Hummingbird (2013)
a/k/a Redemption

I had this file tagged ‘homeless’ as if, hopefully, it was a movie about homelessness, but it’s just a lot of loud action that starts by having bad guys beat up a homeless man. This establishes that they’re bad guys, but the homeless man is Jason Statham, and you don’t mess with Statham, so there aren’t many surprises here.

One surprise is that Academy Award-winning cinematographer Chris Menges (The Killing Fields) took a paycheck for this. Other than that, well…

Giving up homelessness and booze, Statham becomes a killer and bodyguard for gangsters, while funneling some small portion of his pay to a charity for the homeless. Awww. He’s supposed to be a veteran, so he has Afghanistan flashbacks. There’s annoying music, a horny nun, and the standard-issue quick-cut headache-inducing action sequences.

I never figured out what the title means, but honestly I was zoning in and out.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Despite thoroughly skimming Victor Hugo’s novel and writing a book report for English Lit, I haven’t actually read it, and confuse the storylines of Hunchback of Notre Dame, Phantom of the Opera, and Beauty and the Beast. Must also confess to watching these two Hunchback movies while fevered by food poisoning or a 24-hour COVID lightheadedness, so expect minimal lucidity or factual faithfulness to the fiction.

First surprise is, the story does not take place at Notre Dame University, famed for American football. Instead the setting is even more Catholic, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, same place that recently burned down and more tragically was reconstructed and re-opened.

The Cathedral is a church only more so, huge and already ancient in this movie’s 15th century. It has famous bells in its famous belfry, and the most famous bell-ringer of all, the freakishly ugly, deaf and partially blind Quasimodo (Lon Chaney). Everyone laughs cruelly at Quasi, who’s named ‘King of the Beggars,” a title equivalent to church jester.

Esmerelda is a stereotype of innocence and beauty, and she’s also a Gypsy, shorthand for sexy, but she needs no shorthand. She’s wanted by three men — a dashing Captain of the guard, a poet, and Quasimoto the elusive lump. Of course, Quasi hasn’t got a chance.

This is a silent movie, restored to lusciousness and accompanied by a fine modern orchestral score, with the original Lon Chaney as the hunchback. He wears frightful makeup of the actor’s own design, and he’s scary, but despite being misshapen, darn it, he loves the church’s bells, loves Esmerelda, and loves being lovable. Hell, I’d buy a second recliner and invite him to move in with me, if he’d leave the bells at the cathedral.

Early, there are great shots of Chaney — and it really is Chaney, I think — climbing and swinging from the gargoyles and saints carved high onto the walls at the cathedral. Helps drive home the point that Quasimoto is not just another pretty face.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

This remake, 16 years later, brings the full power of sound, music, religion, and a more modern albeit hokey storytelling style.

Charles Laughton does fine in the title role, and like me, “He can speak, but he doesn’t like to.” Still, my allegiance is to Chaney in the earlier film.

Maureen O’Hara is fine as Esmerelda, bringing a 20th-century outlook to the proceedings. She’s as horrified as anyone by Quasmoto at first, but eventually she’s the only one showing him any kindness.

Unsubtly enough that even I caught it, the French persecution of Gypsies stands allegorically for the Germans’ persecution of Jews. Fresh vegetables are tossed at a poet, and the dark ages crowd is always ready to seize pitchforks and come after Quasimoto.

The movie has too much God and godliness and prayer, but a deliciously vile priest keeps things real. “Good intentions are not enough. They’ve never put an onion in the soup yet.” There’s an attempt at a 67% Hollywood happy ending, which feels inappropriate to the material, but it’s a damned site better than Disney’s cartoon retelling.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Hunger (1974)

11-minute wordless surreal animation by Peter Foldes, joyously mocking modern life. All shapes shift, making a statement about life with everything you want within reach, but everything you need impossible to find. Great musical accompaniment, too.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Hunger (1983)

This is a high-concept vampire flick that plays outside the ordinary rules of the genre. Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon, with David Bowie getting top billing though he’s gone before the 1/3 point.

Based on a novel by Whitley Strieber, the guy who’s also written ‘non-fiction’ about being abducted by aliens, it’s a pretty good story. First-time director Tony Scott doesn’t want to tell the story, though. Instead he dazzles with a hundred lighting and sound tricks, with an ’80s MTV-look to everything.

It was groundbreaking in its time, and I remember being impressed in a theater, but 40+ years later it’s more flash than fear, all sizzle, no stake.

Willem Dafoe and John Pankow, co-stars two years later in To Live and Die in L.A., share a scene and have one line each.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

… and out of alphabetical order …

I was told that my earlier, dismissive review of The Howling missed the movie’s point, so I’ve returned for a second look:

Teevee newslady Karen White is doing an exposé on a serial killer, using herself as bait, and lands in the unpleasant situation of being held prisoner by some hairy dude in a porn shop, who’s showing her home movies of some other dame being raped. That’s when I clicked it off, the first time.

After that low point, though, the rest of the movie’s much better, with frights that build to a satisfying finish. Co-written by John Sayles (The Brother from Another Planet) and directed by Joe Dante (Matinee), The Howling is not the pinnacle of either man’s show-biz resumé, but it’s enjoyable horror schlock done on the cheap, with some sweet camerawork and newfangled old-fashioned effects.

The story is familiar but clever, spooky and sort of a satire. Sayles pops in for a cameo as a bored worker at the morgue, and in another clever moment, it’s Kevin McCarthy (from Invasion of the Body Snatchers) who bursts into laughter when he’s warned that beings “neither people nor animals, but something in between” are living among us.

Dee Wallace (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) stars, with lanky B-star John Carradine, Dennis Dugan (never quite a star but always trying), Patrick Macnee from The real Avengers, B-movie mainstay Dick Miller (A Bucket of Blood), future space MD Robert Picardo, the inimitable Slim Pickens (Doc Strangelove), Christopher Stone (best known as “man in leisure suit” throughout the 1970s), and Kenneth Tobey (Strange Invaders).

In further cameos for true movie buffs: superfan Forrest J. Ackerman carries copies of his seminal Famous Monsters of Filmland while playing “bookstore customer,” noted art director Robert A. Burns (Re-Animator) is “porn store patron,” cinematographer Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver) plays “man at bar,” all-time movie cheapskate Roger Corman waits to make a phone call, Mick Garris (writer of Hocus Pocus) is “man reading TV Guide,” and Jonathan Kaplan (director of The Accused) plays a gas station attendant.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Next: A David Lynch retrospective

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer.

No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

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