#22: Deadfall (1994)

My name is Ed and twice a week I watch a Nicolas Cage film and then play the lottery using numbers inspired by that film.

I kept trying to write an introduction to this along the lines of ‘Whatever happened to Michael Biehn, eh?’ but I mean the answer is pretty much ‘While he’s never made anything else well-remembered as The Terminator or Aliens, he’s been consistently in work, which is more than you can say, you lottery-playing hubrist.’

Having said that, he has been in some truly dire crap, including a film directed by Nicolas Cage’s brother. It’s called Deadfall, and Nicolas Cage is also in it, so I have now seen it. Here’s what happens in it:

Michael Biehn and his dad try to do a con but he accidentally shoots his dad (James Coburn) to death instead, so he has to go and do a con on his uncle (James Coburn, with different hair) who also wants him to do a con. But who is the real con? Can you con a con? Maybe we are all cons?

Deadfall is an extremely bad film. Rotten Tomatoes rank it as the lowest-rated film Nic Cage as ever been in, with an average score of zero. It does have a few things going for it — chiefly, Nicolas Cage is in it, playing Kinky John Fowler from off of Reeves & Mortimer.

Obviously he’s not actually playing Kinky John Fowler (who didn’t appear on screen until 1999, as far as I’m aware), but the characters, both insane lowlifes with terrible wigs, are just close enough to make you wonder if Vic Reeves ever saw Deadfall and consciously or unconciously paid homage. Cage is very much in his delirious ‘there is no such thing as over the top’ mode, and is by some distance the most entertaining thing in the film, shouting non-sequiturs and generally looking like he’s having a lot of fun. Sadly, he, and his wig, are fairly gruesomely dispatched about halfway through.

The latter half of the film flags — the exceptions being Charlie Sheen’s smooth-talking pool hustler, and a ludicrous crime lord with a robotic pincer instead of a hand, who appears to have escaped from a Roger Moore Bond movie. There’s almost something in it as piece of camp, but even if that’s what it’s going for, the tone is all over the place. Biehn seems to be half-asleep through-out, and completely asleep during the deathly dull expository monologues. The gratiutious sex scene is so badly shot and performed I could believe they were actually having sex.

Deadfall tanked pretty badly at the time, reportedly making less than $20,000 at the box office. But even if my theory about Kinky John isn’t true, Wikipedia reckons it did have one bit of lasting cultural impact:

It is also the prime influence on the song ‘Deadfall’, written by the American hardcore punk band Snot.

THE NUMBERS:

2 — There have been 3 films called Deadfall. This was the second. The first one was about Michael Caine being a cat burglar, the third is about snow or something. Neither of the other ones have Nicolas Cage in.

5 — The con at the end of the movie involves 5 carat diamonds. Apparently 5 carats is quite a good number of carats for a diamond. Maybe I will find out more about diamonds when I am a millionaire and can buy a hat made out of a diamond.

6 — At one point Michael Biehn is seen practising card counting. One of the cards he counts is the 6 of spades. Card counting is naughty.

20 — A man called Mitch is offered an ‘easy $20’ to do something illegal. The bloke who plays Mitch mainly dubs American voices onto them Japanese cartoons now, according to IMDB.

50 — The con Michael Biehn is doing with his dad at the start of the movie involves them spending “50 grand for $500,000”. Instead he ends up shooting his dad with real bullets, which is bad.

56 — Mickey Dolenz from off of the Monkees is in this for some reason. Someone gives him a note with ‘956’ written on it. I can’t remember why.

THE RESULT

1 number, so this went about as well for me as for everyone who invested money in Deadfall.

Christopher Coppola has directed a few other films, but only one of them even has a Wikipedia page. It’s about dead FBI agents who have to steal a crystal from Satan so they can go to heaven. Happily/sadly, Nicolas Cage isn’t in it.

NEXT TIME ON NICOLAS CAGE:

From the lowest-scoring Nic Cage film on Rotten Tomatoes to the highest-scoring: Red Rock West. [2020 note: this is no longer true]