Say what you want about the late director, Joel Schumacher, but as I look across the titles that make up his portfolio of work, I am astounded at the sheer number of memorable films in his repertoire.  

Movies that stuck with me from my early childhood like The Incredible Shrinking Woman and D.C. Cab (with Mr. T!). Imaginative and emotive films that I watched more than once in my teenage years like The Lost Boys, Flatliners, and Falling Down. And then to top off this list, there are these two distinct, if inferior, Batman movies in the middle of the first-wave of that DC chronology, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. 

Given all of these memorable titles and even a few others I didn’t list, it’s surprising that Schumacher went so bland and pedestrian in his first cinematic team-up with the enigmatic and hyper-expressive mad man / shaman, Nicolas Cage. Why, for example, would you rent a Ferrari for the week if all you planned on doing with it was driving it up and down the driveway on a lazy Sunday afternoon? 

But this is exactly the kind of milquetoast offering that Schumacher gives us storywise with 8MM (1999) a movie about a man struggling with a pretty severe form of workaholism that pushes him to travel all across the country for weeks and months at a time, while his poor wife is left home alone to care for and raise their young daughter, while waiting for his nightly long-distance call, never knowing exactly what he is working on, where it is taking him, or who he is spending his time with. 

This movie script could have easily just fallen off the Lifetime network shelves to be accidently picked up by a passing Schumacher, who thought, “hmmm, I can work with this. Let’s do a simple family drama about marriage, trust, and the darker side of having a strong Protestant work ethic…”

Hahahahaha. Are you buying this? 

OK, so that’s not what it was about at all. If you’ve seen it, you know. Not by far.  But I guess if there is a moral to be had in a movie that is lacking any semblance of morality: it’s that Daddy should spend less hours clocking in at the office and more time at home with his wife and kiddo. It’s a cautionary tale (I guess). So now, let’s tell it a bit more truthfully.

The World According to 8MM (the real talk)

This movie is pretty fucked up. Full stop. And here’s why.

Much like Jack Singer in Honeymoon in Vegas, Tom Welles (played by Nicolas Cage) is a private investigator who follows people around to find out their dirty little secrets. Much like Jack’s wife in HiV, Betsy Nolan, Tom’s wife in 8MM Amy (played by Catherine Keener) loves Tom but mistrusts his judgment, his lying (mostly about smoking cigarettes) and the secrecy that his job requires. 

In Honeymoon, Jack loses a poker game and then his fiance; he must travel all over the country to track her down and win her back. In 8MM Tom “wins” a case with a found snuff film and loses himself (so to speak) tracking down the truth behind who made the film and why; he also travels all over the country looking for answers (while slowly losing touch with his morality and his wife). 

Are these two films at all related? No, absolutely not, but there is this weird parallel between the two plots that I had to mention. I’m delaying talking about the real story here, but no longer…

If, like me, you’re not all the familiar with snuff films (and I hope you are not) they are movies that involve an actual murder (usually premeditated, and made for money) that also involve some sexual deviancy aspect (e.g. pornographic fetishism, sado-masochism, rape, torture, bondage etc.) 

I remember when I was a kid, lots of my (mostly ignorant) peers talked about the movie Faces of Death which I thought was a snuff film based on how they described it. I never actually saw it, but later found out it was a mondo horror film shot in a documentary style depicting people dying (or being killed) in various settings and situations throughout the world and history. Faces of Death was the ultimate taboo show for an elementary school kid, usually whispered about in hushed tones in case teachers or adults caught wind of it. To have seen it meant you had peeked beyond the veil, that you had somehow achieved some level of adult sophistication, that you could handle the most diabolic and explicit material out there. That you wouldn’t cry or be disturbed by facing one’s mortality.

But of course I, like 98% of the kids who spoke of it, hadn’t ever actually seen it. BUT I knew what it was…sort of. In retrospect, the whole concept seems quaint by today’s standards as the internet, social media, and on-demand everything make it possible to see actual deaths–filmed, faked, or otherwise–all over the world, at any moment. Wars are televised, violence is franchised. Everything is right there just a tap or two away. I am sure there are TikToks.

In that sense, even the late-90s 8MM is a time-machine piece where Tom Welles has to uncover information in analog, “the hard way”, searching paper files, watching VHS tapes, traveling to physical brick-and-mortar out-of-the-public-eye locations to access the inaccessible smut and contraband that will help him solve the heinous case. 

