As this blog proceeds ever so slowly due to the pressing yet mundane concerns of "real" life (because really, nothing is more real than '80s movies), I find myself discovering and rediscovering movies completely by accident.
Most of the movies featured on this blog are quasi-intentional: I saw it once or twice as a kid or as a teenager and want to watch it again, revel in the glory or the shame, and share those feelings and thoughts. I also enjoy looking up the things only available in the age of the internet: earnings, the histories of stars, directors, and producers, and other random trivia and factoids that the information age has gifted us.
But sometimes I just stumble across a mystery movie late at night, or I hear about one on another blog somewhere, and that's what happened with these two. For exampe, Teen Witch I found thanks to the hilarious movie podcast How Did This Get Made, which has featured several other '80s movies that I plan to cover here eventually.
Teen Witch (1989) surprised me, both because I had never heard of it despite being more or less aimed right at my age group late in the decade, and also because it was a spin-off of Teen Wolf (1985), one of the quintessential '80s coming-of-age tales and a movie I've seen a dozen times.
Teen Witch obviously takes the theme of "teenager discovers that they have hidden, supernatural gifts that allow them become popular and prominent ... but at a cost" and simply flips the gender and converts Werewolf into Witch. Yet... it's tremendously likeable.
Our lead is Louise Miller, played by Robin Lively, and she looks a lot like the girls on the fringes of popularity did look back in 1989. As an aside, is "Louise Miller" the least likely name possible for a witch, or what? If you were walking down the street and saw a sign advertising "Tarot Readings with Louise," the chances you'd stop are near zero. Not even "Madame Louise" can save it.
Louise feels hopelessly unpopular, awkward, and desperately out of the league of her boy crush Brad (Dan Gauthier). But, luckily enough, one day she accidentally meets a real witch in a dark spooky house, and the witch informs her that not only was Louise a witch in a past life (hilariously, she shows Louise a yearbook from centuries past that has photographs in it somehow), but that Louise is a witch in THIS life, once she turns 16. She proceeds to train (and exploit) Louise's witchery. This witch is played by the always memorable Zelda Rubinstein (Poltergeist).
Louise also has a crazy family, especially her brother Ritchie, played by the fantastic Joshua Miller. We've seen Joshua Miller elsewhere in this blog, when he plays Keanu Reeves's little brother in the movie River's Edge (1986), another role he excels in. Here he plays possibly the most bizarre and most annoying little brother in any film.
Her mom and dad (Caren Kaye and Dick Sargeant, the latter's casting must be some kind of Bewitched in-joke) are suitably square as all parents of teenagers must be, and generally her family hinders her efforts to be the coolest girl witch in school.
The movie progresses almost identically to Can't Buy Me Love (1987) - teen gets power/money, teen uses it to change appearance and mannerisms, teen becomes extremely cool and popular but leaving old friends in the dust, teen realizes the popular life is shallow and full of problems and not what it seemed, teen must figure out a way to be authentic again and get back friends who value them for who they really are ... often earning the respect and admiration of their love interest along the way.
The plot of Teen Witch checks every single box. But Robin Lively is nice in her role, the casting is really great across the board, and her best friend is fantastic, played by Amanda Ingber (now a yoga instructor! And I bet a great one). Check out the famous "Top That" rap performed by best friend Polly, after being betwitched by Louise:
Amazing, right? TOP THAT. TOP THAT. I want to yell it all day. TOP THAT.
Teen Witch was written by Robin Menken and Vernon Zimmerman. Menken also wrote Young Lust (1983), but is mostly known as an actress (This is Spinal Tap, Body Rock, Head Office, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills). Zimmerman, among other credits, wrote and directed Fade to Black (1980), a horror movie I've long wanted to see. Teen Witch was directed by Dorian Walker, who also directed Making the Grade (1984) and a few other items, including episodes of America's Castles, which I dimly remember from the mid-'90s.
As for finances... at first, when I looked up the numbers, I thought it was a typo. The movie cost $2,500,000 to make, and only made back $27,843. I figured some zeroes were missing there but no, it only made twenty-seven grand and change. Released in April of 1989, it apparently came up against extremely stiff competition in Stephen King's Pet Sematary and also the movie I and everyone else saw in April '89 - Field of Dreams. Too bad, this is underrated and should be better known (other than "Top That," which is maybe too well known) - so big thanks to How Did This Get Made for showcasing it.
