Not everything I've written for FLICK ATTACK has made it to the show. Mr. Lott insists that these rapidly aging reviews will be posted eventually, but until then I'm just going to assume that they have been:
Rejected By Rod(?)
Stephen King's Cat's Eye
(1985)
At the risk of committing genre blasphemy, I have to say that when it comes to 80s Stephen King anthology movies, I’ve always preferred Lewis Teague’s Cat’s Eye to George Romero’s beloved Creepshow. That’s not to say I think Creepshow is a bad movie, just that I always felt its attempt at paying tribute to the old E.C. comic books resulted in a general lack of originality in its stories. The same can’t be said for Cat’s Eye, though, as the three tales it tells are all classic examples of King working at the height of his abilities.
Its stories linked together by a gifted feline’s search for an endangered young girl played by Drew Barrymore, the film begins with James Woods as a lifelong smoker who unwittingly gets involved with a company that takes its pledge to get him to quit the nasty habit far more seriously than anyone would ever imagine.
The second story features Airplane! star Robert Hays as a broke tennis pro who is forced to make his way around the five inch ledge of a skyscraper to satisfy the vengeful whim of a cuckolded gambler and in the third the heroic cat finally finds Barrymore and saves her from a tiny, evil troll determined to steal her breath while she sleeps at night.
The first two stories benefit greatly from the kind of dark humor so often found in King’s best work, while the third succeeds thanks to the amazing mechanical effects created by Italian FX whiz Carlo Rambaldi, whose tiny monster ranks right up there with E.T. as his greatest achievement (the less said about his King Kong the better).
Along with excellent cinematography by legendary British cameraman Jack Cardiff, the film is also well served by director Teague’s tongue in cheek approach, which includes multiple references to King’s previous work and clever use of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” in both the first and final stories.
For some the capsule review comes easy, but for me it’s an exercise in pure frustration. As a means of self-discipline I have decided to confront that which tortures me through this continuing feature—B-Movie Bullsh*t in 50 Words or Less.
My favourite novelist, Martin Amis, wrote the screenplay for this Stanley Donen film about a maniac who disturbs the peace of a couple living alone on a remote space station, but all I remembered after it was over was Kirk Douglas’ butt, Harvey Keitel’s dubbed voice, and the horny robot.
Lieutenant Marion “Cobra” Cobretti is a member of Los Angeles’ “Zombie Squad”—the term used for cops who take the cases that require them to sink to the lowest depths of human society. His latest case finds him searching for the “Night Slasher”, a vicious serial killer whose ubiquity and lack of any discernable pattern suggests he might not be working alone. Cobretti and his partner catch their first break when the Slasher and his cultists fail to kill the witness to a previous murder—a tall Nordic model named Ingrid Knudson. When it becomes clear that the Slasher has an inside man on the force, Cobra takes Ingrid out of L.A. to protect her, unaware that Nancy Stalk, a cop assigned to join them, is the mole. The Slasher and his goons descend upon the small town where they are hiding and Cobretti is forced to protect Ingrid and rid the world of the Slasher’s irredeemable evil.
As a film buff I can think of few careers I find more fascinating than that of Sylvester Stallone’s. After making a good impression in a series of low budget movies like The Lords of Flatbush, Capone, and Death Race 2000 (which features my favourite performance of his career), he rocketed to super-stardom as the writer/star of Rocky, which was not only a major box office hit, but also made him only the third person in Oscar history to be nominated for both writing and acting in the same year (Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles were the two who preceeded him). He didn’t win, but at the time he seemed destined to join the pantheon of great American actors, with comparisons to Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro not being uncommon.
But then he followed up Rocky with two big flops—the union drama, F.I.S.T., and the period wrestling film, Paradise Alley, which he also wrote and directed. Fortunately, Rocky II resurrected him as a moneymaking force—enough so that the relative disappointment of the WWII soccer drama Victory had little effect on his clout, especially when Rocky III was on its way. His luck continued with First Blood, a film that gave him another iconic character in the form of emotionally damaged Vietnam vet, John Rambo, but then disaster struck in the double whammy of Staying Alive and Rhinestone.
This is the period where Stallone’s hubris suddenly became apparent and his choices grew much more questionable. Staying Alive saw him staying behind the camera as writer/director (save for a two-second cameo) in an ill-advised sequel to Saturday Night Fever. The film confirmed what many suspected after seeing his previous directorial efforts—the success of Rocky was a group effort that included the participation of director John Avidson. Working solo and with full creative control Stallone suffered from severe creative limitations, including unimaginative storytelling and a complete lack of subtext.
