MOVIE REVIEW: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974)

 Produced/Directed/Additional Photography by Tobe Hooper

Story/Screenplay by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper

Cinematography by Daniel Pearl

Lighting by Lynn Lochwood

Art Direction by Robert A. Burns

Grandfather's Makeup by W.E. Barnes

Music by Toby Hooper and Wayne Bell

Edited by Sallye Richardson and J. Larry Carroll

Starring

Marilyn Burns as Sally

Paul A. Partain as Franklin

Allen Danziger as Jerry

William Vail as Kirk

Teri McMinn as Pam

Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface

Jim Siedow as BBQ Old Man

Edwin Neal as Self-Mutilating Hitchiker

John Dugan as Grandpa (Non-Munster)

Ed Guinn as Helpful Trucker

John Larroquette as Narrator

. . .

"A whole family of Draculas . . ."

. . .

"If I have anymore fun today, I don't think I'm gonna be able to take it!"

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

We begin with scrolling text onscreen. No Star Wars in sight, babe. Text scroll tells us that what we're about to see is all true, but we know it's a movie, so we know this is bullshit. But it's a nice text scroll. Logical. Step by step. Clause by clause. We are promised horror. John Larroquette nicely overplays the bogus moralistic tone. Real cute. He should narrate one of them thar true crime podgrifts. That would be the cutest. This logical, moralistic text doesn't exactly lie to us in any meaningful way, but I think it also exists to be cut to pieces by all that follows. 

Following boring, respectable text we get gristly corpses staged as studio art installations and images of solar flares-I flash on Michael Ironside telling Ronny Cox that he's got sunspots in Total Recall-and I'm put in mind of the nonsensical outer space explanations offered up for why the dead are up and roaming around on flesh patrol in the background of Night of the Living Dead. We get photographic flashes on gruesome meats-I flash on the swinging photographer from Blow-Up, like this is a sequel, where the guy ended up after fucking around with tennis mimes-and we wonder what kind of people dig up corpses for art school projects. 

We've got a group of young people travelling in a van to see someone's grandparent's grave. They also plan on checking out the deceased's property. Unknown actors. Perhaps we can better project onto people that look normal, that don't look like movie stars-

You wander off the beaten path, find the house behind the house, get killed by people who have also wandered off the beaten path. But they wandered off awhile ago, and they don't want company. Not in the usual sense. Let me put it this way: they have a use for you, just not a social one. In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre these people who wandered off so long ago-it's like they've become living traps. They lie in wait, you blunder into their area, and then they spring on you. Not for survival reasons. Yes, they will torture, butcher, eat you, and wear you-but it's kinda more for entertainment than for essential nutrition. They could just buy their food at the grocery store and go clothes shopping at a department store like everybody else. But they have to be extra, I guess. It's a bit of a paradox: they want to be left alone, but once you're in their clutches they have so much fun with you that you're easily the highlight of their week. You have become their playmates, their products, their breakfast/lunch/dinner, their snack-I flash on the strange dark goo running down Rudy Giuliani's head as he blubbers incoherently to the press-their furniture, their art, their sport, their fashion-

Redneck cannibal hipster fucks who just cannot settle for storebought. They just gotta craft like a motherfucker from locally sourced materials-I flash on a crossover between Portlandia and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-

Imagine you're walking through the woods at night. Maybe you're a regular for night walks in the woods. You might be a true outdoorsperson. Or maybe it took a lotta psyching yourself up to get out into nature. Perhaps you're freaked out by the dark, by unknowable shadows, by bears that are stronger than you, by large spiders, by venomous snakes, by sinkholes that twist your ankles, by allergens that puff up your face and choke off your oxygen, by phantom serial killers 'cause you spend too much time listening to dumbass true crime podgrifts produced/hosted by talentless hacks-and what's with all the phony moralizing they thread into the true crime podgrifts? You know very well rape and torture and murder are atrocities. It's not like you're a conservative Supreme Court Justice-

