Welcome Home, Soldier Boys

In the wake of the Vietnam War, many films were made that examined what happened to American soldiers returning home, from classy prestigious studio films such as The Deer Hunter (1978) to B-movie action fare such as Rolling Thunder (1977). Some explored how soldiers tried to re-acclimate to “normal” life back home while others depicted how their friends and family reacted to their return. A common theme among these films is how the veteran’s war experiences affected them, be it emotionally, psychologically or physically. These films were an attempt for America to come to grips with a highly publicized war that they lost.

Welcome Home, Soldier Boys (1972), directed by Richard Compton and written by Guerdon Trueblood, is a small B-movie that one can imagine playing in some small, rural town on the bottom half of a double bill. It hardly did any business and was barely reviewed, quietly drifting into cinematic obscurity but remains a fascinating oddity nonetheless.

Four soldiers freshly discharged from the United States Army try to re-assimilate into civilian life after a tour in Vietnam with designs to go to California where one of them claims to have inherited a chunk of family-owned land that they can make their own. They’re a tight-knit group as evident in the short-hand between them and the way they banter back and forth.

The four men try to buy a car and are taken advantage of by a salesman. They proceed to “check out” the vehicle and strip it down, knocking down the price from $6200 to $5500. This scene is crucial in that it not only establishes that these guys aren’t pushovers but are also savvy enough to deal with someone in a creative fashion when they feel that they’re being exploited.

The film is a road movie that takes a decidedly dark turn early on when the men pick-up a stranded woman (Jennifer Billingsley) whose car broke down on the side of the road. The proceed to take turns having sex with her but when she demands $500 to get a car and drive home instead of $100 bus fare, things turn ugly and she is thrown out of the car while it was going 65 mph. They don’t stop to see if she’s okay or dead and this scene is an early indicator of what these men are capable of and where the film is going.

Apart from Danny (Joe Don Baker), we are given very little backstory to these men. What we know about them is strictly from their actions in the present. Danny returns home to see his folks and realizes that his experiences in the war has changed him, his parents have stayed the same, assuming he’ll pick up where he left off before he went overseas. They don’t understand he and his friends want to make a go of it in California. A somber mood hangs over this entire sequence and the whole experience leaves Danny and his friends crestfallen, proving the old saying, you can’t go home again.

When their car breaks down somewhere in Texas, they are towed into town and are met with all kinds of flak from the locals. They are overcharged by a mechanic, mocked by Korean War vets for not finishing the job in ‘Nam, and thrown in jail for the night by the Sheriff (Billy “Green” Bush). These incidents only deepen their feelings of alienation and resentment towards civilians.

Low on gas and money, they finally roll into New Mexico and try to get gas in a small town but it is too early. They end up stealing what they need and for them this is the last straw. When they are meant with resistance from the locals, the four men unleash an orgy of violence that would make Sam Peckinpah proud. The ensuing bloodbath is shocking in its ruthless efficiency.

Welcome Home, Soldier Boys ends on a nihilistic note that pays homage to the ending of The Wild Bunch (1969) but while Peckinpah mythologized and had great affection for his characters, this film doesn’t sentimentalize its protagonists. It doesn’t make any excuses for the behavior of these men, presenting the things they do in matter-of-fact fashion. The filmmakers show these men for who they are and lets us judge them. Unlike Rolling Thunder or First Blood (1982), this film isn’t a rousing revenge tale as the protagonists strike back at those that misunderstand and try to keep them down. This is a massacre, plain and simple.

This deviates from the common coming home from war narrative that asks us to sympathize with the vets that return damaged in one way or another. Not so much with these characters who are unrepentant in who they are, escalating slights against them that doesn’t make them victims but aggressors in a way that is unsettling. Is the ending meant to evoke the infamous bloody 1968 Mỹ Lai massacre? Is it suggesting that these guys killed women and children in ‘Nam and are carrying on where they left off? Who is this film made for? It doesn’t quite get down ‘n’ dirty enough for the exploitation crowd and isn’t palatable for mainstream audiences, which may explain why it slipped through the cracks over the years.

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Perdita Durango

Perdita Durango (1997) is a fascinating oddity in the filmography of Spanish filmmaker Alex de la Iglesia. It was his attempt at breaking into the North American market with a cast that featured recognizable actors like Rosie Perez, Javier Bardem and James Gandolfini. Unfortunately, De La Iglesia’s film came out before Bardem became known to audiences here and two years before Gandolfini hit it big with The Sopranos. As a result, Perdita Durango was trimmed by ten minutes and dumped into direct-to-video hell with the generic title Dance with the Devil. Even in this neutered form, De La Igleisia’s film is a gonzo potpourri of wild sex, crazed violence and pitch black humor. In other words, the stuff that instant cult films are made of.

