I’ve been thinking on this film for a few days and wondering why it didn’t quite connect with me.
I’m not the world’s biggest fan of WWII films, to be fair. Not because of the time period or the events. But because too often filmmakers use the setting to say something very important about war, life, or whatever, and trip all over themselves doing it. Which I get. We’re talking about a period that shaped the modern world today. It just too often reeks of tryhard. It becomes more of a vanity project for the director than a portrait of a history. Oppenheimer is a good example. So loud and bombastic just to dramatize a handful of guys in a dusty lab drawing on chalkboards. Inglorious Basterds was kind of obnoxious. Saving Private Ryan was decent, overall.
No, I mostly enjoyed The Great Escape. It’s a good film. It could have been great. But for some reason the film felt at odds with itself, and I think the main reason is the inclusion of the Steve McQueen character, Hilts, or “The Cooler King.” Now, I’ve not read the source novel, but apparently Hilts was added for the movie. Likely studios didn’t want to finance the picture unless they could insert an A-List American star like McQueen. But this editorial decision did a disservice to the story, as the Richard Attenborough character, Bartlett, or “Big X,” should have been the primary character. He’s the one driving the plot. He’s the one who concocts the whole tunneling and escape system. He’s wanted by the SS. I wanted to know more about his background and his character. He was like James Bond. Instead, he gets sidelined so we can get glamour shots of McQueen and his antics that get him stuck in the cooler.
Hilts was portrayed rather sterotypically all-American, too. Aloof, cool, daring, and, of course, a huge baseball fan.
This is what I mean when I say too often studios use WWII as a vehicle to show off rather than to tell a good story. A particularly egregious thing to do when it’s based on a true story, such as The Great Escape.
There were some tonal mismatches, too. At times it almost felt like I was watching a sitcom rather than a war drama. I’m a big fan of the TV series M*A*S*H, so I know you can balance hijinks with solemnity. I also love films like Full Metal Jacket, which is rife with dark humor and outrageousness while still sticking to its theme of dehumanization. But then at the end you have a 50-man massacre when the Nazis mow down all of Big X’s guys, including Big himself, after they’ve recaptured them, and then frame them as attempted escapees.
I guess I went into the film expecting a tone more similar to Clint Eastwood’s classic Escape from Alcatraz than something closer to The Andy Griffith Show. Might have just been the audience sensibilities at the time. Escape was released not even 20 years after the war ended. It was still fresh on everyone’s minds, and many viewers were likely veterans themselves.
The tunneling sequences were well done. I’m a huge enjoyer of technical briefing and planning scenes, which are requisite in heist or prison escape films, no matter how “boring” they may be. Such as the one in Rififi when they test out stopping the alarm system.
Overall, The Great Escape was a worthwhile watch. But it’s a good example of how sometimes unnecessarily adding a character can detract from a story, even if it makes good business sense.
This film was at threat of becoming a discarded “air conditioning movie,” but I’m glad I stuck with it. I started watching this over a year ago on Prime, gave up on it around the first act, then finally returned to it last night to finish.
I do that a lot. I just did it to Soylent Green, in fact. Some movies, however “good” they are, just fail to grab me, and I put them off. It might be the result of simply getting older. I used to plop down in front of anything and let my eyes get glazed over. Now I’m like a mid-30s professional cat lady on a date–“I just didn’t feel that spark, that tingle. I need to really feel a connection.”
Right, we’ll just ignore the hundred dates you’ve gone on over the past year that make feeling a spark about as likely as igniting a soaking wet match.
Anyway, what is Saint Maud about? This horror/drama centers on a young nurse named Katie who becomes an increasingly obsessive religious fanatic after losing a patient under her care, and is determined to save the terminal woman she’s currently assigned from damnation. It’s really a psychological portrait of mental illness. A deeply unsettling slow burn one, too. It reminded me a little of Don’t Look Now, the 1973 horror starring Donald Sutherland, which really takes its time before delivering one hell of a final stinger. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is another similar film, which is definitely one worth checking out.
Saint Maud has a pretty good last minute stinger, too. Maybe not as amazing as some claim online. But pretty good. I won’t spoil it here. But if you like waiting 90 minutes just to see if a flick’s final image makes it all worth your time, Saint Maud has got your back.
