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Assignment #3: Wishful Sequels

Posted by Austin Cinephile

Every week, we will be posting a prompt related to cinephilia, and some of our founding members will contribute a short response. Hopefully you, our dear readers, will feel compelled to respond in our comment section as well. This week’s prompt was:

What sequel would you most like to see, and why?

Stephen: DR. STRANGELOVE 2 OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP MASTURBATING AND CLOSE THE MINESHAFT GAP

As much as I have fallen in love with the glorious visual masterpieces helmed by Stanley Kubrick, from 2001 to Eyes Wide Shut, I can’t help but lament that he never again tapped the rich vein of humor that allowed him to make one of the top comedies of all time, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Even those who have not seen the film are probably aware of its more popular moments, including “You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!,” “You can’t let him in here! He’ll see the Big Board!,” and the iconic shot of Slim Pickens gleefully riding atop a nuclear bomb as it falls to the ground.

Of course, the film has much more to it. There’s the irreplaceable Sterling Hayden as General Jack Ripper, who will stop at nothing to “protect our precious bodily fluids.” And there is what I believe to be the funniest conversation in the history of movies, despite the fact that one of the two participants cannot even be heard. The entire conversation is left to the brilliant comic mind of Peter Sellers, playing the American President, and boy does he knock it out of the park.

The film comes to an infamously abrupt ending. Dr. Strangelove (also Sellers), the American President, and George C. Scott’s character, General Buck Turgidson, are in the War Room discussing how they might recover from a nuclear Holocaust. Dr. Strangelove proposes that they move the most important citizens into underground caves and mineshafts, where they could reproduce and repopulate the earth. As Turgidson begins to worry that other mineshaft tribes might emerge with greater power than his own, creating a “mineshaft gap,” and as Dr. Strangelove suddenly rises from his wheelchair and declares “Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!,” we cut to a montage of nuclear explosions. Does this mean the world has succumbed to nuclear annihilation at that very moment, rendering meaningless any plans this goofy group might have made?

What if this isn’t the case, and President Muffley, General Turgidson, and Dr. Strangelove all made it into that mineshaft? What a movie that would have been! First of all, it would have retained the best characters from the original film; Hayden and Sellers’ third character, British Captain Lionel Mandrake, have their moments but ultimately can’t match the zaniness going on in the War Room. And, ironically, it would have made Hayden’s attempts to preserve our precious bodily fluids all the more understandable. In the mineshaft, as Dr. Strangelove suggests, men would need to be impregnating women on a regular basis, perhaps meaning that masturbation would have to be outlawed for the time being as a waste of those precious bodily fluids. I would love to see President Muffley and the womanizing General Turgidson deal with this sexual repression.

Indeed, I don’t think I’m alone when I say that more movies with Peter Sellers in them would always be welcome. From Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther series to Woody Allen’s early works Casino Royale and What’s New Pussycat, Sellers’ very presence endowed his movies with instant comedic credibility. The man has never failed to make me laugh, and in Dr. Strangelove the actors around him rise to the occasion, with Hayden and Scott showing comedic sensibilities that may come as a shock to those familiar with their usual work.

Speaking of George C. Scott, it would also have been nice to see a really good sequel to Robert Rossen’s The Hustler, instead of what proved to be maybe the worst movie Martin Scorsese has ever made.

Daniel: THE MALTESE FALCON 2: ON THE HUNT IN ISTANBUL

It’s no secret that I love The Maltese Falcon. Humphrey Bogart, who is one of my all-time favorite actors and style icons, delivers his finest performance as detective Sam Spade. The aesthetic achieved by the brilliant director John Huston is stunning and established one of the great genres of Classical Hollywood, the film noir. The screenplay, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett and translated to the screen by Huston, is a perfect private eye story full of some of the funniest and craziest lines in film history.

The real gems of the movie, however, are the supporting actors. Elisha Cook Jr. is great as the fall guy. Sydney Greenstreet is the delectable “Fat Man” Kasper Gutman. The most outstanding role of the film is played by my favorite character actor Peter Lorre, the double crossing madman Joel Cairo. His insanity is beautiful.

