Kelly WandCrimewave
October 9th 2006 04:53
This is all a bit incestuous so let me explain. Sam Raimi had just made “Evil Dead”. Evil Dead editor Joel Coen had just made “Blood Simple” with his brother Ethan. These two films had just pretty much set the high water mark for independent American film making in the nineteen eighties. They could do no wrong.
Young stars on the rise, Avco Embassy jumped at the chance of signing them on to make “Crimewave”. I don’t know what the studio was expecting but it wasn’t this. They had seen the ferocity of Raimi’s film and the twisted noir fantasy of the Coen’s debut. They hadn’t seen the humour and the wit. They probably thought they were going to get the ultimate slasher movie instead of a romp. Coming on like a fever dream version of a Three Stooges remake of a Frank Capra screwball comedy, it seemed to confuse everyone in its day.
It makes perfect sense in the light of latter day Coen madness but I remember finding myself alone in the cinema watching it when it first came out. There had been a few sorry souls on board when the lights went down but they were all gone long before the final reel unrolled.
I had never seen anything like that exodus. It is really hard to get people to walk out of a cinema anywhere except at film festivals where it is almost expected. I’ve walked out on three films in my whole life and I’ve seen some stinkers. I had been surrounded by people who had handed out their own hard earned cash to be there. They had left en masse.
What made it harder to understand was that I was enjoying the film so much. It would be another two years before “Raising Arizona” blew everyone’s little cotton socks off and this film is much in that spirit. Can the mood of an audience change that much in such a short space of time?
Admittedly, the combination of Raimi’s loony tune camera style and the Coen’s utterly anarchic scripting is very in your face. But, my god, there are some classic sequences here. The safest corridor in the world. Paul Smith’s lifting the carpet routine. The fork in the nose. Brion James’ electric execution device. Bruce Campbell’s heel. The big car chase. The big dance number. Sheree Wilson’s cries of “no bright side”. The package to Uruguay. This movie is just one long string of classic moments.
I would like to point out that Paul Smith’s ridiculous rolling style of walking and facial gestures seem to have been stolen by James Gandolfini for his role as Tony Soprano. When I was watching the film this time, the similarity caught my eye and I doubt I will ever be able to watch New Jersey’s favourite crime boss in the same way ever again. Now that I’ve mentioned it, neither will you.
Only a cold hearted fool could not love this movie. Well, Raimi and the Coens all but disowned it citing studio interference. The studio hated it full stop but Embassy was pretty much in its death throws at the time. Critics hated the film. Even hard core Coen fans ignored it. But people… it’s good! And, like many films like this, it has – over the course of time – developed its own little fan base. We are a small band in numbers but we are the kind of small band who are all going to go out and buy a copy of this film without exception.
News of Universal’s special edition cheered me enormously. My video copy was tatty. I wanted my gorgeous new widescreen digital transfer. Gimme. Gimme. Gimme. I went to seven separate shops until I hunted it down. Clearly, someone wasn’t going out of their way to distribute the thing.
Universal dumped an enormous pile of obscure items onto the market this week with little fanfare. It seemed like an exercise in distribution by weight rather than quality or design. Some stores had fifteen copies of “Cry Baby” whilst another had the entire world’s supply of “Near Dark”. Someone else got a case of “Crooklyn” and I pity the poor sod who collected all the copy of “Bob Roberts”. Hey, it’s not a bad film but how many times would you want to watch it? I thought about buying it but I realised it would just sit on the shelf untouched. Some films are seen once and once alone.
“Crimewave” is like a dirty addiction you pick up somewhere. You watch it once and think you can handle it. The trouble is it has got so many little nooks and crannies and tiny details that you can’t help but sling it into the machine for another hit. Soon normal motion pictures lose their charm. You go from watching “Crimewave” once a month into becoming a weekend abuser. I’m warning you. If you’re not careful, you’ll be watching it everyday and quoting lines to your non-existent friends.
If you can sing the theme tune, it is already too late for you.
My concerns were raised when I noted the eighty three minute running time had been reduced to seventy nine minutes. What is so special about that? It is not like I’m not hip to a bit of post modern irony. (To be fair, by the time “Crimewave” hit the streets, the words Special Edition did not appear on the packaging – only the abbreviation SCN on the disc menu remained from the pre-release promise.)
