This was recorded off Turner Classics Movies on July 16, 2017 as part of their TCM Underground line-up. They always played great and/or obscure stuff in the early hours under this banner. Unfortunately, I think if I tried to watch this one at four in the morning I would’ve nodded right back to sleep.
Stacy Keach stars as a psychiatrist sent to run a military asylum housed in an old castle in the fog-shrouded Pacific Northwest. He implements an open-door policy which allows the inmates to enter his office at all hours and spill their insane ramblings. It doesn't take long to discover the new shrink might not be what he seems.
The Ninth Configuration was written and directed by William Peter Blatty who of course, wrote The Exorcist. Just because you can write one of the most famous movies of all times doesn’t necessarily make you a candidate for the director’s chair. In fact, it often feels like a kindred spirit to Blatty’s much-maligned The Exorcist 3, but without the supernatural trappings as both involve nuthouses and patients who run on at the mouth to no end. (There is a tenuous link to The Exorcist, although it’s so inconsequential I don’t even know why I brought it up.)
Often times, The Ninth Configuration feels like a bad Altman movie as people run around babbling while others hang about the frame and do other bits of side business. Or maybe it’s like a bad amateur-hour play where everyone gets to spout unending monologues about God-knows-what while the audience is forced to look on, bewildered. In any case, it’s just plain bad.
What’s worse is that it manages to waste a rather incredible cast, mostly because all they get to do is pace around frantically and scream over one another. Scott Wilson is particularly annoying as an astronaut with a screw (and then some) loose. Robert Loggia gets to yell and cuss like Robert Loggia, but that’s about it. Blatty even found time to reunite with The Exorcist’s Jason Miller, but unfortunately, he’s rather grating too. You know you’re in trouble when the always reliable Joe Spinnell is stuck with nothing to do. You have to feel sorry for Keach as all he does is sit behind a desk and listen to these assholes rage on endlessly. The only actor who manages a tiny spark is Neville Brand as the harried Major in charge of the facility.
I guess it goes without saying what the “twist” is going to be. Heck, even one of the inmates figures it out about halfway through, and he’s as crazy as a shithouse rat. In fact, the only unpredictable part is near the end when the movie weirdly turns into a biker flick as Keach and Wilson square off against some scuzzy bikers (Steve Sandor and Richard Lynch). This scene isn’t exactly good or anything, but at least it has a pulse, which is more than I can say for the rest of the picture.
In short, The Ninth Configuration isn’t even worth configuring once.
AKA: Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane.
No comments:
Post a Comment