In the book of Genesis, you can find the story of Jacob, a holy patriarch in Judeo-Christian faith,
who once fell asleep under the stars and had a dream of a ladder reaching from Earth to Heaven,
with God's angels ascending and descending. Theologians have debated the meaning of Jacob's
dream for millenia, but one of the more lasting and popular interpretations takes a mystical,
ascetic approach, arguing that the ladder represents the many steps one must take to climb
out of the mortal plane and make oneself worthy of everlasting peace. This view is most likely
the one that helped inspire today's subject, a horror classic that is not for the faint of heart.
Something strange is happening to Jacob Singer. Tormented by flashbacks to a gruesome battle in
Vietnam, Singer finds his mind unravelling in a whirlwind of paranoia, stange hallucinations,
fever, and an all-encompassing suspicion that his reality is not what it seems. After another
former member of his platoon reports similar symptoms and is then killed by a car bomb,
Jacob resolves to uncover the truth about what happened, even if it costs him his
sanity and his life, and even if he finds himself dragged all the way to Hell itself.
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Without tripping into the deep, dark hole of conspiracy theories,
it is an admitted fact that the United States government, in a perceived arms race against
Russia and China, did experiments on certain chemical and biological agents,
including potent hallucinogens, in the nineteen fifties and sixties. One such agent, code-named
BZ, was tested in the Vietnam War against enemy troops as a way to incapacitate them,
and some American veterans insisted for decades that they were also exposed against
their knowledge to something similar, causing long-term physical and psychological damage.
This idea was used to set up the basic premise for Jacob's Ladder,
a script written by Bruce Joel Rubin. Rubin is a fascinating character in his own right,
a man who went on a long spiritual journey in the late sixties, visiting the Middle East,
India, Cambodia, Nepal, Singapore, and Japan, among other places, and studying various Eastern
religions and philosophies before returning to New York in pursuit of a longed-for career in film.
A dream about being trapped in a subway station inspired him to write what he described as a
modern take on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He also pulled inspiration from the film version
of An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, which is about a man being executed who fantasizes about
breaking free and trying to lead a normal life in the split second before his death,
and from his own experiences with meditation, classes for which he still hosts to this day.
Several industry insiders and filmmakers loved the script, including the likes of Sidney Lumet and
Ridley Scott, but the studios weren't convinced that it would make for a commercially successful
film, so it languished in a pile of great, unfilmed screenplays for nearly a decade.
After a pair of Rubin's other scripts were turned into the films Brainstorm and Deadly Friend,
Paramount purchased Rubin's script for Jacob's Ladder (along with the script for Ghost,
which would later net Rubin an Oscar), and Adrian Lyne, director of 9½ Weeks and Fatal Attraction,
was so taken by the script and a single meeting with Rubin,
he pulled out of directing The Bonfire of the Vanities in favor of directing Jacob's Ladder.
While shake-ups at Paramount eventually caused the studio to drop the project
after failing to convince Lyne or Rubin to change the ending, Lyne remained on board,
helping to sell the film to Carolco Pictures, who were willing to give him plenty of creative
control and a budget of around twenty-five million dollars, with Rubin handed a job as co-producer.
For the lead role of Jacob, Lyne originally wanted Tom Hanks, who in a fun coincidence
passed on the project in favor of The Bonfire of the Vanities. Other actors that were considered
include Richard Gere, Al Pacino, Mickey Rourke, Don Johnson, and Dustin Hoffman,
but Lyne ultimately opted for Tim Robbins. Robbins wasn't considered a big star yet, but he had made
a splash with comedic roles in films like Bull Durham and Erik the Viking. Lyne liked him for
his ability to give lightness to the character, worried that a more serious, dramatic actor
would make the film feel too dark and hopeless. Robbins also has a childlike naïveté that makes
him endearing, and that makes the sequences of his torment all the more gut-wrenching.
"Stop it, you're killing me!"
Opposite him as Jezebel, his live-in girlfriend, is Elizabeth Peña, who was one of the very first
people to audition but who didn't get the part until bigger names like Julia Roberts,
Andie MacDowell, Madonna, and Demi Moore gave it a shot. Peña had appeared in a handful of
notable films like Blue Steel and *batteries not included, but Jacob's Ladder would prove
to be her breakthrough performance, as she lends a lot to a very complex and difficult character, an
amalgamation of often conflicting male fantasies borne out of Jacob's subconscious imagination.
Danny Aiello plays Jacob's chiropractor, guardian angel, and only true voice of enlightenment,
Louie. Aiello worked with a real chiropractor on set to lend authenticity to his actions,
and he manages to deliver some of the most profound and inspiring lines of dialogue--
"He said the only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life."
--while still getting a chance to shine as
the somewhat unbalanced man you'd expect from the actor.
