LUST IN THE DUST
(R, New World Pictures, 84 mins., theatrical release date: Mar. 1, 1985)
Long regarded as the Uncanny Valley of instacamp Western burlesques, Paul Bartel's LUST IN THE DUST finds the black comic master of Death Race 2000 and Eating Raoul wandering self-consciously into John Waters-burg. This was more of a passion project for wayward heartthrob Tab Hunter, who'd been wanting to produce his own offbeat spin on the desiccated genre for a while (the title comes from Joseph Cotton's nickname for the 1946 epic Duel in the Sun) and found himself energized by his experience on Waters' Polyester. The coupling of him with the heavyset transvestite Divine proved a match made in heaven (Criterion announced Polyester as a September 2019 release as I write this), and Hunter no doubt recognized the potential in placing Waters' MVP atop a burro and shipping him off as a dance hall diva. There was even a role for Edith Massey, another inextricable member of Dreamland, which was cut tragically short because of the Egg Lady's declining health.
Perhaps as much a hurdle as the Waters associations was how 1985, the year Bartel's movie went into wide release, was raring to be clogged with attempts to bring back the Western. If it wasn't Lawrence (Silverado) Kasdan or Clint (Pale Rider) Eastwood, it was Lust in the Dust's closest competition at the multiplex, the Tom Berenger vehicle Rustler's Rhapsody, another featherweight satire. And a year later, John Landis' Three Amigos! came along and was ultimately rewarded the hipster cult audience that came naturally to the unflappable if glib Landis. Basically, 1985 was the year of the cult movie, some more intensely marketed than others, but it felt like all under-performers of 1985 would go on to build their own rabidly defensive fanbase.
Lust in the Dust, however, seems to be one of the lesser cult movies of that crazy, crazy year. How could this be?! You had Divine and Tab Hunter reunited so shortly after the trash masterpiece that is Polyester. There were goofy supporting roles for Geoffrey Lewis, Courtney Gains, Henry Silva, and Cesar Romero. And then you had Lainie Kazan, so hilarious as the Jewish mother with eyes for Peter O'Toole in the magnificent My Favorite Year, in a corset trading mesquite-grilled barbs with Divine, who was finally being recognized outside of Waters' own Baltimore creative hub. And Paul Bartel was no novice, either, although he sadly didn't get as much respect as he deserved based on some disheartening evidence found in the bonus features of this Vinegar Syndrome release.
Bartel and co. labored so hard to put the vamp in "revamp," and yet Lust in the Dust has the reputation of a saddle sore to this very day. Why?
The fact that Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, held up by a lot of cranks as the last bastion of political incorrectness translated to riotous comedy, continues to cast a shadow over every attempted Western comedy is inevitable. Neither Bartel nor scriptwriter Philip John Taylor (making his sole foray out of TV programming) were ever going to compete with Brooks or ZAZ on a joke density scale. Lust in the Dust presents Tab Hunter as a Man With No Name-style drifter only to christen him Abel Wood, which never rises above groan-worthy pun status despite the frothing horniness Lainie Kazan, going full Mae West, brings to the brassy saloon owner, Marguerita Ventura. Same goes for Courtney Gains, as...well, Red Dick!
None of these nudge-wink nicknames can compare to the sheer majesty of Divine's playacting. Rosie Velez would be a stock ingénue in a less ironic parts; Divine gooses the role with enough offhand humor and force of personality that his charisma remains consistent. "Always the little ones got something to prove," she deadpans, with true Lily Von Shtupp sarcasm, upon finding the dwarf sidekick to bandit Hard Case Williams (Geoffrey Lewis) between her legs in the middle of the night. When she interjects upon Kazan's musical number, "South of My Border," it is the perfect encapsulation of the playfully bitchy chemistry between them. Nothing stops Divine; even a line like "My ass is on its last legs!" solicits a guilty chuckle when he delivers it.
Rosie, of course, arrives in Chile Verde, New Mexico, the archetypal small town rumored to possess gold in their hills. There are a broken map and a limerick as clues, although the former's assembly will be become obvious once you immediately deduce the bawdiness inherent in the words "two butes." And it all ends with the characters on receiving ends of gun barrels, even Marguerita's most aged prostitute, Big Ed (Nedra Volz, in the role that Edie Massey read for). The plot is certainly as flimsy as the wardrobe on Gina Gallego as the least eccentric senorita of the saloon, Ninfa, and for as much energy as the cast brings, this plot doesn't bring Leone down a single peg. It's the Clue conundrum all over again: amped showmanship which doesn't make up for the lack of real ambition or the hoariness of most of the jokes.
Certain moments in Lust in the Dust do solidify the playfulness Bartel labors to bring to the movie. Henry Silva, in what has to be his funniest role since Alligator, is a hoot as the trigger-happy Bernardo, addressing the Chile Verde Rotary Club in his attempt to rouse a mob to silence the already stoic Abel. Kazan's big musical number is so outrageously horny, she grinds upon Henry Silva's inanimate body and manipulates him like a puppet, and it slays me every time. Divine belts out "These Lips Were Made for Kissin'" in all his hoarse but pitch-perfect glory, and there is a solid running joke about the way Rosie's loins tend to literally smother any prospective lovers. It pays off at the end, complete with a tasty "Come and get it!" in regards to the film's other primary focus of lust away from Tab Hunter. And Geoffrey Lewis as Hard Case Williams, the son of a Boston preacher ("may he rot in hellfire"), adds to his rogue's gallery something truly hilarious.
The comedy of Bartel's film is, like Eating Raoul, situated at the crossroads of straight and loony, which is high-risk, high-reward. Trouble is that Eating Raoul felt more novel and had more of an axe to grind at swingers and bondage cases, which gives it more of an edge compared to this softer R-rated romp. But that was Bartel's own unique sensibilities at work; Taylor, meanwhile, is merely transgressive for a television writer, and he doesn't measure up to what a Paul Bartel or a John Waters could do in peak mischief. I don't agree with Graeme Clark's assertion that Tab Hunter doesn't get one funny line, as there is a bone tossed in his confession scene with Cesar Romero's man of cloth about "lockjaw Indians." But he does have less personality than the Eastwood-style desperado he cosplays, and for all the eccentrics bouncing off him, Hunter feels less vital here than he did as Divine's hopeless infatuation from Polyester.
There is no doubt a small cult devoted to Lust in the Dust, as Lainie Kazan's own gay fans will attest to, and singling out Divine for a Worst Actress Razzie nomination is mean-spirited in a petty way, hardly worthy of Waters and Bartel at their most enjoyably catty. I'll take Lust in the Dust over a St. Elmo's Fire or a Teen Wolf in a heartbeat. But if one can be completely objective about such security blanket subversives as Clue or Better Off Dead or even The Goonies, and can put aside any further Mel Brooks or John Waters comparisons, Lust in the Dust looks weak in the presence of the more truly gonzo highlights of 1985, be they Re-Animator or Pee-Wee's Big Adventure or The Last Dragon. Those pure entertainments knew how to go over the top with the best of them; Lust in the Dust isn't so tarnished, but it wheezes by like a lonely tumbleweed.
Funny thing happened when Anchor Bay released this on DVD for the first time in 2001: though not shot in CinemaScope, their transfer reframed the film to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio to mimic the look of its inspiration. No information exists as to whether it was screened as such theatrically from its festival premiere in '84 to the wider release around the same time as The Sure Thing, and Bartel isn't here anymore to supervise or elaborate on if 2.35:1 was a conscious decision. The original aspect ratio appears to be 1.85:1 as befits a low-budget 35mm production. The Vinegar Syndrome "Halfway to Black Friday" exclusive release preserves them both, and they appear to possess the same overall picture quality.
Which is good, because they've located the original 35mm negative and made it sing for this 4k scan. This is the real Divine Madness the way our lady Glenn appears, and everyone and everything on show looks astoundingly crisp. Floral print dresses, bloomers and corsets are as robust as the sweat, mascara and lipstick on the performers. Black/blue levels in nighttime sequences never smear, and there is a light, natural grain to an otherwise error-proof transfer. The 1.0 DTS HD-MA mix is exquisite, with clean dialogue throughout and dynamic musical cues, especially the opening ballad. Though the track is monaural, there is atmosphere to the sound effects, and the optional English SDH subtitles are more accurate than most VS transcripts.