Rhinestone saw him attempting to stretch his legs with a light musical comedy in which he played a taxi driver who’s transformed into a country singer after Dolly Parton makes a bet with her manager. A gender reversed My Fair Lady with cowboy hats and tassels, it was the first film that clearly showed the limits of his acting abilities.
Left bloodied by the back-to-back mega-flops, Stallone performed what would become his trademark move and returned to his two most popular characters in the same year. The results, Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rocky IV, were so overtly designed to appeal to the mid-80s audience that they turned once-credible characters into living cartoons. The slide in this direction had already started with Rocky III, which featured Hulk Hogan and the hilariously menacing Clubber Lang as its villain, but that film was a virtual cinema verite documentary compared to the cold war absurdity of Rocky IV.
With that film Stallone attempted to transform his inarticulate, working-class-schlub-made-good into an out-and-out action hero. Rocky Balboa no longer fought to prove himself or to take care of his family, he fought to honor his former rival turned friend, Apollo Creed, who was murdered by nothing less than the terror of communism itself. In terms of absurd anti-Soviet propaganda, the film was in the same class as Red Dawn and Invasion U.S.A. Rocky ceased to be a recognizable human and became an unstoppable god bent on protecting capitalism at all costs.
At this point I’d get all pretentious about what Rambo: First Blood Part II was about, but I’ve never actually seen the whole thing from beginning to end, but the snippets I have seen more than back up this analysis.
Unfortunately for Stallone both sequels were massive hits. Having been responsible for the two least-subtle films ever made, he came to the conclusion that this was what people wanted and he partnered up with a small studio for three films that paid him a lot of money, but also managed to wreck his career in a way from which he has never truly recovered, despite some notable successes here and there.
The studio was Cannon, founded and operated by two Israeli cousins named Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. After breaking out with the Israeli period T & A teen flick Lemon Popsicle (a film that you’d assume was a Porky’s rip off if you didn’t know it was actually released in 1978), they gradually took over A.I.P’s spot as the pre-eminent producer of low budget genre movies, most of which had already made their money back before a single frame of film had been shot, thanks to foreign pre-sales.
But for Golan, money wasn’t enough. He wanted prestige and respect as well and decided to try to buy it by hiring Hollywood’s biggest star to become synonymous with Cannon. The failure of the second and third of the three films they would make together would eventually result in the bankruptcy of his once successful company.
Before this, though, Stallone made his Cannon debut with a cop picture he wrote that marked a clear attempt to add a third iconic character to his repertoire. Using a novel originally published by Paula Gosling in 1974 as the basis for his plot, he reimagined its male protagonist as a gun-worshipping cop whose distaste for lawbreakers made Dirty Harry look like Alan Alda in comparison.
In the novel, which was first published as A Running Duck and then retitled four years later as Fair Game, the cop hero was Mike Malchek, which didn’t come close to matching the badass cool Stallone was intent on giving the character. Instead he gave the character the last name of Cobretti, which supplied him with both a dangerous sounding nickname and the title for the film, Cobra. Interestingly, he then gave the character a feminine sounding name in Marion, which added a touch of much-needed humour to the film and served as a specific reference to the man who famously turned down the role of Dirty Harry Callahan—John Wayne (whose given name was Marion Morrison).
From the novel he took the elements of a cop protecting a woman who witnessed a violent crime and the mole who constantly leads the criminals to them, but from there he let his own imagination run wild. In the place of Gosling’s hitman, he came up with a hulking, monstrous serial killer who commands a cult of similarly insane maniacs (some of whom appear to be everyday businessmen in suits), and he turned her attorney heroine into a glamorous foreign model, which allowed for a fabulous posing/investigation montage (easily the film’s best scene) and the casting of his wife, 6’0” Danish goddess Brigitte Nielsen.
(In fact Stallone changed the plot of Gosling’s novel so much that virtually no one noticed when the same book served as the basis of the Joel Silver-produced Cindy Crawford starsploitation flop, Fair Game, just 9 years later.)
Possibly exhausted after taking on the directing chores of Rocky IV, Stallone handed over the reigns to Cobra to his Rambo: First Blood Part II director, George P. Cosmatos—a Greek born Canadian who would later direct the cult western Tombstone and who was previously responsible for the man-vs-rat Canuxploitation classic, Of Unknown Origin. In the end, all of Cobra’s virtues—eye-pleasing style, interesting mise-en-scene, exciting action—can be credited to Cosmatos’ influence and direction. Unfortunately he was working with a script and a star with two absurd agendas.
