© William Ahearn 2006

Science fiction was once one of my favorite genres. When I was a kid, I lived on “Forbidden Planet,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “Earth vs the Flying Saucers” (and anything else by Ray Harryhausen), “It, the Terror from Beyond Space” (which apparently was the inspiration for “Alien”), “The Thing” (the original, and it remains a favorite to this day) and their various low-budget, robot-infested, body-snatching ilk. Somewhere along the line I moved on and the last flick I ever want to see is anything from the “Star Wars” or “Star Trek” franchises. Having paid to see one installment of each in the original release, I still harbor the feeling that someone owes me money and I wasted several hours out of my life.

Not that I’m utterly hopeless when it comes to recent science fiction. There are a number of flicks such as “The Terminator,” “Alien,” “2001,” “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” and some others that I own or still watch when I get a chance. And I really like the offbeat sci-fi like Jean-Luc Godard’s “Alphaville,” (1965), Elio Pertri’s “The 10th Victim” (1965) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solyris” (1972).

There are numerous others.

And then there is “Blade Runner.”

When I first saw “Blade Runner” in its original theatrical release, halfway through the film I knew that I would have to see it again. (“Blade Runner” was the first film I ever owned; a VHS version bought at a flea market in Brooklyn.) Something was going on in the film that wasn’t being made explicitly clear and I wasn’t sure what it was. That is always a good sign and one that is rare in science fiction flicks. “The Terminator” is a good solid movie but it — and the Alien series — is a pure entertainment vehicle. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but occasionally a genre is transcended and the result is a very special film.

“Blade Runner” was special even in its original release. Designed as a futuristic drama unfolding in a decrepit and rain-soaked Los Angeles of 2019, it deals with themes of memory, identity, and mortality. Some have called the film cyber noir but I think the only film that fills that category is Jean Luc-Godard’s “Alphaville.” Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” certainly uses noir elements but it isn’t a cyber or even cinema noir film.

Noir – as in cinema noir – is a term that has been so bastardized over the years as to become almost meaningless. Originally coined by French film critic Nino Frank in 1946 to describe low-budget Hollywood crime films of the ‘40s and ‘50s, it at one point was used to mean a particular type of film.

That definition referred to films where a femme fatale corrupts an innocent man and he is led inexorably to his downfall. Edgar G. Ulmer’s “Detour” (1946) – a film many movie historians regard as the first cinema noir film while others suggest “The Man on the Third Floor” (1940) (which I haven’t seen) – is a perfect example as is Tay Garnett’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” “Killer Bait,” “Gun Crazy,” “Out of the Past” – that some have suggested as the inspiration for David Cronenberg’s “A History of Violence” – Robert Siodmak’s “Criss Cross” and numerous others are examples of this definition of cinema noir.

What gets confused with this definition of cinema noir is the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. John Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon” is a perfect example of hard-boiled in that Sam Spade isn’t corrupted by Brigid O’Shaughnessy – or anyone else – and is always playing the game to find the solution whether his means are legal or not. Dashhiell Hammet, who wrote The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler, who wrote The Big Sleep, are the best-known writers of this genre. Mickey Spillane needs also to be mentioned if only to recommend “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955). Based on a Spillane novel, “Kiss Me Deadly” is one of my favorite hard-boiled detective films and if you’re a fan of Quentin Tarantino or “Pulp Fiction” – or just want to see a flat out bizarre film – you have to see this flick.

James M. Cain is probably best known as the author of noir novels. “Mildred Pierce,” “Double Indemnity,” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” were based on the works of Cain. But the most successful of the noir writers is Cornell Woolrich who had some thirty movies based on his novels and stories. He’s one of my favorites and I’ll do a lengthy review of his work in the “Rear Window” section of the Hitchcock material.

“Blade Runner” references both the hard-boiled and the cinema noir genre throughout the movie. The scene where Deckard poses as a representative of the American Federation of Variety Artists to speak to the android Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), seems to be a direct lift from the book buying scene in “The Big Sleep” where Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) poses as a book collecting nerd and asks for “the Ben Hur 1860 with the erratum on page 116” and “a Chevalier Audubon 1840.” That clear plastic raincoat worn by Zhora recalls the plastic raincoat worn by Joan Bennett as Kitty in Fritz Lang’s “Scarlet Street.” The first reference is to the hard-boiled genre and the second is pure cinema noir.

“Blade Runner” never really crosses into true cinema noir. It is far more a hard-boiled detective story. If it needs to be called anything, futur noir is closer than cyber noir or the utterly meaningless cyberpunk.

The book that “Blade Runner” is based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, was written by Philip K. Dick as a satire of consumerism and whatever cinema noir or hard-boiled elements appear in the film the scriptwriter and Ridley Scott brought with them.

The plot follows a story typical of the action flick: The reluctant hero who has quit the job is dragged back by a sleazy and over-bearing former supervisor who convinces the hero of the seriousness of the situation. There seems to be some coercion involved but it’s purely implied.

The problem is made explicitly clear: Androids — or replicants or skin jobs who are “more human than human” — have killed the crew of a shuttle on an off-world colony and landed on the coast near Los Angeles. One of this new Nexus 6 generation of replicants has already sent a Blade Runner — the police unit that retires skin jobs by killing them — into the hospital. The replicant was discovered — using the Voigt-Kampff (V-K) test — among the new workers at the Tyrell Corporation, the company that created the replicants.

