Editorials
Exhumed & Exonerated: ‘Alien 3’ (1992)
Every decade has its ups and downs when it comes to cinema, no matter the genre. Horror fans love to loft on high the output of the ‘30s & ‘40s, the ‘70s & ‘80s, and the more recent decades. More often than not, however, the 1990s are labeled as the worst decade for the genre. Not only that, but ‘90s horror tends to be written off as a whole, beyond a handful of undisputed classics. The purpose of Exhumed & Exonerated: The ‘90s Horror Project, is to refute those accusations by highlighting numerous gems from the decade. Stone cold classics will be tackled in this column from time to time, but its main purpose will be to seek out lesser-known and/or less-loved titles that I think deserve more attention and respect from fans. Let the mayhem begin!
Alien 3
Directed by David Fincher
Screenplay by Vincent Ward, David Giler, Walter Hill, and Larry Ferguson
Produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Ralph Brown, Charles Dance, Brian Glover, Danny Webb, Paul McGann, Pete Postlethwaite, Holt McCallany, and Lance Henriksen
Released on May 22, 1992
I was originally going to tackle something a bit more offbeat for this entry, but upon being reminded of “Alien Day”, I switched gears. Last week (4/26…LV-426…hooray for joke holidays) saw many around the nation (world?) celebrating Fox’s Alien franchise, particularly the first two films. What better way to follow things up the next day by taking a look at the dark horse third entry in the sci-fi/horror saga? David Fincher’s Alien 3 has its fans (spoilers: I’m one of them) but to this day it remains a wildly divisive installment in the series.
Why is it so divisive? Because the previous films, Aliens, saw Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) come out of her second traumatic encounter with the alien species not only triumphant, but with a new surrogate family. With Ripley as the mother, we were also given Rebecca “Newt” Jorden (Carrie Henn) as an adopted daughter, Corporal Dwayne Hicks (Michael Biehn) as the would-be father, and the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) as the weird uncle, something ever family seems to have. In short, director/writer James Cameron had given the franchise’s lead a fairytale ending. Unfortunately, not all fairytales remain happy.
The opening sequence of Alien 3 sees these characters in hypersleep aboard the Sulaco, where we last saw them. So what goes wrong? You guessed it, there’s an alien on board! A fire breaks out, forcing the escape ship to be launched, but not before the little face-hugging fiend possibly manages to impregnate one of the three humans with an alien embryo. Life is a cruel bastard at times.
Making matters worse, the escape ship crash lands into the waters on a sparsely populated backwater planet. A planet whose inhabitants are all ex-convicts tasked with keeping a metalworks factory maintained. In the crash, one of the ship’s support beams impales Hicks in his sleep, killing him instantly. Bishop’s already-trashed android body is also further damages, with “pieces of him all over the place”. The malicious cherry atop this tragedy is that Newt is also dead; having drowned in her sleep after her cryo-tube became cracked.
Ripley is left alone; her new surrogate family ripped away from her even quicker than her co-workers were in the original film. Whereas the original film was about survival and the sequel about conquering your fear, the third becomes about a loss of faith and hope. It’s no coincidence that the writers chose to make the former prisoners into people who had found religion during their incarceration. Ripley is the faithless tossed among the faithful, attempting to find some meaning and purpose in the wake of another traumatic event.
What good is film dealing with faith that doesn’t have a demon running about? In addition to the mystery of whether or not one of the original trio has been impregnated by an alien, a second facehugger is revealed to have made it onto the escape pod. Upon landing, it “mates” with an animal. What kind of animal it latches onto depends on which cut of the film you are watching, of course. In the theatrical version, it attaches itself to a dog. In the extended producers cut, which hews closer to Fincher’s original vision of the film, it is an ox.
Regardless of the cut, we have a far faster and animalistic alien to deal with this time out. Complicating matters further is the fact that the facilities administration doesn’t believe a word of Ripley’s tale, at least not until the beast slaughters a handful of people. Worse yet, there are no weapons at this facility. After all, it wouldn’t be smart to have a bunch of guns or flamethrowers lying around where convicted murderers and rapists can access them, even if they are all supposedly “reformed” and have “found God at the ass end of space”. All of this contributes to the film’s mounting sense of hopelessness and dread.
All the franchise’s hallmarks are on full display here. We have Ripley at the center of it all as the voice of reason, just like she has been since the opening moments of Ridley Scott’s original. We have a colorful cast of characters, mostly of the blue collar variety, running about a dirty and rundown space facility. We have a few characters with their own agenda that does not gel with the rest of the group, especially in the extended cut. And, of course, we have the company, Weyland-Yutani, still trying to get their hands on the titular fiend…no matter the cost.
We could argue all day about whether or not it was right for Hicks, Newt, and (effectively) Bishop to be torn away from Ripley right out of the gate. Regardless of whether or not you personally agree with this decision, one made by Weaver herself, it’s simply the way the dice rolled. Whether or not that sits well with you, it’s impossible to deny the craftsmanship here. The theatrical cut of the film is compromised, but still a worthwhile sequel. The extended cut is even better, further exploring the new characters and the film’s themes.
Would it have been nice to see at least one more adventure with the three fallen survivors of Aliens? Of course! I love those characters as much as anyone. For a time, it was actually going to happen that way. Before Vincent Ward was brought in to craft a faith-oriented tale involving Ripley, there were three other completely different scripts written for a potential Alien 3. The first one, penned by Neuromancer author William Gibson, saw Ripley in a coma, with Hicks, Newt, and Bishop as the leads. There were also two further, wildly different scripts after that which contained no returning characters at all. One was penned by Eric Red (Near Dark) and the other by David Twohy (Pitch Black). All three can be easily found online, if you are curious, along with Ward’s own (quite different) script.
Alien 3 is an ugly, nihilistic sequel slathered in grease and grime and filled with a wide assortment of troubled characters. In addition to its unceremonious dispatching of the other survivors of Aliens, this also seems to be a sore point with those who do not care for the film. Alien 3 is almost the complete opposite of Aliens, even of Alien, and that’s exactly what I love about it. For most of the films in this franchise, the filmmakers behind them have been allowed to craft their own completely different take on this universe. Ridley Scott’s Alien is the ultimate monster movie. James Cameron’s Aliens is one of the best action films ever made. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection is more of a dark comedy. Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is a weird Planet of the Vampires-esque space exploration flick. Only the Alien vs. Predator films really sidestep a signature style, instead opting for a more comic book-like approach.
Alien 3 might not be the sequel you wanted when you first saw it after watching the first two. I completely get that, but I believe that it is a great fill in its own right. The story and themes are compelling, the cast is great, and the visuals are striking. It’s an ugly sequel in every sense of the word, practically oozing with a feeling of hopelessness that is understandably off-putting to some viewers, but a unique and unforgettable one. It may not have impacted genre-filmmaking as much as its gargantuan predecessors, but it absolutely deserves its place as one of the best genre sequels we have received.
Up Next: Cast A Deadly Spell (1991)
Previously On…
Species | Mute Witness | Popcorn | Wishmaster | Alien 3 | Cast A Deadly Spell
Disturbing Behavior | The Sect | The Addams Family
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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