Rampage - Beating Silence of the Lambs to the Punch

Apr

4

Rampage - Beating Silence of the Lambs to the Punch

≡ Category: Drama, Horror, Movie Reviews By Country, Recommended |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Drama/Horror
Director: William Friedkin
Year: 1988

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

Due to distribution difficulties, Rampage, which was made three years before Silence of the Lambs, was dropkicked into the marketplace like an ugly stepchild, but it’s actually the better movie.

Based on the real life exploits of a serial killer in Stockton, California, Rampage begins strongly, following Charlie Reese (Alex McArthur, in a flawless performance) as he calmly prepares for and carries out a multiple homicide. Director Friedkin observes Reese and his victims with clinical detachment, refusing to sensationalize any aspect of the killings, which ironically increases their impact. The viewer is like a fly on the wall, making us priviledged witnesses.

Friedkin does not shrink from the agony of the survivors, either. When Mr. Tippetts (a particularly fine Royce Applegate) discovers one of the victims, his cries of anguish will chill you to the bone. Friedkin observes Mr. Tippetts closely for the rest of the film as he attempts to cope with his feelings of grief, helplessness and insecurity.

In the impressive level of care director Friedkin takes in depicting these horrible events and their aftermath, he reveals his sense of responsibility to the real-life victims of this tragedy. By adhering to a kind of heightened realism, accentuated by Ennio Morricone’s superb score, Friedkin honors the victims, acknowledging the full measure of their loss.

Friedkin is much less surefooted when it comes to the fictional elements of his story. He introduces district attorney Anthony Frasier (Michael Biehn, in a TV-movie performance), a deeply religious liberal (!?) who decides to pursue the death sentence in this case solely because of the heinousness of the crime. Frasier endured a personal tragedy of his own you see, and the loss of someone near and dear to him convinces the DA that the best way to honor reverence for life is by enabling the State to kill those who take life, especially if the perpetrators are really mean about it.

Friedkin, in his desire to honor the victims of this real-life tragedy, zealously stacks the film to support his ideological viewpoint, weakening the film. Corrupt expert witnesses, a ghoulish Grand Guignol episode by Reese, bogus scenes of soul searching on Frasier’s part, Frasier’s supposed liberal leanings, all conspire to shunt the viewer towards the supposedly inevitable conclusion–an eye for an eye! Yeah, baby!

Friedkin isn’t entirely to blame, though. He based his screenplay on William P. Wood’s rabidly right wing polemic, after all. At least Friedkin didn’t have the DA go into the jail to kill Reese after it looked like he was going to get off, as happened in the book.

In any case, the misguided political bent of the movie cannot diminish Rampage’s honesty regarding the killer and his victims. Even under the spell of right wing zeal, Friedkin is reflexively too fine an artist to falsify the experiences of the perpetrator and victims of these terrible crimes.

That is, until he succumbs to the temptation to gild the lily with surrealism in one or two scenes, both involving the killer during the commission of his crimes. Friedkin does this sort of thing in almost every movie he makes, with invariably disastrous results. It’s a pity no one told him to stick to heightened realism, which he does incomparably well.

Rampage may not be a whole lot of fun to watch, but as long as it avoids surrealism and the pro-death penalty soapbox, Friedkin’s admittedly flawed movie provides the exhilaration of revealed truth, in all its ugliness and humanity.

As of this writing, Rampage is out of print, and only available used on VHS (see my post Why You STILL Need To Own a VHS Deck).