There’s a great moment in the documentary The Hamster Effect, where Terry Gilliam is talking to Bruce Willis on the set of Twelve Monkeys about a scene where his character is supposed to be knocked out by co-star Madeleine Stowe. Gilliam tells Willis how he wants to film it, but Willis argues with him, insisting that a woman Stowe’s size could never knock out a man the way Gilliam is suggesting. The argument is long and passionate and it quickly becomes clear that Willis’ reluctance has less to do with the integrity of the film than his desire to not be seen as a pussy.
It’s an insight into the behind the scenes process that explains many a terrible film (fortunately for Gilliam, he finally got what he wanted and Willis benefited by giving a great performance in one of his best movies). Many movie stars, especially in the action genre, want to be perceived as the most cool, awesome people alive and they do this without any irony. Therefore they force changes upon any script featuring moments that might humanize or lessen the awesomeness of their characters. Go back to my first B-Movie Bull-Sh*t review and you’ll find a film where Chuck Norris kills dozens of commies without so much as a scratch to show for it.
Now imagine what happens when a star who is very much of this persuasion actually writes the script himself! That’s Cobra, a film so dedicated to promoting the awesomeness of its title character (and the actor playing him) that the film instantly devolves into unintended self-parody.
I mentioned Dirty Harry before and the comparison is extremely apt (although the film’s plot more closely resembles another Eastwood picture—The Gauntlet). Like Callahan, Cobretti is a gun fetishist (his weapon has a cobra pictured on its handle and we watch him clean it with loving care the first time we see him in his apartment) whose tough stance against criminals is harshly criticized by his liberal, namby-pamby superiors (one of whom, in the film’s biggest Dirty Harry homage, is played by Andrew Robinson aka The Scorpio Killer, Callahan’s original nemesis). But if Don Siegel’s film wore its conservatism on its sleeve, than Cobra dons it like a three piece suit, culminating in the truly hilarious moment where the Night Slasher taunts Cobretti by telling him how as a lawman he’s obligated to take him in and be tried by the courts, which will find him not guilty by reason of insanity.
Cobretti’s response to this is to
impale him on a large metal crane hook.
And whereas Callahan chose to throw his badge into the water after gunning down Scorpio vigilante-style, Cobretti is congratulated for his actions and gives the audience a thrill when he punches Robinson’s character in the face for being such a left-wing wimp.
The two films also depart significant in the depiction of their two villains. In Dirty Harry, Scorpio is a pathetic hippy whose big plan to stop his adversary is to hire a black man to beat him up and pin his bruises and injuries on Callahan—getting him thrown off the case and earning the sympathy of liberals concerned more about so-called “police brutality” than keeping the public safe. In Cobra, the Night Slasher is played by Brian Thompson, a 6’3” monster of a man whose craggy face invokes a strange kind of handsomely charismatic monstrosity. Rather than acting alone, his character is shown to be a leader of a cult dedicated to the creation of a “new world” where the hunters rule over the hunted, but we’re never shown any reason why he would have such a following or why they would be so dedicated to him. We’re simply supposed to take their existence at face value.
And just like Cobretti’s gun, the film fetishizes the Slasher’s primary instrument of terror, a large menacing knife with sharp spikes along its bearer’s knuckles. The absurd bigness of the villain is clearly meant to prove the badass amazingness of Stallone’s character. Any wimp with .45 Magnum can kill a hippy—it takes a real man to take down a monster straight from Hell.
As frequently (and unintentionally) funny as this all is, there’s a clear sense of desperation that saturates the entire film. It would have seemed impossible after Rocky IV that Stallone could pander any lower to the public’s desire to see the clearly good battle the obviously evil, but with Cobra he managed to do just that and deliver a movie so pathetically geared to get morons to shout out “FUCK YEAH!” he might as well have ended it with a group chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
That said, for all his lack of subtlety and willingness to pander to the public’s most basic impulses, his scripts almost always feature an interesting character detail or two that suggests the highly intelligent, articulate man he frequently comes across as in interviews and making-of documentaries. In Cobra I enjoyed a moment between Cobretti and Knudson at a local truck stop diner where we see her purposefully dump half a bottle of ketchup on her French fries. It's completely extraneous but reminded me of Paulie’s paintings in Rocky Balboa—another touch that suggested the work of a much better filmmaker.