Imagine you're walking through the woods at night. You become aware of heavy steps and heavy breathing. You look towards the noise. You see a hulking man hustling towards you with a chainsaw in his hands. You run. The chainsaw wielding man mountain chases you. You run forever. The hulking chainsaw dude chases you forever. Maybe you get used to it over time. Maybe this situation becomes your New Fake Normal. Maybe the chainsaw guy is just kidding around, y'know, maybe this is just his version of horseplay and/or grabass. You never know if you can never trust, Dear Reader.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a frightful sequence of a woman being chased for what feels like forever through woods at night by a man with a chainsaw. It's pretty simple, really. An implacable killer chases a potential victim. The potential victim screams for help-no help is coming-and she runs and runs and runs. And her would-be killer runs and runs and runs after her squealing and gasping with orgasmic delight. We know this guy means business 'cause we've already seen him kill. Time stretches in my mind as I watch. I'm sure if I timed the chase, it wouldn't be that long. Objectively. The movie's total running time is under ninety minutes. It'll all be over soon enough. What's the big damn fuss about, eh? 

Later, this woman is tied to a chair and tormented by the chainsaw guy and his family. We get a series of extreme close-ups of the woman's eyes bugging, and we hear her nonstop screaming. Absolute terror induces absolute attention, a widening of the victim's awareness. Earlier, we see her crashing through a window, and we'll see her do it again. Absolute terror propels the victim to bust through artificial barriers in pursuit of survival and safety. Is this a hint about the true origins of the brickwall shattering Kool Aid Man? What hounds the Kool Aid Man through that wall? Will we ever know?

Earlier, we're told through an audio collage of radio news about all kinds of things going wrong. We hear about corpses getting dug up out of graves. Some parts of these corpses are missing, presumed stolen. Some corpses are posed and propped up like pranks and/or art installations inside of cemetaries. An exploded oil rig burns out of control. Inexplicable murders, suicides, and murder/suicides. A sheriff insists that this rash of depravities are no doubt caused by out-of-state elements. Not our people, no-sirree-Robert. Artificial borders and boundaries don't do shit except give authoritarians bogus talking points to rhetorically jerk off the Nixonian Silent Majority. It's fine. 

Randomness is a big deal in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Chance. Luck goes one way, and then it goes another. Normal people blunder into a den of killers, but then the killers turn out to be equal parts stupid and creative. The killers have home field advantage. They know the terrain. They know what they want, which can get you pretty far in this life. But the killers don't have any flexibility. Which usually isn't a problem. But then this inflexibility collides with a victim's ferocious will to survive. Note that Right and Wrong have no major and/or supporting roles in this cast. Note that cops do not save anyone from anything, nor do they bother to show up, even though we get such certain pronouncements from a sheriff over the radio. Observe the flayed face that serves as a pleasantly glowing lamp shade. Give the killers their due: they use every last part.

MOVIE NOVELIZATION REVIEW: THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR (1975)

 Novelization by Bill S. Ballinger.

From a screenplay by Robert Clouse.

Published by Warner Books in November of 1975.

. . . 

"There are times when a man must look at another and trust him with his life, or something even more valuable. He cannot ask that man whether he is a good man . . . or if he is going to betray him. He has to look at him and decide."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

In a nameless city-well, it probably used to be New York, so it's not a 'nameless' city, it actually/probably lost the name it had for so long-

In a city that lost its name due to all the cataclysms-nuclear war, famine, economic collapse, petroleum exhaustion, civil wars in every bedroom and on every block-humans have sealed off different groupings of what used to be apartment and office buildings and set up communes where people have rooftop urban agriculture and rainwater catchers so they can continue to eat and drink. One might assume they're also still using whatever's left of the aquifers, but it's best not to think about that. People horde canned goods, but those are going away, along with all the other delights and conveniences of the mass produced highly disposable societies of yore. The narrative is vague, but we are well past the 1980s. No more cars are being manufactured. Later for nation states-the logic of nationalism was so self-consuming. Later for religion-no great loss. Money don't mean shit-the logic of capitalism was so self-consuming. No electricity, no air conditioning-no Pac-Man, no Space Invaders, no Death Race 2000, no Missile Command-well, shit and fuck! Outside the communes are the 'Street People,' roving gangs of bandits'n'cannibals that allow the commune dwellers to feel superior to the unhoused and, also, terrified of same. I got the impression that some Street People groups were better organized than others, but this was not fully elaborated in the text. We are observing the action from the perspective of a commune known as the Barony.

