So Bad They're Good: Osterman Weekend (1983)

1 year ago

So Bad They’re Good: Osterman Weekend (1983)

CRAIG T. NELSON’S MUSTACHE

by Christopher Cantwell

Craig T. Nelson has a great mustache in this. Did you realize it’s fake? Look closely! Now, when I say fake, I’m not presuming to say that the mustache is entirely fake—that is to say, synthetic hair and a cheap epoxy—this thing might have been a work of art. It’s possible that it could have been made with real human hair. It’s even possible that it could have been made from Craig T. Nelson’s hair. Sometimes I imagine that Sam Peckinpah even made the mustache himself. Long hours in a work shed, meticulously constructing facial hair for an anti-hero of his newest picture, perhaps keeping a black and white headshot of Craig T. Nelson over the work desk for reference and inspiration.

Why couldn’t Craig T. Nelson grow an actual mustache for this film? Was he filming something else immediately prior to or right after that required him to be clean-shaven? Does he have a medical condition? Or did Peckinpah go with a fake mustache in order to increase the amount of suspicion around Nelson’s character?

The Osterman Weekend sounds like a good time, just from the title alone. But let me also state that this film is a drunken nightmare. This is largely due to one problem the movie has: you never have idea what is going on. The film is based on the book of the same title by Robert Ludlum, which I believe is out of print. Still, even if it weren’t, I don’t think I would take the time to read it in order to fully understand the story. I don’t think that would be possible, because apparently the film is more a dead miscarriage discarded from the weeping mother that is the original Ludlum novel.

But let me stress that this is part of the “fun” (fun here defined as the compulsive nature) of viewing The Osterman Weekend.

For those of you who don’t even want to bother watching the film, here is a quick shorthand of the plot laid out in basic discernible concepts:

John Hurt and his wife are fucking—she is killed in a really incredible, efficient way by spies (assumption re: identity as spies).

CIA director Burt Lancaster ordered killing, we’re not sure why, and he sort of feels bad about it (validation re: identity as spies).

John Hurt not upset re: wife’s killing. Since he = CIA, too, he thinks it’s time for the CIA to go after Omega… Omega ≈ Soviet covert ops thing / group of people / spies.

Rutger Hauer = famous TV talk show host in America.

He has friends from college (Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon) who have enjoyed success in their own lives as well, but not to extent of Hauer. Every year they get together at Rutger Hauer’s great set piece of a house for weekend party.

Craig T. Nelson’s character’s last name = Osterman + party was originally his idea ∴ name of weekend = “The Osterman Weekend.”

This year’s Osterman Weekend promises to be doozy: right before his friends arrive, Hauer approached by John Hurt. Hurt tells him friends = Soviet spies for Omega. He shows Hauer proof in a videotape of his friends discussing $$ matters with Russian.

Rutger Hauer’s wife and son are kidnapped, but the wife gets away, I think. Also, Rutger Hauer’s wife is Meg Foster (crazily intense actress with gray eyes; what a werewolf might look like if hair were replaced with female human skin). I can’t remember if foreshadowed yet that she = very good at archery, but yes.

Friends come over to Rutger Hauer’s house and bring wives / girlfriends. They all seem weird, because John Hurt and CIA have already been engaging in psy-ops.

Cue extremely tense weekend w/r/t Hauer thinking friends are spies, his friends not knowing why he’s being strange, etc, etc. This leads to arguments, awkward moments, which all could possibly be Peckinpah expounding upon bickering, pathetic nature of rich white people, perhaps brought on by experiences in Hollywood, but who is to say. At this point, Peckinpah = beyond recovery and most likely operating from a place of basic perspective and instinct i.e. the unconscious.

John Hurt has wired Hauer’s home with extensive closed circuit television cameras and audio bugging equipment, is watching all of the ruined vacation unfold from hyper-future Knight Rider van in woods near house.

Head of Hauer’s dog ends up in the fridge. Dog head then revealed to be puppet or something (???????).

Hauer and Nelson finally have confrontation, Nelson > Hauer re: fighting capabilities (note: Osterman is martial artist), Nelson, friends ≠ Omega, Soviets. He, Sarandon, Hopper have only been funneling $$ to Swiss bank accts to avoid taxes.

Hopper, Sarandon, wives (one wife continuously ingesting cocaine read: doing a metric ton of cocaine) leave property in Hauer’s RV. Hauer’s attempts to warn those in RV to leave vehicle immediately prove in vain when Hurt blows it up remotely while Nelson and Hauer watch via closed circuit TV in kitchen.

Cue Nelson, Hauer, Foster killing operatives in woods in incredible Peckinpah slow-motion battle. Nelson’s karate attacks = lethal blows + incredible male screams, Foster gets bow and arrow and starts driving bolts into guys’ chests. There’s a dive into swimming pool amidst gunfire that is definitely worth seeing and one wishes scene would go on ∞ ;)

Hurt reveals that he knows Lancaster had his wife killed and now he wants revenge. He has also kidnapped Hauer’s son, but will release if Hauer exposes Lancaster on talk show.

All action stops abruptly.

Hauer does talk show, interviews Lancaster. He also unexpectedly pipes in feed from Hurt, who exposes Lancaster on air as ≥ liar, murderer (showing footage of wife’s killing). What neither Lancaster nor Hurt know is that Hauer’s cues and responses are pre-taped, i.e. not live. Nelson runs the TV director booth and operates frame interchange, but Hauer is not in studio.

Meanwhile, Hauer tracks Hurt’s signal, arrives and blows him away, and saves kid.

Now, upon watching this film, it is difficult to figure out all the above. It’s even difficult to parse it out in explanation. It seems that Hurt creates the fictitious organization of Omega in order to bait Lancaster into allowing him to run an operation which he subsequently takes rogue. All he wants is to get Lancaster on Hauer’s show, so the rest of the movie is him enacting that plan. He threatens and abuses Hauer and his friends so that he can manipulate Hauer into cooperating… but the questions that arise are innumerable.

The reason this film is fun, or rather compulsively necessary to watch is due to morbid curiosity surrounding Peckinpah’s twilight. The movie is at once a product and a mirror of Peckinpah’s reputation at that time—blindly accusatory in all directions, painfully bitter and muddied in detail due to desperation and indigence and rage (I’m guessing).

The mental health of the picture is unstable at best. The whole thing feels bizarrely irrational, down to Nelson’s fake mustache. I enjoy it like I enjoy reading about the Kennedy assassination. It will never be clear cut due to the tremendous amount of baggage associated with it.

The best way I can describe the movie is that it is a droopy-eyed eight-foot-tall schizophrenic man screaming with a pitch-shifted voice as it lumbers toward you reeking of cheap gin. That’s not supposed to be a description of Peckinpah. It’s supposed to be a description of the shadow of the indiscriminate monster Peckinpah (et al) left on the wall in making this movie.