License to Drive (1988) I found randomly on TV last night, and vaguely remembered it from its original release although I never saw it then. The movie featured Corey Haim as a teenager who I had a really difficult time getting a handle on. He's a whining, lying, deceptive sixteen year old (weren't we all?) but he has that natural Corey Haim charm including some really funny facial expressions and sound effects that win you over once in a while. Overall I liked him.
The plot is beyond simple: Boy needs car to get girl, boy has no license so steals family car, hijinks ensue where stolen car is constantly imperiled and boy is out of his depth with girl, finally boy is caught and has a rueful Growing Up Talk with dad, boy realizes cars aren't everything but girls (and family) are.
The Boy here is Corey Haim, who is in full Corey mode. His best friend in the movie is Corey Feldman, who was also his best friend in real life. They have an obvious chemistry and so the teenage portions of this movie work pretty well. Astoundingly the love interest, named Mercedes (ha ha... ha), is played by a very very young Heather Graham. She looks so little like herself in later films I did a double take after reading that it was her.
Perhaps the best thing about the movie are the parents, Richard Masur and Carol Kane - both completely fantastic movie parents, and both surprisingly realistic at moments. They carry their scenes well. There is also a really great scene with James Avery (the dad from Fresh Prince of Bel Air) as a DMV driving examiner.
Also starring is an array of wonderful cars: a '72 Cadillac DeVille, an Alfa Romeo Spider, a Corvette, etc. - all great dream cars for boys of the late '80s - but most notably a gorgeous red Ferrari 308 GTS, aka The Magnum P.I. Car, which features prominently in the opening fantasy sequence.
License to Drive isn't a deep movie, but it's nice in a small way, mostly due to appealing performances that overcome a by-the-numbers script. Speaking of, it was written by Neil Tolkin, who also wrote Richie Rich and Pauly Shore's Jury Duty, both in the '90s, and it was directed by Greg Beeman in his debut, and who has become a successful television director with Smallville, Heroes, and JAG.
According to Wikipedia, it had a budget of $8 million and made $22 million (!), making it a pretty moderate hit in 1988. Pretty good, considering it was up against the juggernauts Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Coming to America from late June, and Die Hard and Midnight Run in mid-July. It was lucky that the only same-week competition it had was Short Circuit 2 (barf).
Most of the movies featured on this blog are quasi-intentional: I saw it once or twice as a kid or as a teenager and want to watch it again, revel in the glory or the shame, and share those feelings and thoughts. I also enjoy looking up the things only available in the age of the internet: earnings, the histories of stars, directors, and producers, and other random trivia and factoids that the information age has gifted us.
But sometimes I just stumble across a mystery movie late at night, or I hear about one on another blog somewhere, and that's what happened with these two. For exampe, Teen Witch I found thanks to the hilarious movie podcast How Did This Get Made, which has featured several other '80s movies that I plan to cover here eventually.
Teen Witch (1989) surprised me, both because I had never heard of it despite being more or less aimed right at my age group late in the decade, and also because it was a spin-off of Teen Wolf (1985), one of the quintessential '80s coming-of-age tales and a movie I've seen a dozen times.
Teen Witch obviously takes the theme of "teenager discovers that they have hidden, supernatural gifts that allow them become popular and prominent ... but at a cost" and simply flips the gender and converts Werewolf into Witch. Yet... it's tremendously likeable.
Our lead is Louise Miller, played by Robin Lively, and she looks a lot like the girls on the fringes of popularity did look back in 1989. As an aside, is "Louise Miller" the least likely name possible for a witch, or what? If you were walking down the street and saw a sign advertising "Tarot Readings with Louise," the chances you'd stop are near zero. Not even "Madame Louise" can save it.
Louise feels hopelessly unpopular, awkward, and desperately out of the league of her boy crush Brad (Dan Gauthier). But, luckily enough, one day she accidentally meets a real witch in a dark spooky house, and the witch informs her that not only was Louise a witch in a past life (hilariously, she shows Louise a yearbook from centuries past that has photographs in it somehow), but that Louise is a witch in THIS life, once she turns 16. She proceeds to train (and exploit) Louise's witchery. This witch is played by the always memorable Zelda Rubinstein (Poltergeist).
Louise also has a crazy family, especially her brother Ritchie, played by the fantastic Joshua Miller. We've seen Joshua Miller elsewhere in this blog, when he plays Keanu Reeves's little brother in the movie River's Edge (1986), another role he excels in. Here he plays possibly the most bizarre and most annoying little brother in any film.