What is gone is a sequence where Brion James imitates Sheree Wilson and mocks Reed Birney by predicting his every nerd like word. It’s a lovely sequence but the weird thing is, I found myself thinking the film was better for its absence. There is now no sag before the climax but it has introduced a couple of plot holes which go against the Coen’s usual meticulous scripting. Besides, that sag was hardly noticeable to begin with. It wasn’t a gaping hole the fate of the movie teetered over.
I had to go through the particularly anal process of comparing video to disc to tell you this stuff. As someone who has edited a fair amount of video over the years, I had to do it out of professional curiosity anyway. I certainly don’t like admitting to such behaviour in public. It tends to draw the nut jobs out of the woodwork. Feel free to slap me down for my peculiar obsessions.
I don’t know who organised the re-edit. It seems like a lot of effort for a studio to go through for what is such a limited release (unless it was insisted upon by the creative parties). I mean, since Spiderman, who would fuck with Raimi. The Coens may not have that kind of commercial clout but they do have the kind of artistic credibility that tends to shut most critics up.
The Coen Brothers were notorious for delivering a director’s cut of “Blood Simple” that was four minutes shorter than the original. What I can’t understand is why such a large deleted scene could not have been included as a special feature particularly given the film’s short run time. It’s really not a bad scene and the only reason to give it the boot is pacing. It is not as if disc space was a problem. If the initial footage had been damaged, I doubt anyone would have objected to pan and scan deleted scenes.
I remain a fan of both versions. I would, however, like to think that companies who release such obviously cult material could at least pander a little more to the needs of the cult maniacs likely to purchase such artefacts. It is not as if such an item is going to be scooped up off of the streets by passing strangers. Getting vanilla editions is one thing but this is another.
Maybe we could have an explanation from Universal Pictures with regards to who edited the film from its original theatrical form and why this edition is so light on features.
There is a comment box below.
Young stars on the rise, Avco Embassy jumped at the chance of signing them on to make “Crimewave”. I don’t know what the studio was expecting but it wasn’t this. They had seen the ferocity of Raimi’s film and the twisted noir fantasy of the Coen’s debut. They hadn’t seen the humour and the wit. They probably thought they were going to get the ultimate slasher movie instead of a romp. Coming on like a fever dream version of a Three Stooges remake of a Frank Capra screwball comedy, it seemed to confuse everyone in its day.
It makes perfect sense in the light of latter day Coen madness but I remember finding myself alone in the cinema watching it when it first came out. There had been a few sorry souls on board when the lights went down but they were all gone long before the final reel unrolled.
I had never seen anything like that exodus. It is really hard to get people to walk out of a cinema anywhere except at film festivals where it is almost expected. I’ve walked out on three films in my whole life and I’ve seen some stinkers. I had been surrounded by people who had handed out their own hard earned cash to be there. They had left en masse.
What made it harder to understand was that I was enjoying the film so much. It would be another two years before “Raising Arizona” blew everyone’s little cotton socks off and this film is much in that spirit. Can the mood of an audience change that much in such a short space of time?
Admittedly, the combination of Raimi’s loony tune camera style and the Coen’s utterly anarchic scripting is very in your face. But, my god, there are some classic sequences here. The safest corridor in the world. Paul Smith’s lifting the carpet routine. The fork in the nose. Brion James’ electric execution device. Bruce Campbell’s heel. The big car chase. The big dance number. Sheree Wilson’s cries of “no bright side”. The package to Uruguay. This movie is just one long string of classic moments.
I would like to point out that Paul Smith’s ridiculous rolling style of walking and facial gestures seem to have been stolen by James Gandolfini for his role as Tony Soprano. When I was watching the film this time, the similarity caught my eye and I doubt I will ever be able to watch New Jersey’s favourite crime boss in the same way ever again. Now that I’ve mentioned it, neither will you.
