Raising Cain (1992)

Great Film overall

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

And it was still just as suspenseful as the first time I saw it in theaters. Why John Lithgow never even got nominated for Best Actor at the 65th academy Awards is still beyond me. I thought he did a magnificent job playing Carter, his evil twin brother Cain, and their even more screwed up father, Dr. Nix! Not to mention the plot twists involving Josh and Margo. Lola Davidovitch was also great as Dr. Jenny O'Keefe. A working mom who keeps her maiden name for modern feminist reasons; and who ultimately proves beauty, brains, and bravery aren't mutually exclusive. And long time fans of both MURDER, SHE WROTE, and BEVERLY HILLS 90210 are bound to get a kick out of recognizing character acting veterans Gregg Henry and Gabrielle Carteris, respectively. In short; this is the finest erotic homage to Alfred Hitchcock ever done by Brian DePalma. It even tops his previous homage DRESSED TO KILL! Which is saying a lot (and justifiably, too).

Dear Brian De Palma,you once remarked that you had to direct a few big studio films in your career in order to finance the films you genuinely wanted to make. I guess Raising Cain is among the films that you genuinely wanted to make.A middle class married man is being terrorized by his father who wants to steal his kid to use her as a guinea pig in behavioral experiments for the good of science. The man also suffers from a split personality disorder. It was an interesting story. But I am afraid, the film was dreadful. You hid the lack of genuine inspiration and substance in the film with an utterly preposterous (albeit interesting) story, over the top thrills, close ups and long tracking shots. While John Lithgow is a very competent actor, I am not sure he can play the lead and carry a film on his shoulders. He was nowhere as sinister as Margot Kidder in Sisters. Nor did he invoke sympathy like Craig Wasson in Body Double. The sub plot concerning the affair between Lolita Davidovich and Steven Bauer was a needless distraction from the interesting main plot. And unfortunately for you, the film has one of Pino Donaggio's lesser scores.Gabrielle Carteris was quite funny as the cigarette smoking mother. The film did have its share of strange and entertaining supporting characters (like the square mother in the beginning). Davidovich was sexy and her drowning scene was quite scary. And you did tie it all together quite well in the end. The film is not entirely without merit. Some of your hardcore fans are raving about the film on its IMDb message board. But I think the 6/10 rating is one point too high.Best Regards, Pimpin.(5/10)

Jenny, wife of eminent child psychologist Carter Nix, becomes increasingly concerned about her husband's seemingly obsessive concern over the upbringing of their daughter. Her affair with an old flame, however, causes her to neglect her motherly duties.But a spate of local kidnapings forces her to accept the possibility that he may be trying to recreate the twisted mind-control experiments of his discredited psychologist father.Baffling and even considering his CV, this has to be De Palmas most bonkers film, but my goodness, it's a wonderful bonkers movie.Referencing every thing from Hitchcock, to Lynch, to parental fears, Raising Cain is not a good place to start, if you want to seek out De Palma.If you are a veteran to his films though, and appreciate his obsession with Hitchcock, you will find so much to like in this movie.Lithgow is wonderful as the titular characters, and although he loses it slightly toward the end, the interrogation scene is wonderfully acted by Lithgow, and makes the film the gem that it is.The camera-work is what you would expect from the director, and the scene from the police station to the body found in the trunk, is expertly done, and looks seamless.It gets a little confusing every now and again, and it all feels a bit dated, but for De Palma fans, it's a real treat.

Carter Nix seems to be a devoted husband and father, but behind this facade lurks a shady past and some decidedly odd relations. When Carter's twisted brother Cain shows up and some local children go missing, can the police figure out what's going on in time ?Brian DePalma's best films are just so deliciously twisted, and in my view this is one of his very best. There are at least five fantastic aaaaahhhhh moments in it; the comatose wife awaking from her slumber at the wrong moment, Carter abruptly smothering Jenny with the pillow, the shocking twist on the old car-in-the-swamp Psycho moment, Jenny's sudden appearance on the baby monitor, Margot headbutting Dr Waldheim. All of these are beautifully, lovingly stylised, but the whole movie is just full of fantastic sequences, culminating in the terrific showdown at the motel. It also has a completely outstanding four-minute shot in the middle walking through the cop-shop, where Sternhagen ploughs through a ton of back-story, hits about a thousand marks (including some intentionally wrong ones) and emotes like there's no tomorrow. If ever you hear some phony-baloney actor type spouting off about have to struggle to find their character, show them this scene - Sternhagen is wild, funny, gripping, irascible, scared, intriguing and intense, all at the same time. Better yet, Lithgow is equally sensational, playing five characters with terrific abandon, weedy one moment, terrifying the next. Okay, so DePalma may have trodden this ground before (Sisters, Dressed To Kill, Body Double), but nobody does these crazy, sexy, twisty-turny thrillers as well as he does, and the cinematic power of these incredible set-pieces is just astonishing. Here's a movie where not a moment is wasted, where every shot is both artfully composed and intrinsically important, where every nuance the actors can provide contributes to the mood and the shocks. It's simply fantastic from start to finish. With a terrific score by Pino Donaggio (the music makes me scream every time) and fabulous photography throughout from Stephen H. Burum, this is a masterclass is technical filmmaking. Produce by Gale Anne Hurd (of Terminator fame) and brilliantly written and directed by DePalma, this is a great, gleeful, creepy, exciting, shocking, fantastically well-executed thriller.