Saying Anything (1989), Over the Top (1987), Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984)

Triple Feature!

After a regrettably long hiatus due variously to employment, unemployment, my Scotch blog, a bad case of pneumonia, the daunting task of reviewing thousands of films, and general lack of new '80s fare on Comcast, Netflix, etc., I am back with three major movies no one can dispute are icons of '80s pop culture: Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, Over the Top, and Say Anything. 

Say Anything (1989) is now something of a classic, but growing up it had a strange reputation as half chick-flick and half guy-flick. Really, you can sort of say that about any of Cameron Crowe's better movies - they exist in a kind of real space that defies easy explanation, but has both a tender side and a rougher one. 

Starring John Cusack at the very apex of his early career (and easily my favorite role of his entire catalog), Ione Skye as one of the most authentic teenage girls in screen history, and John Mahoney as one of the more believable screen fathers, this movie has fantastic casting both large and small, front to back. Everybody acts like a real human being, which is as much a testament to the great screenplay as well as the actors. 

The plot revolves around the relationship between Diane, the class valedictorian, considered generally untouchable/unreachable/undatable by her peers (Skye) and Lloyd, a popular outsider/budding kickboxer/all-around good guy. Complicating the picture is Diane's father James (Mahoney), a retirement home administrator who has a very clear picture of where he sees his daughter's future going, and that picture does not include Lloyd Dobler. 

Lloyd himself really has no idea what he wants for himself - like the vast majority of graduating 18 year olds after high school - and his great speech about "not wanting to buy anything sold or processed, process anything bought or sold, or sell anything bought... or processed..." is a definite highlight. He is more or less content to be an uncle (his in-film sister is his real sister Joan Cusack), to do his sparring, and to hang around with like-minded friends. The film does a good job showing how Lloyd and Diane expand and enrich each others lives. 

This is so ... real. The '80s had a nice subculture of teen films that pushed fairly realistic behavior even as the slasher films and sex comedies pushed ridiculous behavior and plastic characterizations to the utmost limit. Particularly noteworthy among these realistic teen movies are are the films of John Hughes (Some Kind of Wonderful, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club, and so on), Cameron Crowe, and a few well known titles like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and One Crazy Summer. 

Movies like this are basically long gone, but at least Say Anything is still shown on TV with some regularity. Filled with great dialog ("I gave her my heart... and she gave me a pen") and characters (the small town guys drinking behind the Gas N Sip was particularly close to home) and iconic moments (the boombox playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" is the one that everybody knows), it's worth seeing more than once.

Over the Top (1987) was a favorite of mine as a kid for good reason - a completely insane journey through the world of competitive arm wrestling, the story involves long-haul trucker Lincoln Hawk (what a name! played by Sylvester Stallone) trying to win the affection and eventually custody of his son Michael (playing well by child actor David Mendenhall). 

This movie was basically tailor-made for kids like me in the late '80s - Giant trucks ramming things! Trucks jury rigged with weight lifting equipment! Super macho arm wrestling under extremely sweaty adrenalized conditions! A dad who is a hero destroying mountain-sized competitors named Bull! A grandfather who is rich and showers the kid with gifts including a sweet truck! It's a kid's secret fascist fantasy world of violence and testosterone and idealized parental roles. 

The director was the late Menahem Golan. When I first saw the name in the credits, it rang several bells, so I took a quick sojourn over to IMDB and discovered he directed the worst adaptation of Crime and Punishment I had ever seen, back in 2002, featuring a dreadfully miscast Crispin Glover. 

Digging deeper, I saw he also directed 1986's The Delta Force with Chuck Norris (1986), which is a passable/decent action movie, the intriguing 1989 curio Mack the Knife (with Raul Julia and Richard Harris), 1984's charming Over the Brooklyn Bridge (Elliott Gould, Margaux Hemingway, Sid Caesar), and 1981's Enter the Ninja, a cult classic with legendary status among my peers back in elementary school in the '80s. We would trade the worn VHS back and forth in secret bus-seat back-alley deals, and watch in the middle of the night, worshipping the soft glow of the midnight television. 

The plot is pretty straightforward - Michael is a kid around age 10 or so, and in military school. When school gets out he's forced to go home via giant truck with his father Lincoln Hawk, who he's meeting for the first time. Hawk is a long haul trucker with a busy sideline competing in arm wrestling competitions in various rest stops and diners, and with an eye on the upcoming world arm wrestling competition in Las Vegas. 

As Michael and his father journey across the west, they get to know each other and form a nice father/son bond. However, in the central conflict of the film Michael's maternal grandfather wants custody of him - for no obvious reason except that he has control issues (he tends to scream "I'VE GOT TO HAVE THAT BOY" and things like that). 

There is a very funny episode of How Did This Get Made? about Over the Top, and if you've seen the movie you really should invest the time in the podcast, which skewers all the notoriously stupid elements of the movie, including gems like:

-The insane weight lifting apparatus Hawk has installed in his truck so he can work out while he drives, 
-When Hawk encourages his 10 year old son to take this multi-ton truck down a major road despite not knowing how to drive. 
-How highly televised the Arm Wrestling Championships are, including dominating all the TVs at the airport (!). 
-The complete lack of motivation or history for Hawk's major life decisions. 

This is definitely a movie that could only exist in the '80s.  

Finally, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo is easily one of the most surreal movies I've encountered for this blog (or anywhere else for that matter). It's essentially a psychedelic dance attack with two loose plot threads - first, our heroes (a crew of breakdancers) must stop the destruction of their community rec center. To do so they must enlist the help of the rival crew of breakdancers - by defeating them in repeated neon-soaked dance-offs, of course - and the help of the upper crust rich parents of one of the newest dancers. 

This movie may not be a feast for the mind, but it IS a feast for the eyes and ears. There are some really wild scenes that should be seen at least once, even if you have to YouTube them - like a rail-thin Ice-T (as "Radiotron Rapper") dressed in studded spiked leather performing a song in a colorful tech noir nightclub. Or Turbo (Michael Chambers) dancing across the walls and ceiling of his room in a fantasy sequence. They apparently borrowed the "revolving room" set from A Nightmare on Elm Street, filmed earlier in the year, and put it to ingenious use. 

Another must-see-to-believe sequence has the two crews breakdance fighting to a song called "Combat" also performed by Ice-T. Or the hallucinogenic hospital dance number, where rap and breakdancing literally resurrect the dead. Or ... the list goes on and on. Great choreography by Adrian Dightam. 