Cobra ended up doing relatively well at the box office (but not enough to warrant a sequel, even though the creation of a new franchise was its clear intention), but his next film for Cannon—for which he earned the then-shocking payday of $12,000,000—was Over the Top, an arm-wrestling melodrama directed by Golan. It flopped so spectacularly that Cannon bought the rights to Stallone’s second biggest franchise in a clear bid to recoup their costs with a sure thing. The resulting Rambo III was—at $60,000,000—one of the most expensive movies made up to that time and proved to be another costly flop. The one-two punch of these costly failures resulted in Cannon’s bankruptcy.
Since then Stallone has famously spent his career starring in major flops (Stop or My Mom Will Shoot!, Oscar, Judge Dread, Assassins, An Alan Smithee Movie: Burn Hollywood Burn, Get Carter, Driven, D-Tox, Avenging Angelo) and the occasional modest hit (Cliffhanger, Demolition Man, The Specialist). After killing his top franchise with the humdrum and disappointing Rocky V, he waited 16 years before doing the one thing that kept his career going in the 80s—returning to the two characters people loved the most. The results, Rocky Balboa and Rambo, managed to earn money and even some good reviews largely on the basis of nostalgia alone. Sensing this, Stallone decided to capitalize on Gen X’s fondness for the no-nonsense action pictures of old and created The Expendables, which marked his first successful attempt at a franchise in over two decades.
For all of its many faults, I found Cobra fascinating for its part in such a tumultuous Hollywood career. Made for all of the worst reasons possible, it’s a textbook example of what happens when a superstar aims for the lowest common denominator and still manages to miss.
Once again I found myself sitting alone in the Londonderry Theater, and--based on Hawk's infamous B.O.--I just might have been the only person to see it that afternoon. Why was I there? One word: Heathers. Like all alienated teenagers from the period, I'd seen it over a dozen times since it came out three years earlier. Being a movie geek, I naturally knew all about the folks who made it and excitedly waited for their big-budget major Hollywood follow-up effort (the less said about Meet the Applegates the better). And y'know what? I fuckin' liked it! Sure I was just 15, but I was a 15 year old who had seen Annie Hall 20 times, so it's not like I was totally without judgment. I haven't seen it in a decade, so I have no idea how it holds up, but considering it's the biggest and most infamous flop I ever saw during its intial release (with the possible exception of Babe: Pig in the City) I'd probably say I loved it just to be a contrary bastard.
Not everything I've written for FLICK ATTACK has made it to the show. Mr. Lott insists that these rapidly aging reviews will be posted eventually, but until then I'm just going to assume that they have been:
Rejected By Rod(?)
Up the Academy
(1980)
After the unprecedented success of National Lampoon’s Animal House it seemed only natural that the nation’s other most influential comedy magazine of the period would get into the movie game as well. Unfortunately for the usual gang of idiots at Mad, the result wasn’t nearly as financially rewarding.
In fact, the Mad men were so disappointed with the way Up the Academy turned out, they eventually took the Mad Magazine Presents out of the title and disavowed any association with the film—instantly turning Alfred E. Neuman’s cameo into a strange non sequitur.
In retrospect, though, you do have to wonder how they ever thought hiring the iconoclastic filmmaker Robert Downey could have ever resulted in a successful mainstream comedy. Best known (aside from siring the future star of Iron Man) for his cult masterpiece, Putney Swope, Downey was an auteur whose gifts pretty obviously didn’t extend to the creation of a sophomoric teen comedy (or at least one that could actually be appreciated by its intended audience).
Sloppy, deliberately offensive (the film’s casual jokes about race and teen pregnancy seem especially shocking today) and almost angrily broad, the film plays less like an actual movie than a feature length version of one of Swope’s infamous commercial satires. But then at the same time it also feels strangely restrained for a film supposedly inspired by the anarchic spirit of Mad (a spirit much better exemplified onscreen that same year in Airplane!).
For this reason Up the Academy is one of those films I personally find interesting even though it clearly fails on all of the levels by which it should be judged. An experiment gone hopelessly awry, it’s one of those strange projects that should be viewed if only because it somehow manages to exist even though it probably shouldn’t.
For some the capsule review comes easy, but for me it’s an exercise in pure frustration. As a means of self-discipline I have decided to confront that which tortures me through this continuing feature—B-Movie Bullsh*t in 50 Words or Less.