The 15-minute "More Lust, Less Dust" featurette produced for the Anchor Bay disc by David Gregory is carried over, which is generous with on-set footage and even includes the audition tape of Edith Massey reading the part of Big Ed. Producers Tab Hunter and Allan Glaser are on hand, as are actors Lainie Kazan and Gina Gallego (sadly, no Courtney Gains), and there are enough production details to satisfy, as well as some choice audio clips of Divine and Paul Bartel. Real life couple Hunter and Glaser return, a decade and a half later and before Hunter's death in 2018, for the 20-minute "Return to Chili Verde," produced by Automat Pictures (I Am Divine), which elaborates further on the pre-production process (Shirley MacLaine as well as Chita Rivera were initial choices as Marguerita) as well as Divine's involvement ("Mr. Producer" was his pet name for Glaser), with a third Hunter/Divine vehicle that, tragically, never came to be. Both do a great job conveying the rugged nature of setting and outfits.
"The Importance of Being Paul" is Gregory's 16-minute overview of Bartel's career, featuring input from Roger Corman, Mary Woronov, Bruce Wagner, and John Landis among others. Since Lust in the Dust was elaborated upon further in Gregory's other featurette, much of the doc focuses on Eating Raoul, which Bartel made on no budget and through personal favors (Landis would order extra film for his own concurrent studio pic and donate to Bartel). There are minor discussions of Death Race 2000, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills and Bartel's extensive resume as actor, but it's his late career downfall that hits the hardest. His last feature film from 1993, Shelf Life, was unable to find major distribution in the wake of studio switch-ups, where executors could care less about Death Race 2000 or Eating Raoul. Bartel was unable to get his sequel to Eating Raoul, "Bland Ambition," which had a completed script as early as 1986, into production before his death in 2000, with financing secured the day prior.
Topping things off are a newspaper archive gallery set to the tune of "Tumbling Tumbleweed" and a TV spot for the movie. You can still secure a limited edition copy at Vinegar Syndrome, complete with slipcover. Here's the proper theatrical trailer, though, which isn't included on that release which I just reviewed:
Gil Buckman seems like a former latchkey kid frantically seeking out the door for his own young son. In his head, he still feels the disappointment of his own paterfamilias taking him to baseball games without the added element of bonding, except for when dad has paid off a stranger to talk to him. Decades later, and close to his own family in ways his father never was, Gil is happier, more confident and surprisingly well-adjusted, and he wants things to pan out similarly for nine-year-old Kevin, whom he coaches on the Little League team and who is exhibiting signs of abnormal psychology which Gil and his wife Karen cannot rationalize.
This is but one of several generational anxieties which unfold in Ron Howard's Parenthood, where well-meaning adults butt heads with the inevitable dysfunction practically hereditary in nature. Gil, not unlike his father (as well as Mr. Howard), has a family of four to his credit and his three siblings are also at loggerheads with responsibility. The youngest, Larry, is black sheep cloth all the way, chasing after easy money through schemes and wagers but with an illegitimate child whom he brings to Thanksgiving dinner as a sign of his supposed well-being. The two sisters, Helen and Susan, haven't run from their crises, whether it's concern over grooming a three-year-old as a hyper-intelligent prodigy or facing loneliness when son and daughter alike discover sex.
"It never, never ends," says Frank Buckman about the ties that bind. Luckily for Howard, Parenthood is far breezier and good-humored than the retiring head of the bustling Buckmans. Nowadays, Steve Martin has parlayed Gil Buckman into a new life as family movie figurehead and Ron Howard's done his own dirty work with the novels of Dan Brown. In 1989, Parenthood was a sign of growth for both these showbiz stalwarts. The young star of American Graffiti and Happy Days was at his peak a few films deep into his career as director, which began under Roger Corman's auspices (Grand Theft Auto) and encapsulated Night Shift, Splash, Cocoon, and Willow. Martin, meanwhile, saw his face-pulling legacy balloon into genuine stardom by 1987 thanks to Roxanne and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
But Parenthood is an ensemble piece, with as much proven talent as well as rising newcomers across the board. Oscar-winners Mary Steenburgen and Dianne Wiest under the same roof as SCTV's mega-talented Rick Moranis and Tom (Amadeus) Hulce. Goonies standout Martha Plimpton acting opposite her Running on Empty co-star's kid brother Leaf (Joaquin) Phoenix as well as Keanu Reeves. Jason Robards on one end, Harley Jane Kozak at the other. Child actors who'd go on to the likes of 1990's excellent The Witches, John Hughes' final directorial effort and...erm, Problem Child 2. There's also Dennis Dugan and Clint Howard, for what it's worth, too.
Reeves is the most interesting of the bunch, his performance as "That Tod" (whom Wiest's Helen refers to derogatorily) completing the trio of hilarious breakout roles Reeves launched himself with. At first, Tod comes off like another cad boyfriend who can't balance allegiance to Helen's daughter Julie (Ms. Plimpton) and ambitions of stock car racing. He inspires a particularly blunt mother-daughter exchange due to his negligence, but turns out to have more noble qualities than even the supremely disappointing Larry (Mr. Hulce). Tod even breaks the shell of Helen's moody young son Garry (Phoenix), whose rebellious pastime is coveting porno tapes in defiance of both his eager, distressed mom and the absentee dentist dad who wants nothing to do with him. He's hep to the same spiritual awareness as Gil, but in his own recklessly youthful way.
Harley Kozak had previously done walk-on parts (Clean and Sober) as well as one vintage slasher effort (The House on Sorority Row), but proves to be a find herself as Susan. She's paired with Moranis' Nathan Huffner, an orderly intellectual who has taken to child rearing with scientific madness. "They're like sponges just waiting to absorb," he tells Gil after wee Patty (Ivyann Schwan) demonstrates her precocious mathematical skills. Nathan fills his pint-sized vessel with all manner of intellectual and cultural delicacies at the expense of his wife's restlessness over having a second child as well as training the firstborn to be more sociable. Nathan, like his wisecracking brother-in-law, is chasing blindly after his own ideals of parental perfection.
Parenthood in Parenthood is a game of extremes. If Gil succeeds in his own affections toward Kevin (Jasen Fisher), he grows up as a model college graduate ready to take on the world. Should Gil fail, Kevin is tomorrow's terrorist, shouting "You made me play second base!" as he picks off another of his campus mates from the bell tower. Gil is so hung up on his pride that in both imagined outcomes, his doting wife Karen (Ms. Steenburgen) is nowhere to be found, let alone the adult analogues of his other children. Not that Gil is totally selfish, as he rescues Kevin's birthday party when the cowboy balloon artist they've hired is waylaid by a scheduling snafu. He genuinely loves Karen as well as Taylor (Alisan Porter) and Justin (Zachary Lavoy), but as the school psychiatrists have it in for Kevin, Gil sees Kevin's adolescence as a one-man crusade to avoid the failures of father Frank (Mr. Robards).
And then there's the phenomenal Dianne Wiest (nominated here for an Academy Award following her deserving win on Hannah and Her Sisters) as Helen, a bundle of nerves and repository of the script's most honest dialogue. A single mother who cannot hide the scars from her divorce, Helen puts on a brave face even as her children out-sophisticate her and the advice she tries to offer gets subverted. A romance with Garry's biology teacher Mr. Bowman (Paul Linke) hints at salvation and satisfaction not battery-powered, but she needs to find common ground with teenage Julie as well as grade schooler Garry. Wiest's droll realism rivals Martin's own sardonic humor, whether Helen's flipping through photos of Julie & Tod's bedroom antics or putting the odds to their impromptu wedding and pregnancy.
Much like Patty, Parenthood is itself a sponge which collects all the foibles and neuroses between Ron Howard, producer Brian Grazer and Howard's frequent writing partners, Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel, family men all. Their success with Parenthood is one which most MOR filmmakers have since had the hardest time trying to replicate, the union of broad comic vignettes with hard-earned emotional honesty. Howard's deft touch with light/heavy-hearted character interactions is on constant display, especially whenever Frank alternates between protecting his youngest son Larry, who is the true chip off the old block, and revealing his own guilt to Gil. Rich with one-liners as Parenthood is, many of those mingle with moments of devastation and cruelty, particularly in the scenes between Helen and her children.
