Word: dourif
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...cliche, has resonance and poignancy in the context of her performance. Dennis Hopper is to-the-core nasty as the vile drug-killer; he was better in Apocalypse, Now, but it's hard to imagine any actor carrying this role off as well, or with more energy. Brad Dourif, babbling Billy Bibbit of Cuckoo's Nest fame, has a cameo, looking like John Cougar on acid. And Dean Stockwell lipsyncs his way to moviedom history as the super-suave...
...cadence of Randy Newman's lovely score, the Family takes center stage-a family as all-American as the Smiths in Meet Me in St. Louis. Father (James Olson) chats of his business successes; Mother (Mary Steenburgen) presides over the housework with quiet grace; Younger Brother (Brad Dourif) dreams of love with a showgirl. But there is something rancid about this slice of apple pie. The pauses at Sunday dinner are laced with anxiety; the ticking of the grandfather clock sounds like the prelude to an explosion of neurotic energy. The detonator...
Perhaps the film's performances were hurt by the re-editing. Brad Dourif, for instance, seems to be an important character, though he has only about a dozen lines and lots of close-ups; he's always standing around, looking important, but never really doing anything. Throughout the entire film, Cimino cuts away from key scenes before they seem even half over. It's like a two-and-a-half-hour-long coming attraction. We get only fragments of performances from fine actors like Christopher Walken, Isabelle Huppert, John Hurt, and Sam Waterston. And then there's Kris Kristofferson...
...Guyana occurs in the final half-hour of each installment. In Part 1, there is a climax that makes Dallas look like Washington Square: having already had an affair with a married female follower (Diana Scarwid), Jones starts to make love to the woman's husband (Brad Dourif) as she looks on. One's mind reels merely in contemplation of the efforts it no doubt took to get the scene past the network's censors. In Part 2, things get going when Congressman Leo Ryan (Beatty) arrives to investigate the Peoples Temple. The airstrip murders and subsequent...
...Wise Blood belongs to Huston and his star, Brad Dourif as Haze. Dourif was the stuttering Billy Bibbitt of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; he looks like a crazed Don Knotts. His eyes contort wildly, glaring unnervingly, distracting from his rigid nose and hard, flat mouth. Dourif's Haze is grotesque, a little man possessed by a shady demon. He believes in his Church Without Christ not with his soul--which is undeniably Christian--but with his body. It shakes with evangelical passion, with barely controlled violent passion capable of murder. And in an ultimate renouncement of Jesus...