Aside from the last second bitch smack, this flick does a very good job of depicting loneliness and isolation, which are often the twin demons that lead to mental breakdown. Just ask Jack Torrance. There are some good creepy moments throughout. But you have to be patient for them. Frustrating, yes. But you need a Saint Maud once in a while to counter the roller coaster popcorn horror flicks like The Conjuring.
Saint Maud was worth it in the end, even after taking a one-year long sabbatical from my initial watch.
I finally caught Masters of the Universe, the newest He-Man film, on Amazon Prime. Which turned out to be mostly fun and engaging, but doesn’t quite land in the Franchise Zone that it was clearly aiming for.
And that may be for several reasons. One, the fantasy genre is tough as hell to break into. There are really only two major fantasy properties doing well in it–Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. I don’t count MCU stuff as fantasy, even when it involves Doctor Strange and Wanda Maximoff. The genre is so tough to crack that MOTU sadly bombed at the B.O., similar to another recent fantasy flick based on an IP that was largely popular in the 80s: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
Like Dungeons, MOTU follows the Guardians of the Galaxy formula practically to a T. A group of ragtag heroes led by a charismatic but clueless dude, band together to overcome a purple villain. There is a wisecracking robot, which reminded me of the other wisecracking robot from Rogue One. Even their designs are similar. There is the super badass warrior chick character in Teela to satisfy the feminist box check. You’ve got the mentor character in Man-at-Arms played by a somewhat wasted Idris Elba. I say wasted as I feel he was miscast in this. He’s a better actor than a lot of material he’s been in, like the umpteenth sequel to Fast and Furious and that weird Pacific Rim series. But he plays as a solid veteran overall.
Then, of course there’s He-Man himself, played by Nicholas Galatzine, though he goes by Adam for most of the movie until the very end. Galatzine does a pretty solid job portraying what has largely been a two-dimensional muscley avatar of goodness meant to just sell toys in the ’80s.
Now, I never watched He-Man much as a kid. It was one of the few classic cartoons of the era I missed out on, so the film couldn’t hook me with its nostalgia barbs. So, I could watch it with a more objective eye. Though I am a little familiar with He-Man’s mythology and such.
It’s hard to pinpoint why He-Man didn’t do so well at theaters. It might have been the fantasy thing. The overreliance on the Guardians formula thing. Or just the fact that it’s a nearly 45-year-old IP that really hasn’t been relevant since the Reagan Administration. The CGI and blue screen stuff was all done well for the most part. Nothing really standout.
No, I think He-Man did itself a disservice by not including a certain character–Orko, the hovering juvenile wizard thingy. As I recall from seeing bits of the cartoon, Orko is the pratfall-riddled comic relief. He’s the character meant for young kids to port themselves into the story. In the movie, he only appears at the very end, to deliver the “lesson of today’s episode” segment, as he often did in the cartoon. Seeing him, I was honestly baffled. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t in the story at all, and it struck me as a real missed opportunity. Mid-way through the film, the characters encounter a drunken and depressed Man-At-Arms character, which was obviously done to give him a redemptive arc. Something again I feel didn’t really work.
However, the characters should have encountered an imprisoned Orko instead. Then you could have had a sequence where He-Man has to motivate Orko to use his powers and help them escape. You would have set up Orko in the beginning as a young jesteresque wizard who always makes a fool of himself trying to perform magic, then arc him into a capable enough wizard who comes in clutch when needed. Orko has a fun personality, and the movie could have leaned more into the magical element of the world of Eternia. Orko would have also played very well in trailers for the film. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the film lost tens of millions by not including a kid-friendly character like Orko, and featuring him prominently. I mean, if you’re an eight-year-old kid, would you rather spend your afternoon with Orko, or a drunken bum Man-At-Arms? I know which one eight-year-old me would have picked.
