Mountaintop Motel Massacre

MOUNTAINTOP MOTEL MASSACRE
(R, New World Pictures, 95 mins., theatrical release date: March 14, 1986)

In one of his earliest stand-up routines, Patton Oswalt revealed what he considers the greatest movie title ever: "Texas. Chainsaw. Massacre." The beauty of it, as opposed to the mealy-mouthed romantic comedies in the mainstream, was how you envisioned a free movie playing in your own head based on those three words. But the most substantial element for me is the word "massacre" alone, because it has been the perfect hook for B-movie entrepreneurs, especially thanks to Tobe Hooper's film: Massacre at Central High, Drive In Massacre, Mardi Gras Massacre, The Slumber Party Massacre, Microwave Massacre, Women's Prison Massacre, etc. etc. Just affixing "massacre" to any object or setting fires up the projector in the mind, which is great for the imagination but also troublesome knowing the concept has already been made tangible. This is where the burden of expectations comes in.

Hooper's film worked far beyond most people's mental image of a Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and a few of the mercenary examples listed above were pretty much as straightforward. Yet in the summer of 1986, the novelty of "[fill in the blank] Massacre" wore off thanks to Hooper's official sequel to his decade-old trendsetter. But there was another pretender from earlier that year thanks to New World Pictures, who picked up a regional horror film from Louisiana (premiere date: July 15, 1983), commissioned a new finale and shipped it out for wide release with "massacre" tacked onto its original title.

The result was MOUNTAINTOP MOTEL MASSACRE, and it's not just the title which tipped me off to the debt that all movies with "Massacre" at the end owe to Tobe Hooper. The film itself strikes me as the type of movie Hooper could've made near the mid-80s were he not spending Golan-Globus' money, with mundane characters in foreboding rural environs getting picked off by a deranged loner. His 1976 follow-up to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Eaten Alive, itself took place at a bayou lodge and featured a scythe as a notable murder weapon.

Jim McCullough Sr. was the director, instead, his second feature effort following Charge of the Model T's and once again working from a script by his boy Jim Jr. These were filmmakers more of the Charles B. Pierce mould, as Jim Sr. produced (and Jim Jr. wrote) the Boggy Creek-style Creature from the Black Lake around the time Hooper was making Eaten Alive. But compared to not only Pierce, who kept a more active resume and worked with recognizable actors (Ben Johnson, Michael Parks, Jessica Harper), but even Don (Nightbeast) Dohler, the McCulloughs never amassed much of a wide-reaching legacy, although Vinegar Syndrome are seeking to at least give Mountaintop Motel Massacre a new lease on life.

A lack of ambition is likely more of a nuisance than the slasher they have concocted for this particular massacre movie. She is Evelyn Chambers (Anna Chappell), a former inmate of the Arkansas State Mental Hospital from July 1978 to January 1981, and one who obviously didn't receive the best possible rehabilitation as Evelyn carves up both her daughter and a baby rabbit in a fit of madness. With her husband unexplainably dead and her daughter's murder (she was caught holding a séance to communicate with daddy) written off as a gardening accident, Evelyn tends desk at the Mountaintop Motel on a convenient dark, stormy night that brings in all manner of customers/victims.

Aside from the typical young couple looking for a honeymoon suite and the reliable preacher and carpenter types, one of the waylaid travelers is an advertising exec from Memphis named Al (Will Mitchell) who turns out to be the hero. But in the grand tradition of Tom Atkins, horny ole Al picks up two nubile coeds, cousins Tanya and Prissy (Virginia Loridans, Amy Hill), and deceives them into believing he's really the owner of Columbia Records. Tanya is more gullible than Prissy, natch, but they perform a meek rendition of Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night" regardless until Prissy catches on for good and is hacked up in the bathroom by Evelyn.

This murder doesn't occur until nearly an hour into the film, as the McCulloughs do the slow burn shuffle by having Evelyn attempt to disorient her tenants with roaches, rats and even a rattler for the newlyweds. It's only after the occupants refuse to go back into the rain that the deranged Evelyn, who is scurrying about in the basement and popping up from beneath trap doors, starts screeching "Away, Satan!" and planting her scythe into the bodies of her guests.

When New World Pictures distributed Mountaintop Motel Massacre at the end of the slasher boom, they hedged their bets fabulously with the very one-sheet pictured atop this review. Dig that tagline, in particular. Sadly, the actual film is less the campy hoot the studio promises and more, all-too-fittingly, garden variety. Joseph Wilcots (Roots) provides slicker cinematography than one would expect from a film that cries out for a grungy treatment, but otherwise he's one of the few people in the crew who distinguishes himself in any regards. The atmosphere is willing, but the plot is weak even by the standards of the genre.

I wish I could give Evelyn the benefit of the doubt as a villain, and to credit Anna Chappell for a committed performance. Her only other film role, surprisingly, was in Robert Mulligan's The Man in the Moon (1991), famous for introducing a 14-year-old Reese Witherspoon. But there is nothing in the script to give Chappell any depth of character beyond the type of role already owned by Nancy Parsons. It's the usual trite motivations, from voices in the head to religious fanaticism, and they don't add up to a fearsome, let alone pitiable, personality. You never really worry for any of her victims, either, with the possible exception of the black carpenter, Crenshaw (Major Brock), and that's because his dialogue is ripe with jive, especially when he monologues his uneventful escape from the premises. This is the closest the McCulloughs come to humor.

At some point, you'd figure the characters would learn the value of safety in numbers, especially since their antagonist is hardly Pamela let alone Jason Voorhees. But they tend to split up and wander off half-cocked into Evelyn's lair all too predictably, and the reason for their isolation is nothing more than feeble. You also got to hand it to our nominal hero, Al: he's so lasciviously committed to duping the girls that he ignores the value of the working car phone in sending out for and responding to any help in dealing with the mentally ill mass murderer, the fallen tree blocking the road or the snake-bitten honeymooner.

Mountaintop Motel Massacre continues Vinegar Syndrome's tradition of reviving regional horror titles people would have otherwise missed, such as Disconnected or Horror House on Highway 5. I can't recommend it as much as I do either of those other, stranger obscurities, both of which have gone out-of-print following the same Halfway to Black Friday 2019 sale which offered Mountaintop Motel Massacre as an exclusive release. Without the creeping dread and sordid abandon of Tobe Hooper (or even the cornpone playfulness of Motel Hell), this family affair is just another dull saw sans teeth.

Mountaintop Motel Massacre isn't so much raw as it is perpetually dark, a point driven home by Vinegar Syndrome's spanking new 2k transfer from the original 35mm elements. The tacked-on ending sticks out even more after watching this top-notch visual presentation, which brings out the best in its source negative and presents consistent accuracy in terms of color saturation, facial/clothing details and those ever-important black levels. Looking back further in my evaluation, I do also have to credit Drew Edward Hunter's production design for the underground passageways of the motel; like the film, it's nothing original or particularly engaging, but it looks spooky enough to deserve a better film. Wish the DTS-HD MA 2.0 track made me feel more affection for Ron Di Iulio's score, but the best I can say is that the musical-box keyboard tones are as crystal as the dialogue.