Wouldn't you know it-the Barony is led by a man called . . . the Baron. The Baron isn't actual nobility, nor do the people of the commune actually believe in ranks or titles or noble this'that'or'the'other. They believe in jobs to be done, and Leader is a job which must be filled. The Baron was just a name picked on a whim to denote the job/role of a leader, and it somehow stuck. The Barony, by a similar process, became the name which these particular commune dwellers adopted to distinguish their turf from everybody else's turf. Nor does the Baron himself think he's anything special. He's old, but I got the impression he's been the Baron for a long time partly against his will and partly by his own choice, so we are not necessarily dealing with a cut-and-dried case of gerontocracy here. 

The Baron's gig isn't so bad, really. He gets his own office. He's got lots of books and maps to pour over. He fantasizes about leaving the city-just like many New Yorkers of yore did-and he's got a private stash of delicious cigars. Perhaps, once he's smoked his way through all those stogies, his mouth and teeth will fall off, and he can die of dehydration-or starvation if he can still take fluids.The downside is that the Baron has to make a lot of tough decisions: crime, punishment, security, street combat. If someone steals or kills or rapes within the Barony, the Baron is the guy who has to make the decision to exile that person into the urban wasteland with a vest of jingle bells to draw a cannibal mob of Street People. If the Barony's running low on supplies, the Baron's the one to lead foraging  expeditions out into the creepy ruins of the blighted city. If there's a war with a gang of Street People or a hostile commune, the Baron is dutybound to lead the charge. But, if all is calm, the Baron can sit in his office, puffing a cigar, and re-reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(where did it all go wrong?) or Day of Trinity(who thought nukes were a good idea?) or Thirteen Days(how do you slick your way out of a doomsday standoff?) or Earth Abides(oh, that's what they thought would happen)  or The Story of O(just some leisure reading) or whatever. Better than Wal-Mart or McDonald's. 

The Barony has a scientific greenthumb named Cal who has bred a strain of famine-resistant seeds. The Baron sees these seeds as a potential way out of extinction, but he has no faith in the ability of the people of the Barony or the larger city to put these seeds to good use. The Baron knows the cruelty and vindictiveness of his people all-too-well even when measured against the bloodthirsty Street People. The commune dwellers are just a little more comfortable and self-absorbed than their unhoused fellow humans is all. But what can the Baron do? He has been put into his job/role not to demonstrate moral leadership or elevate people's ethics or sense of social justice but merely to maintain status quo. The Baron knows not how to speak to the hearts of his people. 

There's a kinda-sorta no man's land outside of the communes that serves as a public square to facilitate barter and other forms of exchange. A muscular man appears here, all alone, standing shirtless, eyes closed, presenting himself to the highest bidder. This is Carson, the titular Ultimate Warrior, who is very good at killing people with his hands, his feet, and his big-ass knife. Carson makes such a ritual display to signify both his strength and his mercenary status, though it was not clear to me why a gang of cannibals would be put off from converting his impressive physique to nutritional purposes. The point is that Carson is a wandering badass motherfucker-like Shane, like Yojimbo, like the Man With No Name-and he's going to provide the action sequences for the next seventy or so pages. The Ultimate Warrior is a Wild West melodrama in post-apocalyptic drag. 

The Baron hires on Carson. The Baron had hired a mercenary previously, and there's a great speech describing the tragedy of such a life: accumulated wounds leading to escalating disability ending in suicide. Carson knows all of this already, and either doesn't care or sees no other way to live in a post-civilizational world. I interpreted Carson as a guy who preferred to die on his feet, but the narrative makes it clear that such a desire might be nothing more than a macho fantasy in a life that wears you down with a million cuts. All the same, Carson has plenty of opportunity to demonstrate his killing prowess against Street People and a particularly nasty bunch of goons led by a dude named Carrot, who turns out to be Carson's nemesis. The action stuff is somewhat perfunctory, and lacks the gruesome panache of later post-apocalyptic fantasias such as The Road Warrior, Fist of the North Star, and Fury Road, but it does lead to an acceptable payoff. The Ultimate Warrior doesn't completely back down from its bleak premises even as it indulges in one-against-all battle fantasies.

