Entry 124: Nomads (1986)

Nomads (1986)

Dir: John McTiernan

"If you've never been frightened by anything, you will be frightened by this."

 

This is a rare occasion, folks; a BoS entry that you can safely watch with the missus!  So grab a bottle of red wine, buy a nice bouquet of roses and cuddle up down in the Basement of Sleaze for Nomads!

After a ranting, raving French anthropologist (Pierce Brosnan, TV's Remington Steel, the fifth James Bond) dies under her watch in the emergency room, Los Angeles M.D. Lesley-Anne Down (Countess Dracula, The Great Train Robbery) begins experiencing hallucinatory visions of his life shortly before his demise.  Brosnan specialized in documenting the lives and customs of nomadic tribespeople and had moved with his wife (Anna Maria Monticelli, The Dark Room, Silver City) to settle down and take a teaching job.  As Down begins to question her sanity, through her visions we see how Brosnan and Monticelli were menaced by some punk rocker-looking delinquents (including New Wave rock legend Adam Ant Mary Woronov from Eating Raoul and Rock n Roll High School) in a black van who seemed drawn to their home because it had been the scene of a brutal murder some time ago.  In the past, Brosnan discovers that the figures menacing him don't show up on film and that they are, in fact, a group of restless, nomadic souls, all of whom had died violent deaths and feel compelled to assault the living.  Brosnan attempts to confront them, sealing his doom while, in the future, Down and Monticelli flee Los Angeles, but not before being chased by a mysterious, spectral biker whose identity (the last shot of the film) shocks them both.

Despite it's outlandish tagline, Nomads isn't remotely scary.  In fact, it isn't really even a horror film.  Rather, it's a simplified, filmic version of the "dark urban fantasy" genre that would later be favored and popularized in literature by Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman.  Nomads has a great, dreamy 80's music video look and, in it's action sequences, McTiernan showcases some of the visceral edge he would mine to great effect in his next two films, Predator and Die Hard.  The performances, if not revelatory, are at least solid and the whole cast seems to be putting their best foot forward (Brosnan's French accent takes a bit of getting used to and is never entirely convincing).  The problem with the film is that McTiernan (who wrote as well as directed) chooses to sacrifice substance for style and pacing and, in so doing, turns out a film that makes no goddamn sense.  We're never told (or even shown) how, exactly, Brosnan's memories are transferred to Down after she witnesses his death, nor are the rules by which the "nomads" operate (how do they come back from the dead?  Why?  Can just anyone become a nomad?).  The film alternately implies that they're Inuit spirits that have followed Brosnan from a previous expedition AND that they're actually drawn to Brosnan's home because of it's violent history and that he's just a victim of circumstance.  This lack of defined rules for the supernatural characters makes the film's final scene, meant to be shocking, kind of silly and nonsensical.  Oh yeah, about halfway through the film, Brosnan meets a blind nun (Frances Bay, Twin Peaks' Mrs. Tremond) in an abandoned building and has a cryptic conversation with her before suddenly being menaced by a whole gaggle of writhing, rotting and half-naked nuns in a sequence that looks like an outtake from a metal video and has no real relation to anything else in the film.  If The Bros gets you all hot and bothered, take note that he has a surprising full-frontal nude scene here (which seems to be the sole reason for the film's R rating).  For you music enthusiasts, Nomads DOES feature a GREAT score by Bill Conti (Rocky, I, The Jury), with some screamin' electric guitar provided by Ted Nugent, PLUS the Nuge himself appears in a cameo as one of the Nomads!  To review, Nomads looks and sounds great and is never boring, but it makes no sense whatsoever.  Also, it's tame enough that you should feel free to watch it with a non-horror fan.  That's all.