Two still galleries, one devoted to behind-the-scenes photos and the other a short gathering of news articles (less extensive than Lust in the Dust, to be true), and the original theatrical trailer are included alongside the usual packaging perks (slipcover, reversible artwork). Other than that, extras are limited to two appealing interviews with Mr. Hunter and assistant cameraman David Akin. Hunter's recollections are carried over from the UK BD release by 88 Films, and it covers childhood influences, getting discovered at a haunted house exhibit, various props and drawings he fashioned from the script, and the eventual reshoot. Akin recalls being plucked from Texas video school by McCullough Sr. and discusses his working relationship with Joe Wilcots and is more candid about the distribution demands of New World. We still don't get to see the original cut of Mountaintop Motel which debuted that night in July 1983 in Opelousas and played the next year in Jackson, Mississippi, which would've certainly boosted my recommendation of this combo-pack release if not the film.

Cult of Chucky + Spy Hard + The Money Pit

CULT OF CHUCKY
(R, Universal 1440, 91 mins., video release date: October 3, 2017)

The Chucky saga isn't as overbearing as Freddy or Jason, but ever since Karen Barclay bought the possessed play pal for her son Andy in 1988‘s Child's Play, the trajectory proved fairly similar. First, there was that intriguing and clever original from director Tom Holland. Then came a routine “the terror continues” sequel wherein the rebuilt Chucky proceeded to menace Andy Barclay and his adoptive family. It was tolerable, but the third installment made it look like Aliens by comparison. Controversial for the time as a lynchpin for the Video Nasties furor over in England, Child's Play 3 was also the series' nadir for a spell. Writer Don Mancini steered his creation through a couple of pomo revivals with the decent Bride of Chucky and the tired Seed of Chucky, which veered off too far into winking camp.

2013's Curse of Chucky gave Mancini's psychotic toy a fresher sense of purpose and also introduced the gifted Fiona Dourif (daughter of Chucky vocalist and character actor Brad) into the fray. This wasn't the Friday the 13th idea of a new beginning, but instead a leaner, meaner chamber thriller with a transfusion of new blood. Cult of Chucky, a.k.a. Child's Play 7, follows the path of Curse, but incorporates the more self-aware elements of the post-Scream Bride/Seed as well as tries for a trickier third act than expected from the reliable formula. The combination still seems unrefined: self-promoted director Don Mancini is no Wes Craven, and to watch Chucky brag about beating mean old Ms. Kettlewell with a yardstick is to cringe once again at the diminished returns which set in too early. Cult is a lesser movie than Curse despite its ambitions, but more tempered than previous rehashings and hinting at what could be a decent finale if Mancini tries for a third effort.

Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) and Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif) are most assuredly not well off for having made it out alive. Andy has never experienced a real childhood thanks to Chucky, and his adult life is even more abnormal. When another blind date ends in rejection because of his violent past, Andy retreats home to torture the disembodied, taunting head of his lifelong tormentor. Andy (and the child actor who played him in the first two movies) may have grown, but he's still mentally 12 and burning his action figures in a mutually spiteful dynamic. Paraplegic Nica, meanwhile, took the rap for the mass killings of Curse and is now in psychiatric care, with deliberate echoes of Brad's Oscar-nominated debut role as well as Fiona's association with the crowd-funded indie chiller Fear Clinic.

In a fraction of the time it takes for Nica to be rehabilitated, who should come interrupting her group therapy sessions but a Good Guy Doll with the familiar name of Chucky! The body count rises and Nica's warnings go unheeded by her lecherous shrink (Michael Therriault as Dr. Foley). Outside of these confines, Andy is mocked over the phone by Charles Lee Ray's paramour Tiffany Valentine, whose soul continues to live on in the body of actress Jennifer Tilly. Turns out there's an even more abridged version of the Damballa voodoo chant which Charles exploited to inhabit the Chucky toy. Worse, there's enough of the Lakeshore Strangler to go around when there are eventually three Chuckys going to murderous work at the funny farm.

Mancini quotes the visual tricks of De Palma and Kubrick (split screens and sterile palettes) as he peppers his dialogue with throwaway references to not just earlier Child's Play movies, but even the Hannibal TV show. Just as ham-fisted are his attempts to discredit Nica's sanity by having Dr. Foley hypnotize her into believing she is the real homicidal maniac, which only serves to set up the big ironic twist to come. There's a strong Elm Street 3 vibe to the proceedings, especially when Andy arrives to take care of Chucky but is punk'd in much the same way Nancy Thompson was at the end of Dream Warriors. Alex Vincent has less screen time than Langenkamp, but he does make a stronger impression up until he ends up in the cell. The characterizations of Nica's fellow inmates, which include the smooth-talking former vagrant Michael (Adam Hurtig) who believes her as well as the nastily skeptical Claire (Grace Lynn Kung), are as stock as a supermarket's inventory.

What remains good about Mancini's series are both Brad and Fiona Dourif, the delirious mixture of graphic violence (the worst saved for an unsuspecting orderly who walks into Dr. Foley‘s office) and psychological trickery (Elisabeth Rosen as Madeleine forms a deranged attachment to Chucky in repose) and his willingness to embrace unconventional narrative outcomes. I've come around to the diabolical fates for Andy and Nica in hindsight, and the film's reliance on practical puppet/splatter effects is old-fashioned in the best ways. And like Curse, the unrated version of Cult of Chucky is baited with a credit cookie that brings back another beloved survivor (“You seen dolls that pee?“) and gooses up Mancini's cliffhanger finale. It's tempting to suggest that Don Mancini, whose energies are better spent on writing, should hand over the directorial reigns to, in Chucky's vulgar parlance, your “goddamn women drivers!” You think the Twisted Twins would sign on for it? This is 2017, after all, and at least in the entertainment world, the honor of saluting the good old days of horror should itself transfer to a more progressive body.

SPY HARD
(PG-13, Hollywood Pictures, 81 mins., theatrical release date: May 24, 1996)

Turner Classic Movies aired Who's That Girl recently as related from a tweet by Bill Chambers of Film Freak Central. But having reviewed it myself, it's just another sub-mediocrity which has benefited way too much from glib nostalgia. I dread TCM turning into I Love the '80s, but 1996’s Spy Hard doesn't make me pine for the dregs of the next decade to end up on the suspect list of modern "classics." Another case of something which stunk from the beginning and has rightly decomposed, Spy Hard appears to be a feature-length vehicle for director Rick Friedberg and spoof comedy superstar Leslie Nielsen. But it was also the debut screenplay credit for Rick's son Jason and his college roommate Aaron Seltzer, and one's heart not only sinks at this, it forces you to leave your seat to ensure it didn’'t fall right out of your ass.