Its plot perfectly summed up by the title, this second entry in the Ilsa canon is just as vile, sordid, and misogynistic as the first, adding racism into the mix. Kidnapped females are tortured in every conceivable fashion. Needless to say it’s a must watch for every serious B-Movie fan.
“But what the holy heck did I do to get sent to Hell, Duke? I lived a mostly good life. I went to church. I tolerated my mother. Sure I was tangentially connected to a dozen or so “accidental” deaths, but no charges were ever made.”
“Everyone’s innocent down here, pardner.”
“But I don’t want to go to Hell! There must be something I can do to stay away from here if that ambulance makes it to the hospital in time.”
“There is, Drake. You’d have to give up being a stuntman.”
Ever go back to a movie from your youth that you saw 1000 times and loved and thought was awesome and the best thing ever, only to discover that it was worse than the time your dog got rabies and your mom told you to go outside and shoot it, but he didn't die the first time you shot him and he managed to sink his fangs into your leg, necessitating the need for a series of painful shots?
This isn't about that.
This it-happens-when-it-happens series is instead about what happens when you revisit an old movie you used to love and discover that it makes you feel the exact same way you did the last time you watched it as a kid--maybe even a little better. It's a good feeling and not one that gets mentioned on the internet that often.
For my first look at such a movie, I have a film that's yet to make it to DVD, despite being a TV staple after its brief 1979 theatrical run. I must have seen it from beginning to end at least 10 times in the 80s, and was always shocked and thrilled by it's inclusion of a brief scene of nudity I AM NOT ALLOWED to enjoy today.
I am, of course, talking about:
Just You and Me, Kid
(1979)
Synopsis
Bill Grant used to be a famous Vaudeville comedian, but he's an old man now, living his days as a bachelor in a beautiful house filled with mementos from his past. Kate is a troubled 14 year-old girl who attempts to escape her sad foster home existence by stealing $20,000 from a demented drug dealer named Demesta. But before she can run off to Arizona, he finds her and strips her naked in his apartment. She escapes with nothing but a towel, which she loses along the way. She hides away in the back of an old car, and when she's discovered by the old man who owns it, orders him to take him to her place, which he does. Bill has seen too much of the world to be shocked by the situation and treats his new unwanted houseguest with patience and good humour. Kate, on the other hand, is so desperate to get moving that she jumps out a window and sprains her ankle. Bill tends to her injury, tells jokes she doesn't think are funny, and still makes the appointments that define his life. Kate is slow to appreciate his generosity and regards him and his friends with constant suspicion, but eventually she realizes he's someone she's never met before--a good person. Demesta eventually tracks them down, but Bill's quick thinking makes quick work of them. Having formed a unique family, Bill convinces his worried daughter to adopt Kate, while his beloved friend, Max, breaks his silence and returns to the real world.
As a kid I was sucker for anything that was corny and/or sentimental. If it could make me cry (and it was--and still is--very easy to make me cry) then I loved it. Watching Just You and Me, Kid at the age of 8, 9, and 10, I always choked up at the moment when Bill ran into his house thrilled to be able to tell Kate that her advice worked and his friend Max had spoken to him for the first time in years. What moved me wasn't the news itself, but the obvious joy he had in having someone to share it with, and then the painful realization that she was no longer there and possibly out of his life forever.
That shit killed me, then. Turns out, it still kills me now.
There's no doubt this is a flawed movie. Roger Ebert's two-star review gets it mostly right. The film does bungle the part of Demesta, making him truly terrifying in the beginning, only to have him turn into a chickenshit dope at the end. It isn't hard to understand how this happened--there's only so much you can do action-wise when your heroes are a geriatric old man and a 14 year-old girl. The screenwriters wrote themselves into a corner and simply couldn't think of a better way to get out of it.
But I can't begrudge them their error. Even Mr. Ebert admits that the film had to have started out as a great script, since there is so much treasure to be found in its barely-TV-movie-level production values. That said the greatness begins and ends with George Burns, whose performance here--I feel--is actually superior to the one in The Sunshine Boys that won him his Oscar and completely resurrected his moribund career. It's easy to say that Grant is merely a version of himself, but that ignores the wonderful, thrilling joy of it. This is a man who can't help himself from singing aloud as he performs the little chores that keep him feeling active and vital, whose wits have not been the slightest bit dulled with age or lack of an audience, who truly LOVES show business in a way very few people can understand. It's a small, unassuming film whose existence is based only on the amusing juxtaposition of 1979's oldest and youngest superstars, but that doesn't negate the fact that in it, Burns gives one of my all-time favourite performances and creates a character I genuinely and sincerely love.
