{"id":14209,"date":"2020-06-09T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=14209"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:19:09","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:19:09","slug":"the-fascinating-provocations-of-stuart-gordons-american-trilogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-fascinating-provocations-of-stuart-gordons-american-trilogy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fascinating Provocations of Stuart Gordon’s American Trilogy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With the passing of Stuart Gordon this past March, cinema lost one of its great provocateurs. An agitator and enemy of good taste from the start of his career in the Chicago theater scene\u2014where, during his 1968 production of The Game Show<\/em>, he would lock audiences in the theater until they literally rioted\u2014Gordon proudly carried what writer Michael Doyle (author of the forthcoming Stuart Gordon: Interviews<\/em><\/a>) describes as \u201can unflinching and transgressive spirit\u201d with him into filmmaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best known for his deliriously gruesome horror output (particularly his Lovecraft cycle: Re-Animator<\/em>, From Beyond<\/em>, Castle Freak<\/em>, Dagon<\/em>), as well as handful of fun sci-fi adventures (Robot Jox<\/em>, Fortress<\/em>, Space Truckers<\/em>), Gordon\u2019s final run as a feature director saw him wander into less easily categorizable territory with a trio of crime films\u2014sometimes referred to as the American Trilogy\u2014that straddle the line between horror, noir, and the absolute pitch blackest-of-black comedy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even at the height of his success, Gordon remained a cult figure, so this period of his career tends to get overlooked by gore hounds and genre aficionados (to say nothing of square audiences), even though the films themselves are entirely of a piece with his more notorious efforts, featuring some of the most disturbing and stomach churningly visceral imagery and ideas found throughout his filmography. Considering said filmography include a severed zombie head attempting to perform cunnilingus, interdimensional parasites devouring a man down to the bone, and a living victim having his face skinned off in one go, that\u2019s saying something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first, and least seen, of this thematic trilogy was 2003\u2019s King of the Ants<\/em>. Adapted by Charlie Higson from his 1992 novel of the same name, the film is a horrifying descent to hell and back again, about a young house painter (Chris McKenna) who falls in with a crew of crooked real estate developers (a collection of wonderful character actors including George Wendt, Daniel Baldwin, Vernon Wells, and Lionel Mark Smith) and gets roped into committing a murder-for-hire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

King of the Ants<\/em> was brought to Gordon by frequent collaborator Wendt (a prosthetic of the actor\u2019s severed head has been used in no less than three different projects). Although a more grounded story than his other work\u2014it features some nightmarish hallucinations, but nothing supernatural or technologically fanciful\u2014its themes of grueling physical, psychological, and spiritual transformation spoke to him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The darkest and meanest of his films, King of the Ants<\/em> contains a second act so brutal, in which we witness a prolonged process of systematic dehumanization, as to makes the glut of \u2018torture porn\u2019 movies of the following years pale in comparison. Combined with some truly hellish bits of Clive Barker-inspired surrealism (including probably the most disgusting creature design\/effect in Gordon\u2019s entire oeuvre), a cheap but appropriately grimy aesthetic (this was the first feature produced by indie schlockmeisters The Asylum), and an uber-nihilistic ending, it may also be his most memorable film, in that you are never<\/em> likely to forget it. True to its namesake, it will burrow deep into the recesses of your psyche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gordon returned two years later with Edmond<\/em>, an expanded adaptation of David Mamet\u2019s 1982 one-act play, starring Mamet regular William H. Macy as a spiritually unmoored businessman who, following a portentous fortune telling, leaves his wife and home and embarks upon an increasingly dangerous journey of self-discovery through New York\u2019s underground flesh market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Gordon, Mamet<\/a> got his start in Chicago theater\u2014in fact, Gordon staged the first production of his breakthrough play Sexual Perversity in Chicago<\/em> in 1974. Edmond<\/em> thus offered him the chance to return to his roots while keeping entirely in line with his long running obsession over monstrous transformation and warped transfiguration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although outwardly less focused on physical brutality than his other films (though it\u2019s not entirely lacking for blood and viscera), Edmond<\/em> may actually be his most<\/em> violent film\u2014it\u2019s just that the majority of violence comes by way of language, particularly the deployment of racial, sexual and misogynistic invective. As such, it is also his most overtly political film, an unforgiving (but not unempathetic) examination of the white male power fantasy at its most cruel and craven. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s these latter qualities that likely keep Edmond from being as favored among a certain demographic as similar psycho-thrillers about the white man\u2019s burden (such as Taxi Driver<\/em>, Falling Down<\/em> or, god help us, Joker<\/em>), since there\u2019s no way to mistake its central angry loner for a misbegotten hero or role model. When I caught Edmond<\/em> during its initial theatrical run, the only other person in attendance was a middle-aged white guy who cackled loudly at every line of racist\/homophobic\/sexist dialog and scene of violence, only to boo the film during its shocking\u2014but surprisingly tender\u2014ending, in which the archetype of the \u2018good man pushed too far\u2019 is utterly broken down and ressembled into…something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t to take away from the Gordon\u2019s penchant for humor, as Edmond<\/em> is legitimately funny (Macy\u2019s constant haggling with bored sex workers and nightowl hustlers over verbal fine print plays like a cross between Taxi Driver<\/em> and Curb Your Enthusiasm<\/em>). The same can be said for King of the Ants<\/em>, although the laughs there are fewer and farther between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gordon would double down on this twisted comedic sensibility, while also returning full force to the genre of body horror, with his next feature, 2007\u2019s Stuck<\/em>. Inspired by a very not<\/em> funny true story<\/a>, the film stars Mena Suvari as an overworked nursing home caregiver who strikes a homeless man (Stephen Rae) with her car on her way home, embedding his torso in the windshield. Rather than seek out help, she hides her car and victim\u2014horribly wounded, but alive\u2014while figuring out how to dispose of them both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the two films that preceded it, Stuck<\/em> is a frightening rumination on the banality of evil, one that shows the ease with which an average person turns into a criminal and monster. In all three, the atrocity on display is spurred on and abetted by economic desperation. This reflection of the cutthroat capitalist instinct and the way they each anticipate the anxieiteis of the coming recession, combined with their more overt political analogues\u2014torture in\u00a0 King of Ants; <\/em>white middle class resentment in Edmond<\/em>; and governmental indifference (as well as an immigration subplot) in Stuck<\/em>\u2014make them among the best cinematic representations and most ferocious condemnations of the barbarous Bush era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is this dimension that really makes Gordon stand out among his peers. As Doyle notes, \u201cwhile several of [his] contemporaries either softened, reduced their directorial output, or abandoned the horror genre altogether, he was still producing highly provocative and original works. He never lost the desire to create agitating and thoughtful movies that struck painful nerves.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And strike them he did, right up to the end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Gordon continued directing for television and stage throughout the next several years, Stuck<\/em> would be his last final feature. While it\u2019s disappointing that he was unable to get any of his later films past the planning stage\u2014such as House of the Re-Animator<\/em>, which would have seen the franchise move into the White House\u2014it\u2019s also hard to think of a more fitting swan song for a transgressor of his talents. Few filmmakers have been lucky enough to out go out with as strong, disturbing, and politically provocative a run of films as Stuart Gordan\u2019s American Trilogy. Fewer still would have even tried. \"\"\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the passing of Stuart Gordon this past March, cinema lost one of its great provocateurs. An agitator and enemy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":506,"featured_media":14210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,1399],"tags":[1422,162],"class_list":["post-14209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-looking-back","tag-looking-back","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/506"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22813,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14209\/revisions\/22813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}