The seminal send-up of espionage tropes already came from the ZAZ trio with Top Secret! All Spy Hard adds to it is "Weird Al" Yankovic's send-up of the Maurice Binder title sequences from umpteen James Bond movies and the discreetly bombastic theme songs accompanying them. Without his Airplane!/Police Squad benefactors, Nielsen winds up in his very own Leonard Part 6 as secret agent Dick "WD-40" Steele, facing arch-nemesis General Rancor (Andy Griffith) 15 years after blowing up his helicopter, but merely ridding him of both arms in the process. Rancor has taken hostage Barbara Dahl, daughter of Steele's deceased one-and-only Victoria (both Dahls played by Stephanie Romanov), but what the 80-minute Spy Hard is most concerned with are the kind of toothless pop culture references Friedberg & Seltzer have beaten to death since then as amateur parodists: from Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid to Sister Act to Speed, with an already-expired swipe at Cliffhanger (and a Michael Jackson gag better used in Neil Young's "This Note's for You" video) and an aimless recycling of Pulp Fiction's dance sequence which fails to do for that iconography what “Straighten the Rug” from Top Secret! did for Elvis movies.

With Nicollette Sheridan as the Yurrupean love interest (or Agent 3.14), Charles Durning as the Agency's master-of-disguise chief, Marcia Gay Harden as Moneypenny, and Barry Bostwick & Robert Guillaume as the reigning top agents, Spy Hard doesn't lack for a willing ensemble. Bostwick affects Ted Kennedy's Brahmin accent with blithe merriment, and the times when Nielsen simply coasts on his mugging, velvety charisma are comparatively painless to the inferior jokes he delivers. But the Friedbergs and Seltzer and fourth writer Dick Chudnow can't even do right by the cameo talent they've corralled, let alone their principals. Aside from both Mr. T and Alex Trebek in the opening riff on Mission: Impossible, there are the wasted likes of Ray Charles as a bus driver, Pat Morita (first Collision Course, now this) as a gay maitre d' and, as passengers on Charles' bus, both Curtis Armstrong and Michael Berryman. That I didn't notice or laugh at Curtis Armstrong at first watch is a special form of stupidity (the late Taylor Negron is in this, too, as a painter, but I don't want to see any more Savage Steve Holland MVPs pissed away like this). Eddie Deezen is in this, too, but so what? He's been too good for a lot of his post-Grease career.

Spy Hard plays like a dark omen for the way spoof movies would devolve into mean-spirited, cheapjack redundancy rather than genuine subversion or anarchy. Bond movies tended to be in on the joke even at their laziest and lamest, and Spy Hard doesn't push their inherent ridiculousness over the edge in an amusing way. Seeing Talisa Soto, the gangster moll from Licence to Kill, and Robert Culp, the other half of I-Spy who's not Cosby, doesn't lend it any charitable relevance. We get a lot of femme fatales and ancillary characters dispatched in cartoonish ways, including a dancing fool who pops up frequently to take bullets and throwing stars for Steele. But they are about as unfunny as the Home Alone rip-off (read: NOT parody, just regurgitation) which casts John Hughes' Dennis the Menace, Mason Gamble, to be Macaulay Culkin only to have the thugs rough him up as revenge for Getting Even with Dad and both My Girl movies. That Gamble-as-Culkin has to say he wasn't even in My Girl 2 only reinforces this malignant recognition-as-joke approach would get worse in the future with the "movie" movies. Ian Pugh, also of Film Freak Central, said it so well in his book-exclusive takedowns of Friedberg/Seltzer's Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie from the FFC 2009 Superannual. And so did Doug "The Nostalgia Critic" Walker in this editorial.

It took "Weird Al" Yankovic seven years after UHF to come up with the single funniest element of Spy Hard. In a shorter time frame, Seltzerberg have been distressingly rewarded for their brainless, repetitive, shoddy contributions to the genre. There have been six of them ranging from Date Movie to The Starving Games, and there isn't one moment in any them that could light the menorah like Yankovic did when he married the music from "Money for Nothing" to the lyrics of "The Ballad of Jed Clampett." Mark Knopfler is no match for such dire straits as this. In the spirit of Yankovic, here's my final thought on Spy Hard courtesy of Rip Torn's Artie from The Larry Sanders Show and the aforementioned Savage Steve Holland: "You opened with a showstopper. The movie's over...You can go home now." Move-ah, move-ah.

THE MONEY PIT
(PG, Universal Pictures, 91 mins., theatrical release date: March 26, 1986)

Had Richard Benjamin's only directorial credit been My Favorite Year, I would embrace him as a legendary one-shot akin to Charles (The Night of the Hunter) Laughton. Alas, the retired actor kept plugging away from behind the camera, his follow-ups from 1984 being the romantic Racing with the Moon, starring Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage, and the pedantic City Heat, starring Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. Benjamin took the latter gig when Blake Edwards was booted from the production, and it turned out to be a thankless task. Neither of the macho marquee idols lived up to the charming self-deprecation of the great Peter O'Toole, and it was clear that not only had Edwards' muse abandoned him (he fittingly declined credit for the sloppy script by changing it to S.O.B.), but that Benjamin couldn't handle tonal changes even in a B-grade gangster movie.

Still, My Favorite Year was a pleasant surprise back in 1982, and the box-office king of that year was paying attention. The Money Pit should've closed out another banner year for Steven Spielberg as a Christmastime release in 1985, but with his own The Color Purple bucking for Oscar-validated prestige that he did not get, it was delayed until the following spring, upon which it was razzed all over in the critical press as a disappointing ancestor of both the Cary Grant/Myrna Loy gem Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and Spielberg's own Poltergeist. Tom Hanks and Shelley Long, Benjamin's leads here, each provided good work for Ron Howard in the past (Night Shift, Splash) but make a lackluster impression together, even if their individual appeal breaks through on occasion.

If Pacific Heights were a broad domestic comedy instead of a middlebrow thriller, The Money Pit is what springs to mind. Walter Fielding (Hanks) and his girlfriend Anna Crowley (Long) have respective gigs in the music biz (he as a legal advisor, she as a concert violinist), but they are dirt poor and crashing in the home of Anna's symphony conductor/ex-husband Max (Alexander Gudonov) on his European engagement. His tour ends prematurely, forcing them to decide upon buying a home just as swiftly. With luck, Walter and Anna hit upon a million-dollar mansion being sold at a $200,000 song by Estelle (Maureen Stapleton), whose husband Carlos has been detained by Israeli spooks. Or at least that's what she tells Anna; she neglects to mention the house is so decrepit, it's practically as stable as a castle made of Elmer’s Glue and popsicle sticks.

The entire staircase comes loose and collapses. The water main appears to be connected to the sewage system. One flick of a light switch sends wily sparks shooting up the electrical wiring. The naïve couple invest whatever cash they have for repairs in the service of men named Shirk (Joe Mantegna is the grossly disreputable carpenter) and hellion laborers who tear out the ground and leave holes in the walls. The ones who do renovate work for weeks on end, which doesn't prevent further destructive chain reactions. The lovers' morale is eaten away like a cartoon termite feasting on the Pink Panther's cottage, which leaves them to vulnerable to suspicion and infidelity.

