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.