The Baron has a secret mission in mind for Carson, one based on the hardy seeds cultivated by Cal. The Baron is also looking to get his pregnant daughter, Melinda, to safer climes. But in a key moment, the Baron tells Carson to choose the seeds over Melinda if he can't save both. I appreciated the bleakness and cynicism of these machinations. But from another perspective the Baron is extending his sense of care beyond his own comfort and position since this secret mission will fatefully put him at odds with his own people. The Baron trusts a stranger over his 'family,' in a sense, and I find this fascinating to think about. It's like the Baron is developing a more global outlook even if it's too little or too late. 

A last minute twist suggests that maybe one of the core malfunctions of this world is breakdown of communications. Everybody's retreated into communes and gangs and aggression and paranoia-not wholly without reason-but the appearance of some friendly strangers suggests that the city isn't so dead after all. This is right at the end, so it must be significant, right?

The Ultimate Warrior is no masterpiece. It's movie tie-in product. You get about one hundred thirty pages of entertainment. I read it in one go on a Sunday night. The cover features a cheesy drawing of Yul Brynner as Carson and Max von Sydow as the Baron. Don't ask me about the actual movie, I've never seen it. If I was living in a post-apocalyptic world, this book would be the only option for enjoying this story. I could've even smoked a gross cigar like some asshole while reading it, but I didn't. I had some strong black coffee and that was good enough for me.

MOVIE REVIEW: TAXI DRIVER (1976)

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Screenplay by Paul Schrader

Cinematography by Michael Chapman

Art Direction by Charles Rosen

Costumes by Ruth Morley

Music by Bernard Herrmann

Edited by Marcia Lucas, Tom Rolf, and Melvin Shapiro

Produced by Michael Philips and Julia Philips

Starring 

Leonard Harris as Senator Charles Palantine

Albert Brooks as Tom

Cybil Shepherd as Betsy 

Richard Higgs as Secret Service Agent

Victor Argo as Store Owner

Joe Spinell as Personnel Maniac

Peter Boyle as Wizard

Norman Matlock as Charlie T.

Harry Northup as Doughboy

Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle

Steven Prince as Gun Dealer

Martin Scorsese as Loiterer/Murderous Passenger

Gene Palma as Drummer

Harvey Keitel as Sport 

Jodie Foster as Iris

. . .

"I believe that someone should become a person like other people."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

In New York City, everybody rides in cabs. Senators. Homeless people. Investment bankers. Sex workers. Broadway actors. Sick junkies. Mafia assassins. Lonely grandmothers. Pimps. Drug dealers. Arms merchants. Public school teachers. Civil rights attorneys. Serial killers. Charles Bronson. People who talk to themselves. People who love to chat up the cabbie. Swingers. Wife-swappers. Catholic priests. Street artists. Musicians. Journalists. Novelists. Other cabbies have to catch cabs. Filmmakers. Foreign tourists. College students. Studio art majors. Restaurant servers. Drunken sailors. Scientists. Poets. Defense intellectuals. Anti-nuke activists. Community organizers. Veterans. Peace activists. Housepainters. Civil engineers. Martial arts instructors. Everybody has to catch a cab at some point. You ever try driving in city traffic? Best leave it to the professionals. And because a vast spectrum of humanity passes through a taxi, why not tell a story from the point-of-view of someone driving the taxi? What do they see? How do they feel? What goes through their mind? It all depends on the cabbie.