This may not be Singing in the Rain, but it is creative and fun and bright. However, I include the strong caveat that you should only watch this movie if (A) you LOVE DANCING and (B) you LOVE THE '80s. Both conditions must be met, or you will be turned off by this. 

Long before I ever saw this, I knew that the term "Electric Boogaloo" referred to an unwanted sequel. It may be hampered with braindead plotting and paper thin characters, but it also has some interesting early rap and other electronic music and some truly strange and athletic dancing. It all takes place amid the brightest day-glo t-shirts you have ever seen. They will seriously burn your retinas. 

The director of Breakin' 2 was Sam Firstenberg, who also directed Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja III, American Ninja 1 & 2... well, you get the idea. 

These three movies had varying success. Say Anything cost $16 million to make, and brought back a modest profit by grossing $20 million. I'm sure it's made a lot more in video rentals and sales over the years, but I'm a little surprised it didn't do better during its theater run. 

Over the Top, meanwhile, did not do well - sadly, the arm wrestling community did not turn out in force to support the movie: it cost $25 million to make (!) and only returned $16 million. 

Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo is a little bit of a mystery: various sources indicate it made about $15 million in the theater, but I can't find how much it cost. I'll hazard a guess that it made its money back. 

Poltergeist (1982)

Sorry for the longggggggggg delay, everyone ... many life changes, much less free time, more hobbies, less sitting still, etc. etc. etc. I'm now way behind "schedule," so I hope to post a lot in the next few days. I'm also going to start a new blog about single malt scotches, may do some cross linking from here to there, etc. 

So, coming back with a one of the big boys of horror - Poltergeist (1982), which is nominally directed by Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre "fame," but produced by Steven Spielberg. 

It FEELS like Spielberg, honestly. We have the unaware/useless parents, the active imperiled children, the supernatural or unexplainable entity which challenges the family to adapt and grow... just on this template alone we have Close Encounters, E.T., Jaws, Temple of Doom (sort of), Empire of the Sun, Hook, Jurassic Park, A.I., War of the Worlds... maybe more.

I've read numerous articles about who "really" directed this movie, and it apparently it WAS Tobe Hooper... but I swear, this movie has the look and feel of a Spielberg, and that's my final offer. It has nothing or less than nothing in common with other Tobe Hooper films - it has everything in common with other Spielbergs. 

The film itself is masterful - one of the great horror movies of all time. The plot is deceptively simple - a family of five (father, mother, son, two daughters) moves into a new house... but quickly discover something is off about the new house - there is a poltergeist (duh). 

The dad is played by Craig T. Nelson, and the mom is played by JoBeth Williams, and they are amazing. In turns bewildered, brave, scared, they run the full range of emotion and are one of the most convincing screen couples in horror movie history. Hell, maybe movie history. They look and feel like a real married couple. 

The kids are also very good, especially the girls - the late Dominique Dunne as the older sister Dana and precocious Heather O'Rourke as the most famous of the family, Carol Ann. Carol Ann is the one who is responsible for The Moment That Everyone Knows, where she reaches out to the TV ... and the TV reaches back. "They're heeeeeeeeere," she says...

The special effects are mind-blowingly amazing... both audio (underrated) and visual. The creepy delay effect they apply to voices from The Other Side is unforgettable. The living tree... the vortex in the kids room ... the seance... the spirits on film... the maggots on the steak... I mean, across the board the movie is frightening as hell. 

It's scary not just in a What The Hell Was That kind of way, which any movie can do, but in a deep, unsettling, disturbing kind of way. In a This Family Is Very Vulnerable kind of way. You feel fairly certain that this could happen in YOUR life. You feel fairly sure that the lines between the living and the dead are very, very blurred.

I had the privilege and pleasure of viewing this movie on the big screen at the AFI during an '80s revival festival a few years back, and it was ten times scarier and more powerful than normally. The soundtrack and audio track especially stood out - I'll never forget the creepy little audio details I caught. 

The movie, of course, was a HUGE smash hit. Made for roughly ten million, it brought back $120,000,000+ and spawned a legion of drastically inferior sequels. The sequels will have to be dealt with at some future date, but I just don't have it in me so soon after returning. 

I also want to give a nod to the magnificent Zelda Rubinstein, who plays the medium Tangina Barrons and is maybe the most identifiable character in the movie outside the family. She has most of the movie's best lines and moments, and people who haven't even seen the film can quote her dialog ... "Go into the light!" This is her apogee, and I'm glad the film is worthy of her. 

Red Dawn (1984), Risky Business (1983)

I saw Red Dawn (1984) at some basic and formative moment in my childhood, like many  boys I grew up with in the '80s. It's basically a version of Rambo for kids - backs against the wall, all of society against you, violence and discipline WILL solve your problems. The story was (is?) highly influential for any boy (and some girls) growing up in the age of the cold war threat of the USSR, which was very real back in the '80s even as the Soviets waned. 

Plot: the Russians and Cubans invade Colorado from Mexico. A renegade group of American teens head for the mountains and the woods and spend a long time resisting, slowly and painfully losing beloved friends to battles and natural rebel attrition. The Russians, impressed and annoyed, spend more and more resources fighting the teens... until finally... well, I won't give it away. I found the ending fairly anticlimactic and ambiguous. 

I would hazard a guess that the movie is a Conservative's dream - the Soviet threat is very real, the self-imposed martial law of the rebels benefits everyone who follows the rules, brave American youth stand tall in the face of adversity with the help of lots and lots of guns - but it's also surprisingly dark and grim. Many of our heroes and heroines die. Many civilians are murdered. The town is blown up. The kids are essentially terrorists, although defending their nation (which no one ever seems to consider). 

The cast is a classic '80s ensemble lineup - probably on par with the Breakfast Club or Hannah and Her Sisters or one of those large casts of iconic actors. Check this out: Patrick Swayze... Charlie Sheen (film debut)... C. Thomas Howell... Harry Dean Stanton.... Lea Thompson... Jennifer Grey... Powers Boothe... Frank McRae... et al. Impressive! And they're all good.

The film also LOOKS much better than I remembered. Crisp, great greens and whites of forest and snow, great red explosions, etc. Good cinematography across the board. 

Directed by John Milius, the action writing and directing legend who made The Wind and the Lion, Big Wednesday, the immortal Conan the Barbarian, Farewell to the King, wrote Apocalypse Now and many others. The movie honestly feels a little long, but is worth it. It's a movie that really embodies one of the core mindsets of the '80s - the Reagan-centric anti-communist back-to-the-'50s family-first mindset seen obliquely in other movies (Back to the Future's famous obsession with the values of the '50s; the long list of pro-USA anti-communist movies like The Day After, War Games, Rambo III, Top Gun, Rocky IV, Invasion USA; the overlapping list of movies glorifying military force). 