Her mom and dad (Caren Kaye and Dick Sargeant, the latter's casting must be some kind of Bewitched in-joke) are suitably square as all parents of teenagers must be, and generally her family hinders her efforts to be the coolest girl witch in school.
The movie progresses almost identically to Can't Buy Me Love (1987) - teen gets power/money, teen uses it to change appearance and mannerisms, teen becomes extremely cool and popular but leaving old friends in the dust, teen realizes the popular life is shallow and full of problems and not what it seemed, teen must figure out a way to be authentic again and get back friends who value them for who they really are ... often earning the respect and admiration of their love interest along the way.
The plot of Teen Witch checks every single box. But Robin Lively is nice in her role, the casting is really great across the board, and her best friend is fantastic, played by Amanda Ingber (now a yoga instructor! And I bet a great one). Check out the famous "Top That" rap performed by best friend Polly, after being betwitched by Louise:
Amazing, right? TOP THAT. TOP THAT. I want to yell it all day. TOP THAT.
Teen Witch was written by Robin Menken and Vernon Zimmerman. Menken also wrote Young Lust (1983), but is mostly known as an actress (This is Spinal Tap, Body Rock, Head Office, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills). Zimmerman, among other credits, wrote and directed Fade to Black (1980), a horror movie I've long wanted to see. Teen Witch was directed by Dorian Walker, who also directed Making the Grade (1984) and a few other items, including episodes of America's Castles, which I dimly remember from the mid-'90s.
As for finances... at first, when I looked up the numbers, I thought it was a typo. The movie cost $2,500,000 to make, and only made back $27,843. I figured some zeroes were missing there but no, it only made twenty-seven grand and change. Released in April of 1989, it apparently came up against extremely stiff competition in Stephen King's Pet Sematary and also the movie I and everyone else saw in April '89 - Field of Dreams. Too bad, this is underrated and should be better known (other than "Top That," which is maybe too well known) - so big thanks to How Did This Get Made for showcasing it.
License to Drive (1988) I found randomly on TV last night, and vaguely remembered it from its original release although I never saw it then. The movie featured Corey Haim as a teenager who I had a really difficult time getting a handle on. He's a whining, lying, deceptive sixteen year old (weren't we all?) but he has that natural Corey Haim charm including some really funny facial expressions and sound effects that win you over once in a while. Overall I liked him.
The plot is beyond simple: Boy needs car to get girl, boy has no license so steals family car, hijinks ensue where stolen car is constantly imperiled and boy is out of his depth with girl, finally boy is caught and has a rueful Growing Up Talk with dad, boy realizes cars aren't everything but girls (and family) are.
The Boy here is Corey Haim, who is in full Corey mode. His best friend in the movie is Corey Feldman, who was also his best friend in real life. They have an obvious chemistry and so the teenage portions of this movie work pretty well. Astoundingly the love interest, named Mercedes (ha ha... ha), is played by a very very young Heather Graham. She looks so little like herself in later films I did a double take after reading that it was her.
Perhaps the best thing about the movie are the parents, Richard Masur and Carol Kane - both completely fantastic movie parents, and both surprisingly realistic at moments. They carry their scenes well. There is also a really great scene with James Avery (the dad from Fresh Prince of Bel Air) as a DMV driving examiner.
Also starring is an array of wonderful cars: a '72 Cadillac DeVille, an Alfa Romeo Spider, a Corvette, etc. - all great dream cars for boys of the late '80s - but most notably a gorgeous red Ferrari 308 GTS, aka The Magnum P.I. Car, which features prominently in the opening fantasy sequence.
License to Drive isn't a deep movie, but it's nice in a small way, mostly due to appealing performances that overcome a by-the-numbers script. Speaking of, it was written by Neil Tolkin, who also wrote Richie Rich and Pauly Shore's Jury Duty, both in the '90s, and it was directed by Greg Beeman in his debut, and who has become a successful television director with Smallville, Heroes, and JAG.
According to Wikipedia, it had a budget of $8 million and made $22 million (!), making it a pretty moderate hit in 1988. Pretty good, considering it was up against the juggernauts Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Coming to America from late June, and Die Hard and Midnight Run in mid-July. It was lucky that the only same-week competition it had was Short Circuit 2 (barf).
