Editorials
While You Wait for ‘Mandy,’ ‘Drive Angry’ is the Badass Nic Cage Film You Need to Watch
In 2011, Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer out-Ghost Rider‘d both Nicolas Cage-starring Ghost Rider films with Drive Angry, a modern exploitation gem starring… Nicolas Cage.
Earlier this week, the trailer for Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy hit the net, looking like Hellraiser by way of Dario Argento and with Nicolas Cage in the mix as an axe-wielding, chainsaw-fighting badass tasked with fending off an unhinged religious sect in the 1980s. If your tastes are anything like mine, you absolutely NEED to see Mandy RIGHT NOW, but the sad reality is that you’re going to have to wait until it’s released on September 14. In the meantime, there’s damn sure no shortage of fun Nic Cage movies to pass the time with.
Hell, I’m pretty sure fifteen have already come out this year.
My personal recommendation? The Farmer-penned, Lussier-directed Drive Angry, which didn’t make a splash at the box office nor did it win over most critics. And really, it’s not the sort of film that was ever going to be a hit in either department. Drive Angry, rather, succeeds admirably at being precisely the kind of film it set out to be: a bona fide cult classic.
Like few films are brave enough to these days, Drive Angry ushers us into a world rife with its own wacky mythology and asks us to accept its rules, no questions asked. The plot? Well, Cage stars as John Milton, a dead man who has just broken out of Hell. You see, Hell in the world of Drive Angry is actually a prison where the world’s most “badass motherfuckers” are held, and Milton breaks free when he learns that his murdered daughter’s child has been kidnapped by a cult. I repeat. Cage plays a dead dude who breaks out of Hell to save a baby from a cult.
Oh and by the way, Milton plans to kill Jonah, the man who murdered his daughter, with the “God Killer,” one big ass gun that he stole from the personal collection of… SATAN.
Many Nic Cage films have one standout scene that fans essentially use to identify which movie is which, because it can admittedly be hard to keep track of Cage’s career. The recent Mom and Dad, for example, is “the one where Cage beats the shit out of a pool table,” while Wicker Man is of course “the one with the bees.” I suppose that’d make Drive Angry, “the one where Nicolas Cage kills a bunch of dudes while he’s having sex,” as the film is home to what is unquestionably one of the most bizarre sex scenes in cinema history. Milton is having sex with a woman in a hotel (while smoking a cigar and swigging a bottle of whiskey) when a few of Jonah’s men come knocking. Rather than stopping, Cage shoots and kills everyone in sight. Bottle of whiskey still in his hand. Cigar still in his mouth. And, well, you get the idea.
The whole scene is shown in slow-motion, in case you had any delusions about the particular brand of exploitation ridiculousness and excess Drive Angry dedicates itself to dishing out.
As much as a surprisingly subdued Cage shines in Drive Angry as an undead felon who eventually loses an eye, the film isn’t entirely the “Nic Cage Show.” Cage is surrounded by a great cast in this one, with Amber Heard as Piper, the waitress who ends up joining him on his journey of revenge, and Billy Burke as satanist Jonah King. William Fichtner is a particular standout as the cocksure right-hand-man of Satan who goes by the name The Accountant, assigned to bring Milton back to Hell. Fichtner is perfectly cast in the role, turning The Account into a supremely entertaining villain who arguably steals the show even from Cage.
And then there’s horror legend Tom Atkins, who pops up halfway into the film to make Drive Angry even more of a treat. Atkins, who had previously starred in Farmer and Lussier’s My Bloody Valentine 3D, naturally plays a take-no-shit sheriff in Drive Angry, who has but one order for his team: aim for all of their heads. There’s a good chance Drive Angry will go down as being Atkins’ last appearance in a studio film on the big screen, and that’s just more reason to love it.
From start to finish, Drive Angry embraces its grindhouse spirit with high octane enthusiasm, loaded with all the explosions, car chases and bloody carnage you’re surely asking for it to deliver. It’s the sort of film that knows what you want because it’s made by people who want what you want, culminating in an all-time great Nic Cage moment where he turns a human skull into a beer glass. It’s something Cage’s Milton promised earlier in the film that he’d eventually do, and that’s what Drive Angry is all about: promising exploitation insanity and making sure to deliver it. It’s all capped off with Milton driving back into Hell, Meatloaf’s “Alive” playing loud and proud. Because of course it is.
If you’re looking for prime Cage material on the road to Mandy, look no further.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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