The story of a child psychologist bedeviled by his twistedNorwegian father and an evil twin named Cain (all three roles playedby John Lithgow), the film is a non-stop romp involving infidelity,kidnapping, child abuse, multiple personalities - all further addledby De Palma's trademark visual kineticism and allusions to filmsranging from Hitchcock's "Psycho" and Michael Powell's "PeepingTom."
Billed as a "romantic suspense thriller" and a "return to agenre made popular by Hollywood classics" (and one that has earned DePalma his greatest succcesses), "Raising Cain" offers scenes soexcessive and implausible that seems like a deliberate and hilariousself-parody. Whatever his original intention, that's the lineDePalma is taking (so have the people promoting the film, who nowdescribe it as "a departure from the traditional suspense thriller .. . a devilishly funny film that combines wry humor with shocks andthrills.") "Raising Cain" will open Friday nationwide.
"It's my sensibility," De Palma explained. "I mean, I thinkit's funny and scary. . . . It's hard for me to label, basically.I've just got a black sense of humor. I think the setups are veryfunny. And you also find that you disarm audiences when they'relaughing, they feel, they feel like everything's under control. Andthen you can really nail them."
Gale Ann Hurd, who produced the film, puts it in the samecategory of black comedy/suspense thriller as her previous hits "TheTerminator" (1984), "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991) and "Tremors"(1989). She also acknowledged that such switches in tone can be alittle confusing for the audience, and those marketing the film.
"I think it's a hard film to market," she admitted. "Whenyou mix genres, you really tread on thin ice. I know that because Idid `Tremors.' It was also a film that combined horror with comedy.Once people watched it and realized it was OK to laugh, they had awonderful time. Our initial scores for test-marketing that picturewere awful. And yet after the fact, people loved it because theywere told what kind of movie it was, and they were able to enjoy.Because no one wants to laugh at a movie if it isn't intended."
John Lithgow, for one, doesn't seem sure if the laughter wasintentional. "I don't know about self-parody," he said. "But (DePalma) certainly is as operatic as a movie director can get. The useof slow motion, the way he uses music, the kind of heightened realityof the romance and the sex. It's very emotionally extravagant,Brian's stuff. And I think you can't go that far without it becomingkind of laughable, but Brian intends it that way. He loves to drawthings in very bold strokes, and he has this character Cain who'skind of like the comic outlet for everybody.
"Cain comments on the action, and is this marvelous source ofrelease for the audience, I think. Everybody tells me people laughtheir heads off all through the film. This delights me, I think."
Perhaps one reason for Lithgow's reluctance to embrace thefilm as a yuk-fest is the violence against women that his characterCain gleefully perpetrates. Within the film's first 10 minutes, awoman is brutally assaulted, and she's not the last.
"I've felt more discomfort in the past," Lithgow said."Although I enjoyed making `Blow Out' (the 1981 De Palma thriller inwhich Lithgow played a ruthless CIA operative with a penchant forstrangling women), I found that a sort of nightmarish experience. In`Blow Out,' it was something different and more disturbing I felt.The fact that it was a man who pretended to have perverse motivationfor killing a series of prostitutes, that I felt was deeply deranged. (In `Raising Cain'), the fact that it is a good person with arenegade bad side, in a way, it gives Brian a chance to have his cakeand eat it, too. It's a man who kills women, but is totallyunresponsible for his actions.
"Brian, I don't know, you have to separate the man from hismaterial in a way. I think what Brian does is, he takes our darkestimpulses and he makes thrillers out of them. Many people areoffended by that, but that's not to say that people who are offendedby it don't have dark impulses of their own, which are deeplyrepressed and salted away. Brian is a very nervy guy. He takes allthe all the muck at the base of our beings, and he drags it out. Hedoes it for the purposes of psychological suspense thrillers."
"You know you're gonna be bored again with my stock answer,"De Palma sighed when confronted with the familiar violence againstwomen question. "Usually, I put women in jeopardy because I thoughtthey were more vulnerable. It became very unfashionable in the '80sto put a women in jeopardy. You were immediately accused of beingsexist. Now you put men and machines in jeopardy or children."
Hurd, one of the most independent and powerful women inHollywood, supports De Palma's use of women as victims. "I don'tfeel I have to defend him because I know he's incredibly humane andpro-women," she said."And this picture certainly has a woman whorefuses to be a victim (Lolita Davidovitch, who plays Lithgow'sresouyrceful, if somewhat clueless, wife).
"You have to understand that Brian has a sense of humor,"Hurd added. "I didn't know it from the very beginning. I thoughthis films were to be taken seriously. And that's a big mistake indealing with Brian. Brian is one of the funniest human beings I haveever seen. But you have to be really watching. And you have tounderstand that he respects women a great deal. But they can be usedto really a great end as victims in films. If you didn't understandthat while seeing `Body Double' (a 1984 De Palma thriller in which awoman is murdered with a power drill), you wouldn't know what thatmovie was about. The difficulty was that people drew opinionswithout really having all the information. I was one of those."
Apparently, she is no longer one of those. The estranged wifeof "Terminator" director James Cameron, Hurd married De Palma notlong after his crushing disappointment over "Bonfire." They now havea 9-month-old daughter, and a movie.
"I just basically wanted to get back to something that I feltvery comfortable with. `Bonfire' (was) in an area which I obviouslymade some terrible mistakes," De Palma said of his feelings about"Bonfire" and his determination to make "Raising Cain." "There werevery good reasons why I made the decisions I made (with `Bonfire').You say why didn't you direct the book, it's real simple, but it'sone of those things that seem so simple in retrospect. I think theproblem was that we tried to please too many people and pleased noneof them.
"But it's always important to get up the next morning afterthe world has been dropped on your head. Yes, you have to do it,I've done it many times in my career, so it's not something I'munfamiliar with to but, it's never pleasant."
"Brian felt the most important thing was to prove that hecould get back in the director's chair again," Hurd said. "To provethat `Bonfire' had not left him a bitter man and someone who's tooafraid to take a risk. He wanted to show that the rumors were wrong: that Brian isnot a director who goes wildly over schedule and budget, but that hecan be very responsible, given the parameters."
To that extent, "Raising Cain" has been a success: It wasfinished two days ahead of schedule and $1.2 million under budget.But there remains that laughter: Was it at him or with him?
No matter: if the film goes crazy at the box office, De Palmacan laugh all the way to the bank. Besides, he always has his No. 1fan and producer to fall back on.
"Making a movie involves falling in love with the director,and his vision," Hurd said. "And he's the most charming, hilarious,warmhearted human being I've ever known."
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