Hamlet 2

Openly gay ‘Generation X’ filmmaker Andrew Fleming acquired a reputation as a wunderkind shortly after leaving New York University’s prestigious film school. The last of his three award-winning student films there, “P.P.T.”, earned him a fellowship at Warner Bros., and he teamed with no less a producer than Gale Ann Hurd (“Terminator” 1984; “Aliens” 1986) for his feature directing and writing debut “Bad Dreams” (1988), a largely ignored psychological horror film. Although some found it stylish in a sort of David Cronenbergian way, many questioned Hurd’s involvement in an “entertainment” so clearly celebrating doom and utterly devoid of hope, aimed shamelessly at the teen market.

Prior to “Bad Dreams”, Fleming’s interests had primarily lain in the technical side of filmmaking, but after a hiatus to learn how to write, he resurfaced with his follow-up feature, “Threesome” (1994), an amusing coming-of-age college story. Boasting an attractive young cast (Lara Flynn Boyle, Stephen Baldwin and Josh Charles) caught up in a somewhat unconventional love triangle, the movie outstandingly and believably expressed the sex-saturated state-of-mind of 20-year-olds and represented a giant leap forward for the screenwriter. Solid tech contributions gave the independent feature the polished look of a bigger budget studio effort.

The refreshingly unpretentious writer-director “nailed” the high school experience for “The Craft” (1996), a supernatural thriller and black-comedy clone of “Heathers” (1989), featuring four toothsome “witches” (Fairuza Balk, Robin Tunney, Neve Campbell, Rachel True) grounded in a realistic setting. Fleming’s ship ran aground when it abdicated its strong narrative in favor of well-executed special effects, culminating in a showdown battle between Balk (in full-blown punk Medusa frenzy) and Tunney, the recent convert with a conscience. He continued in the high school milieu with “Dick” (1999), a period piece bringing two teenagers in contact with such Watergate era characters as President Nixon (Dan Hedaya), James Dean (Jim Breuer) and G. Gordon Liddy (Harry Shearer), among others. —TCM