MaXXXine (2024)
Directed by Ti West
In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.
20 connections found
View:
20 films that influenced MaXXXine
What critics say influenced MaXXXine
A gondola that leads up to a Hollywood Hills mansion is a direct reference to Brian De Palma's Body Double, while the sex-worker-kidnapping psycho nods to Paul Schrader's Hardcore and the lesser-known 1983 B-movie Angel.
With moralistic fringe mobs protesting Hollywood as a “Satanic factory” and a pornstar-turned-actress finding her identity amidst serial murders, it’s easy to feel the shadow of classics like Brian DePalma’s Body Double or Paul Schrader’s Hardcore.
Nods to sophisticated, sexy thrillers like Body Double (1984) or Dressed to Kill (1980) celebrate the Americana craze over amateur investigations, where protagonists spiral deeper and deeper into a conspiracy as if pulled in by an irresistible undertow.
In Maxxxine, the series moves away from the made-in-New Zealand Texas farmhouse with adjacent alligator lake of the first two pictures into a 1980s Hollywood which is at once scuzzy and vibrant. With perfect needle drops — Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’, Kim Carnes’ ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ — and an array of authentic costumes and hairdos, this inhabits video-rental space with Abel Ferrara’s Fear City, Brian De Palma’s Body Double, William Friedkin’s To Live And Die In L.A. — not to mention a whole lot of non-auteurist exploitation pictures like the teenage-hooker classic Angel trilogy, the cult-of-killers cop flick Cobra and the extraordinary mad-movie-buff film Fade To Black.
A gondola that leads up to a Hollywood Hills mansion is a direct reference to Brian De Palma's Body Double, while the sex-worker-kidnapping psycho nods to Paul Schrader's Hardcore and the lesser-known 1983 B-movie Angel.
…the references are enormous fun: we get Psycho’s Bates Motel as an unlikely refuge, Kevin Bacon as a scummy private eye with a Chinatown nose plaster, and lashings of Brian De Palma’s Body Double and Paul Schrader’s Hardcore. West clearly adores these films, and in an ideal world, MaXXXine would have joined them in the canon.
And to show this, with his tongue very firmly in cheek, West depicts Maxine on a tour of the Universal lot, outside the Bates Motel, imagining that she’s seeing the ghost of Pearl in the windows of the looming house above, where another cinematic killing spree took place. If directly invoking Psycho will further embolden the horror auteurists who have begun to view West as a hack who adds nothing to his myriad influences, then directly drawing narrative parallels between it and X––which should be uncontroversial on paper, considering the well-trod slasher template Hitchcock forged––will turn them apoplectic.
A chase sequence across the Universal Studios backlot ends on the old set of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
A chase scene brings Maxine right into the home of Psycho's Norman Bates on the Universal lot.
Maxine doesn’t seem to mind though, figuring she’s already dealt with a psychotic killer once before, so what’s another to her? When she tells Tabby she can “handle herself” walking home, Tabby ripostes, “Said every dead girl in Hollywood.”
Anachronisms be damned, the film is set in 1985, but West takes inspiration from all across the 20th century, be it its Chinatown-styled private eye character, a Goodfellas-esque one-er in the first act, or the eponymous protagonist wearing makeup straight out of Blade Runner during a club scene.
In one sequence, in particular, Bacon resembles Jack Nicholson in Chinatown as he pursues Maxine on the Universal backlot; and the Hollywood homicide detectives played by a fun if underused pairing of Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale might as well be out of any ‘80s cop movie—complete with MaXXXine's third act detour into action movie spectacle.
Kevin Bacon also joins the ensemble as a cheeky detective with a plastered nose, like Chinatown’s Jack Nicholson.
But this time West's influences lean into the film-noir classics set in L.A., like Roman Polanski's iconic 1974 hit, Chinatown.
Advertisement
In addition to its many cultural signifiers (New Coke! John Parr’s theme song from “St. Elmo’s Fire”! Cocaine!), “MaXXXine” also homages many different directors and films of the period—the most glaringly obvious to me being Vernon Zimmerman’s “Fade to Black” (1980), Lucio Fulci’s “The New York Ripper” (1982), Gary Sherman’s “Vice Squad” (1982), Robert Vincent O’Neil’s “Angel” (1983), and Brian De Palma’s “Body Double” (1984).
In addition to its many cultural signifiers (New Coke! John Parr’s theme song from “St. Elmo’s Fire”! Cocaine!), “MaXXXine” also homages many different directors and films of the period—the most glaringly obvious to me being Vernon Zimmerman’s “Fade to Black” (1980), Lucio Fulci’s “The New York Ripper” (1982), Gary Sherman’s “Vice Squad” (1982), Robert Vincent O’Neil’s “Angel” (1983), and Brian De Palma’s “Body Double” (1984).
In addition to its many cultural signifiers (New Coke! John Parr’s theme song from “St. Elmo’s Fire”! Cocaine!), “MaXXXine” also homages many different directors and films of the period—the most glaringly obvious to me being Vernon Zimmerman’s “Fade to Black” (1980), Lucio Fulci’s “The New York Ripper” (1982), Gary Sherman’s “Vice Squad” (1982), Robert Vincent O’Neil’s “Angel” (1983), and Brian De Palma’s “Body Double” (1984).
Those gloves are likely an homage to Dario Argento’s “Deep Red,” along with numerous other references scattered throughout the film.
One watch of Argento's Deep Red (1975) will reveal just how much the giallo genre is a blueprint for West and Goth's horror tribute, with plot twists, striking colors, and a nonstop series of suspense.
Advertisement
A clip that smacks of Bette Davis as Baby Jane interacting with her own father in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Likewise, there are elements from sleazier iterations, like Mario Bava's model murder movie Blood and Black Lace (1964).