"HOLY SHIT! CLOWN ATTACK!"
Real Mean (1987) is a real sleeper. I mean, this movie is aces and really deserves a lot more recognition. I am going to endorse this movie to all my friends and acquaintances and when I write a post about the most underappreciated movies of the decade, this will be on it.
Here is the set-up: James Belushi is the best CIA agent in the world, and he is attempting to broker a deal between our government and aliens we contacted a short time ago. Unfortunately, the agent the aliens know and trust (not Belushi) is assassinated right in the beginning of the film. The CIA runs a computer scan for the agent's face, and finds a near-perfect match ... John Ritter!!
I love John Ritter. In Three's Company and here, his comedic skills are perfectly used. He starts out as a totally meek, mumbling, passive husband and father of two. The milkman is dangerously close to starting an affair with his wife; neighborhood bullies steal his son's bike and beat him up. He's very weak in that feathery-voiced Jack Tripper kind of bashful way.
But once Belushi takes him under his wing and convinces him of the truth of the CIA alien connection, he begins a slow transformation. With Belushi's expert guidance, Ritter really blossoms into a real hero. Belushi is endlessly encouraging, in a really hilarious way - he sees the silver lining in every failure.
The opening quote comes from maybe my favorite scene in the whole movie - when an enemy group of agents (who want to use the alien tech for their own dastardly agenda) dressed as clowns attack Belushi and Ritter in a narrow alley. The whole scene is choreographed beautifully.
Other nice touches: a great soundtrack by Miles Goodman (who has done a ton of movies, but I only recognized K-9 and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels right off) that is reminiscent of the best work of Danny Elfman. A nice running gag where Ritter makes a gun with his hand and shouts "bang bang!" and someone out of his sight really shoots the bad guys - making him think he has amazing powers. And a fantastic twist involving Belushi's character that I really want to spoil, but won't.
Seriously, seek this movie out! It apparently made less than a million at the box office, which is a shame, but unsurprising given how underground it's become over the years.
Zone Troopers (1985) is made by the same writing/directing pair (Bilson & Di Meo) who made The Rocketeer, which I loved as a kid. They also made the cult classic Trancers (also 1985), which is very highly regarded.
Zone Troopers is another movie I had heard nary a whisper about in all these years, but stumbled across during this quest to see the whole catalog... and am really glad I did. It's also firmly in the "cult classic" category, except I'm not sure there is much of a cult surrounding it.
The basic plot is simple: During WWII, American soldiers race against Nazi stormtroopers to gain access to a downed UFO somewhere in the forests of Europe. The winner hopes for technology that will quickly end the war for their side. However, neither anticipates the actual nature of the aliens, nor that they might have their own agenda.
So far, so good - pretty basic. What it doesn't tell you is that this movie is dripping with style. It's really like an old Warner Bros. cartoon made with live actors. It's crazy - they couldn't afford blood effects most of the time, so a guy will just make a loose "rat-a-tat-a-tat" motion with a machine gun and soldiers will fly to the ground, apparently "dead." This happens over and over!
They eventually meet a live alien, which looks like it escaped from a movie in 1951 - really goofy, but really fun at the same time. Right out of a comic book, perhaps. The actors are clearly having a ball, and the whole movie has an aura of cheesy pleasure from front to back. This is another little movie I'm really glad I caught.
Finally, Last Rites (1988) is infamous as perhaps the biggest bomb of 1988, a year I've seen a lot of lately and already consider fairly weak. Ebert gave it zero stars, it bombed tremendously, and is the only movie ever directed by Donald Bellisario, who otherwise stuck to TV shows and TV movies.
The general plot is very simple. Mafia don has a son who becomes a priest (played by Tom Berenger). He also has a daughter, who is given to prones of explosive violence. When the daughter catches her husband cheating on her, she shoots him dead. The mistress escapes, and the daughter puts a hit out on her. The mistress ends up seeking asylum in the church, where she comes under the protective wing of ... surprise ... Berenger's priest character. Priest and mistress go on the run, while priest becomes increasingly tempted by the worldy young woman.
The subject matter, priest losing his willpower to supersexual woman, is obviously very touchy, and this movie doesn't really have the sensitivity to pull it off. The script is very obvious and dull, the characters flat and broad, and the plot movement over-obvious. It telegraphs every plot development well in advance.
However, the movie does have one thing going for it: a great soundtrack. Tons of classical music mixes with Italian-esque orchestrated folk music to generate a really nice atmosphere. The movie also has a cool poster. According to Wikipedia, it made less than a half a million at the box office, which is very low. Whatever it cost to make, it was more than that.
If I'm being totally candid, I will report that I don't hate this movie. Berenger ain't great, but ain't terrible either. The movie is somewhat exploitative, but I didn't turn it off in protest either. No, the real problem is that it's totally mediocre in every way. If you're going to do something, do it either really well or really terribly - this movie just gets wedged in between somewhere and falls through the cracks.
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