Episodic and sitcom-sterile as it may look, Parenthood's storylines have more than enough bite to belie the size. An ambiguity hangs over the many strained relationships Howard and his crew depict. Larry is desperately trying to recoup overdue gambling debts to the point where he sneaks out his father's 1935 Ford DeLuxe to get it appraised. Both he and Frank share more quality time together than they are willing to spare for Larry's son Cool (Alex Burrall), whose mother was an ebony showgirl with whom Larry had a one-night stand. Frank tries to set his reckless son on the straight-and-narrow with a well-thought compromise, inducting Larry into his plumbing supplies business, but it turns out to be a bitter failure. The circular drama which finds Frank essentially adopting the fatherless Cool is understated but powerful.
There are many strands like these woven throughout. Gil is disgusted when he is passed over for a lucrative partnership to a man with shady child support practices, and he quits his job hoping for a righteous allegiance to family only to discover Karen is bearing his fourth child. "Women have choices, men have responsibilities," he protests in a tense moment, although he will have an epiphany that will let him concede in peace in a way Larry stubbornly denies. Susan will leave the supercilious Nathan feeling that romance is gone, and Nathan's sincerely embarrassing atonement is endearing though not a proper resolution. Helen and Julie stand by each other as Tod makes his disastrous racing debut, and contrary to Frank's negative philosophy, Kevin does something on the Little League field that allows Gil the opportunity to do the rare "happy dance."
Triumphs are where you can find them, often small but immensely gratifying, which is certainly a characterization of real adulthood. This culminates in a waiting room finale which is also a touch pat but is best taken as a warm victory for one of the many expecting mothers in the movie, including Karen and Julie (and the biologically anxious Susan, who pricks holes in her diaphragm). It also feels like one more group portrait of unified contentment before the pain and pleasure waves start crashing down all over again. "It never, never ends," indeed. If you are as invested in the characters as I, there's bound to be more squabbles and soul-searching to match the many bundles of joy.
Steve Martin would finally become a father in his 67th year, but he fits well in Ron Howard's suburban surroundings. A lot of it is the reflexive wit and outrage Martin brings out in Gil, but there is also his priceless Cowboy Gil routine, dressed up in modified rugs and boasting kitchen utensils for spurs. He's always been a marvelous physical goof, and that side of Martin gets to play regularly, but like in his Hughes collaboration, Martin calibrates it to the moods of his character. He bounces well off the beaming Steenburgen (the inspiration for Randy Newman's "I Love to See You Smile") and has one choice moment with Moranis, his Little Shop of Horrors/My Blue Heaven companion. If the picture lost something in order to fit it into two hours, one wonders if it was more time spent between Gil and Nathan, who share kindred woman troubles that a nice double date could fix.
Parenthood is a film of constant interactivity which has been calibrated very exquisitely by Howard and his team. You get the "Diarrhea" sing-a-long, improper bedtime attire and vomit gag early on to ease you into the more potent adult-oriented comedy which immediately follows and the unabashed gem of a birthday party set piece. It works on a level of true cross-generational appeal which doesn't trivialize the subjects it condenses and embellishes, a testament to the skills of its large cast as well as its creative hub. No matter how desperate the characters become or how pressing the situations, Ron Howard loves to see them smile. And so do I.
THE ROCKETEER
(PG-13, Walt Disney Pictures, 108 mins., theatrical release date: June 21, 1991)
Clint Howard turns up in Parenthood as the archetypical ballgame loudmouth mocking Coach Buckman from behind the fence, but apparently he also appears in Joe Johnston's failed blockbuster The Rocketeer. Having watched the movie three times, I can't place Clint at all. Either he's the frustrated day player dressed in friar's robes storming off a movie set or the diminutive mobster on the right side of the frame during the final act showdown. He doesn't have a single line of dialogue and his unmistakable mug never commands the camera's attention. Still, when Clint Howard turned up to play the Ice Cream Man, what was the name of the preteen clique he tormented? It sure wasn't called the Rugheads.
Johnston, an ILM visual designer who graduated to associate producer for Ron Howard's Willow and finally director on Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, moulds The Rocketeer in the image of a Lucas/Spielberg adventure yarn. The time and place is southern California in 1938, taking off from the lavish recreation which kicked off Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom for feature length while incorporating tropes from Return of the Jedi and the inaugural Raiders of the Lost Ark. Cliff Secord, the Fearless Freep, tests the jet pack on his back in an attempt to rescue a drunken townie spinning out of control in the skies above only to skip across the pond once the device gets the better of him. When the forces of institutionalized evil come looking for Secord, the main threat turns out to be Nazis who covet the rocket for a marquee name spy.
Errol Flynn, W.C. Fields, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, and Rondo Hatton (cf. "Tiny Ron" Taylor as the slope-faced assassin Lothar) are all clearly evoked amongst its cast, but not Bettie Page. In the original Dave Stevens creation which premiered in 1982, a year after Raiders modernized our Republic Pictures past, Cliff Secord's girlfriend was modeled after the pre-Marilyn sex symbol who was in reality 15 years old in the era favored by Stevens. Not that the new model love interest Johnston's film subs in is any less achingly sexy: Jennifer Connelly, a former child actress turned 20-year-old knockout in Dennis Hopper's The Hot Spot, could've been the queen of pinups herself in 1991 on the strength of both The Rocketeer and the shrewdly/lewdly-marketed John Hughes throwaway Career Opportunities, had these two films performed better.
The Rocketeer harkens back to the antiquated Commando Cody serials in which a tweak of the nipple knobs (thanks, J. Elvis Weinstein) allowed for a homegrown Superman changeover. No purple nurples or star-spangled tights for Cliff Secord, a gum-smacking model of boyish fearlessness who sees "borrowing" the experimental engine as a chance to revive his flagging fortunes as a pilot. In just the opening scene, his test run of a prize airplane, the Gee Bee, is rudely interrupted on the ground by one of the Cirrus X-3 rocket's gangster smugglers, who fires his tommy gun in the air and takes out one of the plane's legs. Secord, who can be self-absorbed and klutzy at odd intervals, listens to reason and even considers returning the Cirrus to the FBI before the jeopardy becomes expectedly personal.
Joe Johnston's hero caper, alas, was produced by Disney during an inter-company backlash dictated by Jeffrey Katzenberg in the wake of the faulty Dick Tracy blitzkrieg. The Rocketeer, which isn't as opulent as Warren Beatty's own pulp throwback, unravels on a small scale plotwise as opposed to budgetary. It operates on a strange kind of cult movie disposability where it looks sumptuous but tastes unfulfilling, and thrice have I watched it with rapt admiration but no lingering affection. The elements are all there for a transcendent if nostalgic crowd-pleaser on the order of the decade-old (at the time) Raiders of the Lost Ark, but they don't gel as craftily as they should.
Bill Campbell, who was romantically linked to Connelly off set and on, plays the hotdog stunt pilot Secord without setting off sparks in the manner of Harrison Ford or Mark Hamill (it's more a problem with the script than the capable performer). Timothy Dalton, fresh off his double 007 duty, gleefully
sinks his teeth into the role of swashbuckling warmonger Neville
Sinclair yet minus the humor he got to demonstrate a decade later in
Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz. Paul Sorvino, who was also in Dick Tracy, is the all-American mobster who holds his own against the vain Sinclair. And as Howard Hughes, presented as the brain behind the rocket pack which lands in Secord's hangar, Terry (The Stepfather) O'Quinn is as commendable as ever.
The Rocketeer's true marvels are of the visual kind, however. Johnston, who'd later launch the Captain America franchise during the modern comic book superhero boom, orchestrates a few pips of set pieces as grand as anything past its $40 million price tag. You can't deny the brilliance of the production design whether its the small town Bulldog Café which Secord and his mentor Peevy (Alan Arkin) frequent alongside ole reliable William Sanderson or the more ritzy South Seas Club which the devious Sinclair takes Secord's day player paramour Jenny Blake (Connelly) to upon overhearing the true identity of the famous Rocketeer (his headline-dominating name coined by Jon Polito as Bigelow). And I loved the animated newsreel of doom which lays out the Third Reich's plans of jet-propelled conquest more convincingly than all of the dialogue which involves Sinclair. It reminded me of Brad Bird's The Iron Giant, which was more confident in its Spielbergian heritage than The Rocketeer.