"Take one step and I'll wrap this around your neck."
Other actors worth noting are Eriq La Salle, Ving Rhames, and Pruitt Taylor Vince as three
of Jacob's fellow platoon mates, Matt Craven as the hippy chemist Michael Newman, who pulls off
a very exposition-heavy revelation in the film's final act, S. Epatha Merkerson as the fortune
teller Elsa, a pre-Seinfeld Jason Alexander as the incredibly unpleasant lawyer, Mr. Geary,
and an uncredited Macaulay Culkin as Jacob's deceased son, Gabe. Lyne,
in furtherance of his aim to give more lightness to the film, also hired a few
stand-up comedians in bit parts, including Patty Roseborough, Reggie McFadden, and Lewis Black.
"You must have friends in high places."
Filming began on September 11th, 1989, almost entirely on location
thoughout New York City and Newark, with the Vietnam scenes filmed in Puerto Rico.
The Bergen Street subway station was a redressed version of the disused lower level of the existing
Bergen Street station, and many scenes featured non-actors to lend an air of authenticity.
The effects work was all done in camera, too, with Lyne adamant about avoiding any
post-production visuals. He significantly toned down the Dante-esque imagery of Rubin's script,
choosing to turn the more classical Judeo-Christian images into something
more grounded and unique, such as replacing demon horns with stumps that could be interpreted as
cancerous growths of some sort. He took inspiration not only from the real-life
deformities caused by thalidomide, but also from the works of William Blake, H.R. Giger,
and Francis Bacon, as well as taking ideas from the photographic body-horror artist
Joel-Peter Witkin, whose "Man with No Legs" is replicated almost exactly in the film.
He also wanted the imagery to go by quickly, with nothing on screen long enough for viewers to make
real sense out of. Combined with a lot of tight close-ups, strobe lighting, and a few memorable
instances of severe undercranking, it lends the film a disorienting, hallucinogenic quality that
arguably matches better with the tone of the script than Rubin's fire-and-brimstone-style
descriptions, not to mention the fact that it was probably easier and cheaper to film.
The music was scored by the legendary, multiple-Academy-Award-winning Maurice Jarre,
the composer behind Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago in addition to some of my
favorite eighties sci-fi classics like Firefox, Dreamscape, and Enemy Mine. Jarre really sets
the mood for the film, with haunting piano dirges offset by quiet choir vocals that evoke all the
religious themes of the film without downplaying the existential distress underlying everything.
There were some post-production delays, largely involving a few negative test
screenings that resulted in the cutting of upwards of thirty minutes from the film.
According to Lyne, the longer cuts were too intense and relentless for audiences, with the
final act in particular pushing them to a near catatonic state by the time the credits rolled.
Still running close to two full hours in length despite these cuts, Jacob's Ladder
released in early November of 1990, to moderately positive reviews that tended to favor the acting
and filmmaking over the substance. Despite a surprisingly strong opening weekend, the film
ultimately disappointed at the box office, with a total domestic gross of 26.1 million dollars,
just barely over the production cost but certainly deep in the red after a heavy marketing campaign.
It maintained a strong cultural footprint, however, especially among
fans of psychological horror, inspiring several copycat films like many of the
direct-to-video Hellraiser sequels, along with the popular video game series Silent
Hill and Resident Evil. Though certainly not the first psychological horror film,
nearly every movie in the subgenre released after it, has taken at least some inspiration from
Jacob's Ladder. There was also a loose remake in 2019, but it's not worth discussing.
Now, before I get to my analysis, I do have another disclaimer. As a rule, I tend to shy away
from two subjects on this channel: politics and religion. I don't avoid them completely, as there
have already been several films that I've covered that deal with very political subject matter.
However, this is the first film where I will be discussing things of a more spiritual nature,
and though I will be sharing a piece of my perspective on certain metaphysical concepts,
I am neither endorsing nor criticising anyone's religious views. These are deeply
personal things that you should be free to decide for yourself as an individual, and I
am genuinely the last person who will tell you you are right or wrong about a matter of faith.
I know I may be inspiring discussion on religious or spiritual topics in the comments,
and that's fine; in fact, I welcome it. I only ask that you show each other respect, because I
will not hesitate to delete toxic comments, even if they come from friends. Okay? Okay.
Jacob's Ladder, not unlike An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge or Carnival of Souls,
posits that there is more to our own reality than what we can percieve, that the death
process--especially in a sudden or violent death--involves a kind of spiritual reckoning
that takes place in a quasi-reality where we must tackle our own demons and insecurities.
"Don't go." "I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here."
Bruce Joel Rubin describes it as the infinite couched in the seemingly finite,
as a way of seeing the world not as it appears but as it can be revealed.