Another missed opportunity was not including more Cringer/Battle Cat. He’s a cute, lovable scaredycat. You never turn down the chance to include a cuddly animal into a film that is meant for children. He-Man was basically made originally for 6-12-year-old boys. The 2026 movie seems meant for…aging Millennials in the 35-45 range? That’s a much smaller moviegoing demographic than the cohort that turned Super Mario Bros. into two billion dollar films. I mean, no kid cares about He-Man much less knows who he is anymore unless their parents showed them the cartoon or their dusty figurine collection. You have to make them care, and you do that by showing them characters that they will like and relate to. You can’t just lean on Member Berries. Think of how Pixar attracts a younger audience, even for films with more sophisticated themes, like Inside Out.
Aside from missing two huge characters that might have represented tens of millions in additional theatrical revenue (if not even more from merch sales), the rest of the film was okay. The humor mostly landed. There were perhaps a few more swear words than there needed to be. What’s with inserting profanity into films that are meant for families? I remember most family films in the ’90s and earlier to be largely free of it, save for one here or there. There are like at least ten in He-Man. There were a bunch in Spider-Man: Brand New Day as well. There’s no reason for it, really. Adult dramas more than make up the difference.
If this latest MOTU is the final word on He-Man, I think that would be just fine. We don’t really need anymore at this point.
For those unaware, Michael Mann is planning to direct Heat 2. He also co-authored the novel with Meg Gardiner that is, of course, a sequel to the classic 1995 hit Heat starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and the late great Val Kilmer. The book is centered on the character of Chris Shiherlis, who, you’ll recall, was the lone surviving member of the ace criminal squad.
Heat is a fantastic fucking film, it goes without saying, featuring the classic shootout in downtown L.A. following the McCauley gang’s ingenious bank heist.
But what about Mann’s 2022 novel? Does it live up the legacy of the crime thriller drama that spawned a million imitators and inspired the style of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight?
Well, to quote the wild Detective Vincent Hanna, “This book has a great ass, and I’ve got my head all the way up it! When I think of great books like Heat 2, something comes out of me.”
Okay, okay, I’m not that crazed. But yeah, I liked this book a lot.
And I’ve been on a thriller novel kick lately. I recently finished The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by John Godey (Morton Freedgood). I’m currently reading Death Wish by Brian Garfield.
I also liked The Irishman, the 2019 gangster flick, if at times it felt more like Scorsese was just playing his greatest hits. Plus it was ridiculously long, slow, and heavy to watch.
I haven’t seen Gladiator 2, and I doubt I ever will. I find it a little odd, this latest trend of big directors returning to the well of their best works and putting out a sequel decades removed from the original. The Irishman is not a sequel, but it feels like the spiritual successor and final missing piece to the Cinematic Universe of Goodfellas/Casino. Gladiator 2, I felt, was a strange sequel to make. What’s next? Braveheart 2?
It’s usually not best for an aging director to return to the world of their previous hits, especially this far out from the OG. However, Heat 2 definitely landed for me, and if the film is able to capture the book well enough, it should make for a fantastic sequel.
:::spoilers incoming:::
Therein lies a huge challenge. Heat 2 is basically three stories in one. Which works fine for a novel. I’m not sure how successfully that will translate to film. You have a “present” timeline set in 1995, right after the bank robbery and shootout, with Chris’s escape to Paraguay and his attempt to move up in a new crime organization. There’s the past storyline in 1988 with criminal mastermind gigachad Neil McCauley getting the band together for its first gig, and running afoul of psychopath home intruder and rapist Otis Wardell. Then you have the “future” timeline in 2000, with Chris’s return to L.A. to set up some illegal biz with weapons systems shipments or whatever with his new partner and girlfriend Ana, who’s trying to branch off independently from her crime family. All culminating in a final clash with Vincent Hanna, who’s still chomping at the bit to put bad guys six feet under and wants Chris like a junkyard dog wants a trespasser’s throat.
Well, I shouldn’t put that there is a “clash” with Hanna as he never even knows Chris is back in L.A. until the very end, and only after Chris escapes again. If I have a criticism, it’s that I would have liked to have seen more of Hanna hunting Chris.