Based on Barry Gifford’s novel 59 Degrees and Raining: The Story of Perdita Durango, De La Iglesia’s film is a spin-off, of sorts, of David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990) – also an adaptation of one of Gifford’s novels – by focusing on one of the minor characters featured in that film (and played by Isabella Rossellini). Perdita (Perez) is a tough, no-nonsense lady clad in a Tura Satana-style black outfit. She meets Romeo Dolorosa (Bardem), a maniacal criminal who also happens to be an even more maniacal witch doctor.

The couple cross the border into Mexico, become lovers and partners in crime as they kidnap a white-bread couple of teens – Duane (Harley Cross) and Estelle (Aimee Graham) and transport a truckload of human fetuses to Las Vegas while trying to evade determined Drug Enforcement Agency officer Woody Dumas (Gandolfini).

The opening scene, where a schlubby guy tries to pick up Perdita at an airport, tells us all we need to know about her – she’s smart, tough and more than capable of handling herself, sending the hapless guy scurrying with a few choice words. It’s a juicy role that Rosie Perez sinks her teeth into, immersing herself fully. She shows a wide range of emotions as her character is more than an amoral criminal, she also conveys a vulnerability – albeit fleeting – that gives her a bit more depth than one would expect from this kind of a film.

Romeo is an impulsive mad man as evident in a flashback where he forces a busty bank teller to expose her naked breast while he’s robbing the bank! He then double-crosses his partner, hitting him with the getaway vehicle. Much like Perez, Javier Bardem commits fully to the role with scary intensity. Romeo is a force of nature that follows his own beliefs that are a funky fusion of a love for cinema and a twisted belief in Santeria.

James Gandolfini portrays Woody as a slightly sleazy, slightly seedy character that speaks with a slightly weasely lisp and has the misfortune of being repeatedly hit by fast moving vehicles, not unlike a live-action Wile E. Coyote. He also seems to be mildly fixated on Ava Gardner, at one point remarking how much he likes her lips. He’s determined to bring down Romeo for his outstanding drug offenses and will let nothing get in his way. It becomes a point of pride for him. Gandolfini steals every scene he’s in with his I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude and that is saying something in a film that features larger than life characters played by Rosie Perez, Javier Bardem, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

The film is at its most horrific in the scenes where Romeo practices voodoo. In one ritualistic scene, he drenches himself in blood and smothers his face in a bag of cocaine. He then hacks limbs off of a corpse, tears out its heart and writhes around on the ground, channeling multitudes of demons. There is an unpredictable energy to the scene that makes it scary and thrilling. De la Iglesia contrasts these scenes with gallows humour. Romeo may be a vicious killer but he also loves the music of Herb Albert. There is a hilarious moment where he and Perdita happily groove to the strains of The Dating Game theme.

From the grotesque mutants who threaten Earth in Accion Mutante (1993) to the graphic voodoo practices in Perdita Durango, horrific, often bizarre, imagery has always been prominent in Alex de la Iglesia’s movies. Like his cinematic contemporaries — Mexico’s Guillermo del Toro and France’s Christophe Gans — De la Iglesia impishly mixes a variety of genres in his films:

“I like to play with genres and construct my own movies...What I am trying to do is inject poison into these genres. In a happy comedy I like to introduce poison and make the movie freaky and weird, with a tasteless sense of humor.”

It is no surprise that, like Del Toro and Gans, De la Iglesia comes from a comic book/fanzine background that informs all of his work. There is something of the film geek in all of three filmmakers that results in a desire to include show-stopping spectacle set pieces in their movies and to quote other films in their own work, fueled by an obsession with American culture.

El Dia de la bestia was a huge hit in its native country, earning six Goya Awards (Spain’s equivalent of the Academy Awards), and breaking box office records. Producer Andres Vicente Gomez saw the movie and wanted De la Iglesia to direct Perdita Durango. Gomez felt that De la Iglesia’s sensibilities were better suited for the project than current director, Bigas Luna. With pre-production already underway, De la Iglesia came aboard and molded the material to fit his preoccupations.

For all of its inspired lunacy, Perdita Durango is not without its poignant moments, like when Romeo waxes nostalgic about seeing Vera Cruz (1954) at an impressionable age and how the fate of Burt Lancaster’s character resonated with him. Like with that film, there is a certain sense of fatalism in Perdita Durango as Romeo knows he’s going to die but goes through with one last job anyway and De La Iglesia literally has him become Lancaster’s character, mimicking the showdown in Vera Cruz with the one between Romeo and his cousin Reggie (Carlos Bardem). Perdita Durango ends on a deliciously subversive note as the titular character walks through a gaudy Vegas casino with “Winner” signs flashing all around her – epitomizing the American dream – but she’s lost everything.