What is the case you ask? Ah, well, Tom is hired by a wealthy widow Mrs. Christian and her lawyer Longdale (played by Anthony Heald) to watch an 8MM snuff film she has discovered in her late husband’s safe. In the film, a young woman is brutally raped and murdered by a leather-masked man with a star tattoo on his hand while another man watches from the shadows.  Tom is asked to verify the authenticity of the film (i.e. was the woman really murdered or was it all for show?) and discover who made the film and how it ended up in her husband’s possession. Not wishing to involve the police due to the publicity it could generate, Mrs. Christian asks Tom if he will take it on and will pay him whatever costs are necessary. 

Reluctant, but also having a father’s sympathy for the young woman murdered on film, Tom agrees to take the case and treat it like any other missing person investigation. Claiming it’s for “her own safety”, Tom does not tell his wife, Amy what the case is about or provide details for why he is out of town for such an extended period of time.

From there, the plot plummets from its short-lived PG-13 beginnings to its very lengthy NC-17 death spiral as Tom must fully immerse himself in the history of the runaway girl, Mary Ann Mathews, who was seeking fame and fortune in California, but found herself in the darkest corners of the criminal underground sex industry.

To find the makers of the snuff film, Tom must enlist the help of an insider / confidential informant, adult film store worker and closeted nonfiction reader, Max California (played by the excellent Joaquin Phoenix). He must do market research on the snuff films themselves, watching the 8MM tirelessly for clues and making comparisons to authentic and staged snuff films, and he must rub shoulders and pretend to share affinities with the deviants who populate the seedy sex underbelly of L.A. and New York. To find a creep you must think like a creep is the unspoken mantra for Tom, as he tries to get to the bottom of who murdered Mary Ann, and perhaps more importantly to him, why these men are driven to do such unspeakable acts in the first place?

Unraveling the mystery’s string and following the bread-crumb trail of clues that Mary Ann has left in her wake, Tom discovers the movie production company that Mary turned to and meets the sleazy porno producer behind it, Eddie Poole (played by James Gandolfini). Bugging Eddie’s office phone (the old school way with a device planted in the voice receiver of the landline), Tom discovers that Eddie had other collaborators with him who helped make the film that killed Mary Ann. With the help and company of Max California, Tom flies to New York to meet the collaborators and get an introduction with the famous snuff film maker Dino Velvet (Peter Stormare) to enlist his services in a new film he’d like to make with two girls and Machine (the masked man with the star tattoo on his hand). 

Meanwhile Amy is home doing the laundry, taking care of the baby, worrying about Tom and beginning to wonder if this marriage thing is working out for them. 

From here there’s a lot of table-turning and end-of-film violence that I won’t go into in much detail. Tom tries to send Max back to L.A. since he has a scheduled meet up with Dino and the Machine at an abandoned warehouse in the city for the snuff film shoot he has commissioned (in which he is probably planning on killing them as revenge for Mary Ann’s death). Instead, Dino, Machine, and Eddie show up to kill Tom and “surprise!” Longdale (the despicable lawyer) is there to watch, as he was in on this from the very beginning–protecting Mr. Christian’s interests and his own. 

Max, who never left New York, gets killed. Tom loses his mind (kinda) and fights his way free of the melee, killing Dino and wounding Eddie and Machine. Alerting his wife to the danger they are now in and alerting his employer that the snuff film was in fact legitimate and Mary Ann is dead, Tom is left with no recourse (maybe just stay home, get a new job?) but to hunt down and take revenge on Eddie, discover Machine’s true identity before killing him as well–because it’s what Mary Ann’s mother REALLY wanted. 

So Tom DOES hunt down the porno-murderers one by one and kills them. He discovers in the end that Machine actually is (Chris Bauer) just a middle-aged guy from a loving family, who still lives with his mother and listens to The Misfits on vinyl. 

Why did he do it? (Why does anyone?) Because he could! It’s fun and he likes it. Tom impales him.

Thus concludes the too-long summary of 8MM. 

Why did I go to such lengths to describe all these details to you? I guess so I’ll remember them in the future, as I don’t plan on watching 8MM again a second time. Maybe I’ve spared you from having to watch it as well.

The World According to Tom Welles

I find myself asking the question, “Is 8MM a movie that’s even worth watching?” This is a difficult question because it’s not a boring movie. The subject matter is tough to stomach. The tenacious way in which Tom pursues the clues and the criminals makes for a well-paced thriller. The acting is solid, especially with the strong work of Phoenix, Gandolfini, and Stormare rounding out another Cage winning performance. 

But then there’s the sex / torture dens, the scummy slime selling child pornography in underground alleys, the not-so-Pretty-Woman real life depictions of the sex trade destitution, and the sicko commodification of human suffering / pain. All the explicit pictures I’m not showing you.