Red Dawn, predictably, was a big hit. Made for $4.2 million, it brought back $38 million - almost a tenfold return. And it makes sense - the movie hit all kinds of resonant notes in 1984, and hit enough even now that it was remade in 2012. No, I didn't see it. 

Risky Business (1983), meanwhile, is a movie I both like and dislike. I like very much the atmosphere and feel of the movie; I dislike very much the emotions present in it. 

The plot is pretty simple. Tom Cruise is high school senior Joel Goodsen (Good son, get it? GET IT?) and aspiring businessman, hoping to go to Princeton, whose parents go out of town on a trip. Like every '80s kid whose parents go away, Cruise goes c.r.a.z.y. He not only takes his dad's Porsche out for numerous spins - although, sadly, the Porsche doesn't stack up against the killer lineup I saw in No Man's Land earlier this week - he gets involved with a prostitute, hosts a brothel in his house, gets in a lot of hot water and has to get out of it, and has to restore the status quo by the time his parents return. 

The movie has a great synthy soundtrack (Tangerine Dream!!) that I really really like. It feels extremely 1983, if that makes sense:

and

That should explain pretty well. I really like those types of orchestral/synth combinations that emerged in the early '80s. 

The movie is one of a million that takes place in and around Chicago - why did Chicago feature so heavily in the '80s and '90s and now has almost totally disappeared as a locale in movies?? I miss it. The movie takes place mainly at night and looks fantastic - shadows everywhere, dark blues and greens, grays, street lights and lit windows. Well done. 

The cast is solid. I actually dislike the female lead - Rebecca De Mornay in her film debut. I know they were trying for "mysterious" but her lack of emotion comes across as awkward instead. She really hit her stride in the '90s, but we will see her develop a lot as an actress throughout the '80s. Here, not so much.

Cruise is great. I'll be honest, because it's easy to smash his later work (Valkyrie, anyone??) and of course his public persona has taken a huge, huge hit - it's hard to imagine he will ever recover the insane levels of cool he had in the '80s. I've read that his use of the Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses in this movie brought Ray-Ban from the edge of bankruptcy into financial success. That's how cool Cruise was. 

And here he projects just the right levels of naive, ambitious, desperate, confident, fun, scared, etc. - all in turns. Like a real high school senior. He was perfectly cast. Meanwhile, I think Joe Pantoliano was perfectly cast as well as Guido The Pimp. High reedy voice, menacing body language, relies on subtext to get his threats across... it's the same role Pantoliano ALWAYS plays (see: Memento, The Goonies, Running Scared, Midnight Run, et al ... everything except his terribly miscast role as a dance show DJ in The In Crowd, reviewed last year). 

The Princeton interviewer, the parents, and ESPECIALLY Cruise's high school friends (Curtis Armstrong! BRONSON PINCHOT!!!) are all pitch perfect as well. Another casting coup. 

So what don't I like about the movie? It embodies a sort of materialistic nihilism I don't care for. The only thing that matter are success, sex, fast cars, big houses, Ivy League schools. Who cares about the prostitutes beyond the pleasure of the moment? Who cares about Cruise's strained relationship with his emotionally unavailable parents? Who cares about the fates of his friends? Not this movie. It is very much a product of the Me Decade.... but the darker side of it. Cruise's character is insanely privileged and I hard time feeling bad for him.

That said, the movie is still fun and moves quickly and the opening and closing voiceovers bookened it nicely. It was a huge megahit, like Red Dawn - made for $6.2 million, it made ten times that - $63 million. Written and directed by Paul Brickman, who intriguingly only made three movies, although no others in the '80s. Strange. 

It's one of the iconic hits of the entire 1980's and people STILL make videos copying the famous underwear dance Cruise does right after his parents depart. I'll leave you with that famous scene:

No Man's Land (1987), Witness (1985)

No Man's Land (1987) was a movie I had never heard of, no one I knew had ever heard of, and the internet has very little footprint for. Yet it is one of the better gems this blog has unearthed - a classic Donnie Brasco-esque story about the perils of undercover work, except here involving a stolen Porsche ring run by yuppies (!!!!). 

This is a topic I'm especially interested in - my uncle has been well known Porsche mechanic in my region for over 35 years, and I grew up around Porsches, oily Porsche parts, Porsche rims laying in the grass behind my grandmother's house, the works. PORSCHE. So this movie was extra fun for me. 

The plot is pretty simple yet effective anyway - D. B. Sweeney is a hotshot Porsche mechanic who apparently knows everything and more about the cars, and is recruited by the cops to infiltrate a Porsche theft ring. Eventually though his loyalties become cloudy and divided and he can't easily tell right from wrong anymore. Until it's too late (dum dum DUMMMMM). Meanwhile, he begins a romance with the theft ring's sister ... another In Too Deep symptom. 

His undercover handler is Randy Quaid, and the leader of the ring is ... Charlie Sheen!!! And  this is one of Sheen's best roles. He's dirty yet appealing, crooked yet charming, evil yet exciting. He is perfectly cast here. Sweeney, too, is well cast. He looks fresh and boyish enough to pull off his naivety,  but adult enough to do the things he does. The whole cast other than these guys is great as well. 

The movie looks fantastic - glossy cars, glossy guns, interesting settings, interesting outfits, lots for the eye to feast on. Why is it so unknown? I have no idea. It was directed by Peter Werner, who did a couple movies but a TON of TV movies, and now works in TV series, including several episodes of my beloved Justified. Good on you, Peter Werner. And nice job here. It was written by Dick Wolf, who everyone knows from his work writing and producing Law and Order. 

It grossed, according to Wikipedia, $2,800,000 ... but I can't find any info on how much it cost to make, so no idea if it was successful or not. Probably not so much. But I can tell you that I wish I had seen this when I was younger. It's exciting and interesting and on top of everything else it great, well-choreographed chase scenes. 

Factoid: No Man's Land is Brad Pitt's film debut!!! Good luck finding him. I was glued to the screen and somehow completely missed him. Apparently he's a waiter. 

Meanwhile, Witness (1985) I *did* see as a kid, and liked it a lot. It's a pretty well known movie, especially among Harrison Ford fans. 

The plot is somewhat unusual - an Amish family on a trip into the city (Philadelphia) experiences an unexpected trauma when little boy Samuel (Luke Haas in his signature role) witnesses a murder. Harrison Ford (detective John Book ... that's right, he does things ::drumroll:: by the Book) is assigned to the murder and at first callously drags around the little boy and his mother. But when the boy identifies the murderer as a cop, Ford realizes it's too hot to remain in Philly and they all end up back in Amish country.

