The greatest movie theater on earth stood on a half block section of urine and blood-stained concrete on San Francisco's upper Market street. Pawn shops and skid row flops clustered around it like a post-apocalyptic movie set, real life sirens and screams competing with the horrors on screen. The marquee overhead looked like a giant squashed cigarette pack, S-T-R-A-N-D spelled out in exhaust-caked neon letters. Not The Strand.... More like someone tried to spell out "S-T-R-A-N-D-E-D", but then gave up three quarters through.
Down on the street, an endless parade of dealers, hookers and addicts haunted the front entrance round the clock. Babbling, cursing drifters- casualties of Reagan's deregulation of the mental health industry- roamed the lobby tirelessly, becoming such a regular nuisance that the staff finally tacked up signs around the front entrance and snack bar:
Groping for your seat in the darkness was a nerve-racking safari of broken bottles, dozing vagrants and raspy whisperers ("Hey mannn? Hey! Mannn! Mannnnn??"). It helped to bring an old coat with you when you sat down, putting an added barrier between you and the crusty relief map covering nearly every cushion.
Settling down in the dark, surrounded by jerking shadows and moans and sobs and chemical burning smells like a Hubert Selby-themed dark ride, the movie would knife through the shadows and splatter the screen up above. Usually something terrible, out of focus, damaged, and unforgettable.
"Two questions," you might ask at this point.
"One: how are you even trying to prove that this Strand crap-hole is the 'greatest theater on earth'? The opening hook got my attention. Cool. But how are you now appealing to me as a gourmand of random online bullshit? Are you just screwing with me? Or are you really so damaged that this sort of ambient prison shank to the neck is the only way you can enjoy yourself?"
"And two. Are you going to start talking about Netflix soon? This is a blog about Netflix, right? I saw the red with the white letters up top and it made me happy inside so I started reading... But now I see you're just fucking tricksy like all the others, and you ruins it! And now I have to go watch both Hangover movies back to back just to remind myself that hookers and vagrants are funny again! Fuck you! Why??"
The short answer to all of the above is: Yes. My beloved Strand absolutely qualifies as the earth's greatest movie theater, for the same reason that Netflix (and I might cry and take back the rest of it, but not this) is not just an online streaming service, but a glorious, misunderstood movie-lovers' mecca, spat-upon and reviled by the unworthy, the "really? REALLY?" and "meh"-sayers, but yielding endless hidden treasures to the devout.
The key to understanding the greatness of both is a single magic word. Movie studios now utter this incantation to tap you for five extra bucks at the box office, all for a pair of uncomfortable glasses which they then demand you "recycle" after leaving the theater (assholes), but The Strand and Netflix always gave it away for free. Or almost for free. That word is immersion.
For almost two years, I happily immersed myself in the Strand's cave of wretched wonders on a weekly basis. The dirt cheap ticket prices were what sucked me in at first. Mismatched ransom note letters on the marquee called out "3 MOVIES/ 5 BU KS": a price point that nicely cleared my entertainment budget. I was working for minimum wage at a puppet shop on Pier 39 at the time and living in the kind of rented room that came with a hot plate and sofa bed, so every non-rent/ramen/Bugler-tobacco-dollar came at a premium.
Stepping through the lobby doors, the other selling points were subtle but insistent. For starters, the snack bar didn't even try to sell you overpriced, megaplex-style concessions, instead loading its case with a sloppy jumble of discount candies from surrounding liquor stores. Laffy Taffy, Zagnut, Blue Mountain-- all for a buck, maybe a buck and a half: catering to the majority of clientele who used the Strand to offload panhandled change and catch a few hours of sleep during the day.
The relaxed, mi casa es su casa atmosphere in the auditorium held a certain charm as well. The Strand was the only theater I've ever been to where they didn't care if you smoked. Or what you smoked. And judging by the strange artifacts you'd sometimes find wedged under your seat-- baggies, old clothing, older syringes-- the only real restriction seemed to be, "Don't scream too loud... Unless you really need to."
And the movies. Dear god Jesus. A second-run theater scraping by on razor-thin margins and probably paying more in insurance premiums than rent could be forgiven for not really giving a shit about film selection. But to its credit, week after week, the Strand offered not just cheap triple features, but a point of view. A kind of hardcore film mission statement that spoke directly and persuasively to even the most chemically imbalanced patron. If you had to take the Strand's catalog of films and cram them all into one video rental section, the end-cap sign would have to say something like: SEX-MONSTERS-VIOLENCE-MADNESS.