Richard Benjamin is on surer footing here than he was with City Heat, and a couple extended scenes of the house wreaking havoc harken back to the slapstick vigor of My Favorite Year. Compared to Spy Hard, Benjamin is better at stacking his cards and toppling them than Rick Friedberg. And when it comes to peripheral jokes, writer David Giler shames Seltzerberg as much as The Nostalgia Critic. Walter seeks a cash advance from a prepubescent multi-millionaire he represents, coming up with this assertive form of blackmail: "If you don't loan me that money, I’ll not like you anymore!" There's also a fine gag involving Anna's medicine cabinet, and Gudonov's conceited, contemptuous Max upstages even the hysterical Tom Hanks.

But like Hanks' previous The Man with One Red Shoe, another terribly wan spy caper, The Money Pit lacks a black comedy foundation to go along with the elaborate catastrophe. It's inevitable that the unmarried Walter and Anna will require some patching up of their own, but this is thrown at us half-baked and hastily. Spielberg and Giler, as executive producers, have commissioned the house to be the star at the expense of Hanks and Long, still small-screen personalities in 1986 and saddled with a script that lets them down not just physically, but materially. The contrivance of their love story eventually shows up the limited capacity of the comedy, and since The Money Pit isn't as whimsically demented as Back to the Future or Gremlins, the Spielberg productions it truly recalls are the more labored, self-conscious carnival rides of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, and still on a lesser scale.

Under the Cherry Moon

UNDER THE CHERRY MOON
(PG-13, Warner Bros. Pictures, 98 mins., theatrical release date: July 2, 1986)

The year is 1986: The Golden Raspberry Awards, in its seventh year of existence since a group of armchair critics declared Can't Stop the Music to be the nadir of 1980, has tabulated its first tie vote. This ceremony, which has since persisted in piggybacking off the Oscars but has proven just as inconsequential as the Golden Globes, seemed to take one good look at the turkey gallery of 1986 and couldn't settle on one "winner." Given how most objective critics at least have a single solitary movie per year to decree their least favorite viewing experience, it seems dodgy that the GRAs would call a draw.

Which one...I mean, two of the year's worst would go neck-and-neck? There were tempting choices, to say the least. Blue City, for instance, was the nail in the coffin for the so-called Brat Pack by virtue of casting Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson in their most badly-received dual vehicle, although time has not been as kind to St. Elmo's Fire as the Razzie committee was in '85. Why Schumacher & Kurlander weren't creamed with a "Worst Screenplay" nod, I'll never understand.

Maybe Sylvester Stallone, whose Rambo and Rocky sequels were easy Razzie targets the previous year, would come away the victor for the deserving Cobra, an inept attempt at turning the Italian Stallion into the new Dirty Harry from the producers of non-nominee The Apple?

Or what about the dreaded Shanghai Surprise, which was every bit as bad as its reputation when I finally wrote about it?

Hell, maybe John B. Wilson would prank us and spring a dark horse winner? Maximum Overdrive? American Anthem? King Kong Lives? Tai-Pan?

Nope, 1986 was another fish-in-a-barrel year for the Razzies as they unanimously declared both Howard the Duck and Under the Cherry Moon the Worst Movies of 1986. Dino De Laurentiis, you lose again.

But why these two instead of one or the other? Or for that matter, Shanghai Surprise, which unlike Howard the Duck or Under the Cherry Moon has not developed a contrarian cult following and remains as adamantly disliked now as it was then. If it's a question of ego, then George Lucas and Prince would seem small potatoes compared to the combination of Sean Penn and Madonna.

In a word: publicity. The Raspberry committee was well aware of the poor receptions of both in all the various trades and papers, ubiquitous in their flopdom. These were the safest possible bets, and even an institute like the Raspberries took the bait unquestioningly.

The strangest thing about Howard the Duck since its release is that the film has actually been embraced in some horribly nostalgic way. I can't say I have a mental list of the three worst movies I'd single out in 1986, but rest assured that I probably would count Howard the Duck as one of my finalists. It was an affront to the legacy of Steve Gerber's scabrous Marvel comics, a colossal plummet from the brain trusts responsible for American Graffiti and a sad career point for all three principal actors. It was to Lea Thompson what Dirty Grandpa is for her daughter, Zoey Deutch. It was even more regrettable for Tim Robbins than Fraternity Vacation. And though Jeffrey Jones' disgrace as a sex offender remains fresh in my mind, could it be any less queasy-making than the botched interspecies romance between Beverly and Howard?

And Thomas Dolby's soundtrack was clearly a rip-off of what Prince had been doing to perfection ever since 1980.

The news of the passing of Prince Rogers Nelson has left a hole in my heart, to say the least. Of all the 1980s pop icons, from Michael to Cyndi to Madonna and (perhaps) Phil Collins, none of them were ever as consistent as The Artist Forever Known as Prince. From the moment he dressed himself down to a trench coat and bikini briefs on the cover of his Dirty Mind LP at the start of the decade, to the musique-concrete funk of his surprise chart-topper "Batdance," Prince satisfied some major sonic rumbles at the height of his fame. He did so-called "new wave" better with his brazen kinkiness, cross-pollinated genres with the precision of a true wunderkind and always kept people stymied at the growth he demonstrated from one project to another, even when the results were maddening.

Yet in 1986, Prince swept the Golden Raspberries with Worst Actor, Worst Director, Worst Original Song, and a joint Worst Picture for Under the Cherry Moon. Jerome Benton, who survived The Time to be with Prince's Revolution band, emerged scathed with Worst Supporting Actor. Newcomer Kristin Scott Thomas and screenwriter Becky Johnston must have narrowly avoided their respective nominations. In short, all the goodwill Prince gained with Purple Rain came crashing down in a rubble of hubris and gross miscalculation.

But the death of Prince has led me to evaluate both his narrative-based feature directorial efforts, Under the Cherry Moon and Graffiti Bridge. I carry a monumental reverence and sadness as I go, well aware of Prince's many notorieties and boundless talents. I can declare to the world (or at least those reading this) that there will never be another Prince in our future, no matter how hard Justin Timberlake, Kanye West or others may try. Even though my primary interest is film, I can listen to Prince's records, especially Sign o' the Times, and hear a genius in every groove.

As for the movie, it...doesn't quite suck like many have said. I'd watch Under the Cherry Moon over Howard the Duck or Shanghai Surprise or Cobra every time. The real dilemma is how much of my enjoyment is from vicarious train wreck fascination or simple allegiance to Prince.