Only a cold hearted fool could not love this movie. Well, Raimi and the Coens all but disowned it citing studio interference. The studio hated it full stop but Embassy was pretty much in its death throws at the time. Critics hated the film. Even hard core Coen fans ignored it. But people… it’s good! And, like many films like this, it has – over the course of time – developed its own little fan base. We are a small band in numbers but we are the kind of small band who are all going to go out and buy a copy of this film without exception.
News of Universal’s special edition cheered me enormously. My video copy was tatty. I wanted my gorgeous new widescreen digital transfer. Gimme. Gimme. Gimme. I went to seven separate shops until I hunted it down. Clearly, someone wasn’t going out of their way to distribute the thing.
Universal dumped an enormous pile of obscure items onto the market this week with little fanfare. It seemed like an exercise in distribution by weight rather than quality or design. Some stores had fifteen copies of “Cry Baby” whilst another had the entire world’s supply of “Near Dark”. Someone else got a case of “Crooklyn” and I pity the poor sod who collected all the copy of “Bob Roberts”. Hey, it’s not a bad film but how many times would you want to watch it? I thought about buying it but I realised it would just sit on the shelf untouched. Some films are seen once and once alone.
“Crimewave” is like a dirty addiction you pick up somewhere. You watch it once and think you can handle it. The trouble is it has got so many little nooks and crannies and tiny details that you can’t help but sling it into the machine for another hit. Soon normal motion pictures lose their charm. You go from watching “Crimewave” once a month into becoming a weekend abuser. I’m warning you. If you’re not careful, you’ll be watching it everyday and quoting lines to your non-existent friends.
If you can sing the theme tune, it is already too late for you.
My concerns were raised when I noted the eighty three minute running time had been reduced to seventy nine minutes. What is so special about that? It is not like I’m not hip to a bit of post modern irony. (To be fair, by the time “Crimewave” hit the streets, the words Special Edition did not appear on the packaging – only the abbreviation SCN on the disc menu remained from the pre-release promise.)
What is gone is a sequence where Brion James imitates Sheree Wilson and mocks Reed Birney by predicting his every nerd like word. It’s a lovely sequence but the weird thing is, I found myself thinking the film was better for its absence. There is now no sag before the climax but it has introduced a couple of plot holes which go against the Coen’s usual meticulous scripting. Besides, that sag was hardly noticeable to begin with. It wasn’t a gaping hole the fate of the movie teetered over.
I had to go through the particularly anal process of comparing video to disc to tell you this stuff. As someone who has edited a fair amount of video over the years, I had to do it out of professional curiosity anyway. I certainly don’t like admitting to such behaviour in public. It tends to draw the nut jobs out of the woodwork. Feel free to slap me down for my peculiar obsessions.
I don’t know who organised the re-edit. It seems like a lot of effort for a studio to go through for what is such a limited release (unless it was insisted upon by the creative parties). I mean, since Spiderman, who would fuck with Raimi. The Coens may not have that kind of commercial clout but they do have the kind of artistic credibility that tends to shut most critics up.
The Coen Brothers were notorious for delivering a director’s cut of “Blood Simple” that was four minutes shorter than the original. What I can’t understand is why such a large deleted scene could not have been included as a special feature particularly given the film’s short run time. It’s really not a bad scene and the only reason to give it the boot is pacing. It is not as if disc space was a problem. If the initial footage had been damaged, I doubt anyone would have objected to pan and scan deleted scenes.
I remain a fan of both versions. I would, however, like to think that companies who release such obviously cult material could at least pander a little more to the needs of the cult maniacs likely to purchase such artefacts. It is not as if such an item is going to be scooped up off of the streets by passing strangers. Getting vanilla editions is one thing but this is another.
Maybe we could have an explanation from Universal Pictures with regards to who edited the film from its original theatrical form and why this edition is so light on features.
There is a comment box below.
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Comment by Chantal
Love the passion in your posts! You know your stuff!
Comment by Bob Short
In this country, all the distributors seem to think we should thank them for what we are given. The customer is merely an annoyance and can never possibly be right.
Even independents like Umbrella refuse to answer questions about the quality of their discs.
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Crimewave is a fantastic curio and deserves better treatment on its local DVD release.
Purchased it anyway though, cant resist a better transfer than my ratty VHS.