Shotgun Psychopaths. Vigilante hookers. Rampaging mutant gangs. Genetic mutations. Kill-crazy veterans. Stewardesses. Secret Nazi sex torture labs. Whatever the bill of fare, you always got you your money's worth and then some: six solid hours of blood, bullets and boobs to rain sparkles over your jaded brain like Tinkerbell's wand. But the movies themselves only totaled part of The Strand's wonderfulness. As any Disneyland employee handbook will tell you, it's not the rides but the cast members that turn the park into a magical experience...
"...squeeze it... ohgodohgodohgod...squeeze the triggerrrrr... do it... noooo.... don't wait! Do it NOW!"
"Sniper" starring Tom Berenger (Luis Llosa,1993) was easily one of the most starkly terrifying films I've ever seen. The action set pieces crackled with authenticity. Dragged me headlong into the gut-churning world of rival snipers Berenger and Billy Zane as they stalked each other through the Panamanian jungle in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, belly-crawling through the shadows in search of the perfect kill-shot...
"... he's in your cross-hairs NOW... do him..! dooooo him..!"
Years later, I rented "Sniper" on video, babbling to my room-mate that this was one of the greatest action movies ever. "Just sit tight, man, trust me! It's way better than the reviews say it is!" So, we popped it in and watched, and right away, I felt that giddy 'plummeting elevator' sensation deep in my gut; anticipating a wonderful thrill ride I'd been on before-- now waiting for new visceral thrills to overlap and compound my happy memories...
Then something weird and disappointing happened. "Sniper" happened. It was like I'd tried to rent the 'special edition director's cut' of a favorite film, but wound up getting the 'gaffer's cut' instead. I felt cheated, wronged. Like a trusting kid again, being told that it wasn't really Santa Clause killing all of those people in "Silent Night, Deadly Night", just a psycho pretending to be Santa. Disappointed doesn't begin.
Then I remembered my first viewing of "Sniper" all those years ago. Which also happened to be my first visit to the faceless, whispering shadowscape of The Strand:
"OH GOD! SQUEEEEEZE IT! SQUEEZEATRIGGER!"
I never saw the guy's face. All I know is, he was sitting right behind me, so close I could smell the sour blend of Boone's Rhine Wine and Jujyfruits on his breath. One thing was for sure: "Sniper" scratched a serious itch for him. Resurrected some dark and painful- or maybe dark and happy- memories so intense they never stopped boiling out of him until the final credits rolled.
"Sniper's" central gimmick is a rapid-dolly "you are the bullet" camera shot that pops up again and again as Berenger and Zane stalk their various targets and each other. Much like the CGI-heavy "let's jump into the dead guy's brain tissues" shot used so much on CSI and House, director Llosa's Bullet-cam takes the workaday tedium out of sniper assassinations and puts you inside the missile speeding two hundred miles an hour towards the victim's horrified face.
Whether this had the desired impact on multiplex audiences remains to be seen (just like the three direct-to-video sequels remain to be seen, buh-dum-bum psssh) but to Mr. Boones Jujyfruits, it was the stuff that dreams are made of. Whenever the camera turned into a bullet, I heard his breath catch in his throat... just before belting out a high pitched, orgiastic squeal like he was launching down a candy-cane water slide into a pool full of naked women. His whole body trembled, knees battering my seat, larynx straining against rupture as volcanic pleasure gushed forth:
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"
Then, at the moment of impact, he'd cough out a damp, gratified: "Oh! Ohhh!!" in a tone that seemed to say, "Whoah! I thought that was gonna be good-- I mean, I knew it was gonna be good-- but goddamn... That was GOOD!"
I left the theater badly shaken and hyper-aware. Glancing over my shoulder, every shadow stared and muttered at me on the long walk home. But along with the sour, 'new inmate' nausea steeping in my throat, I also felt a strange thrill of optimism. Something similar to what the first movie-goers must have felt when that black and white locomotive charged at them on screen and they dove away in fear of being crushed to death. Or maybe when early 3D audiences watched the Creature from the Black Lagoon grope into their real world darkness for the first time. And I remembered my own first experience seeing Star Wars as a little kid and fully realizing what it meant to be transported to another time and place along with eighty total strangers who shrieked and gasped and jumped in their sets at the exact same instant I did.