While there, Ford starts a small romance, learns the beauty of the simple, moral life, participates in community life, and eventually solves the crime as the villains discover the whereabouts of the witness and decide to clean up the messy affair. 

A lot of the movie is about Ford's character's transformation from a cynical city detective whose sister enumerates all his many social problems to the Amish mother Rachel (played very well by Kelly McGillis) into someone who finds value in being around other people, being helpful, being sensitive, and really listening for a change. The pace of his life slows by a factor of ten, and it helps him a lot. 

A great scene that illustrates this is when Detective Book helps the community raise a barn. It's also a sort of sly in-joke, because Harrison Ford was a carpenter before he was an actor, and his skills get put on display a little bit. Nice touch. The whole scene is very well executed. Another classic scene I appreciated more this viewing was when Book dances with Rachel to Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World." Really nicely done. 

Notable here, as well, is Danny Glover as a really villainous bastard who has one of the better death scenes I can remember from cop dramas. Speaking of, the film has a very tense climax that reminds me of High Noon where the hero has to outwit the villains by navigating a strange small environment and using it to his advantage. 

Factoid: this is the film debut of Viggo Mortensen! 

Witness was directed by the rather well known Australian Peter Weir, who film students love, and who made some great films like Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Year of Living Dangerously, Gallipoli... and some well-liked Hollywood fare like Dead Poets Society, Green Card, The Truman Show, Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, and recently The Way Back. Quite the pedigree. 

Witness's release was a case of bad timing, as it competed head to head with Beverly Hills Cop, which everyone knows was one of the smash monster hits of the entire decade. But Witness still did well - there is a big slice of demographics where the two don't overlap - it cost $12 million to make and brought back $65 million. Very respectable. This one comes with my seal of approval.

The Gate (1987); Party Animal (1985)

I am about to review two movies that were complete surprises, in absolutely opposite ways. 

The Gate (1987) was much better than expected; The Party Animal (1985) really lowered the bar. Low, low, lowwwwwwwww.  Let's get into them. 

The Gate is about two friends who open a geode found in a pit in their backyard and unleash a demon menace. The demons are all about a foot tall, and are filmed in claymation, and the effects are surprisingly creative and well conceived. I was impressed! 

Maybe the most often shown scene is the one where a demon's arm gets severed in a door, and falls the floor - only to split up into rapidly moving maggots to crawl quickly under the door and reassemble on the other side. It's creepy, and astonishing, and only one of several great effects - like the (in)famous eyeball-in-the-palm that was used to exceptional effect in Pan's Labyrinth. 

The movie really pulls no punches - the movie doesn't mess around about showing you parental abandonment, little kids perishing and being cruelly tricked, and gruesome death scenes. Unusual for a film aimed at kids (presumably), but also a smart choice in context. 

The movie also has a great heavy metal slant to it, where the demons are thought to be unchained by a metal album called The Dark Book; the best friend character Terry wears a great jacket featuring the logo of the Killer Dwarfs. 

Interesting update: the movie is slated to be remade by Alex Winter (of Bill and Ted fame) this coming year, with creature design by H. R. Giger (of Alien fame)! I will absolutely go see that. 

The movie was made for only $2.5 million, but made back over $13 million - a sizeable success. And honestly, it deserves it. It's not the greatest horror movie of the decade - or even the greatest kids horror movie - but it's very good for what it is.  It was directed by Tibor Takasc, who also made a few episodes of TV - "Red Shoe Diaries" and "Outer Limits," along with a couple movies I don't know, including a sequel to The Gate made in 1990.

The Party Animal... wow. What to even say??? This movie was clearly made by amateurs, for amateurs. Everything here is broken. It makes the worst scenes in Ghoulies look like outtakes from The Godfather. 

The plot is that Pondo Sinatra (seriously. No, seriously. Stop laughing) is a farm boy, raised among chickens, brought to college on a turnip truck. His rural status is emphasized by his wearing a freaking Confederate flag on every item of clothing he possesses. He is desperate, desperate to get laid in college. That is the plot. Pondo wants sex. 

Except everything is terrible. Pondo looks like he's 44 and balding badly. His roommate and "best friend" (huh?!) looks 37. The college is filled with foxy babes who are CONSTANTLY doing aerobics and stretches, for no reason. 

Pondo tries many idiotic ploys to trick girls into sex - he tries to be a pimp (and gets an afro pick stuck in his forehead for his trouble; honestly, he should have been murdered for his racist schtick), he tries becoming a "punk" (and ends up looking like some deformed Quasimodo/Frankenstein hybrid), and in the movie's ONLY working scene, he tries becoming well versed in sex toys.

The sex shop scene is kind of amazing. It is filmed in black and white FOR NO REASON AT ALL, and mostly features moron Pondo mugging with sex toys while two clerks discuss global nuclear armament using dildos as props. One of the clerks is channeling Brando, and quotes from On the Waterfront. The whole scene is so surreal and inexplicable, it feels like it was filmed by a different director for a different movie. 

Following that is a nonfunctional Benny Hill-esque gag, and finally Pondo decides to simply become a rapist, and invent a love potion that will force women to sleep with him. He fails a million times, disturbingly, as his love potions turn women into gorillas, aliens, mummies, skeletons, zombies, etc. It's awful. AWFUL. 

Then, offensively, one of his potions works and he is literally sexed to DEATH by every woman on the planet. Did I mention there is apparently a goddess watching over him that allows this to happen? Or that his death comes at the hands of five plump women at a laundromat, which is insanely offensive? Or that the Wise Black Janitor seems to be named Elbow??!!??!!??!

This movie is insanely terrible. It descends below "cult classic" and enters "memorable garbage" territory. I will say it has a decent soundtrack. Otherwise, you have to see it to believe it. But please do not see it. Please. 

True Confessions (1981)

True Confessions (1981) is proof that Robert DeNiro was capable of phoning it in even during the height of his prime - maybe a foreshadowing of his current half-retirement. Currently, it seems like whatever film he's in, he wandered onto the set and maybe someone waved a script in his direction, once. And, sadly, this movie is no pinnacle for Robert Duvall, either. 

The plot is pretty banal - a group of priests are in league with the mob to get church projects developed for cheap, while the mob gets respectability and high culture ins, etc etc. Meanwhile up and coming priest Desmond (De Niro) has a brother Tom (Duvall) who is a hard-nosed homicide cop who is investigating the brutal murder of a young prostitute. 

