Cine-Trash

Raising Cain (Brian DePalma, 1992)
by William Ham

No student of stunningly bad modern cinema should miss this masterpiece. Fresh from the professional Pompeii that was The Bonfire of the Vanities, DePalma decided to step back and play another round in the arena of his greatest work (which can be summed up in a simple equation: Hitchcock+sex+misogyny=gold). And this is what came out. Whether it’s from massive Bonfire-induced self-loathing or simple pranksterism, I can’t say, but Raising Cain may well be the Glen or Glenda? of ’90s suspense. Here’s the scam, uh, story: A renowned child psychologist appears to be murdering moms and kidnapping their kids for… ah, the hell with it. Look elsewhere for a comprehensible plot and just immerse yourself in the sheer wackiness of the proceedings. Especially the tour-de-whatever acting job of John Lithgow, who was such a chilling menace in Bri’s Blow Out, but here portrays six personalities so hammily that the Torah probably prohibits Jewish people from watching it. (Where’s Peter Sellers when you really need him?) This film cannibalizes elements from past DePalma works that were themselves just reheated Hitchcock riffs (psychotic cross-dressers, surveillance/voyeurism, dead chicks stuffed in trunks and pushed into lakes), but this time it adds up to nothing but guffaws. A few questions remain unanswered: How did Lolita Davidovich get outta that sinking car? What possessed the driver of that pickup with the big pointy compass in the back to drive forward six feet, then back up six feet, then forward six feet, etc. for what seems like an eternity? Isn’t Lithgow wearing the same wig he wore in Garp? Isn’t there a shortage of film stock or something? Oh, well, at least you get to see one of the 40-ish teens from 90210 snuff it. Best scene: When Lithgow’s young-boy personality confronts his older self, whining, “I know what you did! You did a baaad thing!” Or maybe he was talking to the director. Hard to say.