You understand this truth without any preparation, I knew. From the first moment the big hands of mom and dad lead you into the dark and lift you up onto the folded seat between them, you get what this is about. A movie jumps into your world and takes you someplace else. If it doesn't, it's not really a movie. You feel that charge for the first time and you get hooked, so you keep going back, returning to that cool, sweet and salty darkness your whole life. Then, when you've got too much personal shit going on to get to the theater, you rent videos, devour them every chance you get. You rent stacks and stacks, buy bigger TV's, upgrade your home a/v experience to streaming and hard-wire your home network straight into the back of the receiver so the movie box gets the tastiest broadband juice. You watch movies on your laptop and phone at fast food restaurants and on the toilet; inwardly wondering why the hell they haven't figured out a way to put movies in your shower yet. Then, when your teeth are still grinding, fingernails shredding the couch cushions long after you should have gotten your movie fix, you plug into your game console and mainline explosions and monster attacks and screams until the wee hours of the morning, when your dry eyes scrape shut and your caffeine-pumped mind lists into a shallow, dreamless sleep...
You always want to get back to that Real Movie Place, I thought. Always searching for it. You know it's there, because all those years ago, you saw it. It jumped off the screen and dragged you away from Mom and Dad and took you someplace cooler.
From then on, The Strand had me. I went back once a week, happily cutting into my ramen and bus fare budget for another six hour fix of dark magic. I returned over and over in the hopes that Boones Jujyfruits wasn't just a passing fluke, that there might be other Strand cast members camped out there in the shadows, waiting to heighten and enchant my movie viewing experience like William Castle gimmicks brought to life by the Blue Fairy. I selected my seats carefully. Scouted shadowy figures already spewing an inspired stream of babble before the movie even started... Then sat down far enough away to stay out of range of any flailing outbursts, but close enough to catch every wonderful word. All I could do was hope for the best. Hope for another fix. Hope to catch another magic carpet ride back to the Real Movie Place.
I was never disappointed.
Now, in all the time I haunted The Strand, I'd never once heard the word, "grindhouse", much less understood what it meant. Only years later, after all of the rented rooms and puppets and syringes under the seats were a safe distance in the past, the word came back to find me.
I was lucky enough to come across Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford's excellent "Sleazoid Express", a comprehensive history of grindhouse culture, from the barely legal road shows of the 1930's to the rise and decline... and further decline... and double-tap Giuliani execution of the Times Square adult movie house strip known as The Deuce. In Sleazoid, I found not only one of the best books on exploitation film I'd ever read, but probably one of the most gripping and personal movie books of all time.
Down the road came "Nightmare U.S.A." by Stephen Thrower, redefining exhaustive with a massive, coffee-table format study of the 'exploitation independents': an unsung tribe of zero-budget film guerrillas who shot quick and dirty and made their living on drive-in and grindhouse audiences well after Hollywood had co-opted the Roger Corman brand.
Then there was Corman's own memoir, "How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost a Dime", and John Waters's seminal autobiography, "Shock Value" and "Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The History of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film", and "The Psychotronic Video Guide" and "Step Right Up! I'm Gonna Scare the Pants off of America!" by the great William Castle. And the list runs on and on like an "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS" sex torture scene. I devoured every printed word I could find on the subject, seduced and roofied by this hidden world I'd been lucky enough to get a glimpse of in the short time it lasted.
And the more I read about them, the more I craved these wonderful movies. Delirious rides in a hot car trunk to a world of nightmare and bad-touch sex and tasteless fantasy. When the drive-ins and grindhouses fell victim to real estate development and local morality campaigns, the movies they housed were scattered and sent down a trail of tears, searching for new audiences in a sanitized landscape that couldn't possibly know or understand them.
Thanks to the rescue efforts of exploitation obsessive Mike Vraney of Something Weird Video, and a handful of others, like Anchor Bay and Blue Underground, a healthy number of these films found new life on DVD, and more recently, on their own On Demand channel. Without SWV, the Smithsonian of film oddity and quality smut, many of these film treasures might have been lost forever. Unfortunately, with the proliferation of new release-centric video chains like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video crowding out independent stores across America, the main access to these titles was through special order or high-end retail stores. You could get your fix if you wanted it, but you might have to wait 7-10 business days for delivery.
Then, overnight, revolution hit the video rental business. And as predicted, it was not televised. It was mailed.
Smelling death on the wind, Blockbuster started its own mail order service, in a Single White Femaleesque effort to defeat its rival through creepy mimicry. But by then, the Netflix brand had become so firmly embedded in the consumer mass-mind that comparing the two was like pitting "Snakes On A Plane" against "Snakes On a Train", or "E.T" against "Mac and Me", or Google against Bing. By the time Blockbuster broke out the tempera and started painting "NO LATE FEES!!" on all of its little envelopes, the fight was already over and the ring girls were sobbing and mopping up blood.