—

A guy named Travis Bickle shows up in New York City to drive a cab. Surely, he's making his own choices. Okay, maybe he didn't know from the start that he was going to hack it, but that's where he lands. He's speedy, y'know, so he can crunch pills, drive triple shifts, cut the crash with sips of bourbon, he'll make money-maybe have a heart attack-but he'll make money. We might make the mistake-a mistake Bickle lives inside of-that Travis is a man without a past. He's not. But he lives within that fundamental mistake all the same. I don't blame someone for making such a mistake. Sometimes your past is a burden, or it can really feel like one. Bickle was a Marine, some kind of Special Forces operator in Vietnam. Maybe he killed people. Maybe people tried to kill him. Yeah, maybe you would want to get away from all that. But it could actually be the case that Bickle isn't a soldier at all. Maybe he's a case of stolen valor. He's one of these guys that needs to play army dress-up or whatever. Taxi Driver is that kind of movie. Travis Bickle is that kind of protagonist. You just don't know if he's telling you the whole truth or not. Bickle latches on to different strands of thought, focuses on willing certain people into becoming what he needs them to be even if they cannot be that, or don't want to be that, or just find him kinda gross and creepy.  He's a man of shreds and patches. I think he's telling it like he sees it . . . but does he actually see it? By it I guess I'm talking about reality. Bickle sees what he wants, and Reality is not necessarily what he wants. Perhaps we sympathize up to a point. 

—

Bickle narrates the movie in fits and starts. He's a guy who keeps a diary. He sits in his tiny apartment, deck of cards for solitaire near-to-hand, surrounded by fast food boxes and wrappers and crushed soda and beer cans, and we get his interior monologue about his thoughts and impressions. Bickle's full of racist paranoia and homophobia and misogyny and fantasies of victimhood and fantasies of a Biblical flood destroying New York City for its sins and corny little self-help sayings. Bickle crunches speed, sips bourbon, slams beers, and jerks off in porno theaters. Yet, Bickle sees himself as an avatar of purity, health, righteous vengeance. Bickle's attempting to introspect himself out of his bad feelings-to introspect himself out of himself and into the role of some heroic destroyer. But this seems to be a trap, since he can't take in new information or other viewpoints. Bickle's stuck inside his own rage, his own fantasies, and his inability to see himself how others see him. Which is as a manipulative creep, a walking timebomb, and a pervert haunting porno theaters with his dick in his hand. 

—

In a key scene, Bickle goes to an indoor firing range to brush up his sidearm shooting. Bickle noticeably blinks as he fires. Is he out of practice? Was he never in the Marines to begin with? We just have Bickle's word to go on about his past and that King Kong Unit patch on his jacket's shoulder. But maybe Bickle just put on this whole persona as a costume. Bickle puts on other personas-nice dating guy; dude looking for a job; vigilante killing machine; guy interested in politics; dutiful son-and who can say if any of 'em are the For Real Bickle. He's not really good at any of 'em, either. Well, he hacks real good. Gotta give him that. The title of the film fits. 

—

In another key scene, Bickle takes a woman named Betsy on a date to a porno theater. Betsy's a volunteer for a Senator Charles Palantine, who wishes to be President of the United States of America. Betsy has, presumably, never been inside a porno theater in her life. She's beautiful and smart and, somehow, she gives Bickle a chance. I've always thought it was out of a combination of boredom and morbid curiosity. There's no way in hell she's actually sold on Bickle's twitchy, desperate pitter-patter. Betsy tells him he reminds her of some Kris Kristofferson lyrics. I think what she's saying is that she thinks Bickle is like a fictional character-dramatic, contradictory-and this is in contrast to her upright socially conscious co-workers who are so sober, so certain, so adult, so predictable. But, when she actually sits down in the porno theater next to Bickle . . . nope. She has to get the fuck outta there. Fiction is fun on the page and on the screen, but not so much in real life. Can't say as I blame her. 

—

New York City is a grimy, violent, exciting, desperate place in Taxi Driver. We are looking at the complex results of social injustice, economic inequality, and the implosion of the Myth of Noble-ass American Exceptionalism. Post-Nixon. Post-Vietnam. You can still see the history. Pre-Giuliani. Pre-Disney. But you can also see sick junkies nodding in doorways; child prostitutes getting pimped; angry dudes yelling incoherently as they stalk the summer nights; people randomly beating the shit out of each other for no discernible reason; juvenile delinquents vandalizing property; garbage everywhere; people fucking in public; and Bickle tries to apply his white man's rage fantasy of annihilation to a city that will remain forever beyond his comprehension. Betsy-a little willfully, a little desperately-sees him as a walking contradiction-the city, too, is a contradictory entity, far more so than Bickle, far beyond the vacuous campaign slogans of the Palantine operation. At least the Palantine operation's trying to build something, y'know? It's something.