MOVING VIOLATIONS
(PG-13, Twentieth Century Fox, 90 mins., theatrical release date: April 19, 1985)
Moving Violations, alas, confirms the nagging suspicion I had about the writing team of Neal Israel & Pat Proft plagiarizing the blockbuster legacy of producer Ivan Reitman. In just three examples: 1) they still can't write a role worthy of the real Bill Murray, so this time, they've caved into nepotism and hired Bill's younger brother John for a deliberate imitation; 2) not content to rehash their own Police Academy, which was already coasting on borrowed Stripes, the finale of Moving Violations is a direct steal from National Lampoon's Animal House (there's also a motivational speech from John Murray that is clearly a half-assed echo of John Belushi's legendary "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!" spiel); 3) the Israel-directed Moving Violations demonstrates not only that the success of the same year's Real Genius was attributable to outsider Martha Coolidge, but that even Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment managed fresher comedy with a new creative hub as well as the unforgettable screen debut of Bobcat Goldthwait.
Bob Zemeckis regular Wendie Jo Sperber starred in the uproarious Used Cars five years prior to this, Sally Kellerman benefited as much as Rodney did by going Back to School the next summer and Fred Willard, who is the lone spark of comic life to be found in Moving Violations, was previously in This Is Spinal Tap. Brian Backer plays another lovesick dweeb as if to remind us that the worthier Fast Times at Ridgemont High would forever be his career highlight. Ned Eisenberg (who co-starred with Backer in 1981's The Burning) does the goofy gorehound shtick owned by Dean Cameron's Chainsaw in Summer School. James Keach was in Walter Hill's The Long Riders (opposite brother Stacy) and National Lampoon's Vacation. Jennifer Tilly would become a worthy comedienne on the basis of Let It Ride and Liar Liar.
I named all these actors and their past or future accomplishments to stress one simple point: You could see them all do much better than Moving Violations. I've already listed a dozen funnier movies, 13 if you want to be kind to Police Academy. At least that had some surefire R-rated set pieces, a more amiable batch of misfit stereotypes and the vocal talents of Michael Winslow as Larvell Jones, who I know can do a better Bill Murray impression than even his sibling can. I've read one reviewer compare the pudgy-cheeked John Murray to a teenage George Takei, but he's easily a dead ringer for a younger Bill Hicks, especially the one seen in Sane Man.
There. My baker's dozen of superior comedy is now officially complete.
Moving Violations is a flunky starring James Keach as Deputy Halik, the bike cop responsible for busting John Murray's slobby Dana Cannon, who immediately retaliates by baiting Halik into a misdirected rage which costs the policeman a recent promotion. That particular punchline you notice in advance like a train you'd hear hurtling towards your stalling automobile perched atop the railroad tracks. Don't laugh (easy to do in regards to this film), but that very cliché turns up at one moment. Other hoary chestnuts include the inadvertent conjugation of jailbait, replete with mad dash out of the bedroom window, and a bumbling examination ride that doesn't even try to one-up a similar moment with Officer Hooks from the first Police Academy. And these happen to the same character, Brian Backer's hapless puppeteer Scott (Backer would go on to Police Academy 4 as a skater boy, opposite a pre-SNL David Spade). He, Dana and several others are thrown together in court-appointed traffic school taught by the disgraced Halik.
Wendie Jo Sperber is Joan , a dim hypochondriac who misconstrues the terminology of auto body doc Terrence Williams (Fred Willard, with a corn-cob pipe and seasoned straight man sincerity) as a regimen for physical wellness. Thus, when he advises Joan to lube up her rear end, it's not the Valvoline she reaches for. The joke is pushed further than Neal Israel can handle it when Joan turns up at his repair shop office and undresses for a supposed physical. Nadine van der Velde (Critters) plays the aforementioned underage love interest, closet punkette Stephanie. Nedra Volz (Lust in the Dust) is the requisite senior demolitionist who drives friend Clara Peller (of Wendy's commercial fame) onto an airport runway. Willard Pugh (The Color Purple) is on hand simply to say "My father's going to kill me!" Again, you could be watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High instead of this.
As for Jennifer Tilly, she is curiously unfunny as the requisite Stupid Smart Girl, known in this script as Amy. She looks like Julie Kavner and tries to sound like Julie Hagerty, and her love for Cannon is too much a placebo to even suggest Bad Medicine. There's one cute sight gag in an anti-gravity chamber, but the dialogue and performances don't justify it. Israel & Proft cram the movie with too many dud one-liners, musty innuendos and hackneyed anti-establishment sniggers. Sally Kellerman's Judge Nedra is an unflatteringly unsexy bondage case (seriously, I can't watch her leather-studded straw dog without hearing Fred Willard's Buck Laughlin) who conspires with the bitter Halik to deny the rejects their confiscated licenses as well as make a profit off their impounded vehicles.
Israel has effectively diluted the convivial anarchy of his forebears, thus resulting in a painfully episodic structure which emphasizes humiliation, banality and tangential dead ends. In his petty vengeance, Halik goes so far as to frame Cannon for a convenience store robbery, but at that point, throwing the book at the charmless jester is likely to be on the majority of people's minds. In any case, this development is worthless. A recurring joke is made about Halik's female partner, Deputy Morris (Lisa Hart Carroll: Terms of Endearment...really?!), being mistaken for a man because of her short, "butch" haircut (apparently, none of the manchildren has ever seen Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places). Wendie Jo Sperber and Brian Backer play characters who are nothing but objects of mean-spirited debasement, no different from the authority figures whom Israel & Proft code as authoritarian killjoys. Everything about Moving Violations tastes so much more curdled compared to not only Police Academy and Bachelor Party, but also Revenge of the Nerds and Ghostbusters.
And yet here I am reviewing it, having listened to charlatans and contrarians tell me it's some kind of discovery. That I'm supposed to overlook Neal Israel's pathetic direction, ripe with egregious continuity and ADR flubs, as well as the tired slapstick and tedious characters so as to appreciate it on the same level as Airplane! or Better Off Dead. I don't think so. If I had paid to see this theatrically, I'd have torn up my ticket like one would do any unfair writ. Even the Netflix DVD sleeve is steeling my hands for destruction: "Traffic school turns into a prison sentence in this comedy from Neal Israel, the director of Police Academy." If you're dumb enough to believe that, then Moving Violations is the perfect movie for you.
REAL GENIUS
(PG, Tri-Star Pictures, 108 mins., theatrical release date: August 7, 1985)
When Amy Heckerling directed Cameron Crowe's script for Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982, she demonstrated a rare sense of objectivity in an era of gross objectification. Since a lot of these teen exploitation movies were either transparently calculated or stiffly personal, what redeemed Fast Times wasn't just the savvy in casting the roles, from Sean Penn's dominating doper to the Martin Twins who stormed out of Captain Hook Fish & Chips, but Heckerling's finesse in handling the many tones of the film. It was as situational as a Porky's, but not as sensational. Her outsider's perspective (as well as Crowe's) didn't force the amiability or leaden either the melodrama or the madcap tangents. What resulted was a hang-out movie worthy of its Sherman Oaks Galleria setting, as well as a more perceptive and less shallow depiction of the worn rites-of-passage tropes.
Martha Coolidge's Valley Girl arrived next year to confirm the welcome difference in hiring untested female formalists of collegiate breeding as opposed to utter schlock merchants. Though staler than Fast Times, given a subplot that deliberately quoted The Graduate as well as the star-crossed romance which was its crux, Valley Girl took a social idiosyncrasy which was the stuff of Zappa-worthy disdain and made a genuine effort to invest us in the fashion plate heroine and her vulgar but charismatic love interest. Deborah Foreman established her perky cult credentials (it's a real shame she never got the Kim Cattrall breakout she deserved) and Nicolas Cage's rise started out in captivating earnest. Frederic Forrest and Colleen Camp weren't bad nor badly-written as the parental units, and the soundtrack actually corralled both The Plimsouls and Josie Cotton to perform on camera. Like Fast Times, Valley Girl seemed like a more authentic scene than most chintzy movie campuses.