Look, if you told me Heat 2 was going to be six hours long, I’d freaking love that. This flick is going to be The Phantom Menace for middle-aged dudes. But I’m not general audiences. I don’t see how this is going to get cut down to a coherent 2.5-3.5 hours without removing a TON. You have three movies here, really. The Paraguay stuff was less interesting to me, and frankly, a little hard to follow with all the backstabbing and double agent stuff. You have to have the 1988 sequence to introduce McCauley to set up the daughter of his girlfriend Gabriela, as she returns for the third act showdown with Wardell. So my guess is Paraguay will get cut down to make room for L.A. 2000, which will likely take up the whole second half.
Then there are the set pieces. If you thought the downtown shootout in the OG was awesome, the sequel has SIX shootouts. Yes, six. I think. I might have forgotten one or two. You’ve got Wardell’s home invasion, which turns into a shootout and car chase with Hanna and the cops. The first highway shootout in Paraguay. A cartel base robbery shootout. A shootout near the U.S.-Mexico border between McCauley and Wardell’s gang. The climactic highway shootout between Wardell and Chris. Then there’s a last-minute factory shootout. Yes, this book is packed with so much there’s even a lengthy shootout in the last THREE PAGES. Good lord.
Mann is going to have to go Avatar 2: Way of Water on this deal to fit everything in, and it looks like Amazon is going to carte blanche him. It worked out great for JC, we’ll see if it works for Mann.
Overall, I enjoyed the book a great deal and would highly recommend it. It kind of reminded me of Tom Clancy with all its globetrotting, multiple interweaving plots, and timeline shifts. Or the first half of Inception when Cobb is getting his team together across countries. Leonardo DiCaprio is perfect for this as Chris, a role he’s finally just confirmed taking. Though personally I find Neil McCauley the more interesting character. A shame he’s only in the ’88 stuff but obviously he didn’t make it past ’95. I’d like a prequel just about him.
As much as I know I’ll enjoy this coming film, I can see it getting dinged for its plot excess. Hanna is somewhat underutilized, though I think Christian Bale is a solid Pacino replacement for Hanna. Yes, Hanna is just as insane in this as he was before, and it’ll be interesting seeing Bale channel some of Al’s signature spastic energy. I’m not sure about the guy doing McCauley, Stephen Graham, but he was pretty good in The Irishman. To be fair, nobody can replace DeNiro, but we also don’t want to see a de-aged Bob like in The Irishman. I’ve heard Adam Driver is possibly doing Wardell, but I don’t see him in that role at all. And the latest is Inde Navarrette is in talks to join, so she’s either Ana or Gabriela, and I’m thinking it would be Ana. A great choice there as she was pretty iconic in Obsession.
If anything, I expect Heat 2 to serve as a strong sequel to Mann’s 1995 masterpiece. Will it break the Curse of the Underwhelming Long-Awaited Successor To A Big Director’s OG Classic that seemed to befell Gladiator Dos and made theaters allergic to the lengthy The Irishman (it premiered on Netflix)? Time will tell.
For some reason, this movie popped into my head recently, and I just had to rewatch it. I don’t know why. I seem to recall seeing it in theaters while on a beach vacation in Ocean City, Maryland back in the summer of 1998. Though the film actually stayed in theaters for over a year.
Films did that back then. Now they dip in and out in like two weeks before hitting streaming oblivion.
It’s weird watching something from the ’90s, as it is basically a period piece anymore. This film is nearly thirty-freaking years old! It is as ancient to modern audiences today as something from the mid-’60s would have been during its premier.
There’s Something About Mary is a screwball romantic comedy about a guy named Ted trying to reconnect with his old high school crush–the titual Mary. Mary Jensen, that is. Following a catalysmically awful prom date that goes sideways in the film’s second most memorable sequence when Ted gets his dick and balls stuck in his zipper after arriving at Mary’s house. Poor Ted spends the next 13 years still pining (borderline obsessing) over Mary, until he gins up a scheme to sick a private detective on her to hunt down her whereabouts. Finding her in South Florida, Ted takes off to reconnect with his old flame, encounting a series of mad-cap adventures along the way. But competing with him for Mary’s heart is the greasy private detective, an old college boyfriend, a slippery pizza delivery guy, and even a famous football QB star. Will Ted, the ultimate nice guy, win Mary’s heart in the end?