—

Bickle fails at winning Betsy's heart, so he tries to save the soul of a child prostitute named Iris. Iris and Bickle's conversation is bleak and hilarious. Bickle does a kind of 'Scared Straight' pitch, and Iris yammers on about astrology. Bickle lies about being a government agent. Iris fantasizes about escaping to some grody hippie commune. Bickle-who loves jacking speed, buying illegal handguns, and watching porno movies full of orgies and gang bangs-takes on the role of Wholesome Big Brother with Iris, and maybe he half sells it. Bickle's speaking with a child, after all. Children aren't stupid, but they can be trusting to a fault. Bickle almost gives away the game when he half admits to reading about commune life in a dirty magazine.  Oh, that dear, dear taxi driver!

—

When Bickle applies in-person to become a cabbie, he's gruffly interviewed by a fellow former Marine played by actor Joe Spinell. The Spinell character tries to suss out if Bickle is some kind of combat stress walking wounded type, but he relents after a bit. There's a moment where they try to relate one Marine to another, but Bickle shines him on, and the Spinell character doesn't push it. Hey, he's not a psychiatrist. Lots of weirdo fuckers hack. New York City is a mecca for crazies, right? Spinell would later play a serial killer with an intermittent ability to pass for normal in the 1980 William Lustig flick Maniac, which I have long thought of as a secret sequel to Taxi Driver. Fuck Marvel. Fuck DC. Fuck Harry Potter. Fuck Star Trek and Star Wars. Give me the Taxi Driver Cinematic Universe. In addition to Maniac, I would include Blue Collar, Saturday Night Fever, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Bad Lieutenant, Bullet Ballet, and Summer of Sam. Because I don't need anymore Feel Good in my movies ever again. 

—

Because Bickle is a sort of fictional construct, the violent climax doesn't totally consume him. Bickle's mayhem gets twisted into a Wild West in Noo Yawk fantasy by a media looking to pander to white America's bloodthirsty vigilante dream life. Bickle's version of Death Wish-unlike Charlie Bronson's-doesn't end with a man in exile, but with the hack readmitted into the community of citizens in good standing. Someone's gotta drive the cab, I guess. It's the most fucked-up happy ending of them all. 

ANIME REVIEW: AKIRA (1988)

 

Original Manga by/Character Designs by/Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

Screenplay by Katsuhiro Otomo and Izo Hashimoto

Art Direction by Toshiharu Mizutani

Director of Photography Katsuji Misawa

Edited by Takeshi Seyama

Music by Geinoh Yamashirogumi

AKIRA HAS A CREW OF HUNDREDS OF HARDWORKING PEOPLE WHO I DON'T HAVE TIME TO LIST IN THIS REVIEW. I SINCERELY APOLOGIZE. A MOVIE LIKE AKIRA TAKES AN ARMY OF DEDICATED ARTISTS AND CRAFTSPEOPLE. IT'S SOMETHING TO KEEP IN MIND. 

Voice Cast

Nozomu Sasaki as Tetsuo

Mitsuo Iwata as Kaneda

Masaaki Okura as Yamagata

Takeshi Kusao as Kai

Yuriko Fuchizaki as Kaori 

Mami Koyama as Kei

Tessho Genda as Ryu

Hiroshi Otake as Nezu

Taro Ishida as Colonel Shikishima

Mizuho Suzuki as Dr. Onishi

Sachie Ito as Kiyoko (no. 25)

Tatsuhko Nakamura as Takashi (no. 26)

Kazuhiro Kando as Masaru (no. 27)

Yosuke Akimoto as Bartender

Koichi Kitamura as Lady Miyako (Doomsday Cult Leader)

. . .

"KANEDAAAAA!!!"

"TETSUOOOOO!!!"

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Post World War III.

