The Movie Doctors. Simon Mayo
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is that of Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction (1987), which got a whole new third act after preview audiences decided that they couldn’t be doing with Glenn Close’s bunny-boiler taking her own life and then framing Michael Douglas’s philandering husband from beyond the grave – which is what happened in James Dearden’s original script. Already tweaked prior to filming (he’s arrested, but then his wife finds evidence proving his innocence), Fatal Attraction dismayed test viewers who wanted to see Anne Archer ‘Kill the bitch!’ before closing on a reassuring close-up of a happy family photo (group hug, everyone!). The revised ending is terrible, but proved horribly effective, helping Fatal Attraction to become a box office smash around the world. Except in Japan, where they got the original (and better) ending, on the grounds of enhanced ‘cultural compatibility’ . . .
Really.
In the end, we are left with the question of whether it’s always better to be happy, or whether there is a time and a place for good honest misery. Should movie doctors prescribe antidepressants willy-nilly just because they may improve a film’s box office potential, even if doing so means effectively lobotomising the movie? Do we really want our entertainment to arrive with the rictus grin of enforced jollity, or should directors be able to claim that it’s their party and they’ll cry if they want to?
Frankly, when it comes to cinema, happiness is overrated.
THIS WON’T HURT A BIT
We Need to Talk About Needles
Come in. Nice to see you. Do sit down. Roll up your sleeve. It’s just a brief exchange in your local surgery, but you know what’s coming next. You’ll just feel a little prick . . . And that’s precisely the point at which you run kicking and screaming through the waiting room. Or you stamp on the hypodermic needle, breaking it in two. Or maybe fight the nurse for the syringe before plunging it deep into her neck . . .
This is why we need to talk about needles. We know you aren’t one of those crazed anti-vaxxers – that would be ridiculous. There are many who suffer from trypanophobia and have no one to turn to for comfort and treatment; you have the Movie Doctors. We have hit upon a rather extreme treatment which may well not be to everyone’s taste, but we believe it works. We have found three of the most extreme needle-related movie scenes. If you can survive these, then the next time you need a vaccination you won’t be so weedy. Watch with the lights on, the sound low and holding hands with your honey.
PULP FICTION (1994)
You’ve just snorted something that wasn’t a nasal spray (you being Uma Thurman, by the way). Turns out it wasn’t cocaine either, but heroin. You are a class A chump. When your friend realises what you’ve done (he’s John Travolta, obviously), he whips out a syringe and (after an excruciating delay while he indulges in some typical Tarantino dialogue) stabs you in the heart. He then injects you with Adrenalin and you instantly recover. The science here is dodgy to say the least, but the fact that you’d actually be dead is not our main concern (you weren’t really in any shape to point out that there is no treatment in modern medicine that requires a medic to stick a needle in your heart). What you need to focus on here is the lingering, loving close-ups of the super-sized, 6-inch needle dripping with ‘Adrenalin’ (it’s actually Epinephrine, but could be 7 Up for all you care).
Lesson learned When you are next in the surgery, your experience will not be like this. You won’t be on the floor unconscious, you won’t be stabbed in the chest, you won’t come round with the hypodermic still deep in your rib cage. Time to move on.
DEAD AND BURIED (1981)
So you’ve survived the heartache of Pulp Fiction, now you’re ready for the next step in your desensitising. Keeping the lights on (actually turn them up, maybe plug in some more), let’s try the 1981 horror film Dead and Buried. A number of gruesome murders have taken place in a small town called Potters Bluff. General nastiness is the order of the day as a series of grisly scenes play out (stabbing, poking, very large rocks) but the scene we need is (inevitably) in the hospital. Our poor patient has suffered terribly and is covered with bandages. The only part of them exposed is the left eye. When a sweet-looking nurse arrives, momentarily we think all will be well. But when she says ‘Just lie still. I’m going to give you something to make you feel even better’ and produces the mega-syringe, we know what’s about to happen.
Lesson learned Being stabbed in the eye by a crazed nurse with a 9cm needle is a rare occurrence these days. The American healthcare reforms have largely eliminated homicidal maniacs pretending to be medics. Rest easy.
FIRE IN THE SKY (1993)
Last one. You’ve done so well. The final test comes with the last fifteen minutes of this 1993 science fiction horror yarn based on an alleged true story. It’s Arizona, there are loggers and there’s a UFO. Main logger guy is abducted but released after apparently undergoing a session with the aliens that makes Potters Bluff look like Notting Hill. Abattoir-loving spacemen with tortoise heads cover him with a membrane, then reach for their handyman selection of clamps, drills and chisels. Just as logger guy is thinking he might get away with a little extra-terrestrial Botox, the galaxy’s biggest drill descends from the ceiling. It is mounted with – you guessed it – an enormous needle, and it is heading straight for his right eye. There’s a deafening clanging that fills the room and logger guy gets his Gloucester-in-King-Lear moment.
Lesson learned All things considered, it isn’t that different to flying Ryanair.
LAUGHING GAS
Movies to Tickle the Funny Bone
Downbeat endings may be ‘artistically valid’, but there are times when an audience just wants to laugh. On those occasions when only Dr Giggles will do (though not Dr Giggles, the terrible slasher movie), Doctors Kermode and Mayo prescribe . . .
LAUREL AND HARDY IN THE MUSIC BOX (1932)
‘Get that piano out of that box!’
BUSTER KEATON IN THE GENERAL (1926)
Keaton loads a cannon which promptly takes aim at him in one of silent cinema’s most celebrated runaway train gags.
GENE WILDER’S ‘FRONKENSTEEN’ AND MARTY FELDMAN’S IGOR IN YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974)
‘Tonight we shall ascend into the heavens, we shall mock the earthquake, we shall command the thunders, and penetrate into the very womb of impervious nature herself!’
WOODY ALLEN AND DIANE KEATON IN ANNIE HALL (1977)
‘I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.’
EAR, NOSE & THROAT
Anyone who has been to a multiplex in recent years will know that two things have gone up: ticket prices and volume. Going to see a major blockbuster in a big cinema is now as loud as going to a Motörhead concert – Mad Max: Fury Road cleaned most of the wax out of the Movie Doctors’ ears. In our own version of an ENT clinic, we offer advice about tinnitus, nose jobs and how to choose a good dentist. No need to thank us – it’s all part of the service.
EARACHE