But even though the movie looks great, and is shot with workmanlike style, it's boring. It's dry as mummy dust. It's like reading an 11-page newspaper article about construction corruption, when you don't care. De Niro is nothing special (!!!) and Duvall isn't any more interesting. Both actors seemed contractually obligated to be here. Definitely not a labor of love. 

It's actually difficult to watch this movie, it's so dry and boring. The plot has too few characters, the emotional breadth is too narrow, the acting feels so forced, the plot is uninteresting... I have no idea how this got made. 

It was directed by a man with the incredible name of Ulu Grosbard, who made two early movies with Dustin Hoffman, and also made Falling in Love with DeNiro, and later The Deep End of the Ocean with Michelle Pfeiffer. So he's no stranger to good actors; but boy does he waste them here.

My sister is going to kill me for saying so, but the script is flat. And was written by the otherwise amazing Joan Didion (along with her husband, based on his novel). But it's just TOO real - real in the mundane sense, where you honestly don't care. 

William F. Buckley panned this movie, rightly, and said that DeNiro is woefully miscast. This is true. He isn't convincing in this role, at all. Coming a year after Jake La Motta in Raging Bull, I can only assume this was a "palate cleansing" project, meant to clean away the remnants of such a vibrant, violent character. 

Yet critics liked it. It brought in $12mil, but I have no figures for how much it cost. Recommended only for DeNiro or Duvall completionists. It's the perfect counterpart to The Godfather Part II, where each of those actors turns in a masterwork. Here? Forgettable, and, more unpardonable, boringly so. 

Ghoulies (1985)

Ghoulies (1985) is cheap, cheap trash. Sub-community theater-level garbage. It makes Troll look like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. It makes Puppetmaster look like Nosferatu. It has only one thing going for it - the ghoulies themselves, who are creative and have senses of humor and are generally gross in a fun way. 

Wait! What's this, you say? A year before this was another movie where humorous little green monsters are summoned and wreak terrible havoc? What's it called?

Oh yeah, Gremlins. Gremlins crushes this movie in every way. Although, if I'm being entirely fair to this movie, I read on Wikipedia that this movie was actually intended to come out in 1983 or so, meaning it is roughly contemporary with Gremlins. But enough comparisons, let's take this turd on its own merits, or lack thereof. 

It opens with one of the least fun, most poorly acted sequences I've ever seen, where a many-years-ago coven meeting goes awry when a sacrifice can't be performed. Yawn. Then there is an abrupt cut to the titles, which is made doubly jarring by jaunty, lively music totally at odds with the F-class acting we just saw. 

The remainder of the movie deals with the son of the coven leader, in the present day, as he tries to assume his father's powers and summons Le Ghoulies in the meantime. And the ghoulies ... boy are they a trip. They are clearly cheap plastic dolls covered in vaseline, but whoever is animating them is doing a great job, because they move in JUST such a way that they are funny and have personalities. Which can't be easy given their construction. 

I was five when it came out, and probably about eight when I saw it first, but it was a pretty popularly known movie among my set in the late '80s, early '90s. And honestly, half the charm is the poster/VHS cover, showing a ghoulie popping out of a toilet with the positively submental tagline "They'll get you in the end!" To an eight-year-old, though, that is solid genius of the highest order. The Moby Dick of taglines and concepts, if you will.

The movie has some truly bizarre sequences that seem like the belong in another movie completely - when the green-glowy-eyed sorcerer summons two little people to be his familiars/helpers/jesters/whatever they are. It's so strange, and seems like it should be in an F-grade Italian sword-and-sorcery film. 

Or the totally '80s Sunglasses At Night Dinner Party, where the ghoulies hide in the food for no apparent reason, and then becomes a truly stupid seance, maybe the worst committed to film. Or the breakdancing stoner who seems be simply having a seizure right in front of us. 

Oh! Mariska Hargitay is in this, her debut movie (!!), many many years before Law and Order: SVU.

But make no mistake: this was a highly successful film. Made for a million dollars, it became a huge cult classic on VHS, probably in the eight-to-ten market that I fell in, and ended up grossing like $35,000,000 (!). The director was Luca Percovici, who made a few '80s horror movies, including Frightmare, which I have fonder memories of. 

There were several sequels made, but only the first one, Ghoulies II, was released in the 1980's, so I don't have to suffer too much more. 

Running Scared (1986)

Sometimes comedians don't realize they are not good at a certain kind of comedy. That is the case with Running Scared (1986), where no one had the guts to tell Billy Crystal or Gregory Hines that they make terrible, unfunny cops. 

Billy Crystal is a funny guy, normally. But as we saw in Memories of Me, he can also be an awful, unfunny mess. Now Memories of Me was a drama, more or less, but Running Scared is SUPPOSED to be a comedy - just look at that awful DVD cover art! - and he totally bungles it. 

My theory is that the '80s were so rife with movies where cops acted fast and loose - 48 Hours, To Live and Die in LA, Year of the Dragon, Manhunter, Robocop, Lethal Weapon, Sea of Love, Stakeout, Cop, and above all Beverly Hills Cop - that Billy Crystal thought he could get away with this. He was very very wrong. The divide that separates Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop and Billy Crystal in Running Scared is unbridgeable. 

So the movie itself... which is no good... is about two cops, Ray and Danny (Hines and Crystal), who try and take down Julio, the local crime... guy... thing... boss. They bust "Snake" (Joe Pantoliano) and try to turn him against Julio, but it goes haywire and only their craaaaaaaaaaaazy antics get them through. Ugh. Then they are shipped off to Key West on a forced vacation by their boss (Dan Hedaya), where they decide to retire and open a bar. Yawn. When they return to Chicago they hear Julio is loose, and decide to do One Last Bust before retiring. Also, they have to train their replacements. 

Honestly, the plot is paper thin ... thin as carbon paper, which is appropriate because this plot is copied off of better cop movies over the years. Rogue cops ... retirement dreams ... one last big bust ... evil gang kingpin ... yadda yadda yawn. There is nothing new here, and the childish comedy antics don't infuse any new blood at all into the tired script. 

So who is responsible for this mess? The director was Peter Hyams, who also made Capricorn One, Outland (which I like), The Star Chamber, 2010 (!), Timecop (uh oh), Sudden Death (uhhh ohhhh), The Relic (uhhhhhhhhh ohhhhhhhhhhh), and finally A Sound of Thunder, a movie I saw in the theater and really wish I hadn't. 