Then, in 2007, Netflix launched its streaming service, and two landmark changes occurred.
One: Netflix spontaneously mutated into actor Michael Ironside... Then marched out into the middle of a wind-blown strip mall and bellowed at Blockbuster Video in a deep, gravelly baritone: "We're gonna do this the Scanner way! I'm gonna suck your brain dry!" ...And then there was eerie stillness, and this high-pitched whining sound, and then Blockbuster's head exploded in a grizzly corona, glistening chunks of blue-yellow viscera painting the sky. And there was much pomp and fanfare. And the Lord looked on and saw that it was Good.
And Two: although this would not become apparent for some time, grindhouse movies suddenly found their most deranged and powerful ally since Kroger Babb crooked depression-era audiences into circus tents to watch sex-hygiene porn. For the first time, these films would receive a kind of mass exposure and legitimacy their makers never could have envisioned; and definitely couldn't have paid for if they did. That friend in the shadows was the Netflix recommendation engine.
The first time I saw it, it looked like nothing to me. Actually, I didn't so much see as grumble and click past it as fast as I could. It appeared to be some annoying pop-up, or the website equivalent of a fast food worker asking if I wanted to upsize or add two apple pies for a dollar. But as time went on, I started noticing a strange shift in my relationship with the engine. It seemed to know me. Sized up my hidden wants and desires as cannily as a road-show barker spotting a mark at a hundred yards through subtle body language cues. When I asked for things, it didn't just serve them up with a dopey smile... it listened. And confided. And then hustled me into the back room to show me a secret stash of goodies I didn't even know I wanted...
Click on "Friday The 13th", just as a for instance. Safe, tried-and-true horror staple. Add to Queue... In an eye-twitch, a handful of you-might-also-like titles jumps onscreen. (Always just a handful. Never so many to be annoying, just enough to get you peeking inside the tent) A few other safe bets, of course: "Halloween", "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Scream 3"... But mixed in with these, some less familiar faces: "The Prowler", "Phenomena", "Tenebre" (Mmmnn, no thanks on the foreign films tonight, but what is this "Prowler" thing? Some dude in a trash bag body condom and biker helmet strangling a half-naked woman..? Poster's bright blue and red and yellow like a violent candy wrapper... Weird. Cool... And "Phenomena": floating lightning-hands menacing some chick... Oh shit! It's foreign, no fucking w... Wait. Jennifer Connelly? She's hot. Donald Pleasance? Okay. Groovy.) Add to Queue... Add to Queue...
But it doesn't stop there. Next screen. More suggestions: "Deep Red", "The Toolbox Murders", "Eaten Alive", "Blue Sunshine". (Okay! Enough! Jesus~! All right, Add Toolbox Murders. He has a whole box to get through, that ought to be interesting... Blue Sunshine... Drugs. Murder. Craziness. Nudity. Bald nudity, but still... Add. Eaten Alive. Texas Chainsaw director dude? Nice. Hillbilly hunting down city folk and feeding them to his pet crocodile... Yes!! Add... Add... ADD...)
And on it goes. Coaxing you down past dark aisles and strange smells, following ancient grooves in the threadbare carpet until, at some point you realize that you've passed through some C.S. Lewis gateway, and you're not in the neighborhood multiplex anymore. The smooth-paved story avenues where preassigned plot points and character arcs and startling third act revelations clutch your hand and keep you from stumbling off the embankment are rules of the daylight world you left behind. The movies here are damaged, erratic creations and logical narrative flow only makes them angry. But the more you watch, the truth becomes clear: damaged movies are like damaged people. They have better stories to tell, and they tell them extremely well.
The rules in this place are simple carnival rules. Show 'em scary, pretty pictures. Get 'em in the tent. Once they're inside, whatever happens, happens. Your brain screams at you to leave, just get the hell out... but a raspy voice jets over your shoulder, promising you- in case you didn't already know- that it's already too late. Your fate was locked in the second you Added it to your queue. Then the screen up above flickers and warbles to life, and dark shapes spill into your world, promising to take you someplace else, someplace cooler... and for the first time in a long time you get that familiar 'plummeting elevator' sensation deep in your stomach...
And you understand the truth without preparation. The lights and music take over. And you're ready to take the ride.
Here's the deal. I don't write movie reviews because I don't know how to.
I've tried, you know.