In another 2019.

In another Tokyo.

A corrupt government suppresses civil rights. Slimy politicians promise the New Olympic Stadium will 'Make Japan Great Again.' Slimy politicians pocket huge sums of money, dole out enough spare change to their donors and sponsors to stay in power until they croak on the job. 

The people take to the streets to make their voices known through acts of civil disobedience, even as they are brutalized by military police. Some take up guns and bombs and wage guerilla warfare against the state. Many try to pretend everything is a-okay by continuing to show up for jobs and school and go on dates at restaurants. Still others seek oblivion in drugs and sex and apocalyptic religions. Young people form motorcycle gangs, and raise all kinds of hell in the streets through indiscriminate acts of violence, vandalism, and defiance of polite societal norms.

A name from the past echoes through all things: Akira . . .

In the futuristic megacity of Neo-Tokyo, a dystopian gerontocracy (arbitrary

rule by old fucks) deposits public funds into the bank accounts of special interests, the military, the cops, and corporations while cutting education, welfare, and civil rights programs. One project that the gerontocrats are looking to ax is known by the codename Akira. This is a top secret superscience operation focused on cultivating psychic powers-though I wonder if it actually isn't obscured by state secret classification so much as it is occluded by the traumas/social breakdowns of World War III, mass global slaughter, nationalist mythcraft, and capitalist greed. Who wants to remember a past so filled with horrors? You turn on the daily news and you know the fix is in, right? You don't have to be a psychic or a historian to know that past is prologue, that shit was permafucked before most people alive today were even born. Even so, Neo-Tokyo is alive with neon-holographic advertising fantasias, premium speed to keep you up for days at a stretch, and all the fucking, fighting, and property destruction you can handle. Akira-the movie,the state of mind, that most fearsome of fantasy vacation hotspots-has something for everybody. 

You've got the motorcycle punks led by teenage hooligan Kaneda, who rides a bright red future bike with matching self-made uniform. You've seen it. Kaneda and his turbo-whip are the iconic marketing, the poster. Even if you've never seen the actual film you've come across the imagery of the crimson clad rebel-without-a-future somewhere in your life. Amusingly, Kaneda turns out to be more of a comedy character than the badass he imagines himself to be, but he doesn't lack for spunk.

Kaneda's best friend is Tetsuo, a troubled kid, full of rage at being bullied from kindergarten onwards. Tetsuo is starting to resent Kaneda's big brother routine, and covets that big red bike. Tetsuo is dating a shy girl named Kaori. Kaori could probably do better than Tetsuo, but she's naive and lacks confidence. Tetsuo is no catch as a romantic interest, but he does become the secret protagonist once he awakens to his psychic powers. Although whether he is his own agent or the expression of some wilder, untameable force remains a mystery to this day.

Also in the gang are tall guy Yamagata and short guy Kai. They kick ass. Don't underestimate the short dude. He'll fuck up all of your shit. 

Kaneda and his gang are in a neverending street war against the Clowns, biker scum who dress like clowns. They're led by a burly dude named Clown. They have a theme going, but it's kinda mysterious.

Kaneda's crew has a motorduel with the Clowns. From out of nowhere, a small strange child uses telekinesis to blow up Tetsuo's bike. Military police show up to arrest the punks, and haul Tetsuo off to the hospital. This accidental collision between the street and the state sets off an apocalyptic chain of events that will transform Neo-Tokyo into a psionic disaster zone. 

Not the first time, y'know . . .

The small, strange psionic kid is Takashi, and he has the number 26 tattooed on the palm of his hand. A guerilla fighter busted him out of a government facility, perhaps to exploit telekinesis as a revolutionary weapon. The guerilla and the psychic brat confront a military police unit, and a building gets destroyed by the brat's uncontrolled brainwaves. Takashi has great power, but he's not a hardened fighter. When he panics at the sight of someone being gunned down by the cops, he looses indiscriminate invisible force. This is a major idea in Akira: social dysfunction and injustice resulting in chaotic destruction. 