So his career experienced a notable decline, and I place the beginning right at the doorstep of Running Scared, aka no one's favorite cop movie, ever anywhere. The movie was written by Gary DeVore, who also wrote Raw Deal and Traxx and not a lot else. I see the Raw Deal similarity - if you added terrible jokes to Raw Deal, it might resemble this movie. 

It grossed $38 million at the box office, but I have no idea what it cost to make. My guess is it broke even or made a small profit. I sincerely doubt it was a runaway hit, especially as NO ONE I knew in the '80s, man woman or child, talked about this movie. Not recommended.  

The Mighty Quinn (1989)

This is a movie I had never, ever heard of: The Mighty Quinn (1989). It's apparently a murder mystery featuring Denzel Washington fairy early in his career, just before his big breaks to stardom. 

Apparently the late Roger Ebert praised this movie to the high heavens and called it one of the best films of 1989. Well, I saw it, and it isn't. It's interesting, but not in the same league as Do the Right Thing, My Left Foot, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Say Anything, et al. Ebert's main points in the brief one paragraph synopsis I read were that (1) it was fun and (2) it was underlooked. Well, OK. Sure. I'm also fun and underlooked, and I'm not a best film of 1989 either. 

Nevertheless, it is better than it should be considering that almost no one has heard of it. Denzel is Xavier, a police chief of a town in Jamaica, and has a really, really good accent throughout. Seriously good. He could teach Jamaican accents. 

There is a murder of a very important, rich man on the island, and a lot of money is apparently missing. Denzel (for some reason I prefer calling him by his real name than his character) is tasked with finding his childhood friend Maubee, who is the last person seen in the vicinity - in fact, who Denzel stopped for speeding/reckless driving just moments after the murder, without realizing he was a suspect. Maubee goes to ground, Denzel searches for him, and meanwhile high political pressure begins to bear on him from above - where is the money? Why can't you find the money? Who has the money? Where is Maubee? WHO is Maubee? 

Whenever Denzel digs deep into the crime, he is chastised and threatened and cajoled, etc. The mystery deepens as the movie progresses, but I won't give anything away in case you should someday catch this on TV. But there are several clever things going on that all come together near the end. 

The movie is dripping in atmosphere - vibrant sun, interesting characters with seemingly full lives of their own (my favorite was Esther Rolle as a witch who laughs and laughs and laughs when she tricks Denzel into opening a wicker basket full of snakes). There is also a lot of music in the movie, much of it reggae, much of it very good, including a version of the title song (written by Bob Dylan). 

I liked this movie, although I didn't love it. The pacing was too elastic - it felt like the tension would suddenly appear for no reason and then vanish again. There were one or two subplots that, although they were interesting, distracted me from something that felt more important. The camera work was also awkward - although there were a couple interesting shots where a character would seemingly look at the camera, only for a reveal that they were looking at another character just off camera. A few surprises, but nothing shattering. 

It was directed by Carl Schenkel, who is German and who made nothing I have heard of before or since. The movie grossed $4.5 mil, which feels about right, and was probably good for the budget. 

Worth catching if you find it somewhere. 

Leviathan (1989)

I owned Leviathan (1989) on VHS back when I was a kid. I didn't yet know who Peter Weller, Daniel Stern, Ernie Hudson, Richard Crenna, or any of the rest of the cast were ... but I knew I liked it. Also, I was nine years old and a fool. 

So let's be honest here - this is a pretty trashy aquatic horror film. For reference, see The Abyss; Death Ship; "The Raft" segment of Creepshow 2; Dead Calm; Jaws; and especially Deepstar Six, which was the same era and sucked even worse. Despite the ridiculous cast, who knows how they all got signed up for this, this movie really doesn't work on ANY level.

The movie begins deep underwater at a mining station, looking for "silver and other rare metals." Yeah, OK. You and everyone else. Then one of the workers, in a giant mech suit, starts hyperventilating wildly - to the point that a little red skull-and-bones light starts flashing on his control panel. That's NEVER good. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the team - mostly post-Robocop Peter Weller - try to get him back into the station while over-the-top dramatic music plays (featuring a xylophone!). So, tension from the word go. 

This movie wants, desperately, to be Alien. The scene where they are all eating around a table is cribbed directly from Alien. Even the character types are similar. Poor Daniel Stern is terribly wasted here. We have the sober leader, the loose cannon, the comedian, the paranoid-for-no-reason, the sexy girl, the doctor, the black guy, etc. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

The effects in this movie are ... bad. I'm sorry, Stan Winston, effects master of so many movies. They are piss poor. The spider that pops out in a cheap surprise near the beginning is approximately 1/10000th the quality of the Alien face-hugger it is obviously copied from. Even as a little kid, I knew these effects were trash garbage. I could have made better with a stop-motion camera and lint from my shag carpet. 

The basic plot, if you can call it that, is that this team of sub-marine miners encounter a terrible monster while trapped under the sea. This is somehow totally different than encountering a terrible monster while trapped deep in space, if you're continuing the analogies to Alien. Which was also about miners, by the way. Except all the characters acted like real human beings with realistic emotions, and the monster was damned horrifying. 

This movie, sadly, is like making a copy of something that has already been xeroxed about ten times. Every element that worked in Alien doesn't work here. The characters are thin and aren't given good dialog to speak. The computer effects somehow look infinitely less futuristic than Alien's decade-earlier depiction. The monster is half-assed at best. The tension is uneven. The music is too omnipresent and too serious. And, worst of all, the actors are all misused. Alien took unknowns and made them amazing. This movie takes established good actors and trashes them. 

Leviathan was directed by George P. Cosmatos, whose '80s movies include Of Unknown Origin, Rambo First Blood Part II (YESSSSSS), Cobra (YESSSSSSSSSSSSS), and this dreck. Then he made Tombstone in 1993, which is probably underrated and has great acting and great dialog, so go figure. 

His movies, until Tombstone, have a definite commonality - an emphasis on cheap action with tons of shooting and explosions, dialog that seems generally uncomfortable with the English language (like Cobra's "You're the disease... I'm the cure" or however that awkward one-liner goes), paper thin character types, and big bombastic scores that push the emotion the film is unable to provide. 

The movie was written by David Webb Peebles, who wrote very good scripts for Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys, and Unforgiven - the first and last being undisputed masterpieces. How on EARTH did he write this thing? Did someone massacre it after he was done? Did someone drop the script on the floor and pick up the pages in the wrong order? Did he go into a fugue state? Did someone impersonate him? Was he badly in debt to the Mob? What happened?!?!?!

 The film grossed $15,000,000 (how???), but I couldn't find any data on what it cost to make. Maybe it made money, maybe it broke even, maybe it lost. It's anyone's guess. Please avoid this. 