Based on the massive cross-promotional popularity of Purple Rain, Prince decided to switch things up several notches cinematically as well as musically. His subsequent LP, 1985's Around the World in a Day, flirted with Beatles-era psychedelic textures and string arrangements. Legend has it that Prince was incubating this sound in his head even before the blockbuster soundtrack to Purple Rain made the rounds. Furthermore, the impetus was a demo tape cut by Wendy Melvoin & Lisa Coleman, paralleling the friction on screen in the movie. That follow-up's "The Ladder" even included a co-writing credit for the real-life paterfamilias John Nelson, who came out to support his estranged son by this time.

Despite Prince's resistance to established promotional means like pre-release singles, concert tours and promo videos, Around the World in a Day spawned a couple of hits, by turns randy ("Raspberry Beret") and skeptical ("Pop Life"), not to mention fan favorites like "Paisley Park" (the name of Prince's distribution label) and "Condition of the Heart." But the teller is the closing track, an eight-minute grind called "Temptation" which morphs from burlesque to damnation in as wild a manner as only Prince can concoct. Imagine "Automatic" from 1999 interjected with the pitch-shifted voice of God which opened that album:

"Oh, silly man. That's not how it works. U have 2 want it for the right reasons."
"I do."
"U don't, now die!"
"NO! NOOOO!!"

This beginning to see the light ("Love is more important than sex. Now I understand") is baked into the courtship plot of Under the Cherry Moon, as Prince was set off on the great thematic push-pull dynamic which would be blown four sides open with Sign o' the Times. His Royal Badness still dressed in flamboyantly sexy ways and celebrated being "in the mood for drawers," but the time had come for making soul connections. Thus Christopher Tracy, Prince's alter ego, ends up compromising his gigolo ways for deeper courtship of 21-year-old heiress Mary Sharon (Kristin Scott Thomas).

Christopher Tracy, not just the pseudonym Prince was credited as on The Bangles' "Manic Monday," is a piano-plinking lothario who sets his lascivious sights on the unsatisfied debutantes of the French Riviera. Flanked by his fellow Miami émigré Tricky (Jerome Benton), Tracy catches wind of the ultimate grift in the figure of Mary, a prim but not-completely-repressed society child worth $50 million. He crashes Mary's birthday gala with seduction in his eyes and dollar signs on his mind, but in patented princess vs. pauper screwball fashion, Tracy antagonizes himself to her immediately. Tracy and Mary will inevitably make up/out in the manner Prince sang about in the pursed-lipped hit single which inaugurated the film, but not without reprisal from her powerful papa Isaac (Steven Berkoff).

Aside from evoking tradition in Becky Johnston's script, where class and gender conflicts are compressed into snappy repartee, Under the Cherry Moon was beget with the kind of production troubles which doom vanity projects from the word "go." Kristin Scott Thomas was scouted in the waning days of pre-production after Madonna and Susannah Melvoin fell through, whereas Terence Stamp quit two weeks into filming and was replaced by Mr. Berkoff. The black-and-white photography was conceived after filming, thus going further against the expectations set by Purple Rain. Perhaps most controversial was the decision to jettison Mary Lambert, who directed the retro-minded video for Madonna's "Material Girl" amongst a couple of her other MTV staples ("Borderline," "Like a Virgin"), and demote her to "creative consultant."

Whatever the sordid details of his ultimate control over the project, at least Prince had some of his work cut out for him. German DP Michael Ballhaus, who would become a regular collaborator of Martin Scorsese's from After Hours to The Departed, makes a paradise of Nice and displays plenty of fluid compositions which make more sense monochromatically. Esteemed production designer Richard Sylbert and returning costume designer Marie France also excel in their contributions to the candle-lit grottos and outré fashions, giving Prince a convincing Valentino-style makeover (it's a better tribute to the idol than Bolero, for damn sure) and fitting Thomas in sparkling flapper wear. And the background score of Prince & The Revolution originals, released as Parade, is a four-star assemblage of stylistic detours swirling in rococo minimalism ("Do U Lie," "Venus de Milo") and transcendent permutations of Prince's finger-snapping pop-funk ("Girls & Boys," "Kiss," "Christopher Tracy's Parade"). By the time it wraps up with the eulogy "Sometimes It Snows in April," even the more ordinary moments ("Life Can Be So Nice," "Anotherloverholenyohead") can be accepted on their own terms.

Alas, Parade remains a tight 41 minutes long whereas Under the Cherry Moon lasts 100 minutes in a journey not as wholly rewarding. To be clear, it is not because Prince moulds it into the opposite of Purple Rain, cutting way back on the musical numbers (the only performance piece, "Girls & Boys," is rendered diegetic through use of a boom box; everything else is laid over) and pushing harder towards goofy comedy as opposed to the gloomy melodramas which dogged The Kid. This is a Bugs Bunny-style cartoon of himself rather than a diminutive Jimmy Dean, and Prince camps it up with gusto whether making "Bela Lugosi eyes" at his landlady or poking at the racial dissimilarities between him and Tricky ("Butterscotch...chocolate"). Jerome Benton is equally refreshing in a more substantial comedic role than as Morris Day's mirror-toting foil ("I'm my own man, just like Liberace!"). And Mary's first lesson in Ebonics ("wrecka stow," which kinda sounds French) is rightly embraced as a show-stopper. 

Purple Rain was tailor-made for Prince's magnetism as a stage performer. There's a reason why the movie ends with three back-to-back songs, benediction demanding an encore. It would seem wise that Under the Cherry Moon instead highlight his boisterous, subversively frisky persona, the kind which appalled AOR-damaged sheep, censorious senators' wives and fuddy-duddy film scribes ("Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?" and "Don't you wanna play?"). Though Tricky later acts as a mouthpiece for divine union, he's dressed up in the same button-studded ensemble Prince used to promote "Kiss."

Prince radiates challenging such sex appeal, and Kristin Scott Thomas puts up an ample fight against Tracy's irritating disarmament whilst looking just as attractive. Which brings me to the one flaw which ultimately undoes Prince's amnesty as an actor: Christopher Tracy and Mary Sharon hardly make an impression as a romantic couple. Yes, we see them make passes over the telephone. They frolic along the beach and make goo-goo eyes at each other. They engage in heavy petting in a payphone. But Prince's direction and Johnston's script never convincingly thaws out either party's defensive personalities to really attain the romantic union Prince seeks as an alternative to lust.

Just like the last time an 80s pop idol tried to anchor a modernized screwball comedy, I must decree that Under the Cherry Moon is no The Sure Thing.

Mary is presented as a carefree soul who casually flashes spectators at her birthday party [side note: one of Mary's friends is played by Pamela Ludwig, a favorite of teen drama specialist Tim Hunter, known for the classics Over the Edge and Tex] and plays drums impromptu. At first, her relatable animosity towards Tracy is equal parts class contempt and mistrust over his intentions. The movie should progress with her desires for love and independence opening her up to Tracy's idea of "fun" and making her less brittle, but it never happens. She stands up for herself in a compelling diatribe to her mother late in the game, but Mary remains a klutzy mix of virginal cipher and upper-crust cookie.

And then there's Prince.

