Anguirus,

guess because they didn't know how to make a quadruped playable?

Anguirus would've made it into a proper heroic trio, but alas, it's just a dynamic duo

like I said

it's a sidescroller

and then it's a board game

and then it's a sidescroller

now back to board game

it's confounding, is what it is

I don't know what the thinking was

except it sorta lets you change up the order in which you confront the Enemy boss monsters

since, they, too, are obliged to maneuver across the hex map,

and you can see them coming, adjust your moves as necessary,

but it's so slow and repetitive

I just march headlong into battle,

no need to dance about,

the giant monsters

they just plow right into each other in the movies,

but this game seems to suggest I'm giving orders to Godzilla and Mothra, 

like I'm a battlefield commander or something,

but these giant monsters don't submit to military chain of command,

you'd have to hit 'em with alien mind control beams,

which does happen in the movie Invasion of Astro-Monster,

but I'm not some xtro flying saucer warrior,

I'm an Earth person,

or so I thought,

and where are the fairy twins who sing to Mothra? that could've been a novel mechanic, having to hit just the right notes to get Mothra to fight, but you would need the Famicom controller with the built-in mic for that kind of action,

and I can't sing for shit,

maybe dub the fairy twins' audio off of a movie? replay into mic?

Truly,

this is a vast and repetitious ordeal of a game, 

wherein a limited set of stages repeat over and over again,

you could easily spend over three hours on a beginning to end playthrough

much of that time eaten up by pure traversal

-perhaps that's the point? that huge, lumbering monsters take for-damn-ever to get anywhere? 

most perverse of all

is the truly great soundtrack

full of drive and moment and even passages of mystery

that deserves a far better game than this

I've half-convinced myself that the developers created the game-which they damn well knew was near satirically overblown-and then they asked themselves, "If the soundtrack is sublime, could the music in-and-of-itself hypnotize the player into staying the course?"

and

no

it isn't enough

especially in the Age of Internet

when you can just listen to it directly

skip the busywork 

go straight to the sonic fun

but it's a damn fine score

with the standout track being the bittersweet ending theme

that plays as Godzilla and Mothra wander off into the horizon,

and we are subjected to an extended text scroll full of the delusional ravings of the defeated Planet X Commander,

who darkly alludes to a self-destructive journey to nowhere even while threatening revenge against Earth,

all this culminating in a kaiju curtain call

but this bittersweet music

also invokes the dilemma of our heroes,

our beasts of burden

Godzilla and Mothra

having saved the human race from an army of extraterrestrial beasts and war machines

yet

Godzilla'n'Mothra are still themselves monsters,

outcasts even in their heroism,

doomed by their excellence and potency to inspire hatred and loathing inside neurotic primate minds

-but give the atomic devil apes-homo sapiens-our due: did not Gojira and Mosura terrify us of old in those Toho flicks? Maybe those movies were exaggerated anti-kaiju propaganda-but did not these lumbering beasts wreak havoc accidental and malicious upon us? Is there no logic to our fear, our loathing, our ingratitude, even?!? Are we doomed to scurry and caper at the feet of Powers greater than ourselves? When will humanity come into its own Agency free of deities, devils, and dictators?

-November 2021-June 2022

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #33: TETRIS NES (1989)

 

within

the 40th hour of Tetris

lies

the Bardo Gate

-May 2022

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #27: NINJA GAIDEN (1989)

you're the side story

a shadow 

of a shadow warrior

is the title a cruel joke about being abandoned by your ninja dad?

'cause that's what happens in the game

your ninja dad walks out to do dirty deeds not so cheap for some cackling mad robed occultist

ninja dad even goes Full Vader,

dons a mask,

you gotta strike him down in a one-on-one duel,

tearful deathbed redemption speech,

Full Vader

but ninja

well, 

daddy's little side story swings a sword real good

adios, pops

and that robed occultist asshole?

