Conan the Barbarian (1982)

I had the poster for this movie on my apartment wall for years. This was a hugely formative movie for me growing up - I would stomp around my house with whatever object I could fashion into a sword (often a tree branch) and slash at cushions, books, errant furniture, anything that seemed in my way, while yelling "CROM!!!"

This is Schwarzenegger's first major film, and the story behind it is pretty interesting. He had appeared as a muscular curiosity in Hollywood films for years, like Hercules in New York (1969, surprisingly entertaining) and The Big Goodbye (1973, brief cameo) and Stay Hungry (1976, a Jeff Bridges/Sally Field Southern romance involving a gym. Yes, you read that right). 

But then in 1977 the documentary Pumping Iron came out, and that elevated Arnold to national attention all on his own; most importantly, it spotlighted his immensely winning personality, full of surprising (and sly) intelligence, good humor, and endless drive to succeed. 

And then came Conan. This movie was written with only Arnold in mind for the main role, and it shows: it plays to his strengths (tremendous physical presence), plays down his weaknesses (long lines of dialog, complex emotive requirements), and does it all in a magnificent sword 'n' sorcery atmosphere that is rich, beautiful, and really well directed. 

It cannot be stated enough what a sensation Conan the Barbarian was when it came out - I recently read that here in Washington DC the lines stretched for blocks. This movie launched Arnold into full profile, and lead directly to the main run of his success: The Terminator, Red Sonja, Commando, Raw Deal, Predator, The Running Man, etc. etc. etc. 

The plot is pretty simple: it begins with Conan as a child, being lectured by his father about Crom the underground god of war from whom men took steel. Then his family is slaughtered during a raid by the main villain Thulsa Doom, portrayed by the wonderfully charismatic (and creepy as hell) James Earl Jones (!). Jones' hair in this movie has to be seen to be believed, it's just fantastic. 

Conan is sold into slavery, where he grows huge and strong through years of forced labor. Eventually he is freed (for reasons that are never quite clear to me), he finds a sword, and begins his slow journey towards revenge. Along the way he finds friends: the thief/archer Subotai (played by the greatest surfer that ever lived, Gerry Lopez!), the female barbarian Valeria (the fantastic Sandahl Bergman), and The Wizard (played expertly by Mako, and also our narrator). 

Eventually he confronts Thulsa Doom directly, but not before experiencing hardship, loss, and many, many battles. Worth noting are Thulsa Doom's two lieutenants, Rexor and Thorgrim. Rexor is played by NFL star Ben Davidson (who is immense in stature), and Thorgrim played by the Danish strongman Sven-Ole Thorsen, who was Denmark's Strongest Man in 1983. Finally, King Osric, who assigns Conan a quest to rescue a princess, is played (to the hilt) by Max Von Sydow (!). 

The movie is filmed across Europe, but the sets are truly beautiful - giant boulders, endless horizons, towering mountains, falling snow, illuminated caverns, dessicated thrones with the bones of ancient kings, orgy-strewn cult chambers... it has it all. There is fantastic cinematography through, and a really memorable and epic score by the Greek composer Basil Poledouris. The movie was obviously lovingly made and it shows in every corner.

Apparently Oliver Stone was recruited at one point to write the script, and his version took place in a post-nuclear wasteland and would have doubled the budget, so director John Milius took over and massaged the script back into shape. Speaking of, this movie is co-written and directed by Milius, who is a legend in Hollywood and has his own documentary on Netflix.

Milius is well-known for hypermasculine fare like Dirty Harry (screenplay), Jeremiah Johnson (screenplay), The Wind and the Lion (director and writer), Big Wednesday (director and writer), and after Conan went on to make Red Dawn (1984), Farewell to the King (1989), and Flight of the Intruder (1991).

Conan is a real gem. It was made for $16 million and the box office take in 1982 was ~$40 million (17th highest grossing movie of that year, coming right after The Dark Crystal, and just before The Sword and the Sorcerer). The total over the years with rentals and whatnot has made it to ~$130 million - a huge success. There is a sequel made immediately after and released in 1984 that I'll review soon. 

Gimme An F (1984), Sleepaway Camp (1983)

 

I could've sworn I had reviewed Sleepaway Camp (1983) before on this blog, but apparently not. In fact, Sleepaway Camp is one of the movies that inspired me to start this project - I watched it while emailing a friend who was also watching it, and neither of us could believe what we were seeing. It also has the distinction of being the movie that introduced me to the podcast How Did This Get Made, which is truly hilarious and dedicated to those misbegotten movies we love to hate (or hate to love?).