Valley Girl (1983)

Valley Girl (1983) is the first movie where Nick Cage is billed as Nick Cage and not Nick Coppola. It's also the first movie in the '80s directed by Martha Coolidge (City Girls, Joy of Sex, the fantastic Real Genius, and the underrated Plain Clothes). It also has a fantastic soundtrack, which I'll cover in a bit. 

The story is simple - our heroine Julie (Debbie Foreman, who is otherwise known to me from the horror movie Waxwork) is having what passes for an existential crisis in the San Fernando Valley - she is popular, her dick boyfriend Tommy (Michael Bowen, who's career has really picked up lately) is popular, her friends are popular, she looks great, wears the right clothes, talks, like, the right talk... but something is amiss.

Julie dumps Tommy, and ends up falling for bad boy Randy (Cage), who is most certainly not from the Valley. He's a punk, as is his friend Fred (Cameron Dye) and extremely uncool among the upper-middle class circle Julie runs with. Fred's opening line on the "date" with Julie and her friend Stacey is extremely memorable: "Hi, I'm Fred. I like tacos, '71 cabernet, and my favorite color is magenta." ZING. 

As you might imagine, there are many Romeo/Juliet like struggles with love between forbidden sects of society - Julie's friends HATE Randy and love Tommy the superjerk... Randy is romantic, in his way, and smart, and keeps trying. Eventually he gets traction... but how will that play out? 

Let's make an aside for the soundtrack. If you like early '80s New Wave / New Pop / Pop Wave / Wave New / Synth Wave / Wave Wave / whatever you want to call it, you are doing just fine here. Let's examine this murderer's row of great synth pop: 

• Johnny, Are You Queer? by the Josie Cotton
• Girls Like Me by Bonnie Hayes
• A Million Miles Away by The Plimsouls
• Eyes of a Stranger by the Payolas
• I Melt With You by Modern English
• Who Can It Be Now? by Men at Work
• Love My Way by the Psychedelic Furs
• Jukebox by the Flirts

Awesome. I Melt With You is probably the best-known song these days, and closes out the movie... but my secret favorite is Love My Way. That's an all-nighter in my book. 

This movie was made on the serious cheapside. To the tune of $350,000, which is crazy low. ESPECIALLY when you consider it became an instant hit and made something like $17,000,000. That is highly impressive, and helped launch Nicholas Cage into more '80s movies like Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Peggy Sue Got Married, etc. etc. 

I also really like the subplot with Skip and Suzie's mom, especially when Beth (the mom) drops all kinds of reference to The Graduate ("plastics") and Skip, dumb as a stone, stares back at her vacantly and uncomprehending. 

This movie looks, sounds, and probably smells thoroughly '80s. Everything is bright - bright purple and pink jackets ... bright yellow pants ... bright red punk hair ... bright pink lipstick. And the dialog is, of course, famous. Everything plays off the success of the Frank/Moon Unit Zappa song of the year before. Like, totally, whoa, whoa, like ... yeah, totally. Maybe most famous is Randy's mocking rejoinder to Julie late in the movie: "Well fuck you, for sure, like, totally." 

This is definitely a pure '80s artifact, in that the culture is one of the characters in the film rather than just a backdrop. Recommended. 

Back to School (1986)

If you couldn't figure it out from my review of Easy Money (1983), I love Rodney Dangerfield. I have no idea why, exactly, but I know that like my love of the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, and Abbott and Costello it was formed at a very early age. And today's review is a movie - Back to School (1986) - that I think is probably his best known and most beloved, and therefore a real treat to get to. 

Everyone has strange moments of synergy in their lives where they discover, for whatever reason, that everyone in the room has the same birthday, or everyone is related to a former president, or everyone's favorite drink is pink gin. In my case, I was once at a party in my sophomore year college apartment where everyone had some life-changing story affixed to Back to School. How it came up I have no memory. 

One guy said it had brought his parents back to together after a fight (?!), another girl said it had made her quit the diving team (!!), a third guy simply said it was the greatest movie ever made and then promptly passed out on our couch, a hero and legend until the end of days. 

I have no similar story -  I just really like the movie. I first caught it on TV, probably Fox 5/45 back in the late '80s or early '90s. The opening is great - a black and white vignette featuring Wayne from The Wonder Years bringing his Old World father a failing report card. The father yells at him, You've Got To Go To College!!! and Wayne sneers and generally declines. We cut to the present day...

The credits then run, with a great montage of vintage photos, including baby pictures, of Rodney Dangerfield. He runs a men's clothing store called Big and Fat, and has a son he misses a lot and wishes he saw more of. But hey, when you're a big time corporate exec, it's tough to find time for your kids...

...unless you're our hero Thornton Melon (Dangerfield, of course) and you make your own rules. I could easily go through this movie scene by scene, but that might/would get boring (for you) really quickly. So I'll hit a few major plot points and then some topics. After getting a divorce from his horrendous young wife ("Adam and Evil" says Rodney after catching her with another man), Dangerfield orders his amazing chauffeur (played masterfully by the incomparable Burt Young) to go to the university where his son studies. One part of the family crumbles, better reinforce the rest. 

His son, sadly, is a wimp. And a dweeb. His best friend and roommate, amazingly, is Robert Downey Jr. with wild dyed hair. And this son (played by Keith Gordon) can't hack it and is about to drop out - a major blow to proud parent Dangerfield who never attended school himself. Solution? GO TO COLLEGE WITH YOUR SON!!! Brilliant. 

But let's pause to discuss the cast here. It's a murderer's row - Ned Beatty is the dean, Sally Kellerman is the teacher/love interest, character actor Paxton Whitehead is Dr. Barbay, M. Emmet Walsh is Coach Turnbull, Adrienne Barbeau, Kurt Vonnegut as himself, and - by far my favorite - Sam Kinison is in this, at Dangerfield's real-life insistence, as Professor Terguson. Kinison is fantastic and very memorable as a teacher of contemporary American history.

In fact, my strongest memory of this film after the famous Triple Lindy dive is Kinison's reaction to a student's depiction of the end of Vietnam - it's vintage Kinison, screaming over-the-top comedy as he steadily melts down until he's yowling at full bore in his way. And then is marvelously defused by Dangerfield. 

Speaking of the Triple Lindy, another great point: Dangerfield's character was a trick diver as a young man and he gets back into it at school. Turns out Rodney Dangerfield himself was a trick diver in real life! Who knew? However, I am almost certainly the diving in the film is done by a body double. 