Perhaps the thing I love the most is how it allows Burns to have fun, be smart, and maintain his dignity. I HATE it when anyone attempts to wring laughs by having seniors behave like children. I don't find it cute or endearing--it's rude, disrespectful, and only made possible by exploiting those whose time in the spotlight has long past its expiration date. Just You and Me, Kid respects its elders and I approve whole-heartedly.
Where I do disagree with Mr. Ebert is in his description of the roteness of Brooke Shields' character, Kate, which suggests that her arc feels manufactured, rather than genuine. To my mind, her fear, suspicion and hostility make perfect sense, given her past. I also like how the script allows her to be canny enough to have genuine insight into her situation--allowing her to at one point accuse Bill of keeping her in the house because he needs an audience. It's presented as a throwaway moment, an accusation made in a peak of frustration, but it indicates that her character actually does pay attention and understand the world around her.
I was initially concerned that the film would sexualize Shields, as Pretty Baby had a year earlier and The Blue Lagoon would a year later. This seemed confirmed when she loses her towel and is shown running--naked from the back--down some stairs. To a present-day viewer the moment seems gratuitous and gross, but I remember that back in the 80s it wasn't even edited out of the TV version. Times have changed. Luckily, though, the script quickly realizes that Kate is a child and allows her to be treated as such--with only a few "she's a pretty girl" comments from some characters to remind us that Shields is playing the part.
I also appreciated how the script even allowed the film's non-drug-dealing villain--Bill's daughter--a moment of sympathy, giving her a chance to suggest ways in which her beloved father might not have always been a great dad. Her short speech gives the film the added depth of allowing us to understand that as happy as Bill appears, his life has been far from perfect. I was especially moved by her suggestion of an attempted comeback that was met with utter indifference. What's sadder than someone who needs to perform who can no longer find an audience?
So that's why, for all its flaws and flimsiness, my revisiting this classic film from my youth wasn't an experience in torture or self-recrimination. No one else may consider it a great movie, but I do--and it's these kind of personally fulfilling movies that matter more than most.
I have no way of knowing if I was the only 15 year-old who spent a weekend afternoon sitting alone in an empty theater watching Blake Edwards' remake of the Vincente Minnelli's 1964 Goodbye Charlie, but I'm pretty sure that if I was, I was probably the only one who knew who Edwards or Minnelli even were. That said, the real reason I decided to bike on over to the Londonderry Mall theater and plunk down my $6 had everything to do with the blond on the poster. I had seen Sea of Love and The Adventures of Buckeroo Banzai and was all over anything with Ellen Barkin in it.
Not everything I've written for FLICK ATTACK has made it to the show. Mr. Lott insists that these rapidly aging reviews will be posted eventually, but until then I'm just going to assume that they have been:
Rejected By Rod(?)
Sorority House Massacre
(1986)
For eagle-eyed horror fans the cleverest moment in Sorority House Massacre comes when two of its characters are watching television. Showing on the set is a scene from an earlier Roger Corman produced classic, Slumber Party Massacre, in which a character is—you guessed it—watching a horror movie on television. It’s the cinematic equivalent of one those drawings of a cartoon character holding a drawing of them holding a drawing on into infinity.
Beyond this one moment, though, there’s not a lot to say about the film. While it does feature a memorably creepy dream sequence, the plot itself is lifted straight from the first two Halloweens, featuring as it does a killer who escapes from the loony bin in order to return to the house where he killed all but the youngest member of his family, who’s now an attractive brunette college student plagued by nightmares featuring him and the massacre she doesn’t remember surviving.
To writer/director Carol Frank’s credit, she avoids the mistake of making her characters deliberately hateful, and merely settles for bland and uninteresting. To her discredit, she chose not to fire her apparently blind costume designer and allowed them to dress her cast in the most hideous clothes the 80s ever foisted upon the planet. That is if a movie this low budget even had a costume designer. If it didn’t, then her biggest crime was casting actors who couldn’t supply decent clothes out of their own closets.
Ultimately, Sorority House Massacre is an especially unexceptional movie and the only reason I’m reviewing it now is because I took the time to watch it before experiencing Sorority House Massacre II, which is an exceptional movie, but not for the reasons you might think.