My problem is, the second I write how I feel about a movie in the language of a review, I instantly realize that I don't speak this language at all, and pretty soon I'm flinging my hands around nervously, shouting I that I need to collect pancakes for my bumblebee army instead of talking about how the "hypnotic use of natural lighting transforms the rural landscape into a powerful supporting character".
Every review I try to write slams to a dead stop the instant review-speak splatters the page. It's ridiculous but unavoidable, like that movie trailer dude saying "In A World", or non-incendiary bullets blowing up a car's gas tank, or the handsome hero not wanting to bang the hot heroine because of his tortured past. One minute we're just strolling along, I'm having a great time telling you about this cool movie I just saw, and then... Fuck. I lift up my shoe and there it is...
"Ill-conceived and Poorly executed"... "Pedestrian themes"... "2/3 of a great movie"... "Pacing falls flat"... "Talented cast struggles with formulaic writing/ directing/ lighting/ costumes... "Fulfilling yet unrewarding"... "An edge-of-your-seat-soul-crushing failure"...
I am not qualified to make these judgements. I know this. I'm not even qualified to choose the clothes I go out in everyday, or drive my car through a school zone. And even if I were, in my gut I know that the totally random pichenko-blast of forces that contributes to my liking or not liking a movie has nothing to do with the technical/artistic triumph/failure of the filmmaker/talentless-pedestrian-executioner.
How the fuck should I know how a movie was conceived? Was I there at the moment of conception, watching the filmmaker grunt and thrust over his script, hoping to give birth to the next "Sniper"? Screw that. Creation is a sweaty, awkward, ungainly process. Calling something 'ill-conceived' is like throwing rocks at a one-legged dog.
And if conception went off without a hitch, execution is next up for the reviewer's colonoscope. And here he gets to doff his critic hat and don the hats of every goddamn cast and crew member involved in the production of a movie, and have you watched the closing credits all the way through ever? There are a fuck-pile of them! It's easy to say something like "poorly executed". It's two words, it pops on the page and it makes you sound like you went to school for this. But two pointless words that play God like Alec Baldwin back when he was young and handsome are two words too many.
And pedestrian. Please. You know, from time to time, We are all pedestrians. I don't believe this is a matter for critique. The idea of someone in a shiny new car driving past and throwing trash out the window at you and yelling, "HA HA! FUCKING PEDESTRIAN!" would probably piss you off, wouldn't it? So, no. No on that movie review buzzword, too.
No on all of them, actually. At least for me.
The idea of writing a "movie review blog" appeals to me only because it's easier to explain than what this thing actually is. And here, ten thousand words after "The greatest movie theater on earth...", I still don't have much of an explanation for you.
I guess if my intent to appeal to you as a gourmand of random online bullshit had to be whittled down to a one word job title/ mission statement, the word I would have to choose is: Barker.
I hate talking about movies I wouldn't want other people to see, or that I regret seeing in the first place. Likewise, if I absolutely fall in love with a movie, the last thing I want to do is stake it out in fourth period Lab and peel back the the skin and muscle from the bones until I'm sifting through a pile of cold, bean-colored organs. Not suggesting that this is what a movie reviewer does (I actually love reading well-written reviews and gaining new perspective on my favorite films, and there are tons of really talented-- I mean, some of my best friends are review-- I'm not-- Hey, where are you going? Shit. You're a reviewer, right? Okay. Damn it. Sorry....Thanks. Sorry.), but this is what I do. Because, as I mentioned, I don't know how to.
What I do know is when a movie succeeds in taking me someplace else. No matter how cheaply made, poorly acted, directed, executed. Or if the sets are cardboard and bondo, or if there are typo's in the title. No matter. A film that takes you someplace always trumps one that doesn't. It's always better to have a running beater car with blood stains on the seat and strange smells wafting from the trunk than a shiny pretty car that never leaves the driveway.
So, I am deleting those other talents and skills from my job description. There: done. Now, my sole purpose is to stand on my box outside this tent and say whatever the hell I have to say to get you inside. I checked: I don't need a degree in film studies for that. All I need is a megaphone.
My rules are carnival rules. Scary, pretty pictures. The lure of screams and thrills in the dark. Blood, boobs, monsters and mayhem, all for $7.99 per month. Step right up for graphic violence! Strong Sexual Content! Adult themed magic carpet rides! Your own private grindhouse, minus the broken glass and needles crunching underfoot...
Please note: there may be no exit in case of an emergency. And please no talking or screaming... unless you really need to. And beware any raspy voice whispering to you in the darkness...
It could be your own.
ENJOY THE SHOW...
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