Of course, the film is BEST remembered for its “Is that hair gel?” scene when Ted and Mary are preparing to go on a date. Believe me, that line was the height of bawdy comedy in my high school during that year. Between that and the many Monica Lewinsky jokes flying around (and there were many), my junior year was beset with semen-based hilarity.
In fact, I’d say there has likely never been a time ever in human history when male ejaculation centered so prominently in the cultural psyche as it did in the year 1998.That’s all thanks to Monica and Mary.
There’s Something About Mary is beset with a hideous amount of ’90s anachronisms, both technologically and cultural. Things that just wouldn’t work in today’s self-aware uber ironic entertainment landscape. The ’90s was all about being okay with looking stupid. It was the decade of Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey, and wacky attitude-y cartoons like Animaniacs. Weird toys like Gak. Very stupid and cringey TV shows. And lots of bright neon colors.
People nostalgia-gazming hard on the decade often forget how damn silly the ’90s really was. And that’s probably the best way to describe Mary. Silly with a capital ‘S.’
The entire conceit of the film falls apart in the age of Facebook and Google. Now it’s not only easy to look someone up from high school, you likely can’t even get rid of them anyway if they follow you on Insta or Facebook.
Then there’s the whole stalking angle. What Ted does is technically kind of creepy. While he does sorta pay for it when he’s forced to confess at the film’s “All is Lost” beat, and is consequentially kicked to the curb, true love conquers all of course in the end.
There’s the idea of a bunch of men fixating on Mary as a sex object in a predatory way that would be seen as “problematic” now. The film gets away with it mostly due to its unflinching cartooniness. The Farrelly brothers were at their peak. The story has heart, though its punctured by a lot of slapstick nonsense.
There’s Something About Mary really is one of those films that wouldn’t be made today. It’s an odd time capsule of a film. A relic from a very niche era of cornball humor that couldn’t be replicated. A perfect representation of what the ’90s was all about.
It does have some classical elements, too. The recurring motif of the singers reminded me of the singing muses often seen in Shakespeare plays or Greek epics. The crude sexual humor harkens back to the stylings of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata. There are some borrowed elements also. The police interrogation misunderstanding feels lifted from 1992s My Cousin Vinny, for instance. But overall it’s a funny original story with a handful of memorable scenes beyond the hair gel one. The fish hook gag, as an example.
Ben Stiller stars in one of his early big roles. At the start of his early 2000s tsunami of comedy hits like Meet the Parents and Zoolander. Cameron Diaz plays the lovely and lanky Mary. And there is the adaptable Matt Dillon as the greasy private eye with the porn stache.
Need some ’90s flavor in your life? Who doesn’t, right? Check out There’s Something About Mary.
I’m a recovering “beat-em-up” fan. Back in the day as a teen I used to love those terrible Steven Seagal films like Above the Law and Marked For Death. Or Jean-Claude Van Damme stuff like Bloodsport and Death Warrant. They were constantly on rotation on USA and TBS and other freemium cable channels in the late ’90s. Films that were passably entertaining for immature adolescent minds, but in retrospect are ridiculously cheesy and absurd. But hey, if you haven’t seen Seagal break a Jamaican dude’s arm in half or Van Damme roundhouse kick a guy into a furnace, you haven’t lived.
Nowadays, Jason Statham is your go-to macho man face puncher and bad guy beater downer. Strangely, actors even higher up the talent totem pole have had a go at their own fistacuffs franchises. Bob Odenkirk is Nobody. A-lister Denzel Washingtonis The Equalizer. And of course Internet Jesus Keanu Reeves is John Wick.
Everyone wants to kick ass these days! Who can blame them? Have you seen the prices of things lately? Going to the grocery store anymore is like going to a Fuck Me in the Ass Parade.
The latest is A Working Man, where Statham plays a former blacks ops soldier turned construction guy who has to return to his face-stomping roots when his boss’s daughter gets kidnapped or something. I’ve not seen it, nor will I ever. Just like I didn’t see Statham’s last flick The Beekeeper, which had pretty much the same plot. The latest edition of Statham Beats Up Some Guys interests me about as much as hanging around a bunch of backwards hat-wearing dude bros talking about their fantasy football picks.