For some the capsule review comes easy, but for me it’s an exercise in pure frustration. As a means of self-discipline I have decided to confront that which tortures me through this continuing feature—B-Movie Bullsh*t in 50 Words or Less.
Honey, O’Hara, Teri and Sam are the H.O.T.S., four girls with axes to grind against their college’s snootiest sorority. By recruiting other busty “rejects” they connive to get their revenge. This mostly unfunny comedy ends with a strip football game you will likely remember for the rest of your life.
At his business school graduation party, Alan Finston learns he’s inherited a 51% interest in his late Aunt Ida’s beachside swimwear store. He leaves his spoiled fiancé, Jane, behind to prepare the store for sale, only to discover that his ne’er-do-well brother, Todd, is the owner of the other 49%. Todd wants to keep the store, but can’t stop Alan from selling it to the leader of a local religious cult. When Alan learns that the cult leader plans to close the store and open a recruitment center in its place, he has a change of heart and asks to buy it back, pissing off a visiting Jane in the process. The cult leader agrees, but demands an additional $6,000 in cash within two weeks. Determined to raise the money, Alan, Todd and the shop’s three female staff members hand-sew 50 army-inspired bikinis designed by Ronnie, the beautiful brunette who’s had a crush on Alan since they first met. With just a few hours to go before the money has to be paid, they do everything they can to sell their new bikinis, while the angrily scorned Jane and her father try their best to make sure they don’t succeed.
The Malibu Bikini Shop is as purely a product of the 1980s as Culture Club, Ray-Bans, and Dynasty. Whereas the fun, lightweight bikini movies of the 1960s (most famously the ones starring Frankie & Annette) were all frivolous fantasy pictures featuring the complications created by glamorous Italian heiresses (Muscle Beach Party), rich English pop stars (Bikini Beach), and mermaids (Beach Blanket Bingo), this 80s incarnation of the genre eschews whimsy in favor of depicting the battle between uptight capitalism and unapologetic hedonism. What makes the film especially evocative of its decade is that the battle ends in a tie, with both sides coming to a better understanding of the other and embracing the idea that one shouldn’t be afraid to party, so long as you’re making money at the same time.
Written and directed by David Wechter (who remains best known as the co-writer/co-director of the cult 1980 Disney film Midnight Madness), TMBS is strongly reminiscent of Paul Brickman’s much, much, much better Risky Business, which also featured an ambitious young wannabe-yuppie as its supposedly sympathetic protagonist. The clear difference is that Brickman had Tom Cruise, who actually did manage to imbue some likeability into the role of Joel Goodsen, while Wechter cast Michael David Wright, whose acting career justifiably ended almost as soon as it began and who went on to make a living as a network executive. It’s all the difference in the world.
Oh, and Paul Brickman had vision and talent.
It doesn’t help that TMBS ups the ante by giving us an 80s archetype even more tiresome than the ambitious young Republican—the slobberific party animal. Unlike the part of Alan, the role of his brother Todd is actually played by a very talented actor—Canada’s own Bruce Greenwood—but he’s miscast here and incapable of convincing us that we wouldn’t want to beat Todd to death with a tire iron within minutes of meeting him.
The result is cliché battling cliché, leaving the viewer to impatiently wait for the plot to stop and allow for the film’s true raison d’etre to show itself.
There’s a certain promise inherent in any 80s movie with the word “bikini” in its title, that its 60s predecessors were not also allowed to make—that at some point, hopefully more than once, twice, or thrice, those bikinis would come off and we would get to see what was barely being hidden from us. TMBS attempts to make good on this promise, but its prurience lacks conviction.
The film’s most famous nude scene serves as proof of the film’s ambivalence about the only reason anyone has ever watched it. In it, a stacked blond customer (Bobbi Pavis, credited as “Stunning Girl”) enters one of the store’s changing rooms, unaware that Todd has equipped them with two-way mirrors in order to commit a crime that could now result in jail time, but in 1986 was considered hilarious. He marvels at the sight of her removing her top, while conservative, no-fun-asshole Alan looks away. But when Todd leaves, Alan allows his mask of decorum to fall away and is punished by the sight of an overweight woman trying to get into a bikini that clearly doesn’t fit her.
This sudden juxtaposition of the attractive and repellent is meant to be funny (although you can tell the movie was made in the 80s because the overweight woman is shown attempting to put on the bikini over her very large underwear—today that same scene would be shot with her completely naked), but there’s a tangible hostility inherent in the moment that makes it clear Wechter wants to punish us for enjoying the sight of Pavis’ copious breasts in the same way Alan is punished for giving into his own urge to peek.
