n 1869 America, someone is kidnapping top scientists, and evidence
points U.S. special government agent James West (Smith) to General
"Bloodbath" McGrath (Ted Levine), a repellent former officer of the
Confederacy. But in pursuing McGrath to a Louisiana brothel, West runs afoul of Artemus
Gordon (Kline), another agent disguised (not too well) as a hooker, who is
also on McGrath's trail. Before they can sort things out, McGrath has
escaped.
Back in Washington, President Ulysses S. Grant (Kline again) orders
Gordon and West to join forces. They are to take the specially outfitted
train, the Wanderer, and pursue leads for McGrath and his unknown
benefactor, who is threatening to blackmail the president.
On their way back to Louisiana, West gets a taste of Gordon's facility
with gadgets, including the Wanderer, with its hidden gun compartments and
booby traps. In New Orleans, meanwhile, they sneak into a costume party,
where they discover the mastermind behind McGrath: the abbreviated Dr.
Aliss Loveless (Branagh), whose steam-powered wheel chair makes up for the
loss of his legs, but not his mind.
West is discovered and is about to be lynched by the partygoers when he
is rescued by Gordon, who has also saved a mysterious damsel in distress,
Rita Escobar (Hayek). They track Loveless to a lake in rural Louisiana,
where they find the aftermath of one of Loveless' experiments with a
new-fangled iron-clad gunship.
The two then follow the trail to Utah, where President Grant is
scheduled to drive the golden spike that will complete the nation's first
transcontinental railroad. It seems Loveless is headed there too, for
reasons unknown. Before the agents can get to Utah, Loveless catches up with them, steals
the Wanderer and places West and Gordon at the peril of a devious device
designed to separate them from their heads. Narrow escapes ensue before
West and Gordon confront Loveless and his most infernal invention yet.
"West. Jim West."
Based loosely on the campy 1960s James-Bond-in-the-Old-West TV show of
the same name, Wild Wild West comes from the creative team that made
the box-office hit Men In Black. But it lacks Black's wit and snap,
despite herculean efforts to match its success.
The chief problem is a lackluster script, which wastes the considerable
charms of Smith and the rest of the cast. The attempts at humor are at best
unfunny and at worst discomforting, as in a scene reminiscent of Blazing
Saddles in which West tries to talk himself out of a lynching. The
lynching of blacks in the Old South is hardly the stuff of lighthearted
comedy, unless done with the satirical bite of someone like Mel Brooks.
Which raises another serious problem with the film. Bowing to a need to
capture a summer audience with box-office champ Smith, the filmmakers have
to do somersaults to explain how his character can exist in post-Civil War
America, without weighing the movie down with too much social context. At
this, they fail miserably.
Every attempt to add poignance to and explain Smith's character--a
runaway slave raised by Indians who somehow has become President Grant's
most trusted confidant--raises way more questions than it answers and adds
a disquieting reminder of historical reality to a film that should
otherwise be a breezy, campy SF adventure romp.
The film's other main problem is less weighty. The filmmakers
rely too much on the gadgets, special effects and computer-aided trickery that
has become so prevalent in summer blockbusters. The old TV show's creaky
special effects, a la Star Trek, didn't matter
so much because of the show's sly sensibility. The film exchanges
cleverness for overblown spectacle, to detrimental effect.
For his part, Smith gamely assays the role. He looks great in James
West's trademark bolero jacket, and the fact that he can sling a gun and ride a
horse enhances his character's charisma. But Kline, and especially Branagh,
are so over the top they begin to grate on the nerves. Hayek seems wasted,
with her main function to flounce around in a series of pushup corsets.
In October 1994, three young filmmakers vanished without a trace in the
Black Hills Forest outside of Burkittsville, Md. A backpack with their
movie and video equipment was found a year later under the foundation of an
old, burned-out home located deep within the woods. Their bodies
have yet to be discovered.
Curse of the Blair Witch presents an in-depth examination of this
mystery. Using a format that combines the attributes of spooky
fact-based TV series like In Search Of with the hype of such
exploitative specials as Aliens Among Us: Roswell and Beyond, the
program introduces viewers to both the students and the peculiar
circumstances surrounding their disappearance. The special features discussions with family
members, friends and college professors, along with comments
from the local sheriff and a private investigator involved in the case.
Through extensive use of archival footage and interviews with various
history experts, the hour-long show also reveals the legend of the Blair
Witch, an entity supposedly responsible for dozens of deaths in the
Burkittsville area during the past two centuries. And, according to some of the
more superstitious members of the community, the cause of this current
mystery.
The program incorporates video shot by
the trio, which was retrieved, along with a few personal items, from the
buried knapsack. This recovered film also serves as the basis for the
full-length motion picture The Blair Witch Project, which is scheduled
to open in theaters on July 16.
A mesmerizing "mockumentary"
Jointly presented by the SCI FI Channel and Artisan Entertainment,
Curse of the Blair Witch is a promotional piece for the
upcoming Blair Witch Project. Despite its marketing spin, this special is fun to watch, and it does a good job of getting viewers interested in the Blair Witch itself.
By treating the disappearance of the three students as an actual event and
the tale of the witch as a genuine myth, the show fabricates a
fable that's remarkably realistic. Scenes from a fake program titled
Mystic Occurrences, supposedly created in 1971, are ingeniously
interwoven into the piece, while a presumably counterfeit college professor
specializing in folklore serves as an informed and erudite skeptic.
Unfortunately, some of the initial cutaways strive a tad too
overtly to build sympathy for the missing students. Watching a heartbroken
old man talk about the first time he held his now-adult granddaughter, or
listening to a saddened brother reminisce about youthful roughhousing, are superfluous moments in an otherwise mesmerizing "mockumentary." The
producers could just as effectively have used additional images featuring the
trio from the movie, which would have been more to the point and less obtrusive.
Yet these miscues are minor shortcomings. While most viewers aren't likely
to lose sight of the fact that the Curse of the Blair Witch is
essentially a 60-minute commercial for the theatrical feature, the show is nevertheless entertaining.
