Strangers Kiss

Trying to stay connected to movie trends in Los Angeles in the early 1980s wasn’t easy, as every week saw the debut of at least two unusual pictures being touted as The Next Big Thing. Only the critics could keep up, but we did catch odd-duck efforts like Slava Tsukerman’s  Liquid Sky or a preview of Giorgio Moroder’s ‘disco’  Metropolis.

The place In L.A. where the barely-connected could catch some of the independents and foreign pictures that slipped by was the legendary  ‘Z Channel’ cable outlet. It was programmed with Film Culture attractions both new and old. 1983’s  Strangers Kiss may or may not have been screened on ‘Z’; the channel gave us the first opportunity to see the movie that inspired it, Stanley Kubrick’s original 1955  Killer’s Kiss.

Fun City Editions continues to release specially curated ‘marginal’ pictures — exotic items we never heard of but are glad to learn of, like their recent release  Deep in the Heart aka Handgun. As is usually the case, the extras are a really big deal. The audio-visual record provided for Strangers Kiss nails an interesting slice of film history that might otherwise have slipped away. The eccentric little picture garnered more than its share of newspaper attention. What film reporter could resist a cinematic puzzle picture based on an early Kubrick movie?

Strangers Kiss (no apostrophe) is like Wim Wenders’ The State of Things in that it’s fiction about the making of a movie, that uses an existing ‘auteur work’ as the movie being made.  Killer’s Kiss is a low-budget 1955 thriller about a losing boxer who falls in love with a taxi dancer and rescues her from her violent boss. As Kubrick’s sophomore effort it succeeded as a somewhat insubstantial but commercially viable second-feature attraction.  Strangers Kiss is set in 1955 but moves the locale to Los Angeles, where a mostly identical feature is in production. Naturally, the relationships in the wraparound drama harmonize with the tensions in the original.

The very un-Kubrick-like director ‘Stanley’ (Peter Coyote) and the inexperienced young producer Farris (Dan Shor) get their film ‘Strange and Dangerous’ going because gangster Frank Silva (Richard Romanus) wants to indulge his girlfriend Carol Redding (Victoria Tennant). But Silva funds the show only one week at a time; Stanley and Farris begin their pinch-penny production not knowing if Silva will pull the plug on a whim. To play the boxer, Stanley hires Stevie Blake (writer Blaine Novak), a New York transplant with no acting experience but a lot of nerve. Shooting is very rough at first. Stanley encourages his actors to get closer, hoping they’ll begin a relationship that will bring some heat to dead romantic scenes. Carol’s secret home life becomes rougher, as Frank worries that she’ll hook up with another man. That’s exactly what Stevie would like to happen… except neither Carol nor Stanley have told anyone in the cast or crew that Frank Silva owns the show… and Carol.

As a clever movie-within-a-movie construction Strangers Kiss gets an A+. Knowledge of the Kubrick original is not necessary to understand what’s going on. The filmmakers are neither making an in-joke nor commenting on Kubrick’s work. The filming situation in Strangers has little relation to that of Killer’s. Kubrick used his connections in New York City to steal shots in odd places. He relied on his camera smarts to create his own weird version of a cheap New York dance Hall. The only really 100% imitation of Kubrick is a setup of a long dance hall (with an interesting mural background) that links to the manager’s office. We’re told that Kubrick asked to see Strangers Kiss when it was finished, in case there was something he might object to … but it apparently didn’t bother him at all.

Strangers Kiss reportedly cost $150.000 in 1983 dollars. It was filmed at Laird Studios, later The Culver Studios, in one of many times that the lot was near falling into receivership. The 1955 period is created with a couple of vintage cars and some thrift-store costumes found by Tracy Tynan. She would go forward to handle costume design for Alan Rudolph, Blake Edwards and Jonathan Demme. The movie makes evocative use of a scenery dock packed with ancient props, which doubles as an office for Ferris and Stanley.