(No man should have a hobby with the word “fantasy” in it. Like, are there sparkles involved? Pink glitter? GTFO of here with that.)
Anyway…
What is pretty cool (and surprising), is that A Working Man is based on a book. Which is part of a book series, actually. By a real author. Not some A.I. trained on Seagal and Van Damme flicks. Chuck Dixon is a prolific author known mostly for his work in the comic book industry. He co-created Bane, aka the villain who broke Batman’s back. So, this guy is well-experienced in creating characters that know how to kick the crap out of people.
Dixon’s series is called Levon Cade, and features the vigilante going on various quests involving revenge and likely crushing a few throats. There are twelve books in total. The first, titled simply Levon’s Trade, premiered in December, 2021. The others came in rapid succession, sometimes as little as three weeks apart, over the course of 2022. The eleventh published in August, after which Dixon took a sabbatical before dropping the twelfth and final (?) in February, 2024. Not bad. Guy banged it all out in roughly a calendar year.
Look, these are not labyrinthine literary feasts like A Game of Thrones. These stories are Fisher-Price simple and Neanderthal stupid. No shit. But when you get down to it, there are really only two genres — “Man with Gun” and “Girl Bangs Guy.” That’s about it. James Bond, for all his British sophistication, is just another “Man with Gun” story. Titanic is the ultimate “Girl Bangs Guy.” The classics usually combine the two in interesting ways. Double Indemnity, for instance. There are some exceptions, often seen in experimental or prestige award stuff, but nobody cares. People only pay attention when someone’s fucking or getting murdered. Can you name the book that won the Nobel Prize for Literature four years ago? No? Have you ever heard of Fifty Shades of Grey? My point exactly.
I am not a fan of simple vigilante series, in either book or movie versions. I read Killing Floor once, the first Jack Reacher book, a long time ago, and the experience was akin to tattoo gunning my eyeballs. I am a fan of writers, however. Especially ones who put in the effort to carve out their own success, in whatever genre they choose. A Working Man has likely done well enough at the box office to merit a sequel. Who knows. It could even be a franchise like John Wick. I have no idea. I’ll never see the films anyway. I outgrew the need for them a long time ago. But I do appreciate them and the writers who make them.
Fiction Affliction #3 — A review of spec screenplay Hen’s Teeth, by Krishan Patel
“Tara.” Made with Midjourney
Genre: Body Horror
Logline — A woman must escape the medical facility awakening reptilian traits recorded in her DNA from our distant evolutionary ancestors as a full scale transformation takes effect.
About — This is a screenplay a writer sent to me to review. The following review is an edited version of my feedback.
Writer — Krishan Patel
Length — 86 pages
For amateur screenwriters, or really for any type of writer, one of the best ways to learn the craft is to trade scripts with other writers, and provide critiques. Or at least read a lot of scripts and novels, both pro and amateur. As Stephen King said in On Writing, “Read a lot, write a lot.”
Hen’s Teeth is the second screenplay I’ve reviewed by Patel, and it inspired a good deal of feedback. That may be because it’s within a genre I enjoyed a lot in the past—body horror. Though nowadays, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more squeamish about things like gore, disease, and violence. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have an occassional glimpse at the grisly genre. So, here’s my review of Krishan Patel’s Hen’s Teeth.
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Hen’s Teeth is basically a body horror thriller in the vein of Cronenberg’s The Fly, 2009’s Splice, or more recently, the 2019 horror film Eli. Stylistically, it leans more psychological and clinical instead of showing excessive gore/physical horror, though it certainly has its share of visual shocks and surprises.
The story is centered on a young woman named Tara Steventon, who since birth has suffered from an unusual affliction/illness that has made her different from other people. This difference is not necessarily readily apparent, but something people, including her own mother, pick up on more unconsciously. Due to this subtle strangeness, she’s shunned by schoolmates and peers. And even somewhat by her own mother, who keeps her distance, and doesn’t even have pictures of her daughter in her house. Tara’s one friend is the loyal and good-hearted Melanie Watkins, who grows up with Tara, and helps her to live a “normal” life. This includes going out clubbing, where in the beginning Tara is picked up by a male suitor. But prior to engaging in a one night stand, the male pulls away, and abruptly leaves, evidently put off by Tara’s uncanny different-ness. Tara vomits up something unnatural, and then ends up in the hospital. The medical staff can’t make heads or tails of her condition, and it becomes evident Tara has made her rounds in the hospital before.