As the '80s teen movie finally stopped getting lucrative on its basic/base fascination with puberty, Heckerling and Coolidge's careers differentiated quite starkly. Amy Heckerling branched out to mainstream comedy quite unevenly with Johnny Dangerously and National Lampoon's European Vacation before getting associated with the decent Look Who's Talking! and its abysmal sequels. She waited until the 1980s were well over before going back to the teen mill, starting all over with 1995's own trend-defining Clueless. Martha Coolidge, meanwhile, stayed in the youthful groove as Paramount's hired gun for their overdue adaptation of The Joy of Sex. Alas, pressure from the studio to conform to the lowest common denominator, echoing her previous struggle with Valley Girl, resulted in her considering the fabled Alan Smithee credit, which she later regretted declining. In 1985, Coolidge returned to form with Real Genius.
At first glance, Real Genius looked as unpromising as The Joy of Sex for Ms. Coolidge. It's all in the presence of hack scriptwriters Neal Israel (Amy Heckerling's former husband) & Pat Proft, creators of the runaway smash Police Academy as well as Bachelor Party and Moving Violations. The comedic trend these men were cashing in on is better associated with producer Ivan Reitman and his slob comedy touchstones Caddyshack, Meatballs and Stripes. Reitman's films, which harkened back to the anarchic culture clash scenarios of the Marx Brothers and The Three Stooges, launched Saturday Night Live's sardonic Bill Murray as movie star (their shared peak being Ghostbusters), the 1980s heir to inveterate wisenheimer Groucho Marx. And it was Murray's shadow in which Tom Hanks, Steve Guttenberg and Bill's own sibling John were cloaked. Just as John Belushi set the gold standard for chunky party animals (and by my estimation, that includes Rodney Dangerfield as much as Joe Rubbo), Bill Murray epitomized the slacker's swagger through playing the kind of puckish schmoe it pays not to underestimate.
For Real Genius, Israel & Proft provided yet another Bill Murray replica in the form of Chris Knight, the senior stud at Pacific Tech who came to an epiphany after observing the mental breakdown of a fellow whiz kid and now applies his own advanced intellect to less introverted pursuits. No longer shackled to white shirts and hush puppies, Chris embraces mock-sloganeering tees ("Surf Nicaragua") and penguin slippers. His thermos of frozen nitrogen can be carved into coins to outsmart the rec room's vending machines. And in lieu of brain-frying study work, Chris preoccupies himself with such extracurricular amenities as mutant hamster races, Madame Currie look-alike contests (there was one contestant, and he was later disqualified) and crashing the tanning invitational held by the Wanda Trussler School of Beauty. If he's going to embrace being a smarty-pants, Chris figures he's going to work on the smart-ass which best fits.
Had Neal Israel directed this himself, the actor playing Chris would no doubt look like another Bill Murray doppelganger, too. Retooled by Martha Coolidge, who coaxed a convincingly lovesick but playful Nicolas Cage in his first leading role, she notched another victory by landing Val Kilmer, fresh off the ZAZ trio's Top Secret! After a heated career in which, during its height, he played Jim Morrison, Bruce Wayne and Doc Holliday, it took a Gay Perry to remind us what a find Kilmer was in the mid-1980s. Whether acting an Elvis send-up whose hits included "Skeet Surfin'" and "Straighten the Rug" or as the sassy foil to Robert Downey Jr., Kilmer had both impeccable taste in comedy projects and the mischievous, self-effacing charisma to match. Kilmer gets an exquisitely snappy, high-energy showcase here not unlike Cage's Randy from Valley Girl, as well as a fully-rounded character.
But despite the promotional materials, Val Kilmer wasn't all that Real Genius had to offer. 14-year-old newcomer Gabriel Jarret (we'll discount his brief appearance in Going Ape!) is also appealing as Mitch Taylor, the freshman prodigy who is plucked from the Western Regional science fair by celebrity brainiac Dr. Jerome Hathaway (William "Wally Wick" Atherton, officious as ever) to join Chris Knight in his research development team. The kids' mission is to unwittingly invent a new five-megawatt laser capable of vaporizing an object from space, thus Real Genius offers a tantalizing take-down of the "Star Wars" initiative of the Reagan presidency. This death ray, the Crossbow as named by its CIA backers, is even introduced like a toy following a credits sequence pitting diagrams of various tools of destruction against the jazz standard "You Took Advantage of Me."
Mitch, a guppy with advanced theories in florescent compound physics, is the kind of idealist Chris was in his first three years as the smartest person in the room. There's also a third young man with the same jaded trajectory as Chris, Lazlo Hollyfeld, played by Jonathan (TerrorVision) Gries. Hollyfeld, who is smarter than Mitch and Chris combined, used to slave over his own scientific breakthroughs before being told that was he designing was potentially lethal. This rendered him a gentle hermit with a mysterious ability to walk into Mitch's closet and vanish into thin air. Pacific Tech has the kind of atmosphere where it's sink or swim, some students managing to thrive under pressure and others cracking. Since Mitch is still a child, he seems poised for an early breakdown, especially thanks to ruthless sycophant Kent (Robert Prescott), who's angling for team leadership in between substitute teaching gigs and dry cleaner errands for Dr. Hathaway.
Certain plot elements in Real Genius cater to Israel & Proft's puerile flavor of humor, especially the character of PR executive Sherry Nugil (Patti D'Arbanville), a "genius groupie" who tries to seduce Mitch in a surprise visit. That it doesn't devolve into another Private Lessons comes down to Martha Coolidge and co-writer P.J. Torokvei's decision to introduce a female Pacific Tech student who is more compatible for Mitch in both intelligence and innocence. Enter the director's good luck charm: Michelle Meyrink (also from Revenge of the Nerds as well as Coolidge's previous comedies) as the tirelessly inventive Jordan Cochran, which can charitably be called the Joan Cusack role. Assertive in her own spaced-out way as Chris and Dr. Hathaway, Jordan lacks the filter preventing all of her idle thoughts from verbal expression. She holds her own compared to her rambunctious male counterparts and, with her bobbed hair and spontaneous work ethic, struck a blow for female representation in the campus comedy. The character of Gadget Hackenwrench from Disney's Chip 'N' Dale Rescue Rangers was directly inspired by Jordan.
With a bevy of likeable characters and adroit performers (Atherton imbues his flagrant villain with OCD hang-ups and a few colicky outbursts), Real Genius does achieve a sort of delirious chemical bond. There are wittier lines and gags in Coolidge's film alone than any five sons of Animal House fused together. A student nicknamed Ick (Mark Kamiyama) transforms dry ice fog into solid matter suitable for indoor skating and sledding. Pressed by Chris to reveal his secret, Ick retorts: "Oh, sure. I tell you, then you tell somebody else, and the next thing you know, we're in the middle of another ice age." Hollyfeld, who has finally acquired "certain materialistic needs," breaks a Frito-Lay sweepstakes like it was the bell curve. And Mitch's initial impression of campus life is thrown into a loop by a math class which grows increasingly remote; the absent students set up boom boxes and tape recorders to record, resulting in a hilarious pay-off.
Ed Lauter (the principal shadow man), Stacy "Dogtown" Peralta, Louis Giambalvo, Severn Darden ("I think the young people enjoy it when I 'get down' verbally, don't you?"), Sandy Martin, Paul Tulley & Joanne Baron (Mitch's dim parents), and Deborah Foreman (kissing off Chris like his name was Tommy) do well peripherally. Among the outstanding tech credits, which include a fine batch of production/set designers doubling Caltech, are Risky Business editor Richard Chew and the esteemed Hungarian cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. To my memory, this is one of the rare '80s teen movies shot in 2.35:1 Panavision, which accommodates the sleek design of the Crossbow as well as the irresistible way it is recalibrated to get revenge on the unethical Dr. Hathaway. The use of Tears for Fears at the end clinches the deal, with the soundtrack also boasting Tonio K., Don Henley, Bryan Adams, The Call, The System, and The Comsat Angels.
