Fun City Editions: Natural Enemies (1979) - Reviewed

Courtesy of Fun City Editions

Before striking comedy gold in 1984 with the high-school comedy Revenge of the Nerds, director Jeff Kanew started out with the sports documentary Black Rodeo before writing for the screen and directing the thoroughly searing adaptation of Julius Horwitz’s novel Natural Enemies.  A small, tightly knit drama featuring terrific performances from its cast including but not limited to Hal Holbrook, Louise Fletcher, Viveca Lindfors and screen legend José Ferrer, the film turned out to be one of the darkest downward spiral films of the 1970s since Joe or Taxi Driver.  Who would’ve guessed the purveyor of one of the funniest comedies of the 1980s would also deliver among the bleakest clandestine masterworks of 1970s character driven cinema?

 
Successful New York magazine publisher Paul Steward (Hal Holbrook) is an ordinary middle-aged family man who lives at home with his wife Miriam (Louise Fletcher) and three children.  After years of steadily growing distance from Miriam after her own nervous breakdown which required her institutionalization, Paul grows forlorn, solipsistic and begins considering murdering his family and then himself in ritualistic suicide.  Acting under the guise of “researching” a story about fathers who tend towards murder/suicide of their families, Paul leaps into freefall seeking validation for his “fate” from friends, his psychiatrist, an astronaut, prostitutes and a lonely woman stranded on the train one night with him.  Then one night he comes home to find his wife asking why he put a loaded rifle in their bedroom closet.
 
Though not a particularly graphic or violent film, Natural Enemies is a grim investigation into the heart and mind of a man beyond help.  One of the most disturbing aspects of it is how intelligent the character of Paul Steward is and how much he rationalizes each and every depressed and self-absorbed answer.  For every story of time spent on the moon, for Holocaust stories told by his friend Harry (José Ferrer in an impassioned soliloquy), for all the helpful words of wisdom offered by his psychiatrist, the call girls and finally his beleaguered wife Miriam herself, we see in Paul’s furious eyes and craggy frown a simmering rage that cannot and maybe does not want to be cooled.  One scene that’s particularly striking involves the camera fixed on Paul’s face, the anger palpable but more terrifyingly unstoppable.  There’s nothing anyone can say or do to stop this ticking time bomb from fulfilling its dark destiny.

 
Visually the film looks fine thanks to Dark August cinematographer Richard E. Brooks, meat and potatoes filmmaking with generally dynamic framing and camera placement.  The subtle orchestral score by Don Ellis is largely minimal but exuding a sense of doom and gloom, already forecasting the grim coda ahead.  Mostly though this is Hal Holbrook’s movie as the camera is trained on him for much of the film as well as offering interior monologue through voiceover narration which comes up in key moments to undermine moments of joy or happiness in his life.  Louise Fletcher, fresh off of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, finds herself on the opposite side of the fence here in flashbacks as a patient in an asylum before becoming the film’s nurturing voice of reason.  Special attention goes to José Ferrer who is only in the film very briefly but gifts us with an unforgettable scene, functioning as the audience’s point of view regarding this man who himself doesn’t know why he feels so strongly towards this destructive murderous plan.

 
A simple yet unrelenting story of an ordinary successful family man on the brink of implosion, Natural Enemies was considered something of a lost film for a while there, given a brief theater run in 1979 before the studio held off on a VHS home video release until 1985.  Unavailable for decades until Vinegar Syndrome sublabel Fun City Editions in conjunction with the Library of Congress have presented a 2K restoration of the only surviving 35mm deposit print, audiences now have a chance to mostly (despite some missing frames and scratches) see this forgotten grim-but-brilliant gem with stellar performances from all involved.  A jet-black downer with performances so full of life and direction so assured you are transfixed despite knowing this saga likely won’t end well.  Though the film never does erupt with the violence at its epicenter, you feel a bit stained mentally and emotionally after spending time around this man you want to help but eventually realize can’t be or doesn’t want to be saved from himself.

--Andrew Kotwicki