(It seems evident from my blog stats that readers prefer my food-related posts to the ones about sports, horror movies, or writing updates. Well, I have some bad news. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, like much of the world, I've been stuck at home. I'll try to find new foods and drinks to write about as I can, but for the next few weeks (months?) I'll be doing more of the horror movie reviews and sports posts than usual. Just so you know.)
"Jacob's Ladder" came out in 1990 and didn't do well at the box office, only earning about 26 million dollars off a reported budget of 25 million. (I've heard in the convoluted world of film finance, that a movie generally needs to triple its reported budget just to break even.) It received mixed reviews, but it's generally regarded as a decent cult film. Anyway, the same structure will be used today--short spoiler-free synopsis, then a long spoiler-rich recap, followed by a discussion of the movie's strengths, themes, and some info about the cast and crew.
Postal worker Jacob Singer is going through a rough time lately. He keeps seeing odd things and weird people, and is unable to tell if they're real or not. He also keeps flashing back to his days in Vietnam, where he was wounded in a brutal attack. Jacob reaches out to his old war buddies, but ultimately they're not able to help him. His chiropractor Louie is more helpful, much more so than Jacob's girlfriend Jezzy, or his ex-wife and sons. The bizarre events and characters seem to accelerate, throwing Jacob into confusion. Who or what is behind this conspiracy?
(SPOILERS AHEAD UNTIL MARKED) "Jacob's Ladder" opens in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, on October 6, 1971. Jacob and his unit are lolling about. Suddenly many of the soldiers are struck down by severe headaches or convulsions, while simultaneously a vicious attack starts from the jungle, which culminates in Jacob being bayonnetted in the torso. Then Jacob wakes up--he's been sleeping on the subway, on the way home from his job at the post office. As he disembarks he thinks he sees a homeless man with a strange tail. He has to cross the tracks when the usual exit is padlocked, and he's nearly run down by a subway car out of nowhere, driven by and ridden by weird looking people.
Back at his apartment, Jacob talks to and then makes love to his girlfriend Jezzy. The next morning she gives him a package from his ex-wife and two kids. It's a collection of photos of his old family, including shots of his deceased son Gabe. Periodically Jacob flashes back to Vietnam, as the medics are searching for him after his wounding. A visit to his chiropractor Louie makes Jacob feel better, both physically and psychologically. After a stranger warns him, however, while walking home Jacob is nearly run over by a car full of strange-looking people. A trip to the V.A hospital goes poorly. The receptionist has no records of him being a patient there, and after Jacob forces his way inside he learns that his physician, Dr. Karlson, was killed in a car explosion.
Jacob and Jezzy go to a house party, but things are weird there, too. A woman reads Jacob's palm, and says that his life line indicates that he's already dead. Then Jacob sees more ominous things--figures with vibrating heads, and then Jezzy being sexually penetrated by a winged demon. He collapses and screams, causing a scene. Back at home, Jezzy takes Jacob's temperature, and it's a scalding 106 degrees. She summons the neighbors, and together they use an ice bath to reduce his dangerously high fever. Abruptly Jacob wakes up in bed with his wife Sarah. He tells her that he dreamed he was living with Jezzy, a coworker. Then their son Gabe comes in, and Jacob puts Gabe to bed, and talks to his other sons, too. Then Jacob regains consciousness again, in his bathtub. A doctor says he alright now, and Jezzy says he was talking to his ex-wife and dead son.
Jacob's home, reading up on witches, the afterlife, and demons. It's been two weeks. Jezzy implores him to leave the apartment, before appearing to become a demon for a moment. A phone call comes from an old soldier friend, Paul, who demands a meeting. He tells Jacob that he's being stalked by unknown creatures, and that he's going to Hell. Jacob reveals his experiences, and Paul seems comforted. However, as Paul starts his car it explodes, killing him. Jacob barely struggles away, aided by the same mystery man who warned him about the car attack before. At Paul's funeral Jacob's fellow soldier friends also report having weird experiences. They all go to a lawyer, who will try to question the Army to find out what happened during their attack in Vietnam. But soon after Jacob's friend drop out of the inquiry, and brush Jacob off. The lawyer, Geary, says that Jacob and his friends were never in Vietnam--they were psychologically discharged after war games in Thailand.
Outside of the courthouse some men in suits push Jacob into a car. They're angry that he's questioning the Army. After a vicious fight Jacob succeeds in jumping out of the speeding car, re-injuring his back. His time at the hospital grows strange. Jacob's progress takes him into a decrepit, disturbing hospital wing, one with filthy conditions, body parts strewn everywhere, and non-human patients. A doctor tells him that he's dead, and there's no way out, before Jacob loses consciousness. Sarah and his two surviving sons visit, and now the hospital seems normal. Louie shows up and angrily removes Jacob, and helps him using back exercises. Louie tells Jacob about a famous writer's experience with the Afterlife. This man claimed if you were afraid, and clung to your life and memories, you'd see demons. But if you were willing to let go, they'd appear to be angels. Back at home Jacob receives a phone calls, and agrees to meet a man. It's the same guy who warned him previously. He's Michael Newman, who was forced to create mood-altering drugs for the Army in Vietnam. A drug called "The Ladder" was put into the food of the Jacob's unit, to increase their aggression. Unfortunately it worked in a chaotic way--the unit killed each other, not their enemies. and Jacob was stabbed by a fellow soldier.