Alas, for as many quality teen movies which came out in the overcrowded year of our Lord 1985 ("This is Jesus, Kent, and you've been a very naughty boy!"), the trend as a whole seemed to be disappearing quicker than Lazlo Hollyfeld. With the exceptions tied to Steven Spielberg (Back to the Future no doubt gave a push to Teen Wolf at the summer's end) and John Hughes, youthful comedies weren't topping the box-office surveys or sticking around long enough to earn anything beyond breakeven sums. The Sure Thing and Porky's Revenge each finished around the $20 million mark, and not even Top 10 singles by Madonna (the chart-topping ballad "Crazy for You," which she performed in the actual movie), Journey ("Only the Young") and Pat Benatar helped Vision Quest ($13 million) and The Legend of Billie Jean (stalling at $3.1 million during the summer of '85, Benatar's theme song "Invincible" peaked months after the movie flopped). All these underachieving teen movies released that year became strictly cult classics, be they Real Genius or Better Off Dead or Girls Just Want to Have Fun or Just One of the Guys (another surprise teen romp from a female filmmaker) or both of Kelly Preston's starturns.
But if there is has to be some kind of honor roll, even if it's a "moral imperative" that you grade on a curve (maybe do that for Better Off Dead and Just One of the Guys), Real Genius is a definite shoo-in for the very best teen comedies not just of 1985, but the entire decade. It's as fluffy as the nougat in a Three Musketeers bar, to be honest, but Martha Coolidge took what could've been another formula comedy and teased out honest-to-goodness belly laughs, a veneer of pacifistic satire within the subterfuge and a really solid string of performances. You could spend hours trying to determine who were the real geniuses of this genre of comedy, but Coolidge was undeniably a true savant.
MISCHIEF
(R, 20th Century Fox, 93 mins., theatrical release date: February 8, 1985)
I spent the inauguration day of Mr. 45 watching Better Off Dead, but there was nothing nostalgic about it. The effect felt like putting an old friend out to pasture after having been bitten by a slavering zombie. It should have felt like a reason to believe, but failing that, it became a requiem for whatever amber waves washed over the detritus of pop cultures past.
2017 marks the 35th anniversary of Porky's, and so when I revisited it, I tried to understand how something like that could have been such a blockbuster given that it was riding coattails of previous heavy-hitters like American Graffiti and Animal House. I still don't consider Bob Clark's movie to be in the same league as Lucas or Landis. Not even Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which I really like, could compare to either of those, let alone Diner. And dopier fare like The Last American Virgin, with its unearned "poignancy," or Zapped!, aka "Carrie in Charge," just leaves me cold.
To cut a long intro short, I don't fetishize the 1980s model of mindless adolescent entertainment as much as others do. If pressed to do so, I would look to 1985 as the definitive year of the teen comedy, because overall they were far more diverse and refreshing than the umpteenth "let's get laid" jaunt. Yes, you still had Porky's Revenge and Fraternity Vacation and Hot Chiliand whatever other sludge was at the bottom of that well. But there was reason to be cheerful in the deathless deluge of teen capers that were still made-to-order.
Heaven Help Us, itself an evocative boys' club caper located in parochial school, may be the most underrated of the pack because script, direction and acting were all at peak warmth. Rob Reiner's The Sure Thing incorporated old-fashioned romance into its sexual confusion and "snob vs. slob" antagonism. Vision Quest had Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino, which went a long way towards humanizing another athletic perseverance curio. Better Off Dead made surreal strides towards being a live-action cartoon, although I think Joe Dante bettered Savage Steve Holland with Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Just One of the Guys has its minor merits, as does watching both Fred Ward and Lori Laughlin in Secret Admirer.
Even Back to the Future, despite its sci-fi trappings, sprung a novel twist on the "coming-of-age" template by placing a contemporary boy in a 1950s environment to play matchmaker to his future parents, Zemeckis & Gale milking the scenario for all the metaphysical and hormonally-conflicting anxieties they could.
Between the poles of hackneyed and inspired came Mischief, which is where '80s nostalgia meets '50s nostalgia and threatens to cancel each other out. Norman Rockwell's Porky's, the critical consensus was likely to refer to it back then. The writer and executive producer, Noel Black, once directed Pretty Poison and made a music-only short film which was a smash at Cannes. Then in 1983, he directed Private School, to a lowest-common-denominator majority. It had Linda Barrett, Mr. Hand, Emmanuelle teaching sex ed, the aforementioned Modine, topless Betsy Russell, and a bawdy ol' Harry Nilsson break-up anthem for its opening credits, the single best musical cue of any teen sex comedy of its time. And yet, the Porky's curse was still casting a pall over the movies geared towards teens.
Whereas Noel Black once possessed enough clout to make Private School seem like the proverbial thankless task, the director of Mischief is Mel Damski, who delivered his own turkey the same year as Black with Yellowbeard. There's nothing in his biography worth mourning.
Mischief was also looked at by film reviewers in '85 as less the progeny of American Graffiti and more like a blue spawn of TV's Happy Days, with Doug McKeon from On Golden Pond in the Ron Howard role and first-timer Chris Nash as Henry Winkler. This is another modernized "period piece" that communicates its story purely though signifiers and stereotypes, only the seams stick out more by virtue of its Johnny Come Lately development. There's even a snippet of Rebel Without a Cause thrown in to set up an impressionable chicken race which is a transparent excuse for one of those most egregious teen comedy clichés: the "hilarious" destruction of a borrowed car.
You don't need to be Janet Maslin or Owen Gleiberman to stifle a yawn at the predictability factor here.
McKeon plays Jonathan Bellah, the self-described "dreamer" who would've been played much more colorfully in a contemporary setting by Anthony Michael Hall. He's got the rolled-up khakis and dentist's heir glow of the introverted geek. Nash is Gene Harbrough, the new kid in Nelsonville, Ohio, with the whole PG-friendly greaser accessory kit (slicked-up hair, leather jacket, blue jeans, motorbike) and stern concert violinist father, who we realize too late is played by Terry O'Quinn(!) Gene is Jonathan's new neighbor, and the awkward kid finds a big brother surrogate in the hip stranger. More pertinently, he finds a new tutor.
The reason for that is Marilyn McCauley, the local sexpot, played by Kelly Preston with deliberate shades of both Norma Jeane and Cybill Shepherd from The Last Picture Show. Jonathan wants a shot at her in the worst way, and bored Gene decides he'll make it his mission in life to turn the spaz into a stud. Not that Gene will have to go away empty-handed, as he himself is smitten with Bunny Miller (Catherine Mary Stewart), a perky sweetheart in an arranged courtship with loutish preppie Kenny Brubaker (D.W. Brown). On the margins of these competing courtships is ugly duckling Rosalie, a soda shop waitress who is biding her time until she can shed the braces and thick glasses and emerge bodaciously as the Jami Gertz we all recognized back in 1987.
The plot synopsis needn't go any further, and sadly, despite all the names I just listed in the cast, neither the characters. That's the fault which damns Mischief in the worst way: the rigid confines of these characters slouching and strutting through the equally limited plot. Jonathan realizes his wildest fantasy come true, but it means shattering both his naiveté and his appeal. Gene wastes no time establishing his delinquent-with-the-heart-of-gold bona fides and is ridden with angst over Bunny's inability to stand up against Kenny. Marilyn's more experienced ways throw Jonathan for a loop at the last moment, and he counters perfidy with petulance in the vomit-inducing tradition of Boaz Davidson, although Mel Damski directs his actors far better.
Earnest and laconic is the way Black fashions his script, which helps out immensely in the friendship that develops between Jonathan and Gene. Yet his oft-risible dialogue often betrays the loose tone and Damski's direction can't rise above anything better than workmanlike. These combine to give the scenes between Jonathan and Marilyn, which are the crux of the movie, a toxic sense of apathy. From the way Jonathan cavalierly clutches at Marilyn's breast after taking a pratfall to their inevitable bedroom encounter, in which Jonathan bluffs his way out of his lack of rubber-centric preparation but still climaxes traditionally, Jonathan's sexual awakening feels at once passé and piggish.
