Hostile Takeover (1988)

... aka: Devastator, The
... aka: Noite dos Reféns (Hostages Night)
... aka: Office Party
... aka: Office Party - Geiselnahme im Büro (Office Party: Hostage in the Office)
... aka: Secuestro en la oficina (Office Kidnapping)
... aka: Sindrome implacable (Restless Syndrome)

Directed by:
George Mihalka

Eugene Brackin (David Warner) is polite, mind-mannered and honest, a very hard worker and the exact type of guy the phrase "He wouldn't even hurt a fly" was coined for. He's even volunteered to go into the office on a Saturday while most of his other colleagues are enjoying their weekend, only this time he's brought along a suitcase. He tells his attractive-and-she-knows-it young coworker, Sally (Kate Vernon), that he's going on a small trip once he leaves there. Another of his colleagues, Joan (Jayne Eastwood), can't help but brag about how much she respects Eugene and his work ethic. Larry Gaylord (Michael Ironside), who manages the office, doesn't even seem to notice as he's too busy making passes at the disinterested Sally, who scoots away from him and motions to the framed photo of Larry's wife on the desk to get him to stop. The four work until nightfall. As they grab their coats, turn off the lights and prepare to leave, they realize someone's put a bike lock on the door. Before they can make heads or tails of the situation, Eugene's suitcase is opened. Inside are guns and handcuffs. He's also thrown away the key to the lock. After cuffing everyone to chairs, Eugene offers up no answers to any of their questions. He won't tell them why he's taking them hostage or even how long he plans of keeping them there. He doesn't want money. He promises not to kill anybody. And he's not trying to make any kind of political statement. The only hint he ever drops is his insistence that "the circle must be completed."

There seems to be little rhyme or reason behind Eugene's actions. When Joan's husband calls looking for her, Eugene flat out tells him he's holding her hostage, recommends he call the police and recommends the police not get too close to the building or else he's firing. Cops quickly arrive at the scene and don't heed the warning. Eugene opens fire and blows a van up. More police, led by put-upon police chief Greg Smolen (Will Lyman), show up and surround the building. Smolen frequently talks to Eugene on the phone but is unable to pry anything useful out of him nor get him to agree to cooperate with the authorities. However, he senses this is a unique situation that may go against usual police protocol. Mayor Steve (John Vernon) also turns up but he's mostly worried about losing votes in an upcoming election and what this little stunt is going to cost the city.

Eugene has childhood flashbacks where his sadistic father chases him around in the woods with a rifle, orders him to "Bark like a dog!" and calls him a "spineless little prick!" Larry has a dream he shoots Eugene in the head and becomes the hero while Sally has a flashback to arguing with the vice president of the company, who promised her the managerial position but then gave it to Larry instead. She believes that was due to sexism while Larry accuses her of trying to sleep her way to the top, which is possible considering she and the v.p. were lovers. We also learn a bit more about Joan, who was a chance-taking feminist in her youth before settling into her current ordinary, ordered life. Still, she's haunted by an illegal abortion she had when she was younger which has left her unable to have children.

Tensions mount on the ground as disagreements about how to handle the situation form. Smolen believes the situation can be resolved without resorting to violence, while the impatient Mayor wants to resolve the crisis a.s.a.p. even if that means a few lives are lost in the process. He recommends Smolen "stop mollycoddling that asshole!" and brings in gung ho special weapons and tactics expert Lieutenant Garlis (Anthony Sherwood), whom Smolen describes as "a redneck trapped in a black man's body." It's clear the two won't be able to work together, especially when Garlis gives an unflattering press interview that angers Brackin and then places a marksman on a roof without the police chief's knowledge. In an effort to try to win back Brackin's trust, Smolen even tells him about the sniper and to stay away from the windows. Can this dire situation possibly be resolved without anyone dying?

This truly bizarre, but quite originally presented, little psychological drama came and went without much fanfare in the 80s but it's worth a look. Most of the film takes place in a drab and nearly empty third floor office room, but the director manages to dress things up nicely utilizing color, surreal flourishes, black comedy and horror imagery. Each of the office workers and the main cop are given character building moments here that are achieved not only through the dialogue but flashbacks, nightmares, hallucinations and poetic voice-overs. During one scene, Larry envisions his wife fucking the company president on the floor in the middle of a party. The cop delivers an eloquent monologue as he steps around faceless, bloody bodies, which is strikingly captured via a long tracking shot looking up through a glass table. Moments like these keep this from devolving into a routine hostage thriller. There's a decent amount of blood, a bit of sex and even some office politics thrown in for good measure.

Alas, it's not all good news. Something clearly got fucked up with the sound during production. While some of the dialogue seems to have been recorded during filming, much of the rest was poorly looped in later. That results in a lot of wonky and unintentionally funny ADR, which is especially evident during the scenes with the police. Some of the police dialogue is terrible, too. You can tell they intended it to sound bad ass and hard-edged, but it just comes off as hokey most of the time. A good primary cast helps to alleviate some of those issues. Warner and Ironside have both made careers out of playing assorted weirdos, crazies and bad guys, so their roles as the motiveless hostage taker and the corporate asshole fit both like a glove. John Vernon is the other big name and gets typecast yet again as a foul-mouthed ("Show some fuckin' decorum!") pushy jerk, but that's why we love him, right? Veteran character actress Eastwood is good as per usual and newcomer Kate Vernon (John's real-life daughter) is adequate.

Based on Michae A. Gilbert's novel Office Party, which was also one of several alternative titles (the one I watched was called The Devastator). Mihalka is best know for the popular 80s slasher flick MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981). He also made the interesting astral projection film Eternal Evil (1985), The Psychic (1991) and Relative Fear (1994). Billy Bryans and Aaron Davis received a Genie Award nomination for their score.