The movie was filmed both at University of Wisconsin, Madison and UCLA, and both look amazing. These are the kind of idealized college campuses that made me actually want to go to college as kid. Everything is green and landscaped and people are mulling around everywhere looking cool.

Remember how in the last Dangerfield movie I reviewed, Easy Money, he sang Funiculi Funicula? In this one he does a spirited version of Twist and Shout, which further reinforces my belief that he really wants to be a musician at heart. Or at least comes out of that vaudeville tradition where comedians were expected to have more than one talent to get by. 

Singing aside, his best performance is probably when he recites Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" for his oral exam. Surprisingly good. 

Also, Oingo Boingo does a great job playing "Dead Man's Party" at a wild party. 

I don't know how much it cost to make, but in combined theater and rental profits it grossed (according to IMDB) $150 million (!!). That is major in terms of 1986. This was a big success and probably led to Dangerfield making things like Lady Bugs and his unforgettably disturbing role in Natural Born Killers. 

I am a big fan of this movie. Excellent Friend Rob says this is both overrated and underrated, and that is spot on. It doesn't quite deserve the Pinnacle of All Dangerfield Comedies, nor does it deserve the Greatest Comedy of the '80s Award either ... but it's no humble fare, and is very funny in all the right ways. Dangerfield and whoever else wrote the story did a great job tailoring the role to his natural persona, so he is funny but vulnerable and realistic. He actually has soulful scenes, which is not what people think of when this movie gets thrown around. Everyone remembers the Triple Lindy, but nobody remembers the tender dinner scene where Dangerfield ruefully acknowledges his failed marriages. 

Heartily endorsed.

Stripes (1981), Johnny Be Good (1988)

Stripes (1981) might be the funniest modern military movie ever made. The list isn't that long - M*A*S*H, Biloxi Blues, Catch-22, Sgt. Bilko, Private Benjamin, and 1941. No, I don't count Pauly Shore's In the Army Now. 

Stripes is about two malcontents - one depressed newly single man with nothing to lose, John (Bill Murray) and his wise-ass friend who is sort of drifting and bored, Russell (Harold Ramis). It's weird seeing these Ghostbusters before they were Ghostbusters, but the chemistry is still there. 

At boot camp they meet a few more live wires, including the ever-hilarious John Candy as "Ox," who's only there to use basic training as a sort of personal fat camp, and the great Judge Reinhold as "Elmo." 

The movie is fun, Fun, FUN!! I can't tell you how many times I laughed out loud, which is pretty rare for this jaded movie watcher. The scenes in the beginning where Bill Murray quits taxi driving... forever. The scenes in basic during the obstacle courses. Bill Murray doing endless, endless pushups as punishment for his incessant, hilarious mouthing off. Bill and Harold transforming their march into motown glory:

Or how about the scene where Ox turns out to be a (self-described!) "aggressive gambler." Or the (in)famous mud wrestling scene! This movie is wonderful, front to back. But as easy as it could have been to simply turn into a long series of skits (it was riding the SNL high, after all), it actually some loose semblance of a plot. 

After barely graduating basic training, John and his platoon of misfits is given an assignment out on the hem of the iron curtain. When many of the platoon are captured on the wrong side of the line, John, Russell, and Sgt. Hulka (the drill sergeant, masterfully played by Warren Oates) have to go get them back ... without starting World War III. 

I should also include the women here - P.J. Soles and Sean Young, both great as MPOs. I've been running across Sean Young a lot on this blog lately - first No Way Out, then The Boost, and now this. Maybe I'll do Blade Runner soon and round her out career...

I heartily endorse Stripes from about every angle. It's not just a funny movie, it's entirely from the early '80s - the tension with the Soviet bloc was at an all-time high, but coexisting with the sudden cynicism that allowed for broad satire of the military at the same time. Maybe it's because I saw this at a fairly early age (9?) but it feels '80s to me through and through.

Fun Fact #1: John Larroquette was drunk for almost all his scenes. 
Fun Fact #2: This was originally intended as a vehicle for Cheech and Chong (!!).

Stripes was a huge, huge hit. Costing $10 million to make, it brought home $85 million, which allowed director Ivan Reitman the clout to make later classics like Ghostbusters, Legal Eagles, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, Ghostbusters II (which I don't much like), and Dave, among many others. Quite a run, there.  

On the OTHER side of the comedy coin we have Johnny Be Good (1988), which is dreck. Famously so. 

The basic plot is that high school football star Johnny Walker (SERIOUSLY??) is being recruited by major programs all across America, and he has to decide what is right (and wrong) for him and his friends and his family. Go to State and be close to his girlfriend, but forsaking football? Go to a major (and majorly corrupt) program far away, where they promise him great things? 

Already we hit a huge, huge problem: Johnny is played by Anthony Michael Hall. Yes, Anthony Michael Hall. Playing the top football recruit in the country. I know, I know - he is scrawny, muscles do not appear anywhere on his body, he is short, he seems to lack basic coordination, he, in fact, is the exact opposite of an athlete. 

And frankly, it's hard to ever get past that. This is the kid from Weird Science, people. His role in The Breakfast Club is "The Geek." This is Brian from Sixteen Candles. He is not a top football recruit, no matter how desperate the studio execs and his agent wants him to be. 

Now, ladies and gentlemen readers, I went to a football high school of great fame and greater glory. I know what high school football players look like. And this ain't it. So maybe this is a personal bias... but it's hard for me to look past.

But let's say you do. You say "Sure, this guy is a big shot high school quarterback!" Then, maybe, just maybe, you will not hate this movie. But it's unlikely, since it sucks in any traditional sense as well.

His best friend is the only really redeeming aspect here - Robert Downey Jr., who seems completely coked out and unhinged the entire time, and always seems to be in on his own private jokes. The girlfriend is played by a young Uma Thurman, who is OK for the crap dialog they give her. His evil coach is Steve James, who tries to sell him out... but is investigated by the NCAA, and the investigator is played by ... Robert Downey Sr. (!!!). 

My favorite scene, if you can call it that, is the one where Johnny comes home wearing the weirdest outfit that Prince ever rejected:

What IS that?

Fun Fact: Judas Priest covered "Johnny B Goode" for the soundtrack (!). 

Anyway, Johnny Be Good is one of the rare movies that maintains a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It made $17 million, but I can't find out how much it cost, so no way to know how well or poorly it did. Unsurprisingly, it was the only movie made by its director, Bud Smith. Probably not entirely his fault, this one screams dud from the premise. You just know some studio heads flipped through a stack of headshots, landed on poor Mr. Hall and said "This one. Let's make him the new Depp," or something to that effect. 

It didn't work.