Perdita Durango is a curious oddity in De la Iglesia’s oeuvre. It is his most overt attempt to crack the North American market (where he has only a small but dedicated following) with his first English-speaking film and a cast of recognizable actors like Rosie Perez, James Gandolfini and Javier Bardem. This alienated his Spanish fans who probably felt he had sold out, while his perchance for graphic sex and violence scared off potential distributors and mainstream audiences in North America, sending the film direct to video. This reaction is unfortunate because Perdita Durango is De la Iglesia’s most successful effort: a perfect mix of the ridiculous and the epic, with the right blend of genres (crime, horror, comedy, road trip) and a wonderfully eclectic cast that features his regular favorites (Santiago Segura) and colorful character actors (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins).

Love and a .45

David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990) kick started the trend of stylish road movies during the 1990s. They usually involved a beautiful, young couple in trouble with either the law or criminals or both, driving a vintage muscle car across the vast countryside of the United States, stopping in small towns populated by eccentric characters all scored to an alternative rock soundtrack. While Thelma & Louise (1991) was certainly the most popular example of this genre during that decade, it was only one of many that tried to give their own unique spin, be it the couple that picks up a psychopath on the road a la Kalifornia (1993), or lovers on the run from gangsters in True Romance (1993), or where the antagonists are actually the protagonists as in Natural Born Killers (1994). Then, you have The Doom Generation (1995) and Perdita Durango (1997), two films that represent extreme examples of the road movie genre, pushing the sex and violence to the limits.

Among all of these various movies is one of my favorites, Love and a.45 (1994), a modest independent film, written and directed by C.M. Talkington, that got lost in the shuffle due to its lack of star power and advertising muscle. It is notable for featuring then up-and-coming actors Gil Bellows and Renee Zellweger in early roles as lovers on the run from two vicious debt collectors and a vengeful ex-con. I have a soft spot for Talkington’s film due in large part to Zellweger’s enthusiastic performance and a soundtrack populated with the likes of the Butthole Surfers, The Reverent Horton Heat, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Mazzy Star among others.

When he’s not knocking over convenience stores to help pay off an engagement ring he bought for his girlfriend Starlene Cheatham (Renee Zellweger), Watty Watts (Gil Bellows) plans for a future with said significant other. However, as the saying goes, the best laid plans of mice and men… The young lovers are soon visited by a whole mess of trouble in the form of Dinosaur Bob (Jeffrey Combs) and Creepy Cody (Jace Alexander), two well-dressed debt collectors hopped up on high-powered speed. As if this wasn’t bad enough, Watty teams up with Billy Mack Black (Rory Cochrane), a fellow ex-con buddy and speed freak, on a robbery that he hopes will help pay off the money he owes. Predictably, things horribly wrong when someone is killed. Watty and Starlene soon find themselves on the run from Bob and Billy Mack, who has lost what little he had of a mind to drugs.

Watty considers himself something of an artist when it comes to holding up convenience stores and freely quotes from the I-Ching. Gil Bellows certainly plays an attractive protagonist and is good in the role, giving it all he’s got, but at times he’s overshadowed by the likes of Jeffrey Combs and Rory Cochrane’s larger than life characters. Bellows and Zellweger have good chemistry together and make for a believable couple that is crazy for each other. They are young and have their whole lives ahead of them – that is, if Dinosaur Bob, Billy Mack or the law doesn’t get them first.

Starlene is a free spirit in cut-off jean shorts that leave very little to the imagination. All she wants is for Watty to make an honest woman out of her by getting married. At the time she made Love and a .45, Renee Zellweger was a fresh-faced starlet and she dives enthusiastically into her role. She brings a lot of natural charm and charisma to the role so that it is hard not to like Starlene. Love and a .45 is a potent reminder of how the very presence of Zellweger would energize a given scene and how this seems to be lacking from what few films she’s done in recent years.

Rory Cochrane brings an unpredictable energy to Billy Mack Black, amping himself up more and more as the film progresses with him diving deeper into drug addiction. One moment, he is whining about going back to prison and the next, he’s pointing a gun in Watty’s face. Cochrane starts off chewing the scenery when Billy Mack appears on-screen and by the time he shaves off his head and gets a huge tattoo on it, he’s gone so over-the-top, he’s devoured the scenery.

The always watchable Jeffrey Combs steals every scene he’s in as a charismatic speed freak cum debt collector. This is evident in his introductory scene, which sees the actor swagger all over the place, gleefully bouncing off the other actors in snappy verbal repartee. Bob is giving Watty a friendly warning, but it is a taste of things to come when everything goes pear-shaped. Combs looks like he’s having a blast in the role as he gets to play a larger than life baddie who enjoys his job a little too much. He delivers a performance that feels fresh and spontaneous, like anything can happen. There’s a fantastic meeting of charismatic scene-stealers when Bob and Creepy catch up with Billy Mack at a tattoo parlor. It’s a lot of fun to see Combs vamp it up as he questions Billy with the aid of a tattooing needle. Then, all three psychos hit the road together to the strains of “Who Was In My Room Last Night?” by the Butthole Surfers blasting on the soundtrack.