Filmed in Toronto, this played theatrically in Canada in 1989 before being issued on home video. Here in the U.S. it was released on VHS under several different titles. There's been no DVD release as of this writing.

★★1/2

Surrogate, The (1984)

... aka: Blind Rage
... aka: Infidélité fatale (Fatal Infidelity)
... aka: Mielipuoliset murhat (Insane Massacre)
... aka: Schizophrenia
... aka: Split Person

Directed by:
Don Carmody

Pretty much anyone who grew up in the 90s into the early 2000s should be pretty familiar with the erotic thriller. After all, these things helped get many of us through puberty. They were playing every single night on cable channels like Showtime and Cinemax. They were filling up video store shelves; not that you could necessarily rent them if you were of a certain age, but they were there. Since 1980, North American soft erotica has become increasingly more explicit to where now it's about as close to hardcore as you can possibly get without actually being hardcore. In the 90s, the sex scenes were still mostly on the very soft side of things because these mainstream features had to cut it as actual movies with plots, production values  and attention paid to the photography, score, etc. After all, these had budgets and were shot on film, not on smart phones or with 200 dollar digital cameras like they do it today. These movies even had their own stars and many of these ladies became fairly well known and could sell a film all on their own. Nowadays, there really aren't soft or hardcore porn stars, at least not like there used to be. Skip back to the 80s and the sex scenes in soft-core were even less explicit than the 90s (or even the 1970s for that matter). Oftentimes in 80s erotic thrillers there wasn't even any sex at all, just a good amount of nudity, as is the case with this one.

The biggest name in soft-core during the 90s boom was undoubtedly Shannon Tweed, who seemed to star in every other erotic thriller made that decade. Tweed was involved in beauty pageants and modeling in her native Canada before posing for Playboy magazine and becoming their Playmate of the Year in 1982. With her star on the rise, she landed a recurring gig on TV's prime time soap Falcon Crest and moved on to feature films (mostly B movies) and numerous TV guest spots from there. She stayed busy enough throughout the 80s that by the time she made a real name for herself in late night erotica, she was well into her 30s and continued in the genre well into her 40s. The Surrogate was one of her first major film roles and also the very first erotic thriller for the actress. Of course this kind of erotic isn't the erotic of the 90s and it certainly isn't the erotic of today. This is a psycho-thriller / mystery first and foremost that just happens to have some sexy scenes thrown in.

Too much boozing, late nights at work and other stresses and insecurities are taking their toll on Frank Waite (Art Hindle), a luxury car salesman, and his wife Lee (Tweed), who's living off of inherited riches. As far as sex is concerned, forget about it. The two haven't been intimate in quite some time because Frank's having a hard time with his hard time. Or as Lee so compassionately tells him “I'm ready and willing... when you're able!” Frank's anger starts boiling over not only at work but at home. He stabs his desk with a knife and screams at Lee, “I could break your God damn neck!” It's getting so bad that he's having rage-induced black out periods where he can't remember what he's done. All of that seems to coincide with a serial killer's murder spree being investigated by tired detective George Kyber (a very disinterested acting Michael Ironside). Someone's running around gouging out eyeballs and making victims look like pincushions and Frank just so happens to emerge from several of his black out episodes near the crimes scenes.

Frank's psychiatrist, Dr. Harriet Foreman (Marilyn Lightstone), has run plenty of physical tests but nothing is coming back that would explain Frank's extreme anger, so she chalks it up to Lee making him feeling inadequate and hands the frustrated husband the business card of one Anouk Van Derlin (Carole Laure), a sex surrogate / fantasist, to help them sort out their sex life. Anouk shows up at the Waite's one evening dressed in all black leather and manages to turn on both Frank and Lee with simple sex talk in her soothing French-accented voice and light touching, but the repressed Lee feels “dirty” after the experience and wants no more of it. Unfortunately, Anouk isn't quite done with them yet. While the wife's away, she shows up unannounced and uses her alone time with Frank to seduce him into some violent, kinky sex that makes a complete mess of their condo. She shows up again several more times to terrorize (and attempt to blackmail) the couple, but is she also the killer?

Another chief suspect is Lee's flamboyant best friend Eric, an antique dealer who's seen in full drag snooping around at many of the crime scenes and is referred to as a “lunatic faggot” by Frank, who hates that his wife spends so much time with him. Since Eric is played by Jim Bailey, a top female impersonator back in the day, we're also treated to such scenes as him dressing up as Bette Davis and stabbing a melon with a butcher knife. The cast also includes Gary Reineke as Frank's backstabbing lawyer friend, Barbara Law as one of Frank's flirty customers, Vlasta Vrana and Ron Lea. Jackie Burroughs also has a bizarre, amusing cameo as a kinky older lady who likes to dress up like a little schoolgirl and wants to get spanked with a giant lollipop (!)

Even though this is classed as an erotic thriller, the audience has to get their kicks mostly with sex talk and three Tweed nude scenes. Laure, a multi-talented beauty who not only acts (she's perhaps best known for the genuinely shocking SWEET MOVIE) but is also an award-winning writer and director and has a successful music career, has just one very brief topless scene. Though not as edgy now as it probably seemed back in 1984, this is competently made with good production values, has (mostly) passable acting and an OK mystery script (by the director and Robert Geoffrion) with some amusing dialogue and a pretty decent twist at the end. This is the only directorial credit for Carmody, who is now a major Hollywood producer, to date. He started out working on David Cronenberg movies.

This was shot in the winter of 1983 in Montreal under the title Blind Rage. The budget was around 1.5 million dollars. After its initial VHS release (on the Fox Hills label in the U.S. and on the Medusa label in the UK) and some TV airings, this one vanished for awhile until a Real 3-D version (!!) turned up on Amazon in 2012.

★★1/2