Jacob hails a cab, and goes to the home where Sarah and his kids live. No one's there. After a while, he sees Gabe. Gabe comforts his father, and leads him upstairs, as the screen goes white. Then there's a final shift, back to Vietnam. The doctor pronounces Jacob dead. He notes that Jacob seems peaceful, but he "put up a Hell of a fight." Text on the screen notes that the Army used mood-altering chemicals on the soldiers during Vietnam, but the Pentagon denies this. (The End)
"Jacob's Ladder" was heavily inspired by a 1962 French short film called, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." (Which I'll also spoil.) In that film, set during the American Civil War, a man is condemned. He breaks free of his noose, falls into the creek, has some adventures, and finally makes it home, where he goes to embrace his wife. Whereupon the scene abruptly shifts to the man dying, as the rope breaks his neck. Most of the film is the man imaging getting free in the split second before he's dead. "Jacob's Ladder," of course, is the same type of story, only extended--Jacob is mortally wounded in Vietnam. During the time he's lying there, discovered by the medics, and treated by them, he imagines years of going back to the U.S., leaving his wife for another woman he knows at work, and the final events of the film. As Louie tells him, if someone is holding onto their life, and their memories and emotions too much, they'll see the spiritual figures as demons attacking them. If they instead let go and accept death, these creatures will then appear to be angelic beings helping them make the transition. This theory of death and the afterlife was influenced by screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin's studies of Eastern religions in particular. Probably the key takeaway, though, is that the message of the movie is hopeful, rather than pessimistic.
Now readers may well be exclaiming something like, "He was dead the whole time?! What a cliche cop out!" And it's true, this type of plot point has been overdone in fiction, especially horror stories and movies. But, the way it happens in "Jacob's Ladder" is well done, and earns this explanation. Mediocre or bad attempts at this plot point often fall apart when you reflect upon them. Even "The Sixth Sense," which I enjoy overall, makes little sense when you think about it--how did Bruce Willis's character not notice that he was dead, when literally no one but the kid ever spoke to him or even noticed him during the weeks or months after he died? Not his wife, not the kid's mother, not a single person? But "Jacob's Ladder" handles it better. The setting of the movie constantly shifts, from snippets of Vietnam, to later New York with Jezzy, to later New York with Sarah and his kids, to a vision of Hell, to time with Louie--on and on. It keeps the audience off balance, unsure of which setting is real, and which are dreams, or hallucinations, or whatever. Several different characters give Jacob clues that he's dead--the V.A. nurse, the palm reader, the doctor in Hell--but then Jacob is still walking and talking afterward, so the message seems invalid. The demonic figures could be hallucinations, or fever dreams, or just fits of morbid imagination. One of the changes that director Adrian Lyne made was to have the monsters and weird settings be more realistic. Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin wanted the creatures to look like traditional Judeo-Christian demons, with red skin, horns, and forked tails, his vision of Hell was the Dante's Inferno type place, and the path to Heaven a literal ladder in the sky, with harp-playing, haloed angels, etc. Which would have been silly, and too on the nose, in my view. Plus it would have given up the twist too soon, too obviously. So it was better to make the "demons" just unsettling, be more organic, and "Hell" be just an odd hospital, and the way to "Heaven" be up the staircase in Jacob's home. There are a few plot holes, of course--why are the World Trade Center towers the way they are in reality, even though Jacob has never seen them? And how does he know about "The Ladder" drug's details when he never was a chemist, or met the real people who worked on it? (Assuming the drug was real, and not just his imagination again, clearly.) But these few issues aside, "Jacob's Ladder" holds up after you've watched it, and makes sense in the movie's universe, so to speak.
Paranoia is another theme of the film. Fear of losing one's mind is certainly prevalent in it. Jacob's constantly worried--is he going crazy? He keeps seeing things that arguably aren't really there. And his identity is threatened. Does he exist, or not? There's even the classic delusion that powerful governmental agents are conspiring against him. The Army drugged his unit, and is then covering up the horrific aftermath of their failed experiment. Official records are changed, and his fellow soldiers are intimidated into abandoning an attempt at justice. The car of suited men are even apparently going to kill him, before he escapes. So not only are supernatural creatures coming after him, there are normal human government agents plotting against him as well. Who can Jacob trust? His friends, his love, his family--all may be against him. He can't even trust himself fully.
Also, unlike many of the movies I discuss on my blog, which are often very low budget, and made by inexperience cast and crews, the acting in "Jacob's Ladder" is top notch. The story is very emotional, and a poor leading actor in particular would have sunk the story. But Tim Robbins is very effective. He's likable, has a sense of humor, and you really care about his plight. We're able to understand his confusion, and frustration, during the perplexing events of the movie. Elizabeth Pena (Jezzy), and Danny Aiello (Louie) are experienced and effective, too. As are the actors with smaller roles, or even cameos, as I'll get into further later on.