Sleepaway Camp is a cult classic that has a lot of gender identity subtext - so much so that it seems ahead of its time, looking back from 2015. The surface plot is about a horrible water-skiing accident (how many movies can claim that?!) that fractures a family - then we are finally introduced to our protagonists, young Ricky and his cousin Angela. Angela is being sent to summer camp for what seems like the first time, and Ricky is very protective of her; she is shy to the point of simply silently staring at people when they speak to her. This leads to moments of complete exasperation/bullying by the other campers, who scream "WHY ARE YOU SO F*&@ED UP, ANGELA?!" right into her face.

Well, like any teen slasher worth its salt people start dying almost immediately, in quite gruesome ways. One horrible child sex predator is boiled alive; another camper is killed by bees while taking "a wicked dump" (his words). There are plenty of awful deaths. Fun fact: the camp cook (who survives!) is Robert Earl Jones, the father of James Earl Jones. His voice sounds EXACTLY the same - they are dead ringers vocally. 

Sleepaway Camp is notable mostly for the famous (and tremendously shocking) twist ending. I am very very tempted to spoil it here, but it really should be seen at least once without any warning. The movie has been a cult classic for years primarily for that final moment, which really raises more questions than it answers, and makes you question a number of previous events. As mentioned earlier, there is a lot of strange gender commentary going on here; I'm not sure at all what the director is trying to say (and I'm not sure HE knew), but something unusual is being said, that's for sure. 

Sleepaway Camp was the brainchild of Robert Hiltzik, who wrote and directed it. He is a lawyer in New York, apparently, and his only other movie is .... Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008), which I saw, to my infinite regret, and can say with complete confidence that it's a 0/10 (hell, 0/100 or 0/1,000,000) movie that has absolutely no entertainment value of any kind, has an abysmal script, abysmal acting, and is surely being screened in Hell right now. A truly awful movie. There were two others in the series that he didn't have a hand in, and they are really only loosely related - Sleepaway Camp 2 and Sleepaway Camp 3 both star Bruce Springsteen's younger sister Pamela (!!!) as Angela, come back to murder more campers for bizarre and poorly expressed reasons. They aren't the worst, but are best avoided. The fourth movie is truly dreck and you would do well to forget I ever mentioned it. 

It was made in upstate New York for about $350,000. According to IMDB, it pulled it $430,000 during its opening weekend (not bad!) and ultimate claimed $11,000,000 - a very tidy sum for Mr. Hiltzik. It's well worth watching, at least once, and especially if you're interested in the teen slasher genre. 

Gimme an F (1984) is an odd duck. It's a teen dance/sex romp, like so many before it and after it, but it has a surprisingly tender heart to it - it seems to really like its characters, and wish the best for them - unusual for this genre. A group of poor, ill-equipped, undertalented cheerleader misfits attempt to make it big, going up against well-funded, well-trained squads. Also released as "T & A Academy 2" (classy) and "Cheerballs" (in West Germany). 

This is also a camp movie - but a dance camp, and no one is murdered. Instead, a number of people get laid, but the film is surprisingly coy with the sexual tension, and almost everything is implied and hinted at rather than shoved in your gob. It's strange, because on one hand it's nice to have a movie tease you and force you to use your imagination (ah, the good old days) and actually stay relatively tasteful ... but on the other hand, it has a really difficult time keeping up tension compared to its high-octane hyper-lascivious colleagues like Private School or Cheerleader Camp. It's difficult not to be disappointed after you've had cheap and plentiful nudity shoveled at you. 

The plot here is pretty old - camp owner Bucky Berkshire (!) bets his top instructor ten grand that the instructor can't turn the hapless Ducks (the poor squad mentioned above) into a winner. Instructor takes the bet, not knowing that Bucky has an ulterior motive - Japanese businessmen will only invest in Bucky's schemes if the top instructor is on board. Why do so many '80s movies feature Japanese businessmen taking over companies (most notably in Gung Ho (1986))?? I don't remember that actually being a real trend - did the Japanese take over a ton of American companies that I'm not aware of? 

Anyway, the movie features some half-decent dance sequences and some of the usual sex antics found in camp sex comedies - for example, one couple doing the deed is secretly broadcast over the loudspeaker without being aware of it. I'd already seen that joke used in M*A*S*H, and I'm sure it was fairly old even then. But that's about the temperature of things - hijinks, but low-grade hijinks.
There is one really great scene where the top instructor does a solo dance in what looks like a sauna, really high energy and athletic. 

Gimme an F was written by James Hart, his first movie - he went on to write the screenplay for Hook, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Muppet Treasure Island, Contact, Tuck Everlasting, and more. It was directed by Paul Justman, who is mostly known for music documentaries about bands from the '60s and '70s (Deep Purple, Cream, The Doors, Diana Ross, etc.). He also contributed a song to the soundtrack of this movie and to the soundtrack of The Sure Thing (1985), which is pretty interesting. I can't find financial info for this movie anywhere, so I can' report on its success; but I'm going to guess it probably was made fairly cheaply and probably ultimately broke even. 

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.