The split-level narrative doesn’t abuse the notion of contrasting movie artifice and moviemaking reality. It doesn’t use fancy camerawork or film tricks, as in the 1980 movie  The Stunt Man. English director Matthew Chapman simply pops to B&W whenever representing the film-within-a-film. Both the acting and direction can be a little iffy. Chapman’s previous picture Hussy had impressive work by Helen Mirren and John Shea, but the performances here are little out of balance. Peter Coyote was fresh from  E.T. The Extraterrestrial but already looked like a familiar face. His director Stanley is a domineering, emotional ‘artist’ who throws small fits for dramatic effect. Stanley doesn’t mind dousing his producer with a glass of wine, if a point can be made. But Coyote is the film’s most professionally assured actor.

Almost as good is the work of Richard Romanus (of Scorsese’s Mean Streets), who does interesting things with a ‘dangerous gangster’ stereotype. His Frank Silva comes off as the most interesting character in the movie, and provides its most memorable twist. The only (we think) completely misguided scene in the movie is a brief cutaway to Frank Silva dragging two women from an apartment and beating them in the street. We need to know that Frank is dangerous, but making him Mr. Murder Incorporated is a bit much.

The frequently strained dramatic tone is not helped by direction that does little with some thinly-conceived supporting roles. Dan Shor’s producer Ferris is too much of a lightweight, behaving like somebody’s nephew who has been forced onto the show. The direction tries to deepen Ferris with a few cutaways yearning for Carol from afar, but that doesn’t add a lot either. A boxing instructor (Carlos Palomino) is good here and there, but like some of the other performers, lacks on-screen presence. Director Chapman’s formal blocking of many scenes is oddly static, hardly different than the purposely stilted direction in ‘Strange and Dangerous.’

Of the two leads, Victoria Tennant definitely has presence as Carol, the bored, pampered girlfriend who quietly torments her sugar-daddy crook boyfriend. Again, the direction seems off. Frank and Carol’s home life is supposed to express a tense, mutually hostile relationship. But the ‘home life’ we see looks like two well-dressed people posing in a staged model home. Too often, the Real half of the storyline feels as artificial as the movie-within-the-movie. By underplaying and staying natural, Ms. Tennant keeps the film’s romantic triangle intact.

Blaine Novak had acting experience in his pal Peter Bogdanovich’s film They All Laughed, but he does not impress as leading man material. He seldom looks natural on camera. Various interviewees extol Novak’s winning personality and especially his sense of humor, but the couple of comic gags Stevie pulls lack charm. Stevie’s attempts to entertain Carol have a show-biz sheen. Stanley hires Stevie the moment he hears his brassy New York tough talk, but nothing jumps out at us as special. The story relies on the development of heat and chemistry between the leads, but we never see enough to justify the director’s enthusiasm. We instead must fall back on story mechanics to stay engaged. We like Stevie and Carol, and assume that Frank Silva will try to kill them, as does the villain in the movie they’re making. How will the filmmakers resolve those more interesting tensions?

We see only a couple of snatches of a fight in a mannequin warehouse, taken from the original; the filmmakers smartly use some so-so fight action to represent a nightmare for Stevie, rendered in inverted negative. This harmonizes with Kubrick’s original, which at one point also cuts to an inverted negative image, for artistic effect. Otherwise, the B&W scenes we see of ‘Strange and Dangerous’ are purposely made to look amateurish. The last time we see director Stanley, he’s praising a final product that he knows is no good. We remember that the seams in Kubrick’s movie sometimes showed as well … his finale was a photographically handsome but less-than-spectacular rooftop chase.

Victoria Tennant tells us that Strangers Kiss wanted a rooftop chase finale as well, but when they knew they wouldn’t have time to film it, an alternate finish was confected right on the set. We’re not spoiling it except to say that it’s a refreshing surprise that likely won over the critics that helped give the show a decent opening. There’s nothing better than ending a picture in a way that audiences don’t expect.