I guess he was somebody's corrupt daddy object, too?

yeah,

well, 

he died real good, too,

not even his final demon summon gimmick counted for much in the end

robed occultist's crib goes Full Dracula's Castle, crumbling apart, what you get when you go with the lowest bidders

daddy's little side story even hooks up with the hot older CIA agent lady in the final cut scene

heh, heh, heh,

so fuck all the fathers

and for futue reference?

when you walk out the door?

make sure you stay gone

if you enjoy keeping your original head on your neck,

okay?

but, hey

we're all video game avatars around here

gettin' a new head is a zero biggie,

it's fine,

we live,

we die,

we live again,

unless we get super-frustrated with the difficulty level,

in which case

we switch off

return to real life,

meatspace,

the land of the living dead,

the land of the nonheroic,

Middlemarch forever in all directions,

childish things put away,

here comes respectability like a bulldozer,

check out my stain routine,

barely anything left of me,

wholly absorbed into this or that consumer quadrant,

not even a shadow of a shadow,

shadows are too fanciful,

too artsy,

doesn't jibe with the ultracasual Netflix palette/frame/formula,

you must watch

but not watch

ye must distract

from other distractions

ninja dad knows about that

's why you're here

heh, heh, heh-

piercing sound of drawn steel

foley of raw meats sliced

it's a bit much

-January 2021-April 2022

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEWS #21: ULTIMA: EXODUS (NES VERSION) (1989)

 

This is another one

where you wander all over the land

getting killed 

not being able to afford resurrection 

you probably don't have the instruction manual or the official hint book 

you get to a point where you start fighting smart 

grinding it out close to the save point

if you're 8-bit authentic

or working those save states

if you're contemporary 

you start socking away those golds

buy horses for your crew,

so now you can get around quicker 

and you did manage to get a seaworthy vessel

you're excited to escape the continent 

but the sailing's just too realistic

you feel like you're constantly fighting the wind

you seek the land, all over again 

but then you were surrounded by pirates

before you could dock 

and it went poorly for your people 

killed to the last hero 

back to the character creation menu

I suppose I could've stuck with the save

but I wanted a fresh crew

a fresh reality

you can do that right-quick in these sorts of role-playing games,

y'know,

delete the old family

roll up a new one

if only something something real life something something 

. . .so I download a PDF of the hint book, and I discover that the first sixteen pages are a beautiful sorta watercolor looking comic book summary of the 'story so far' in the Ultima Franchise, featuring vivid depictions of a messiah wandering between dimensions via mysterious woods and gatherings of stalwart heroes and onslaughts of slobbering beasts and swirling undead miasma hordes and tyrannical villains Mondain and Minax wielding terrifying sorcery and I just wanted it to go on and on-

-but it doesn't. 

The rest is a perfectly functional, if incomplete, guide to the equipment the weapons the classes the differences between the Magic Power system and the Will Power system-like just have one magic system, okay? This is an NES cartridge. Don't overtax shit, all right?

Let me quote

what ended up being

the most consequential line

for me 

from the Hint Book: 

"Four great adventurers challenging Exodus by order of Lord British. What is Exodus? Is it human? Is it a monster? In order to prevail, the adventurers must solve many mysteries and increase their own natural abilities." 

Oh. 

That's what I'm about.

Okay.

I thought that EXODUS was an event,

but in this game it's an entity,

a . . . final boss, even?

Well, now.

The hint book is just a stripped down walk-through with no story content beyond the comic book 'Previously on Ultima' opener. I gather from its pages that I should talk to priests, talk to prisoners, learn to bribe, learn to pray, and visit holy sites suffused with mystical power in order to learn how to pray and/or bribe . . . or do I learn how to bribe by bullshitting my way past the jailhouse guards? I might've got some of that confused. 

Oh, yeah! You can also bet on games of Rock-Paper-Scissors! That's what passes for gambling in the mystical realm of Sosaria. (Now I want Paul Schrader to write and direct a gritty film about an isolated loner who develops a perfect system for winning just enough at Rock-Paper-Scissors so as to contain a mysterious trauma from the past, but not so much winning as to get hustled out the door by the pit bosses. Call it . . . The Finger Counter.)

This is one of those games where important items of mystical potency have been brought into being that can vanquish Ultimate Evil . . . except they've been scattered all throughout the land, and, on top of that, people's awareness of them seems spotty, like different people have been told different things about what's actually going on . . . even though the method of vanquishing Ultimate Evil is relatively straightforward and procedural to the point where it would've had to have been a protocol established by a group of engineers-

Look, Exodus is an evil computer. That's the twist. Okay. Even though this is a sword and sorcery reality, it's a computer running the show. In order to shut it down, you gotta collect punch cards to insert into the four terminals that comprise Exodus, and these punch cards crash the system-so to speak-and all is well in the land. 

I guess this could be a 'breaking out of the program' moment like in The Matrix, or a 'fictional character busts loose of the fiction' like in those Grant Morrison scripted Animal Man comics. Ultima:Exodus got there a bit earlier, in any event.