And it is at the Tyrell Corporation where Rick Deckhard (Harrison Ford), the protagonist and Blade Runner of the film, meets Rachael (Sean Young), an experimental replicant who only suspects that she isn’t human. But Deckhard, who doesn’t know that Rachael is a skin job, discovers the truth when he runs the V-K test on her. It’s an empathy-based test and he’s demonstrating how it is used for Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), who runs the Tyrell Corporation.

That’s when it gets interesting.

“How can she not know what she is?” is a question that Deckhard can’t seem to answer even as he falls in love with her. That question, which also hangs in the minds of the other replicants, is one of the underlying themes of the film that plays off against the futuristic science and the primal drives contained in the characters.

The theatrical release was an excellent thriller cum science fiction film that utilized art direction and cinematography in a way that was rare for these kinds of films at that time and assumed intelligence on the part of the audience that is even rarer. It was just a damn good story told with excellent movie making.

The director’s cut changed everything.

The “happy” ending – the long shot of Rachael and Deckard driving up the coast was actually an outtake from Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” with narration added – was deleted. It was almost poetic justice. “The Shining” was a film that angered author Stephen King’s loyal fan base because – according to them and King as well, if all the publicity is to be believed – it narrowly focused the story and ignored much of the novel. King would become the power behind the scene in a director’s cut of sorts when he wrote the teleplay for a 5-hour mini series titled “Stephen King’s The Shining.” It was barely watchable.

If there are two books where the film versions are better beyond question it is Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Stephen King’s The Shining. The books will never become classics and the films will never be forgotten.

The narration of “Blade Runner” also disappeared; originally inserted as an afterthought, and added was a single sequence that would finally give the ending a depth that was missing from the theatrical release and provide a glimpse into the character of Deckhard that wasn’t present in the earlier version. In the new version, it wasn’t just a case of Rachael not knowing what she is but also Deckhard not knowing what he is, as well.

There is little question that in the director’s cut of “Blade Runner,” Deckhard is a skin job.

That isn’t the case in the story that the film is based on. After reading the novel, it seemed that the book “inspired” the movie more than anything else. Let’s just say that the screenwriters of “Bladerunner” did a remarkable job in pulling threads and themes out of the novel to create the film. Dick’s work has also been the basis for “Total Recall” (1990) that had an interesting premise and an overblown production, the wonderful French film, “Confessions d’un Barjo” (“Confessions of a Crap Artist”) (1992) and the recent “A Scanner Darkly,” among others.

In interviews twenty years after the theatrical release, “Blade Runner” director Ridley Scott said Deckhard was a replicant and actor Harrison Ford, who played Deckhard, said he wasn’t.

All of that is all of that, so what it comes down to is what does the film say? If you study the character of Gaff, it says Deckard is a replicant. In the theatrical release, the character of Gaff (confidently underplayed by Edward James Olmos) is a marginal police officer assisting Deckhard in his hunt for the replicants. In the director’s cut Gaff seems to be — in espionage parlance — Deckhard’s case officer.

There are several clues to this and the most convincing is the origami of the unicorn that Deckard finds at the end of the film. Gaff is the origamist and his paper foldings are used to illustrate Gaff’s information about Deckard in three scenes. The first is when the Blade Runner Unit chief, Bryant (E. Emmett Walsh) is trying to convince Deckard to go after the skin jobs. Gaff crafts a chicken out of paper when Deckard refuses. The second is after Deckard has interviewed Rachael and Gaff fashions a matchstick man with an erection to suggest Deckard’s feelings toward the replicant. (Gaff wasn't present at the meeting of Rachael and Deckard.) The third and most telling is the unicorn at the end of the film. In the scene where Rachael firsts comes to Deckard’s apartment and they have the discussion about implanted memories, Deckard has a memory of a unicorn running through a forest.

He’s not asleep. He’s not dreaming. He’s recalling a memory. Two questions immediately come to mind. How could he remember a unicorn? How could Gaff possibly know about it?

The other interesting clue to Deckard’s true identity is in the way light is reflected at times in the eyes of the skin jobs. In the case of Rachael, it is apparent during the V-K test. In the case of Deckard, it’s seen during the discussion with Rachael in Deckard’s apartment after Rachael kills the replicant named Leon. (It’s kind of interesting that Deckard only manages to kill the female skin jobs.) Deckard is explaining how the “shakes” are part of the business.

“I’m not in the business,” says Rachael. “I am the business.”

We know at that point that Rachael has accepted the fact that she’s an android and when she turns to Deckard we can see the reflection in his eyes and maybe the acceptance that he, too, isn’t all that he thinks he is.

And that realization gives an entirely new twist to their escape from Los Angeles, if in fact they do escape.

Most sci-fi flicks get lost in technological complications. They tend to degrade the very scientific theories that they exploit. “Gattaca” is a perfect example of this process. In “Blade Runner” and “2001,” for example, it’s an exploration of technological complexity and that’s what makes them such great films.

If I were to list three great sci-fi films, they would be “2001” and “Blade Runner.”

I’m still looking for the third.