RAISING CAIN
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
RAISING CAIN is a film directed and written by Brian De Palma. It stars John Lithgow, Lolita Davidovich, Steven Bauer, Frances Sternhagen. Rated R for violence and subject matter.
RAISING CAIN is a psychological thriller with a sense of humor. It is also Brian De Palma's chance to exorcise some his misogynistic reputation, a reputation enforced by BODY DOUBLE, OBSESSION, and DRESSED TO KILL. With Lolita Davidovich's strong, scrappy performance, he certainly succeeds in that. But as for his other reputation as a plagiarist of Hitchcock and others, CAIN is only going to advance the negative arguments. There are the almost mandatory allusions to, or borrowings from, PSYCHO, but there is also Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM about a killer raised by a sadistic father. CAIN involves multiple personalities and a wacko father and a plot to steal children. In the process, a little blood is spilt.
I must say I am of two minds about CAIN. It is a showy tour-de-force for De Palma and for John Lithgow, who plays three characters and five personalities. Davidovich lets loose with another of her high-energy performances, even though she is limited to one role. Other actors include Steven Bauer, as the dark, handsome other man, in a performance that is most interesting when he has the least amount of clothes on, and Frances Sternhagen as the shrink-who-explains-it-all with a goofy Mitteleuropa accent and an even goofier wig (the wig at least is explained in the story) is tough and cute.
Sternhagen is also the focus of a four-and-a-half minute tracking shot through corridors, down stairs, in and out of elevators. She keeps making wrong turns and it is pretty funny, but typically ostentatious on De Palma's part without a lot of rationale; I had to ask myself whether there wasn't an elevator that would have taken them the whole way. And this is a symbol for my most negative feelings about CAIN. De Palma is a director of great ambition, but almost no taste, one who thinks tricky shots, switching lenses, pseudo-Hitchcockian camera angles, and all the other technical tricks he steals are their own reward, their own justification. The camera is just too busy and there is no point to it with Lithgow and Davidovich knocking themselves out for us in front of the camera, if they can remember where the damn thing is now.
There are thrills, chills, laughter, and horror through RAISING CAIN, but the end effect is purposeless, without any moral center, just cynical manipulation of the audience and the characters, mere campiness and vapid technique, and that's always sad and a cheat.
I can recommend RAISING CAIN with reservations, but definitely catch a cheap matinee.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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