The Vagrant

The late Bill Paxton was never afraid of outlandish genre projects.  The early ‘90s found him bouncing between tentpole feature films like Predator 2, Twister and True Lies while slumming (so to speak) in bizarre indies such as The Dark Backward and The Vagrant (1992), the latter a quirky horror comedy produced by Mel Brooks and directed by special effects maestro Chris Walas, which effectively ended his career behind the camera.

 Graham Krakowski (Paxton) is a low-level computer analyst who lives a safe, predictable existence.  But after purchasing a fixer-upper ranch house his life takes paranoid turn when a local vagrant (Marshall Bell) wreaks havoc on his heavily mortgaged home life.  Framed for multiple offenses and driven to the point of insanity, Graham narrowly escapes a jail sentence and still can’t convince anyone that the vagrant is anything more than a disfigured delusion.

 

A truly odd combination of Coen brother’s quirkiness and The Hitcher, Walas’ film is all over the map visually and narratively.  The great musical score by Christopher Young captures the uneasy sense of forced joviality, hinting at an almost Tim Burton sense of fairy tale intentions.  But The Vagrant never settles into anything remotely predictable, culminating in a surprisingly satisfying ending that thankfully doesn’t lean on the “it was all a dream” cop out.

 

But…Paxton is completely wrong for the lead role.  The Vagrant needed someone familiar and comedically charismatic (think Tom Hanks in The Burbs) to pull off its long con storyline.  And Paxton, for all his acting chops, is too left-of-center to provide the cushion required.  Director Chris Walas doesn’t do the film any favors with his heavy-handed attempts at humor.  While The Vagrant misses the mark, it leaves a lot of interesting holes around the cinematic target.

 

Arrow Video’s special edition Blu-ray is undeniably something special, though.  The brand new 2K restoration really looks tremendous and, while Paxton’s thoughts on the film are missed, Walas, Bell and co-stars Michael Ironside and Collen Camp provide some great backstory in separate interviews.  The first pressing includes a collector’s booklet with new writing on the film and a reversible cover.

 

 

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