Interestingly, though, the one person who gets away without harm in this moment is the man who instigated it. Although Alan is obviously the film’s protagonist and has the largest character arc, Todd is clearly meant to serve as the film’s moral center, which is odd since he’s very clearly a selfish, lazy manchild who’s only interested in his own immediate happiness.
As different as they appear, both Alan and Todd have embraced the Reagen-era belief in the virtue of self-interest. Alan insists on using his 1% controlling interest in the store to override Todd’s desire to keep it, while Todd ignores anyone who might impede his ability to have a good time. While Alan succeeds in removing the stick from his butt by the end of the picture, Todd—who the film has portrayed as right more often than wrong—remains unchanged. When Alan discovers that the surgical thread they used to sew the bikinis is designed to dissolve in water he runs to tell Todd, who responds by saying he knew that all along and watches enthusiastically as a group of attractive women dressed in the swimsuits are quickly robbed of their dignity.
The moral then seems to be that selfish, extremely questionable behaviour is entirely acceptable if it’s in service of a good time. Since watching TMBS isn’t a good time, though, it’s hard to justify its similar impropriety.
That said, there is at least two good things about the film. Former Miss Texas, Barbara Horan (now Amanda Horan Kennedy, owner of a successful bra company) is very appealing as Ronnie, the gorgeous brunette who likes Alan for reasons that are explained, but still don’t seem the slightest bit plausible. Not necessarily a strong actress, she still manages to leave a good impression and earns far more sympathy than your typical fantasy dream girl character.
But if I had to pick TMBS’sone redeeming moment, it would have to be the extremely gratuitous, nonsensical dance sequence that occurs when Ronnie unveils her new swimsuit designs for the first time. In terms of style and content it bears no relation to any other sequence from the movie, which is probably why it was easily my favourite part of the whole movie.
To no one’s surprise, The Malibu Bikini Shop is a bad movie, but the problem isn’t inherent in its premise or genre, but rather one of execution and confused philosophy. The truth is that the film is undone by David Wechter’s clear ambition to make a film that was more than an excuse to bare some T & A. Had he stayed true to just that noble ambition the film probably would have still sucked, if only because he isn’t a talented filmmaker, but it at least would have spared us several moments of agony in the process.
I was 12. Plus I was a major anti-Reagan mini-liberal who despaired the way Russians were always portrayed as villains throughout 80s cinema, and I felt honour bound to support a film that set out to break that mold. Did I mention I was 12? Blame my Uncle Doug--he paid for the tickets.
Not everything I've written for FLICK ATTACK has made it to the show. Mr. Lott insists that these rapidly aging reviews will be posted eventually, but until then I'm just going to assume that they have been:
Rejected By Rod(?)
The Convent
(2000)
The Convent is one of those horror movies that was made with such obvious affection by its filmmakers I’m able to forgive the fact that it literally plunges a knife into the heart of its least hateful character 30 minutes into its running time and then makes us wait another 20 before Adrienne Barbeau shows up to kick some serious demon nun ass.
The movie begins memorably with a hot young brunette in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform walking into a church and batting away at the assembled sisters (and father) with a Louisville slugger before setting them ablaze and blasting them with a shotgun, all to the sweet sound of Lesley Gore’s classic “You Don’t Know Me”.
It then cuts to 40 years later, where the location of this massacre is the destination of choice for a trio of truly obnoxious fraternity assholes, their virgin pledge, two girlfriends and the super cute, sarcastic goth girl who’s just like the woman I imagined I’d end up marrying back when I was 14 (which obviously didn’t happen).
The trouble starts when super cute goth girl is sacrificed by a quartet of pathetic Satanists, which causes the demons that necessitated the previous massacre to rise up from wherever they went the last time this all went down. In the end, the only person who can stop the demons from raising the antichrist is the hot 50-something version of the hot schoolgirl who took care of the problem the first time.
Needless to say, Adrienne Barbeau is truly awesome as the foul-mouthed, liquored up, tight jeans wearing demon slayer and is—along with the film’s sly sense of humor—the main reason to ignore the its obvious deficits and give it a chance.
Clearly inspired by Night of the Demons and Evil Dead II, The Convent is better than the former and nowhere close to the latter, which is exactly how it should be in a fair and just world such as our own.