All Mischief truly delivers on is the Eisenhower-era nostalgia, from the sock hop outfits to the tacky Studebakers (I can hear Kathleen Turner laughing in my head), from the county fair kissing booth raising awareness of polio to the long-needled immunity shots (where's Wade Walker when you need him?). Just like American Graffiti and Lemon Popsicle, the period oldies are ladled over liberally: Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, The Platters, Mickey & Sylvia, a little Elvis, and Bill Haley's Comets giving Jonathan an ultimatum to "See You Later, Alligator" as he sneaks out through Marilyn's window. If you can get past some minor issues with the film's stated setting of 1956 clashing with the release of a few 45s (particularly the late Berry's), you can enjoy the swinging soundtrack on its own terms.
Other than those chestnuts, Mischief goes according to plan for anyone who has seen enough teen farces. Jonathan takes his first swig of hard liquor and commanders Gene's trusty but anachronistic Triumph, with obvious results. The conflict involving Kenny is good for a salacious prank at the expense of his dad's department store, but mostly it's tediously prolonged fight sequences and upturned milkshakes. And when the heroes find themselves in romantic straits on prom night, the one who's been recently kicked out of his house is forced to sleep out in the barren countryside.
With a better-than-average cast on board (Catherine Mary Stewart, despite being raised in Edmonton, credibly plays the all-American girl here as well as she did in The Last Starfighter or Night of the Comet) and a willing assemblage of pros to make the pastel-pretty visuals come alive (including DP Donald Thorin, set decorator Ernie Bishop and costumer Mina Mittelman), it's a shame Mischief works only on a strictly superficial level. This is yet another film that takes an obviously '80s (or '70s, in the cases of Davidson and Lucas, who gets ribbed right at the opening) sensibility to '50s growing pains. Two schools of "they don't make 'em like they used to" thought combined to excuse a film which begs to have been made better than it did.
If that's your kick, then seek out Diner or Heaven Help Us, instead.
MATA HARI
(R, Cannon Films, 108 mins., theatrical release date: September 1985)
"Bolero 2: Emmanuelle 4.5." That is my pet name for Mata Hari.
The last time I reviewed a shameless softcore period piece starring an over-the-hill sex symbol, I felt like giving up on The Cannon Group entirely. There's only so much idiocy and bad judgment one can take from Golan & Globus before you rue the day you decided to investigate their track record for yourself. And the next time I revisit Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, I'm going to wince from the experiences of watching Bolero, The Apple and now Mata Hari uncontrollably.
With Bo Derek no longer interested in keeping ties with Cannon, the tacky twosome turned to her Dutch doppelganger, Sylvia Kristel, to satiate their opportunism. In the wake of 1981's Lady Chatterley's Lover, which reunited her with the director who stripped her to fame back in 1974...well, that D.H. Lawrence adaptation didn't get released in America until May 1982. Preceding Lady Chatterley's Lover theatrically was Kristel's appearance in the movie which kicked down the doors for glut of teenage sex movies to come, Private Lessons.
The multilingual model with the 164 I.Q. went Hollywood as the duplicitous French servant who romances/titillates a 15-year-old rich boy. Private Lessons was a sleeper hit even with Kristel being body-doubled, thus the European embodiment of adult-minded erotica became another oversexed pawn in a more disreputable liaison. Kristel's popularity encouraged Louisa Moritz, Joan Collins and Jacqueline Bisset to also act out variations on this cougar cliché. By the time a real movie of quality, Risky Business, arrived to put its predecessors to shame, Kristel came full circle with a "special appearance" as a sex education teacher in Private School.
As I mentioned previously, Cannon thought about making a follow-up to The Last American Virgin which would've had Kristel getting conquered by the three boors. It never happened, mainly because I would imagine the idea of Lawrence Monoson finding solace in Sylvia Kristel's bosom would've been a straight-up copy of Private Lessons. And we already had that with My Tutor and They're Playing with Fire, the latter starring Eric "Philly" Brown himself opposite Cannon regular Sybil Danning.
Instead, in 1985, Hot Chili became Virgin's unofficial sequel by virtue of having Joe Rubbo and Louisa Mortiz star in it (as well as plagiarism from all of the previous Lemon Popsicle movies). Sylvia Kristel, meanwhile, found herself in a more typical refuge for aging if bankable screen sirens working under Golan-Globus: The Out-of-Costume Drama.
The legend of Mata Hari, the sensual entertainer who was tried and executed for enemy espionage during WWI, became the basis for Kristel's second Cannon vehicle. Whereas Bolero invoked and sullied the prestige of silent film star Rudolph Valentino, Mata Hari makes hash of a role which was previously handled by Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich (see Dishonored) and Jeanne Moreau. Poor Kristel may look beautiful in the buff, director Curtis Harrington pitching in a handful of titillating diversions from the mind games surrounding Lady MacLeod. But she cannot command the screen in any other manner besides undressed, and this '70s sex kitten is reduced to a dust bunny in the 1980s.
There's no tragedy in the unraveling of how Mata Hari is played by both the French and German armies at the moment their top commanders catch her eye in a museum. There's nothing to invest in the estranged friendship between these sporting rivals, Karl von Bayerling (Christopher Cazenove) and Georges Ladoux (Oliver Tobias). And any chance for engaging with the various assassinations, mutinies and counterattacks is thrown way off balance by both a sloppy script and the film's awareness of its own sexploitative sensationalism.
So when Mata Hari makes love to a solider on the train to Berlin, they are rudely interrupted by a poison blow dart landing in the stranger's back. Her interrogations lead her to cross paths with nefarious Fraulein Doktor (Gaye Brown), who specializes in psychological manipulation at the cost of Mata Hari's romantic interests with von Bayerling. The disgraced dancer is then pinballed between working for von Bayerling and Ladoux, all the while antsy viewers anticipate the latest flash of skin from Kristel, whether it be from masturbating in the bathtub (replete with keyhole-peeping imbeciles) or a topless fencing bout against a spitfire contessa.
By the time Mata Hari has been row-boated to Java by the amorous von Bayerling, learns about the magic of invisible ink and makes her way across German battlefields to rescue her mortally wounded paramour, Fraulein Doktor has constructed a time-bomb which Mata Hari races to defuse. Of course, she is captured by the French and awaits her inevitable martyrdom in the firing line. Yet the plotline is overstuffed and so portentous that it stomps all over any chances for tension or pathos. What should be a resonant conclusion turns out to be one more bogus filmmaking choice, which is nothing new in the dumpster files of Golan-Globus.
Despite his renown in independent horror circles, Curtis Harrington wound up on the opposite side of the coin compared to Tobe Hooper. Whereas the Texas Chainsaw Massacre auteur invested his trio of Cannon productions with all manner of perverse idiosyncrasies, Harrington (Queen of Blood, What's the Matter with Helen?, Ruby) fails to liven up the movie enough to distract viewers from the locked-down locations (Budapest badly doubling for all European locales) and perfunctory cinematography (by Cannon regular David Gurfinkel of The Apple and Revenge of the Ninja). Under his auspice, Harrington gives Mata Hari a chintzy look which is not helped by the unwieldy performances and the undependable plot.
I mostly concluded that Mata Hari was basically a romance novel heroine writ mythical, torn between two lovers and helpless against the dogs of war. Take out the erotica and all that's left is but a Stephenie Meyer prototype. If you want a shorter, sexier take on this material, watch the middle vignette of Second Time Lucky instead.
MAKING THE GRADE
(R, Cannon Films, 104 mins., theatrical release date: May 18, 1984)
HOT CHILI
(R, Cannon Films, 86 mins., released in August 1985)
Now here's a movie which you won't find discussed in Mark Hartley's Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films. Actually, I've seen two of them, and they're both thudding attempts by Golan-Globus to cater illicitly to the pubescent teenybopper set. They're both very loosely based on their earlier The Last American Virgin, and they were just as day-late and dollar-short, too.
Why Making the Grade isn't included in Electric Boogaloo, even in a passing two-second interval, is astounding. Another relic of Cannon's disastrous association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, you'd think Hartley would've paid this one a little more mind since the topic was broached. This one also spawned the careers of Judd Nelson, just a year before his induction into the Brat Pack, and Andrew Clay Silverstein, whose character is named "Diceman" as an omen of his later notoriety.