Desperate to fix, or at least understand her “illness,” Tara goes to a resort/medical facility advertised online (and seen earlier on her computer), with her best friend Melanie tagging along. Upon arrival, she is greeted by Eleanor, an elegant and dedicated scientist who runs the facility/“temple retreat,” who appears to know more about Tara’s condition than she lets on. Eventually, Tara comes to learn that she’s “suffering” a form of atavism, which is, as Eleanor puts it is a “reemergence of our biology of traits from our animal ancestors.” This has caused Tara to reclaim reptilian/lizard characteristics, such as vomiting up an inhuman fluid, having an unusually-shaped skull, and possessing traces or components of venom in her blood. But rather than “curing” Tara, Eleanor has the more sinister goal of perfecting or enhancing Tara’s specialized DNA. Through the use of treatments and medical therapy, Eleanor is able to induce a radical transformation in Tara’s body that seems to work in stages. At about the midpoint, Tara goes through a major transformation, losing her skin just like a snake. However, this is only partial progress, and Tara is left a human/snake/reptile hybrid inside a vivarium, awaiting Eleanor’s final phase. The eccentric doctor intends to take Tara’s transformation all the way, by turning her into a human-snake creature, including surgically removing her limbs and fixing her spine so that Tara can slither and function just like a real snake would. At the same time, Eleanor intends to transform (or become “realized”) herself alongside Tara.
Meanwhile, Melanie wanders around the temple, where she encounters various “patients,” who call themselves the “Brothers and Sisters of Hen’s Teeth.” A group of people who operate similarly to a cult, and who evidently are in various stages of transformation to mammalian, rat-like creatures. However, Eleanor sees these earlier experiments as mere stepping stones to her grand opus, Tara. After framing Melanie for torching the mammalian creatures, Eleanor tries to win Tara over by convincing her to go through with the transformation in accordance with the mad scientist’s grand vison. But Tara turns the tables, and outmaneuvers the doctor, leaving her to die, while using her reptilian abilities to save her friend, who is injured by the mammalian creatures. All the while, a young girl named Sian, a former test subect of Eleanor, and the doctor’s daughter, interviews Tara and Melanie’s family’s to gather information, and returns to the temple under the guise of needing lodging, while in reality trying to warn the two best friends of her mother’s sinister agenda.
Overall, I enjoyed Hen’s Teeth. Body horror and the medical thriller genres appear to be in Patel’s wheelhouse. Hen’s Teeth fits the type of tone you’d expect in a body horror type movie. Patel has mentioned being a big fan of Cronenberg and other similar directors. And this story is much in that style that the writer/director is so famous for. I’ve not seen his latest film, Crimes of the Future, though the synopsis for that movie dovetails with Hen’s Teeth somewhat.
In Hen’s Teeth, I could understand for the most part what Patel was going for. It has the requisite scares and visual horror elements that you want to see in something like this. It builds slowly. There is the initial glimpse of the hen with teeth, then the mother with the multiple rows of nipples. Finally working up toward Tara’s snake-like transformation at the midpoint. Then the mammalian attacks on Melanie where she’s forced to flee with the fire extinguisher. And finally the glimpses of Tara’s “final form,” as imagined by computer screens, at the end. In addition, I felt that Patel generally staged the different scenes pretty well, especially with the temple layout. Cleverly, he tied in the atavistic scientific component thematically with the visual design of the temple, which combines the old and the new.
But most importantly, he centered the story around two best friends looking out for another, whose relationship is nearly torn apart by Tara being seduced into Eleanor’s grand scheme.
Eleanor, by the way, is a good character, being deceptive, but also a maniacal “mad scientist” type. I also liked Sian, Eleanor’s sort of daughter, who wants to stop her mother, but is internally conflicted.
“Eleanor.” Made with Midjourney.