This leans heavily on Eastern philosophy while putting Jacob's death in the context
of a Judeo-Christian view, with Jacob, a Western man, grappling with concepts of
heaven and hell, angels and demons, to make sense out of his life and loss,
riffing on the unorthodox philosophy of the 14th Century German theologian Meister Eckhart.
"If you're frightened of dying, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace,
then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth."
There's this idea of Jacob stripping away his own ego, of his fantasy taking away everything
he has used to define himself, piece by piece, to prepare him for a death that can transcend his
experiences, i.e. climbing the Biblical Jacob's Ladder. One of the cut sequences in the final
act of the film involves the chemist, Michael, giving Jacob a "cure" that he claims will end the
hallucinations and make his life whole again. This doesn't work out, of course--not even for Michael,
who winds up with his head severed off-screen--and it demonstrates something that Rubin has talked
about, that hope is one of the final and most painful things we must lose.
I can understand why that idea might have been a bit too harrowing for test audiences,
but its excision from the movie takes some of the punch out of its meaning.
That's because the final revelation is that Jacob's not grappling with anything concrete, not
battling any conspiracy of nefarious government forces or any actual creatures of the afterlife.
He's not even fighting the long-term side effects of a nasty drug. Rather, he's fighting himself.
There's another cut scene where this is more clearly shown, where Jacob pulls the mask off
his demonic tormentor only to reveal his own face, and that's a nice parallel to the idea
that the soldiers in Vietnam were revealed to have killed each other rather than the Viet Cong.
This is where the film gets a bit personal for me and hard to talk about objectively.
I truly believe that our most vivid nightmares don't come from the outside world, but from our
own psychological self-flagellation. I don't mean to imply that there aren't very real and truly
hellish horrors in the world, nor am I stupid enough not to recognize I have been privileged
to live a life where those horrors haven't come to my doorstep. Still, I think peace is only
achieved with a quiet mind, when we minimize the desires and delusions of our own selfish ego
to embrace a more spiritual and humble view of the small piece of the world we percieve.
Therefore, it might be simple projection when I put these ideas into my analysis of Jacob's
Ladder. There are several other interpretations of the film that can be no less correct than my own,
and that's part of the film's beauty. Personally, though,
I wish I could sit down with the writer, Bruce Joel Rubin, and just pick his brain
to know what he thinks of his own creation and what meaning he believes is at its heart.
I can't downplay the contributions of Adrian Lyne, however, without whom I'm not sure this
film could have worked. Lyne was able to lend a very strong tone to the film, and his instinct to
make the metaphysical aspects more concrete and realistic was, in my opinion, the right call.
If this film had had more typical religious imagery, it would have been a lot easier to
dismiss, visually speaking, and the shots of demons--not to mention the final shot
of Jacob's ascent into heaven--might have been more comical than intended.
To be fair, this is not an easy film to watch, and I grant that,
even in its stripped down theatrical cut, it might be too intense for many viewers.
Paradoxically, other people might find it slow, boring, and pretentious, with its metaphysical
themes a bit too out there and obtuse. Needless to say, it's not a conventional narrative either,
and one of the criticisms consistently leveled against it is how it is constantly pulling the
rug out from the viewer, with Jacob's reality shifting back and forth and ultimately revealed
to be an equivalent to a dream. I disagree, of course, because I think that uncertainty
is kind-of the whole point, but I can see why others might be put off by it.
Still, there's no denying that Jacob's Ladder is a powerful and well-executed film,
that it's left a permanent mark on cinema, and that it can be incredibly meaningful to a lot
of people, myself included. The ending is also quite uplifting and reassuring if you let it be,
a welcome relief after almost two hours of deep psychological torment. So therefore,
I'm glad it's the first horror movie I'm covering on this channel,
and I'm glad I get to affirm here that Jacob's Ladder is unquestionably a horror classic.
"He looks kinda peaceful, the guy."
And that's all for today, my fellow mortals. If you want to get back to
my science-fiction content, I am cohosting a weekly podcast about Apple TV's Foundation,
called "Cracking Foundation," that is available on Apple, Spotify, Google, and several other places.
I'll link it in the description if you want to give it a listen. And don't worry, I'll get back
to my regular sci-fi classic reviews next month. In the meantime, though, don't forget to like
and subscribe if you haven't already, and consider joining my Patreon to get access to bonus content,
vote on future topics, and more. You can also check out my website at emagill.com, where you'll
find written reviews of sci-fi classics in both film and literature. Until next time, though, when
we'll cover probably the most iconic Universal monster of all time, this is the Unapologetic
Geek, telling you to never be ashamed of what you love, as long as you're not hurting anybody.
"Does he have any identification?" "No wallet, nothing."
"He stole it."
"Who did?" "Santa Claus."