I'm not a big fan of the Pet Sematary movies, and trading in one pop video director for another probably wouldn't mean a wide gulf in quality. But speaking as a cineaste, I think the best director for Prince was virtually anyone but himself. There comes a point when Tracy should tone it down, just as much as Mary, but again, nothing of the sort. This spells disaster for the chemistry between Prince and Thomas, as the one convincing moment of emotional growth is a poem read off screen ("An Honest Man") as Mary lies alone in the grotto. Prince may have been sincere in his studied allusions to Golden Age opposites-attract movies from America and Europe, but here the will is hardly as strong as the flesh.

Which is a shame, because Prince is gracious enough even at his most overheated to allow his fellow performers moments to bare their talent, most beneficially Jerome Benton. When Tracy and Tricky debate their seduction and business rivalries, Benton is endearingly cocky and deflates tension with a solid one-liner. When Tracy is ultimately felled by the Coast Guard, Tricky seems genuinely mournful even when he mutters a recurring, maternal scold. Putting aside any homoerotic accusations against the buddy dynamic between them, Under the Cherry Moon lives up to its potential whenever Prince and Jerome take the screen together.

All in all, it's impossible to take Under the Cherry Moon seriously, which may have been Prince's intention. Whereas Purple Rain preached that "We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life," the philosophy guiding Under the Cherry Moon is that "Life is a parade" (if not a cabaret, Kander/Ebb-style). Removed from 30 years of infamy and in the light of countless re-evaluations of Prince's inimitable legacy, I feel like Under the Cherry Moon's disastrous reputation seems fairly out of proportion. It's never going to be hailed a masterpiece, as the movie goes from laissez faire to lackluster without as much insinuating bravado as Christopher Tracy himself demonstrates.

But as someone who wouldn't have minded if Jerome Benton had a supporting role in a Kid 'n' Play comedy, one who can contextualize the "Kiss" B-side "Love or Money" (the Worst Original Song of 1986, sez the Razzies) as being a test run for the Camille persona Prince made great on "If I Was Your Girlfriend" and just someone who really wishes Prince the same happiness in the afterworld that the end credits here offer (a music video for "Mountains," complete with Sapphic chanteuses Wendy & Lisa, Eric Leeds on the sax and the mighty Dr. Fink), I can't hate Under the Cherry Moon like I do most of the famous fiascoes that come my way.

The bonus music videos featured on the DVD helped to sway my opinion, since there were no other extras to be found besides the theatrical trailer. The video for the bona-fide classic "Kiss" remains a cheeky blast, with Prince writhing in tight black pants with a veiled dancer in black lingerie, all the while Wendy Melvoin struggles to play straight woman. The other clips are also quite joyful, from a color-corrected re-edit of "Mountains" to a scorching live version of "Anotherloverholenyohead" taped from Detroit (incidentally, the show was held on Prince's 28th birthday as part of the Revolution's soon-to-be-final tour). But the odd gem out is "Girls & Boys," which works in footage of the entire, extended band this time around and ends on a sublimely ridiculous note courtesy of...who else, Jerome Benton.

If the ghost of Prince were to haunt Jerome ("Boo!"), I can only hope that the latter's reaction remains no less than ham slam. Thank you, man.

Peggy Sue Got Married

PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED

(PG-13, Tri-Star Pictures, 103 mins., theatrical release date: October 10, 1986)

"I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger," is not just the opening line to the chorus of The Faces' "Ooh La La," but also the thematic undertow of Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married. The main difference is that the person asking to turn back time is not a grandson hung up on wicked women, but a soon-to-be-divorcee pondering 25 years of regret on the night of her high school reunion. Peggy Sue Bodell is not keen on walking into a gymnasium full of her old friends who will no doubt question the absence of her one-time prom king Charlie, who grew to inherit his father's appliance store empire and has turned into a pathetic, philandering Crazy Eddie doppelganger.

The attention gets to be overwhelming for her, as does Charlie's inevitable arrival, and as she is re-anointed to be the belle of the ball, Peggy Sue faints into a time warp to the spring of 1960, her senior year at Buchanan High, going from panty hose to bobby socks all over again.

Coppola had flirted with the mainstream on his own terms in the 1980s, chiefly his two S.E. Hinton adaptations (The Outsiders, Rumble Fish) pitched at a trend-setting younger audience in ways that stood out from his adult-oriented '70s masterpieces. This was done to offset the financial ruin stemming from the box-office disaster of One from the Heart, but for many years, Coppola's reputation took a nosedive as one high-profile film after another suffered dismal returns.

Respectable if not bankable, Coppola's misfortune halted in 1986 when his latest for-hire project managed to draw in audiences and critics alike, making both Siskel and Ebert's ten-best lists (they also championed its lead actress in their annual "If We Picked the Winners" special) and grossing more than twice its budget, Coppola's first windfall since Apocalypse Now. Peggy Sue Got Married is a teen movie, too, and one that was easily pegged as a derivative of Back to the Future, what with its timeline-jumping fixation on a distant love affair. Originally developed as the feature debut for Penny Marshall before the producers got cold feet, this is also a precursor to Marshall's later smash Big, which reversed both the character's gender and age trajectory.

And the less said about Coppola's own decade-later Jack, the better.

For a film which hinges on the double-edged sword of hindsight, Peggy Sue Got Married has aged as well as some kind of fruit of the vine you find in bottles, I forget what they call it.

The main charm in Coppola's hands is Kathleen Turner, white-hot on the heels of Body Heat and Romancing the Stone, giving an Oscar-caliber performance which furthered her sophisticated, sensual adult persona with more precise warmth, body language and comic timing than ever before. The familiar complaint of watching obvious grown-ups having to go back to prom dissipates by virtue of self-professed "walking anachronism" Peggy Sue's arc as a mature, experienced soul in a naïve girl's body, making amends and breaking hearts all over again by dint of absolute knowledge. The sting of what lies ahead is tempered by a flurry of tenderness and introspection which doesn't exactly end in a rose-tinted butterfly effect a la Marty McFly's return to Hill Valley 1985, but is subtly deeper and considerably more despairing given the infidelity and shame in the present day.

Luckily, there's still plenty of genuine entertainment and humor to be gleaned from the journey. Take the now-youthful Peggy Sue Kelcher's reunion with her old nuclear family, which is filmed in a delicately belittling tracking shot as she approaches the front porch and deigns to knock nervously on the open door. Upon making herself at home again, Peggy and her kid sister Nancy (Sofia Coppola) watch Dion & The Belmonts performing "A Teenager in Love" on The Dick Clark Beech-Nut Show. "Look at that man," Peggy awes. "He never ages." Nancy grumbles pettily over Kenny Rossi and Arlene Sullivan, reaching for the bowl of M+Ms as big sis tells her to avoid the red ones (because of the amaranth scare). Peggy then calmly goes to her dad's bureau and steals a couple glasses of whiskey: "Oh, what the hell. I'm probably dead, anyway."