Where I struggled with Hen’s Teeth was chiefly in understanding Eleanor’s motivation, and the purpose of her experimentation. In Eli, for instance, Eli is being subjected to the procedures in order to (spoilers if you haven’t seen it) suppress his demonic side, as he’s the literal son of Satan. In effect, his parents and the facility are trying to save the world from him and his father. In Splice, the couple is trying to create new hybrids for medical use, and for fame. In The Fly, the fly transformation is accidental, of course. Seth is really trying to perfect teleportation. Seth later attempts to merge himself with the pregnant Veronica as a crude means to hold on to his lost humanity. “More human together than I am alone,” as he hauntingly says. Eleanor states that she wants to be “realized,” while preparing to conduct the final process on Tara. She clearly is obsessed with atavism and inducing old DNA to resurface in her subjects. But to what end? Does doing this enable these people to live longer? Does it give them any real benefit over remaining human? It appears her treatments actually hurt more than help. No matter how sinister her plan might be, there should be some underlying logic to what she’s doing. It appears she’s more doing it out of obsession and a kind of scientfic fetishism. Which wasn’t enough for me. It would make sense if atavism led to medical breakthroughs. Or added decades to someone’s life span. Or if Eleanor had some deeply personal motivation. Think of Dr. Frankenstein’s numerous encounters with death that drive him to understand the nature of death and dying, and how to overcome it. Without that needed dimension to Eleanor’s plan, the story loses a lot of substance.
Another aspect that hampered the story for me was Sian’s investigation into Tara and Melanie’s background by visiting their parents. These scenes added some important info about Tara’s childhood, yes, but in mostly an expositional manner that slowed down the narrative. Is there a more visual way to share this information? There was also something I found questionable. The story about Tara’s peers actually giving her vomit to drink, and Tara not noticing, was confusing. Why would Tara having suppressed reptlian DNA make her unable to detect that she was consuming human vomit? Reptiles and snakes eat bugs and small creatures like mice and rats. It would make more sense if Tara had been seen eating a bug or rodent by the others girls. And also, I would expand on exactly why the mother and the girls don’t like Tara. It’s stated that they sense something is off about her. Tara doesn’t have a normal “baby smell” to the mother, for instance. But if Tara has reptilian DNA that occassionally assets itself, this could be shown in a more explicit and understandable way.
Also, when introducing characters, it’s important to try and establish their relationships right away. I didn’t realize that Ruby was Tara’s mother when she visited her in the hospital. I initially thought Ruby was a nurse, or an aunt (due to her age). It wasn’t until later it’s revealed she’s her mother.
Even though there are some good visuals in this script, I don’t think it goes far enough. And that’s mostly because there are many instances where it falls back on exposition instead, or showing something on an iPad or computer. Going back to The Fly, that has a really shocking final sequence, where Seth fully transforms into his fly self. Or you think of An American Werewolf in London, where there’s the violent and climactic Piccadilly Circus sequence with the werewolf. In Eli, the boy eventually is able to defend himself, and fights back against his captors, and frees himself, though the ending in that one does peeter out somewhat. Hen’s Teeth ends rather anti-climactically, as well as ambiguously. I’m not sure what Tara and Melanie’s outcome is at the end.
Regarding the temple, I also wasn’t sure exactly why and how Tara came to know about it, and why she was drawn specifically there as a possible cure. Nothing is stated about it that would necessarily indicate that this is the place she should go. So it comes off as more as coincidental that it just happens Eleanor is running the place. It would make more sense if Eleanor is a widely known geneticist or something with a public reputation. A celebrity scientist, if you will, who is working on the cutting edge of biology research and such. Maybe Tara sees an interview with Eleanor on TV. Or perhaps Sian acts as Eleanor’s emissary, seeking out candidates for her mother’s research, and after recruitng Tara, the girl suffers a bout of conscience when she realizes her mother’s full agenda.
I would lean in more on the relationship between Melanie and Tara, which is the main emotional core of the story. I’d develop that relationship further, as well as the characters. The characters act more now as functionaries of the narrative. Existing to move the plot points along, or serve as exposition vehicles. But they should have their own motivations and background that fully flesh them out.
But overall, I’d encourage Patel to keep going with rewrites, and consider submitting this to contests or sites like Scriptshadow. Best of luck to him.
Dean Brooks 