Much like Tom Welles I have to ask the question, “Why?” Why would I want to watch people doing unspeakable things to get off on other people’s misery, pain, and death? Seems like a very disturbing thing to do and Tom feels this tension throughout. The thought process is: I’m watching this (yes, maybe at first it titillates) but it shouldn’t, and then two seconds later, now we’ve gone too far. 

If the ultimate answer to the why is because they can, because they want to, because evil lives right next door in each of us, and because some people don’t matter, then that’s some next-level nihilism that I can only handle in very small doses. In some ways it’s a horror movie. And it’s not a ride I’d return to.

Perhaps the most unintentionally funniest scene to me was when Tom was first watching the snuff film to determine its authenticity. When Mary Ann gets slapped at the start of the reel, Tom physically flinches in a truly dramatic Cage-trademarked fashion. It was expressively over the top to the point of being somewhat comedic. I laughed out loud. I know Cage was setting the stage for his beginning state (“I’m so shocked by this violence”) so that he could move to a much regressed end state by the end of the film (“I’m the one taking part in this violence, murdering others”) but, even so it was hyperbolic.

Another odd moment in the film is when Tom is trying to find clues to where Mary Ann went after she left home. Questioning Mary Ann’s grieving mother, Tom is surprised to learn that the daughter didn’t leave a note when she ran away (as if a teenager always leaves a note in these cases). Tom searches her room finding nothing of course, but on a whim (a detective hunch) he goes to the dankest looking basement bathroom in the house, and he checks the basin of the toilet. Of course there is a ziplock waterproofed diary sitting in there that Mary Ann hopes her mother would eventually find? It spells out exactly what her plan was and (eventually) gives her mother the closure that she will need to move on. 

SAY WHAT?!?

Lifetime movies, amiright?

Max California is a complicated character

The dude just wants to be in a rock band. He’s got the died blue Flock of Seagulls cut, the can-do attitude, the rebellious demeanor, and yet he’s forced to hold down a series of low pay, low reward, part-time gig work:

• Electric vagina salesmen
• Sex dungeon tour guide
• Adult book recommender
• Snuff film consultant
• Torture film fan boy
• On call kink-tologist

He just wants to sit around reading Truman Capote crime novels, and this is what he had to do to pay the bills? What’s his payment for these services? He helps Tom time and again, and he ends up pierced in the throat on a makeshift cross. He’s a tragic character really, but one who always flies first class. 

Bonus cameo: It’s a young Daryl, from The Walking Dead (Norman Reedus). He, too, has had sexual relations with Mary Ann Mathews and dumped her like a bad penny. But even though he’s received some justice for being a dick (as a current prison inmate) Tom still will not offer the reprobate a smoke. Touche.

Best Quotes from Nicolas Cage as Tom Welles

“What you seem to be talking about is called a snuff film. From what I know snuff films are a kind of urban myth. Sex industry folklore. There’s no such thing.”

“I’m camera shy.”

“All right well you take care, Max California.” 

“Hello, Machine, love your work.”

“You sit there. Hold his cock. Give him a handjob while Mary Ann Matthews was dying.”

“The film is real. They killed that girl.”

Firsts for a Nicolas Cage Character as Tom Welles

• First time in Miami 
• Visiting an adult bookstore
• Using breath spray
• Raking leaves
• Old school “bugging” of landline
• Winning a fight while chained to a bed.
• Receives a thank you note! (For avenging the murder of a woman’s daughter.)

Recurring

• Smoking (Multiple)
• Private Investigator (Honeymoon in Vegas)
• Holding a baby (Raising Arizona)
• Appearing with Anthony Heald as a corrupt attorney (Kiss of Death) 
• In Hollywood (Valley Girl)
• Visiting a strip club (Deadfall, Kiss of Death)

In Conclusion

Should you watch 8MM with your grandmother, your parents, or your children? Nope. Probably not. 

What about if you were all alone, as a consenting adult, within the privacy of your own home? Meh..maybe, if that’s how you want to live your life who am I to judge? 

OK, then how about if watching it meant that you could see Nicolas Cage shining his craft once again. What if it’s the only way to complete the next mission in your own personal WATC(H) journey? Oh, MOST DEFINITELY! The ends justifies the means. 

After all, 8MM is a lot like Honeymoon in Vegas or any number of films about a man who is working too much, getting way too involved in the 9 to 5, neglecting the greater needs and responsibility of the faithful wife and child he has left at home. It’s a wakeup call and a challenge to working men everywhere. We’ve got to do better! What’s more wholesome than that?

Uh, yeah. 🐸