Mr. Kelcher (Don Murray) then arrives to surprise his family with his new Edsel, although his inebriated eldest daughter has seen it all before and cackles it off. Dad: "Are you drunk?" Peggy: "Just a little. I had a tough day." He then proceeds to ground her, thus making Peggy more comically belligerent. Her statement of teenage rebellion: "I'm an adult. I want to have fun. I'm going to go [to] Liverpool and discover The Beatles."

And then there's Peggy's future hubby himself, Charlie Bodell (Nicolas Cage...I'll get to him), waiting for her the very next morning in his big blue '58 Impala.

Enduringly-married screenwriters Jerry Leichtling & Arlene Sarner may not have piqued Coppola's initial interest (he thought it was merely "okay" and no different from a "routine television show"), and their joint career never evolved beyond the promise found herein. Still, the two of them have considerably and carefully mined ample quirk and pathos from what could have been an indiscriminating gagfest. Peggy Sue immediately rebounds from that hilarious episode of disbelief by asserting her independence, calling Charlie's bluff on his three-year plan of outside dating as "comparison shopping" and belting out "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" during the pledge of allegiance to the mortification of her apathetic best friends, Maddy Nagle (Joan Allen) and Carol Heath (Catherine Hicks).

The clash between Peggy's ingrained sense of modern woman's worth and the conformity of her adolescence makes her a bit of a social pariah, although she already extended a hand in friendship to nerdy Richard Norvik (Barry Miller). No one is more taken aback by Peggy's brash personality than Charlie, whose adherence to the male rites of passage are frequently subverted. When necking in the car threatens to blossom into sex, it's Peggy Sue making the moves, leaving Charlie confused and angry. The idealistic doo-wop crooner legitimately loves Peggy, as does she, but she's defensive about both their emotions to Charlie's dejection, as he is bent on stardom and avoiding the callous fate Peggy knows he will fulfill.

Speaking of lost innocence, Peggy Sue Got Married exists in simpler times in terms of its male lead, too. One of Nicolas Cage's breakout roles was as New Wave hunk Randy in Martha Coolidge's Valley Girl from 1983, in which he proved equally intense and charming. It wasn't too long before Cage's knack for Methodic weirdness took over. For Alan Parker's Birdy, which called for him to play a Vietnam soldier whose face was horrendously scarred in a mortar explosion, Cage had a few of his teeth pulled out and would walk off the set in his bandages. From Vampire's Kiss onwards, Cage's idiosyncrasies would define his image, and his offbeat appeal engendered a mix of campy affection and catty resignation in audiences.

Like his Uncle Francis, Cage was also itching to put his own stamp on the material, and in his freedom, he turned Charlie Bodell into a peculiar comic creation. The defining quirk Cage applied was a nasal lilt to his voice modeled after Pokey from The Gumby Show, thus making the younger Bodell an exaggeratedly pubescent swain. A lot of people find it irritating to this day, even saying it adds a creepy dimension to Charlie some of Cage's more physical blunders. At the dramatic turning point, when Charlie sneaks into Peggy's bedroom to confront her infidelity, his bent, Nosferatu-style hands and the near smothering of Peggy with a pillow work against him.

Luckily, Cage redeems himself by the end of said scene, conveying his wounded pride and crazed despair over losing Peggy with greater dignity than he is credited for. Sure, there is a nervous squeak when he asks "Did we break up?" and the last line is a simpering declaration that "I'm going to be just like Fabian!" But Charlie Bodell is a figure of both humor and heartbreak, and we've seen him project enough budding intelligence and guileless charm up to this point that the pain feels genuine. Peggy Sue is bearing a grudge Charlie doesn't even know exists yet, and his getting cuckolded seems to put Peggy in the wrong despite her clairvoyance.

What I'm saying is that Nicolas Cage doesn't sabotage the role with his peculiar approach, and he has clearly thought through Charlie's emotions and cared enough to bring them to life. This doesn't mean he can't score an honest laugh, such as Charlie's legendary mention of "my wang" when Peggy propositions him, or project the right amount of goofy but good-hearted bravado in his musical numbers. In this case, I am tempted to dispense with the postmodern sarcasm and unashamedly enjoy Cage's screwy but affectionate characterization as it was initially meant to.

Besides, Cage is flanked by an assortment of fellow wild card wonders, including an unknown Jim Carrey as Walter Getz, Charlie's best friend and Carol's steady, and the debut role for Kevin J. O'Connor as Michael Fitzsimmons, the brooding Beatnik whom Peggy romances to Charlie's dismay. Carrey gets a moment to mug his way through a rendition of Dion's "I Wonder Why" with the rubber-bodied gusto that would make him famous, whilst O'Connor reaps some of the wildest dialogue through his pompous poeticism: "I'm going to check out of this bourgeois motel, push myself away from the dinner table and say 'No more Jell-O for me, Mom!'"

Joan Allen appears at the start of her storied career, having also stood out in the same year's Manhunter, as do Catherine Hicks, Helen Hunt (as Peggy's doting daughter Beth) and an acerbic Lisa Jane Persky (from The Sure Thing and Coneheads, as well as Coppola's earlier The Cotton Club) as gossip girl Dolores Dodge. Filling in the guest appearances slot are Leon Ames and Maureen O' Sullivan in touching performances as Peggy Sue's grandparents, plus the mighty John Carradine as a lodge spokesman. And other recognizable faces include Don Stark (Evilspeak) as jock bully Doug Snell, Barbara Harris from Freaky Friday as Mrs. Kelcher ("Peggy, you know what a penis is...stay away from it") and Barry Miller (Fame, Saturday Night Fever) as the millionaire-in-sneakers Richard, who has named his own theory of time travel after a burrito and is given hot tips on future innovations from Peggy Sue, such as "Walk-a-mans" and "portable enormous radios."

Well-acted across the board, wrapped up tidily with a John Barry musical score (as well as token appearances by Buddy Holly and his 1980s heir apparent Marshall Crenshaw) and given an intriguingly nostalgic glow by cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, the movie is less a technical showcase for Francis Coppola than a storytelling triumph. The movie offers us one bravura camera trick right after the opening credits and then keeps itself simply elegant and exciting. Coppola's working on a level of populism which courts comparison to Spielberg as well as Capra, but there's nothing excruciatingly broad about how he handles the dramedy. It has all been captured with deceptively effortless ease, from the strained chemistry between Peggy and Charlie, the thrill of pelvic-thrusting teenaged love and the brutal awareness of temporary relationships between family and friends in need of closure.

How these emotional threads are resolved is not entirely clear-cut, and Peggy's return to the present brings her back into the realm of compromise, as Charlie dotes nearby, having dumped his mistress for having the temerity to confuse the Big Bopper with a cheeseburger. But I felt myself growing up all over again next to Peggy Sue Kelcher, and she's one high-school sweetheart who not only deserves her party crown, but wears it exceedingly well. Peggy Sue Got Married, but you'll love the gal just the same.