At the time, Love and a .45 was compared rather unfavorably to Quentin Tarantino’s films, but it doesn’t take long to see Wild at Heart’s influence on it with Renee Zellweger channeling Laura Dern’s hopelessly romantic sex kitten and Jeffrey Combs playing an energetic variation of J.E. Freeman’s laconic gangster. Love and a .45 even features a memorable cameo from Lynch alumni Jack Nance. It also features bloody violence scored to a rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack and adopts the same kind of cutesy lovers banter that is scarily similar, but without the square sincerity of Lynch’s film. It is cool to see Peter Fonda and Ann Wedgeworth show up playing Starlene’s parents, or “handicapped suburban hippies” as Watty calls them. Fonda’s presence is obviously meant to evoke Easy Rider (1969), the mack daddy of all road movies. In an amusing moment, they give Watty and Starlene some primo liquid LSD as a wedding present.

Carty Talkington started off playing guitar in two rock bands he had formed and the theater, producing and directing plays for his independent company. He wrote the screenplay for Love and a .45 with the intention of directing it himself, turning down lucrative offers in the range of $100,000 to $200,000 to sell it for someone else to direct. He approached upstart distributor Trimark Pictures and convinced them that he had made other films, but that they had all “burned up in a dorm room fire.” The ploy paid off and Talkington received a budget of just under $2 million.

Renee Zellweger read the script while making Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994) and her co-star Matthew McConaughey was initially being considered to play Watty. She actively pursued the role, which worked out well as going into production, the filmmaker had yet to find someone they liked for the role of Starlene. Gil Bellows felt that Watty was “one true, cool character ‘cause he’s not perfect. You see where he succumbs to his own human weakness and his own temptation. He’s got a sense of humor about life.” Rory Cochrane read the script and liked it, finding “so many interesting characters in it.” To research the role, the actor talked to a prisoner serving 50 years for armed robbery.

While writing the script, Talkington knew how everything would look and worked closely with cinematographer Tom Richmond (Waking the Dead): “I wanted to make a rock ‘n’ roll movie, and I wanted to have some raw feeling in it, some energy, some soul.” A friend of Talkington’s agent saw Love and a .45 and got him a record deal. The record company gave him enough money to get all the music he wanted, like “King of the Road” and “Ring of Fire,” as well as getting The Breeders to record an original song for the film. Unfortunately, the production was marred by tragedy when the man in charge of special effects died when he crashed his car after a late-night shoot. In addition, the set director died of cancer soon after the production wrapped.

Love and a .45 received mostly positive reviews. In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Mr. Talkington shows some visual talent and has assembled a head-bangingly effective soundtrack, but he’s short on dramatic inspiration.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas wrote, “Love and a .45 is a comic book, not be taken seriously, yet Talkington’s people are real, well-drawn, even though they’re caricatures. Talkington not only has style but also a terrific way with actors, giving them the confidence to go over the top while having fun doing so.” Finally, in his review for the Austin Chronicle, Marc Savlov wrote, “Really, there’s not a whole lot here we haven’t seen before. Wisely, Talkington keeps the film moving at roughly the speed of Speed, bathing the shots with eerie gels and utilizing various skewed camera angles to keep things interesting.” Jeffrey Combs said of his experience working on the film: “That movie was nothing but a joy for me. I had never done anything like that … It was a wonderful director, and I thought it was quite a good script for the first time out for this guy.”

The problem that road movies sometimes fall into is that the eccentric characters the protagonists encounter tend to be more interesting because they have less screen time to make an impression so the actors tend to give it all they’ve got. This is certainly the case with Love and a .45, which features blistering performances by Cochrane and Combs. When their characters are on-screen, the film really comes to life and this fire ebbs a little when they are absent. While Love and a .45 is certainly indebted to films that came before, it is a fun and entertaining ride with two attractive leads and a cool soundtrack accompanying their misadventures. One doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time out. Sometimes, telling an engaging story is enough and C.M. Talkington’s film certainly does that.

SOURCES

Allen, Tom. “Carty Talkington Hits the Mark with Love and a .45.” MovieMaker. November 1, 1994.

Griffin, Dominic. “Road to Nowhere.” Film Threat. February 1995.

Rochon Debbie and Peter Schmideg. “Jeffrey Combs – Acting on the Edge.” Videoscope. Winter 1997.