I was going to criticize the usual video game absurdity of having the punch cards scattered all throughout the land. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the punch cards all in one place? Or, um, you encounter an engineer who worked on the Exodus project at one point? They've still got a bunch of junk in their garage from when they hired on with Mondain and Minax? 

But maybe it makes more sense that the punch cards are scattered all to hell. 

Video game companies are notorious for discarding source code. They grind out a product, ship it, clear the deck for the next cycle. Maybe Mondain and Minax were similarly sloppy once they finished Exodus. Mondain and Minax were the villains of previous Ultima games, and presumably they built Exodus as a way to carry forward their legacy of evil in a rationalized, fully automated form. This suggests that they concealed the punch cards to maintain control over Exodus . . . but maybe they just got lost in the shuffle. 

Or maybe Mondain and Minax lost interest in their pricy mechanical boondoggle once it was all designed and done and, in the end, disappointing. 

Perhaps, Mondain and Minax saw their own obsolescence wthin the machinery of Exodus, and therefore scorned it, even as they let it operate, a pitiless doomsday cheat in the event of their deaths at the hands of party-pooping heroes. Sorcerers make mistakes, lose battles, are all-too-human . . . but an evil machine just keeps on grindin'n'cyclin'-

-until it, too, gets trashed by heroes.

The ending is worth reheating.

I think it is.

In the NES version, the Exodus terminals are called 'altars' . . . oh, so these psuedo-mediavalist Advanced Dungeons and Dragons types-your player characters-don't grok computers but apprehend them as sites of religious offerings, a way to interface the divine or the diabolical or what have you,

I think that’s an amusing detail.

You input the punch cards in just the right sequence,

and the altars sink into the ground,

an ankh appears, which you must collect so it can be all significant in the sequel Ultima: Quest of the Avatar,

the castle housing Exodus shakes and shudders as it collapses all around you,

pulling a total Dracula’s Castle Routine,

now's the time for a horseback escape by the skin of your teeth,

ABRUPT-ASS CREDIT ROLL.

If you played the game with no reference to external sources, you might very well be perplexed. 

If you played the game with reference to external sources, you might very well be perplexed.

If you are unfamiliar with Ultima:Quest of the Avatar-

If you don't know what an ankh is-

An ankh is that cross looking thingy with a sorta oval teardrop shape at the top. If you were a goth kid in the 1990s, you probably read the Neil Gaiman scripted The Sandman comics, and you probably remember that Death was personified as a goth girl who wore an ankh necklace. 

See . . . it's ironic . . . because an ankh is popularly understood as an ancient Egyptian symbol . . . for life . . . and Neil Gaiman has Death wearing it . . . that shit is so fucking deep I want to start screaming!!!

Look. Gaiman's got millions in the bank. Who am I to criticize his touching simplicity? Alleged grown-ups-if they are reading anything-are mostly fucking with Harry Potter and a bewildering array of creepy BDSM wealth porn fairy tales . . . 

Gaiman's not so bad, I guess . . .

Hey, I wasn't even a goth kid in the 1990s, so what do I know. 

I did read a lot of Doom 2099 and Hellblazer . . .

. . . okay, so . . .

. . . you destroy the evil computer Exodus 

. . . you get a symbol of life, the ankh

. . . and the ankh goes on to become your symbol as an avatar of virtue in the next game . . .

Shutting down the program of evil was just the beginning. 

Now you must make your way in the world, cultivating your righteousness by dealing with people and situations as they cross your path. There is no more mechanization of evil. No more centralized villain or villainy.

Just a lot of perplexing shit.

You're never quite sure if you're right or wrong.

People stop wanting to join your party.

You've given some offense.

It remains obscure.

And you never quite got to the end of it,

even with the online walk-through, 

and you think back to the conclusion of Ultima: Exodus, 

"Fuck. That was the True Ending. I broke the program, and I shoulda just kept on riding outta the cartridge, away from the incomprehensible intrigues of Sosaria, and into the Perplexing Meaty Now. My confusion remains, but I am always moving forward, even if it is just Pitiless Time hustling me ever closer to the grave. I can vary up the scenery. I'm already better off beyond the clutches of Exodus . . ."

. . . and then along came COVID-19 . . .

"Fuck this shit, I'm getting back in that cartridge! Get the fuck outta my way-!"

ABRUPT-ASS CREDIT ROLL.

-November 2021-January 2022