Yes, this was the film that gave you Andrew "Dice" Clay. Reactions may vary, but suffice to say there are no naughty nursery rhymes anywhere in the film. Perhaps if there were, Hartley and Brett Ratner would've jumped on that opportunity. God knows my image of Ratner is hardly different to that of the Diceman.
Besides, if you're going to make a shrine to the Eighties, then what better clip to highlight than Clay's show-stopping goof on a jazzercising John Travolta? Even without Frank Stallone on the soundtrack, that moment is golden. What, were the makers of Electric Boogaloo afraid they'd play up the kitsch too much?
Initially titled "The Last American Preppie" in a bald attempt to capitalize on that Boaz Davidson job, despite neither him nor any of the cast (physical or musical) returning to the fold, Making the Grade is another bog-standard row between the stuffy rich and the snazzy poor of our educational system. You've seen this done many, many times, whether you were there in '84 or not. There comes a point where you as a filmgoer feel like one of these sub-Animal House underachievers, being held back so as to endure the same canned anarchy and tedious characterizations over and over again without ever feeling like you've learned a damn thing.
Dana Olsen, the sitcom writer who'd go on to pen The 'Burbs, assumes the poor man's Bill Murray position as Palmer Woodrow III, the living embodiment of both snob AND slob. Smarmily secure in his own arrested development and the shame it brings his wealthy family, Palmer's flunked out of six boarding schools in three years and is threatened with losing his inheritance if he doesn't graduate his senior year at Hoover Academy. Rather than cancel his semester overseas, Palmer buys himself an impostor when he meets Eddie Keaton (Judd Nelson), a youthful hustler running away from $3,700 in gambling debts.
So it's off to Preppie High for Eddie, where he confronts the atypical melee of boors and bores. There's the geeky roommate (Carey Scott) who is also Palmer's best friend, agreeing to mentor Eddie for a healthy lump sum. There's principal antagonist/king of the campus Bif (Scott McGinnis) and his would-be girlfriend/founder's daughter Tracey (Jonna Lee), who fancies Eddie for his salt-of-the-gutter charisma. There's a ragtag faculty comprised of hapless dean Mr. Harriman (Gordon Jump), corpulent lacrosse coach Wordman (Walter Olkewicz) and memory-deprived Professor Mueller (Ray Hill). And finally, there's the neurotic fat kid known only as Blimp (Daniel Schneider), socially awkward and severely overemphasized.
Dorian Walker, whose only other directing credit was the campy Teen Witch ("Top that!"), can't even be counted on to give this movie a serviceable flow. The movie seems to shuffle its scenarios, conforming to the episodic ordinariness of its genre with brazen apathy. Chestnuts like the school social, the loud party and the "romantic" sex scene just seem plopped in to satisfy the producers' demands, and screenwriter/producer Gene (Treasure of the Four Crowns) Quintano strains to adapt them to the then-current vogue. More often than not, it's just dead silly, like when Eddie shows off his Breakin' prowess (note that the only black person in the cast is Palmer's sassy maid) as the live band launches from a limp cover of "My Sharona" to a song by Reflex, the one-hit wonders behind "The Politics of Dancing," despite not having a synthesizer player! (Imagine Reeves Nevo & The Cinch from Fast Times at Ridgemont High suddenly turning into A Flock of Seagulls.)
The result is as schizophrenic as expected of a Golan-Globus exploitation, yet crushingly formulaic and half-baked. What may work in a fast-paced action movie like Ninja III: The Domination becomes stultifying in a teen movie, and this movie's constant switching of gears from raucous (the return appearance of Palmer, which may as well suggest surrender) to proselytizing (Eddie's inexplicable personality shift into a stereotypical Ivy League killjoy) registers as incompetence. The only plus here is that Nelson, Olsen and Clay do not want for one-liners: "I don't even know you and you're breakin'my heart," Eddie raps at Tracey, before admitting "I've only felt that way about Pia Zadora." But despite all of their combined sarcasms, Making the Grade uses the cheapest of primer to paint by numbers.
One of the major idiosyncrasies of Cannon Films is that they were inches ahead of the game (Breakin') and miles behind the curve, as Making the Grade demonstrates. You'd think that the previous year's Risky Business and the concurrently-released Sixteen Candles would've refined Cannon's coarse stance on teen movies. But Quintano is on the same mean streak as his predecessors in the teensploitation field. He thinks it's charming to hear Coach Wordman, who is introduced in the presence of trashy women, speak contemptibly of wallflowers as "woof-woofs" and "dogs." He falls back on Blimp being humiliated by Aryans with argyles or, at the height of condescension, stuffing his face at the commencement ceremony. Even the wanton nudity reeks of arch disdain, which in this film is the dominant style of humor.
At least The Last American Virgin had the brevity of a 90-minute runtime, whereas Making the Grade is a veritable cramming session at 100 minutes. Despite the lack of chemistry between Nelson and Olsen, the credits suggest Palmer and Eddie would return for a sequel, "Tourista." This never officially happened, nor did a planned sequel to Virgin which would've had the male leads cross paths with Cannon regular Sylvia Kristel (Lady Chatterley's Lover, Mata Hari) in an exotic locale, but I believe Golan & Globus followed-up both movies in spirit with William Sachs' phenomenally worthless Hot Chili.
Since three of the four main players from Virgin went on, like Judd Nelson, to way better things in 1985 (Monoson in Mask, Antin in The Goonies, Franklin in Better Off Dead opposite Dan "Blimp" Schneider), Hot Chili's only encore appearance is from perennial third-wheeler Joe Rubbo. And since the premise involves four boys' summer vacation to Mexico, it's as close to "Tourista" as Cannon would ever get.
The big problem here is that whatever marginal graces Davidson's cult favorite possessed, in performance and photography, are completely lost here. All that's left are the tackiness and tastelessness.
WASP-ish hero Ricky (Charles Schillaci in his only movie credit), buddy Jason (Allan Kayser, the bully from Night of the Creeps) and bickering nebbishes Arney (Rubbo) & Stanley (Chuck Hemingway, who appeared in My Science Project and Neon Maniacs before dying young in 1996) arrive south of the border on a work program at a resort hotel, the Tropicana Cabana. Though the manager, Esteban (Jerry Lazarus), is a soul-sapping dictator, they have high hopes to indulge their yen for sex and booze which are immediately stoked by the presence of another degraded Virgin alumnus, Louisa Moritz, here squeaking like Betty Boop as she struts about in nothing but an apron.
Hot Chili basically goes through the dopily titillating motions from this point onward. Ricky takes music lessons from a naked cellist (Bea Fiedler). Stanley carries a snooty guest's luggage all around the hotel, even ending up in a bullfighting ring, while the film is sped up a la Benny Hill and cartoon sound effects augment the chipmunk voices. Tawny blonde veteran Taaffe O'Connell brandishes a dildo in Ricky's face, claiming it's something "all boys want." And then she and the boys straight-up rehash the Carmela gangbang from Virgin, complete with Rubbo's apprehensive face and the unwanted appearance of an irate lover.
And the less said about Ricky's letters-to-mother narration, the better.
Skinny dipping, strobe lights, dressing in drag, belching, meat thermometers in delicate areas, breasts toppling out of their dresses, under-the-table foot penetration. Hot Chili is a compilation of the Lemon Popsicle series' greatest hits, and calls into question why company man Boaz Davidson didn't demand a writing credit opposite William Sachs and Menahem Golan given how many derivations are on display. All that's missing is his smug chauvinist moralizing.
Even if you despised The Last American Virgin, you'll miss the compositional skill of Adam Greenberg, the fresh-faced casting of Lawrence Monoson & Diane Franklin and the fluke assemblage of simpering CHR staples. All Hot Chili serves you are four bland actors on auto-pilot, predominantly revolting mise en scène and one patronizing, puerile gag after another. Not even as flavorful as store-brand mayonnaise let alone cayenne peppers.
This is perhaps the worst movie Sachs has ever commanded, even more dire than The Incredible Melting Man and Galaxina. Hot Chili is only recommended to completists of either Cannon Films or Joe Rubbo, and even they will wish for a Palmer Woodrow III to provide the snarky commentary Hot Chili truly craves. Mark Hartley was right to let this one rot in peace.