The special effects are more than competently done as well. The "demons" are great--fleshy, but just a little bit "off." The "vibrating heads" effect is new, and very disturbing. (I recall when I first saw this in the theater, some of my friends were literally sickened by the strobe light party scene. They had been drinking, but still.) The body parts and gore scenes are few, but when they're seen, they're terrifyingly realistic. Another thing the film does well is to not linger on these shots. We see the monsters only in quick glimpses, or in shadow, or during the strobe light sequence. If the filmmakers had shown these shots too long they would have looked fake, or even mundane.
Not being a filmmaker myself, aside from a few brief, inept attempts at skits with a camcorder as a kid, I usually don't notice cinematography that much, unless it's really innovative and cool (like say in the original "Evil Dead"( 1981)) or horrendous (such as in "Battlefield Earth" (2000)). But even I noticed it in "Jacob's Ladder." The camera is often moving, and we get shots from different character's points of view, such as during the "Jacob in the ice bath" scene in particular, when we see it from his perspective, from the other characters, and even from under the water at times. Or we see Jacob being lifted up in the helicopter from the pilot's viewpoint, and then from within the gurney itself. The descent into the hospital Hell scene stood out, too. Much of the scene is from the perspective of the gurney's wheels, as they cross into the nightmarishly filthy hallway, past disfigured creatures, and literally over scattered amputated body parts. These innovations help keep the viewer confused and unsettled, which really helps with the movie's scary tone.
(END OF SPOILERS--SAFE FOR ALL READERS) Director Adrian Lyne has had an extensive career, and his films are often about sexual themes. He's surely best known for "Fatal Attraction" (1987), but he also directed such movies as "Flashdance" (1983), "9 1/2 Weeks" (1986), "Indecent Proposal" (1993), "Unfaithful" (2002), and the upcoming "Deep Water" (2020). Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin's most notable script was for 1990's "Ghost," for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Other credits include "Brainstorm" (1983), "Deadly Friend" (1986), "Deep Impact" (1998), and "The Time Traveler's Wife" (2009). He also directed 1993's "My Wife." Tim Robbins, who played Jacob Singer, has also had a long, distinguished career. Acting highlights include roles in "The Sure Thing" (1985), "Top Gun" (1986), "Bull Durham" (1988), "The Player" (1992), "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994), "Mystic River" (2003, for which he won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), "War of the Worlds" (2005), and "Dark Waters" (2019). He also wrote, acted, and directed 1992's "Bob Roberts" and received a Best Director Oscar nomination for "Dead Man Walking" (1995). Elizabeth Pena (Jezzy Pipkin) was in such movies as "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" (1986), "La Bamba" (1987), "Rush Hour" (1998), "Stangeland" (1998), and "Transamerica" (2005). Danny Aiello (Louie Denardo) had a long career as well, often in character roles. Highlights include stints in "Bang the Drum Slowly" (1973), "The Godfather Part II" (1974), "The Stuff" (1985), "Moonstruck" (1987), "Do the Right Thing" (1989, for which he was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar), and "Leon: The Professional" (1994). The lawyer, Geary, was played by Jason Alexander, who was in such films as "The Burning" (1981), "The Mosquito Coast" (1986), "Pretty Woman" (1990), and "The Last Supper" (1995), but is best known for playing George on television's "Seinfeld" (1989-98). Two of Jacob's soldier friends are recognizable faces, too. Eriq La Salle (Frank) was in movies like "Cut and Run" (1985), "Coming to America" (1988), "One Hour Photo" (2002), and "Logan" (2017), as well as starring on television's "ER" (1994-2002, 2009). Ving Rhames (George) was in another Vietnam movie "Casualties of War" (1989), as well as such films as "The People Under the Stairs" (1991), "Dave" (1993), "Pulp Fiction" (1994), the "Mission: Impossible" series, the "Dawn of the Dead" remake (2004), the "Piranha 3D" movies (2010, 2012), and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" (2017). Jacob's son Gabe was uncredited, but he was played by Macaulay Culkin, who was in such movies as "Uncle Buck" (1989), "Home Alone" (1990), "The Good Son" (1993), "My Girl" (1991), and "Saved!" (2004). The palm reader, Elsa, was played by S. Epatha Merkerson, known for roles in "She's Gotta Have It" (1986), "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" (1991), "Black Snake Moan" (2006), "Lincoln" (2012), and 388 episodes of television's "Law & Order" (1993-2010). Suzanne Shepherd (the hospital receptionist) was in "Mystic Pizza" (1989), "Uncle Buck" (1989), "Goodfellas" (1990), "Requiem for a Dream" (2000), and television's "The Sopranos" (2000-07), among others. Finally, two guys most noted for entertainment besides acting had tiny roles, both in the Jacob's fever and subsequent ice bath scene: Comedian Lewis Black was the doctor who treats Jacob, and Kyle Gass, part of the "Tenacious D" musical group, was one of the assisting neighbors.
So, if you get a chance, give "Jacob's Ladder" a look. It's a combination of scary, moving, disturbing, and thought-provoking. And done in a very accomplished way.
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