Takashi is part of a trio of kids who have been subjected to secret experiments to cultivate their psionic powers. This secret program is managed by white lab coat rocking Dr. Onishi and has the backing of the embittered Colonel Shikishima, who sees psychic kids as a safeguard against future calamity. The other two psychic kids are a girl named Kiyoko and a boy named Masaru. The psychic trio also seem to view Shikishima as a father figure, since he's trying to protect them from being shit-canned by a government that no longer sees the utility of the Akira program, and also wishes to avoid the fallout of being associated with human experimentation. Kiyoko, who has oracular powers, has had a vision of doom befalling Neo-Tokyo. The Doctor gathers data. The Colonel attempts to convince the corrupt politicians and their business backers to take the prophecies seriously.

One of the Colonel's political enemies is a representative named Nezu, who is secretly channeling funds and intel to a terrorist guerilla group led by a man named Ryu. Ryu's faction are responsible for busting Takashi loose. One of Ryu's most loyal followers is a teenage girl named Kei, who has a kind of naive crush on Ryu. Not that Kei isn't committed to the cause, but Akira also has a theme of young women having shit options when it comes to dating. Ryu isn't into underage girls, thankfully, but he is into dying for a cause-and also having other people die if necessary. Like Kei, for instance. 

Kei crosses paths with Kaneda in jail, and Kaneda hounds her for a date. Kei's so over high school guys, but Kaneda tries to win her over by bullshitting his way into Ryu's faction. Revolutionaries and street punks ought to have more common cause. 

All of these actors are, ultimately, locked into narrow visions of vengeance, order, money, ideological purity, scientific obsession, or accumulation of power. Neo-Tokyo cannot go on as normal, because there is no normal. Capitalism and militarism have effectively thwarted social justice. Now comes the rage. 

And what a rage it is: motorcycle showdowns that would make the Hell's Angels shit their adult diapers; psychic battles that put X-Men to shame; fashionably dystopian cityscapes that make Blade Runner look like the coffee shop from Friends; and orgasmic vistas of mass destruction that make Godzilla look like Barney the Dinosaur. Akira offers up a festival of annihilation for those tired of the bullshit, and a nightmare of desolation for those clinging to a fantasy of a return to a normal that never existed.

Many images and sequences stand alone in their ferocious power and lurid colors:

A massive memory play assembled from the wreckage of a rubbled city and childhood trauma-I wonder what Katsuhiro Otomo would do if he ever adapted Arthur Miller's After the Fall or Death of A Salesman.

Tetsuo defiantly turning away from us to walk into hellfire-now you know where Sephiroth copped his whole routine!

A trio of psychic children battling an intruder within their private playpen, walls adorned with optimistic future cities straight outta Astro Boy and the Jetsons. These flimsy imaginings crumble like everything else.

A psychic punk squaring off against a fucking tank. Don't bet on the tank. 

Slow motion motorcycle wipeouts that make me wonder what Otomo would do with J.G. Ballard's Crash.

The shock and horror on a young guerilla's face the first time she kills a soldier. 

Out of control full body metamorphosis escalating to cosmogenesis. 

A disillusioned military man marching into certain death for reasons he no longer understands with nothing but his sidearm and samurai spirit to guide him. 

A motorcycle gang war crashing a yuppie couple's dinner date.

A vast amoebic cloud of tear gas enveloping a street protest.

The look on someone's face as they channel another's consciousness.

Acid trails of tail lights whipping all over on the air before us, a terrible power we can only grasp in the wake of the ruins it leaves behind itself . . .

All of this set to driving doomsday chanting and percusive instruments. The soundtrack goes with all this quite well, but also stands alone as its own experience. Give it a listen. 

The only downside? All the video game versions suck. Not a single one worth one half of one dog turd. Maybe someone has run their own homebrew tabletop Akira role-playing game somewhere out there in TV land? That could be something.

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #3:

REMEMBER: BEFORE ADVENTURING BEYOND TOWN BE SURE TO USE THE BATHROOM. OR, ALTERNATIVELY, YOU CAN GO TO THE BATHROOM ALL OVER RANDOM ENCOUNTER ENEMIES. FIND THE PLAY STYLE THAT SUITS YOU BEST.