Toward the end of the film, when the villains find out that statue is in Constantinople, they are conflicted. Lorre, as ever, is furious and uncontrollable. Greenstreet, on the other hand, is cool as ice. Here’s the exchange:

Greenstreet: Well sir, what do you suggest? Shall we stand here and shed tears and call each other names, or shall we…go to Istanbul?
Lorre: You are…
Greenstreet: For seventeen years I’ve wanted that little item, and have been trying to get it. If I must spend another year on the quest–well, that will be an additional expenditure in time of only…five and fifteen-seventeenths percent…
Lorre (laughing) : I’ll go with you.

The last time I watched the film, I was ecstatic, ridiculously imagining my two favorite characters from the film. After that scene is the famous confrontation scene between Bogart and Astor, and then the police bust in and tell them that they caught Greenstreet and Lorre. But, I ask you, what if the police were lying? What if Lorre and Greenstreet got away, and really continued their quest into Istanbul?

This would be a buddy movie for the history books. Lorre’s maddening shrieks and ghastly faces would match perfectly with Greenstreet’s calm one-upsmanship. Think of the adventures they would get into trying to find the real Maltese Falcon. The possibilities are endless…

Michael: BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA 2 & THE THING 0

I have to warn you, I’m definitely cheating a bit here with this submission, but hey it’s a “sequel” I’ve wanted for some time now and I’m finally getting my wish, so I feel justified. With that said, as a child one of my favorite films was John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. It was the ultimate guy movie made for geeks, and I loved it. The Chinatown back drop, ancient Chinese magic, gorgeous green eyed beauties, CB radio boasting, monsters, villains that look like they’ve been pulled right from Mortal Kombat, KURT RUSSELL!!! What didn’t this film have? It was no wonder when I watched Carpenter’s The Thing that it skyrocketed to the top of my horror movie list.

(Okay, wait, wait. Let’s just stop right here for a moment. I chose to use this nostalgic memory of Big Trouble in Little China to build up my introduction to The Thing, which was going to be my sequel selection. But, in writing about Big Trouble, I’m thinking this would be a pretty good selection in itself. So here it goes. Two selections. Seems appropriate, right? Sequels being a second installment to a film, it’s fitting to have two selections, right. So, cheat #1: two selections)

Selection number one: Big Trouble in Little China 2, the sequel too late in coming. This film would have been great. Jack Burton returns to battle the forces of evil a second time and to once again set straight the balance of the universe. Goofy, egotistical, sleeveless Jack Burton gets to “kinda feel invincible” once more. How perfect would that have been? But this was a film that would have had to been made in the 80s, while Kurt Russell was still young and the culture still ripe for self parodic, action adventure films where the parodied action is enjoyed both for the parody and also its kickassedness (No, I didn’t just make that word up. And, if you have to ask that, then surely you didn’t watch action movies in the 80s).

Selection number two: The Thing prequel (AKA cheat #2/ cheat #3). Those of you with your ear to the film industry grindstone have no doubt heard that a The Thing prequel (cheat #2) is in the works (cheat #3). Universal is pairing young directing talent Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. with Battlestar Galactica scribe Ronald D. Moore for a prequel centering on the Norwegian expedition team we see in the opening of the film. Remember? The film opens in the expansive white terrain of Antarctica. Two men in a helicopter, one with a rifle, are hunting down a poor, defenseless dog. He shoots, misses. Shoots, misses. The dog keeps trucking, intent on escaping this lunatic hunting fanatic, or so we’re led to infer. The men follow the dog to a US science station manned by Kurt Russell and company. A mishandled grenade takes out one of the two men and the copter, while the other is put down by a well delivered .45 slug to the noggin.

Crazy Norwegian bastards. We soon find that this is no dog. It is a shapeshifting alien using tactical disguises to ensure its survival. The crazed hunters are not hunters at all, but rather a Norwegian science expedition, not unlike our American protagonists. They uncovered something in the ice that drove them mad turning them into rifle wielding maniacs. How does this intro not beg a prequel? So, while it is most definitely a cheat, two in fact, my official sequel selection is The Thing prequel.