Tomb
What the hell?!
Australian director Russell Mulcahy’s body of work becomes more peculiar the closer you look at it. He’s most famous for the rousing decapitation epic Highlander (1986) of course but he got his start with a banned comedy documentary a bunch of crazy ’80s music videos and a flick about a giant killer pig.
Mulcahy’s first film Derek and Clive Get the Horn (1979) is an extremely uncomfortable documentary detailing the recording of an improvised comedy session featuring legendary U.K. comedy team Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. The two comics had done some brilliant work together but their professional relationship had soured to the point that they could hardly stand to be in the same room. Their routine consists largely of pointlessly obscene observations punctuated by chilly silences as the two fill the studio with quiet resentment. It’s about as funny as listening to a married couple engaged in the argument that leads to their divorce. The film was banned in England for its extremely foul language and has never been released in North America.
In the ’80s Mulcahy was the music video director. His first effort turned out to be the very first music video broadcast on MTV: “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles. It would be safe to say that Mulcahy’s influence on the medium was extensive. Much of the “what the hell?!” quality associated with ’80s videos stemmed from the director’s predilection for throwing bizarre and disconnected images in at random. He made videos for Culture Club Elton John The Human League Supertramp Falco Queen Billy Joel Kim Carnes AC/DC and Duran Duran ( he did pretty much every video they made including Wild Boys the video in which Simon Le Bon almost drowned due to a faulty piece of set machinery). Things came to a head with the inexplicably terrifying video for Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler. Mulcahy chose to set Tyler’s weepy power ballad in some kind of freakish boarding school filled with possessed children. Oh sure things start off innocently with the standard shots of billowing curtains moonlight and doves but then the kids with the glowing eyes show up and things take a turn. Suddenly it’s like a John Carpenter film only with a lot more half-naked men jumping out at the camera for no reason. Oh and at one point a team of ninjas suddenly appear and do a Ukrainian shumka dance. Seriously.
It was this kind of bold avant-garde weirdness that attracted investors to Mulcahy’s next project Razorback (1984) the chilling tale of a homicidal pig terrorizing the Australian outback. Legend has it that the animatronic pig cost $250000 to build and is seen on film for only one second.
Then came Highlander (1986) which we all love.
Then came Highlander II: The Quickening (1991) which we all detest. Particularly me. The movie fails on so many levels it boggles the mind. Nobody can claim to know anything about bad movies until they watch Highlander II . Even the subsequent Highlander movies and TV shows ignore the events of the second film entirely. It was more or less at this point that many viewers wondered if Mulcahy was a gifted visual stylist who also happened to be clinically insane.
Russ kept at it giving us the rather good The Shadow (1994) featuring Alec Baldwin as the mysterious pulp superhero. Summer blockbusters like this tend to bury the director’s unique traits deep within a shell of focus groups and Burger King collectible cups but Mulcahy’s individuality seeps through from time to time giving glimpses of the nightmare world of his music videos. There’s a dagger that comes to life a dancing sarcophagus and a spherical neutron bomb that rolls out of control like a pinball while the good guys chase it.
Mulcahy recently directed the video game “threequel” Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) taking the reins of the franchise from equally offbeat director Paul W.S. Anderson. It’s precisely the kind of artsy visually arresting head-scratching genre schlock Russ is famous for.
What’s next for Mulcahy? Well this summer should see the release of The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior (2008) the prequel to the prequel to the sequel of the remake of The Mummy . That just makes me giggle. Keep it up Russ.