Shanghai Surprise

SHANGHAI SURPRISE

(PG-13, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/HandMade Films, 97 mins., theatrical release date: August 29, 1986)

Should Panda Express ever introduce a new entrée called Mandarin Turkey, Lionsgate Films ought to immediately negotiate a tie-in deal to offer free DVD copies of Shanghai Surprise. I'm serious about that.

I say this after NetFlix has decided that the best way for me to view this was via Artisan Entertainment's pathetically outdated 2003 release. In case you weren't an avid video collector back then, Artisan were to digital video what SLP mavens Avid Video [ahem] were to the VHS contingent. They were catalog title distributors who offered up low-grade transfers basically selling unsuspecting consumers VHS dupes transferred to disc, freed from the tyranny of original aspect ratios and special features. The standard retail prices for their titles were hardly worth the effort, and unless you really needed to revisit Watchers or Shadows Run Black out of your own masochism, well...just watch Dirty Dancing again. That was all they were good for.

Lionsgate rectified this by issuing an actual "special edition" several years later, complete with all manner of tacky talking heads showcases and a "Fans Unite!" audio commentary from a quintet of male Madonna scholars. NetFlix didn't get that memo, and thus I am in the temporary possession of a stagnated piece of plastic which may as well represent Madonna's own presence in the film.

What a hell of a way to see China.

Howard the Duck, at least, had actual contemporary interviews with accessories to the crime, chiefly creators Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz as well as stars Lea Thompson and Jeffrey Jones. Nobody wanted to reflect upon the making of Shanghai Surprise, meanwhile, Howard's immediate contender as the biggest flop of 1986 and cutthroat multiple Razzie nominee, which may as well be a given since, as it is now as it was then, its real legacy rests squarely on its long-estranged leading actors, Sean Penn and Madonna.

Oh, the 1980s, you worked in mysterious ways. How did two of the most disparate egos in show biz manage to tie the knot for a bated-breath audience of tabloid junkies and industry insiders? What circumstances led the Me Decade's premier Method actor to declare his vows to the Queen of Pop? What was going through George Harrison's mind when he pursued this project despite the baggage associated with this diabolical duo?

Yes, Shanghai Surprise was produced by the Quiet Beatle himself, the same man who got into film simply because he felt Monty Python's Life of Brian was too precious not to be shared with the wide world. Harrison's HandMade Films also helped produce a slew of British cult classics such as The Long Good Friday, Time Bandits and Withnail and I. And if Harrison had not taken out that mortgage on his own humble abode, the UK would never know the discreet charms of The Burning, which HandMade distributed theatrically alongside Venom, the movie which pitted Klaus Kinski, Oliver Reed and a Black Mamba against each other in a grudge match for the ages.

The prospect of a George Harrison/Madonna duet would go unfulfilled, sadly, as evident in the opening credits of Shanghai Surprise, which were animated by none other than Maurice Binder. If Madonna's British affectations had kicked in before her dalliance with Guy Ritchie, then by rights she'd be the one taunting George with the line "You must be crazy/You got no money/And you're a liar."

And George...oh, dear: "My straits are dire from the wok into the fire/I'd like to trust you but I've broken my rickshaw." I didn't think he could make Paul "Spies Like Us" McCartney sound hip, but it happened. I can't find my brave face, and I haven't even made it to the man's musical credit.

Enough time lapses for me to think about the bizarre choice about having Sean Penn inherit Sir Roger Moore's mantle before the movie takes us to 1937, the year when the Japanese occupied China. There we meet Walter Faraday (Paul "Belloq" Freeman) enjoying a hearty, crunchy dinner with what looks like steel chopsticks. Because heaven knows, you never smuggle 1000 pounds of opium on an empty stomach. Ironically, the morbidly obese man sitting across from him demands he get a move on, as there are Jap soldiers outside their door. "Their beef's with the Chinese," Faraday counters, savoring the taste of his own plate of delicious Alpo. The Chinese's beef is with him!

As the rickshaws pull Faraday and his loot towards international waters, the self-described "Opium King" (have it your way, Faraday) decides to pay a visit to a certain China Doll. We never see his supposed maiden, instead being treated to the first of many double-crosses as Wu absconds with the bounty and both Faraday and his fat companion, a journalist named Willie Tuttle (Richard Griffiths), are cornered by the foot soldiers of Chinese official Mei Gan (Kay Tong Lim), who wants returned to him what he feels is rightfully owned. In lieu of that, Mei Gan confiscates Faraday's utility belt and starts emptying out its contents, only to trigger the explosive within its final compartment and have his hands blown clean off. Faraday and Tuttle make a run for the nearest harbor and dive right in, but the secret police open fire and apparently murder Faraday. I say "apparently," because...well, you'll see.

One year later, the whereabouts of the opium treasure, or "Faraday's Flowers," continue to remain unknown. A pair of missionaries tending to wounded Chinese troops have a rendezvous with destiny when they seek a bilingual stooge to bankroll for investigative purposes. Their salvation comes in the form of an unkempt drunkard, Glendon Wasey (Sean Penn), booted off his boat to Los Angeles for insufficient funds. The elderly Mr. Burns assigns his associate Gloria Tatlock (Madonna) to watch over Wasey, who will receive a ticket back home provided he locates the father of a mortally wounded rickshaw carrier, one Wu Ch‘En She.

You can tell that what Miss Tatlock is really interested in are Faraday's Flowers, as the opium within them could be used as morphine to administer to her patients. Wasey catches wise to the deception, but stays on the search though coercion and thus leads us into a veritable slew of shady ancillary characters and dead ends. Wasey encounters Faraday's beloved China Doll (Sonserai Lee), a concubine with delusions of empress-style grandeur, and thus piques the curiosity of Mei Gan and porcelain replacement hands. He is also shadowed by the lanky Justin Kronk (Philip Sayer), who is in cahoots with Mr. Tuttle, and there is also a baseball-obsessed entrepreneur named Joe Go (Clyde Kusatsu) and his Oddjob-esque muscle (Professor Toru Tanaka). All of these characters also have their fingers in the pie, and it's up to Wasey and Tatlock to navigate these interlopers if they hope to uncover Faraday's Flowers.

Shanghai Surprise was a fiasco from the word go, as George Harrison (who worked with Michael Kamen on the film score and manages a couple of decent original tunes such as "Breath Away from Heaven" and the especially salvageable "Someplace Else") himself admitted in interviews where he grieved over the poor choice of script, director and leads. Infamous stories abound over Sean Penn's ill temper and the constant friction on set. If only these anecdotes amounted to a camp classic, as this is more a confusing and slapdash assemblage of worn-out adventure movie clichés reliant entirely on the superficial novelty value afforded by putting Penn and Madonna into a period play date.

Penn tries to make the best of the situation, but the nature of his particular acting style contradicts the film's supposed fluffiness. Even as early as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Penn's Methodical meticulousness put him squarely in the lineage of Robert De Niro rather than Clark Gable. The role demands a playful, roguish charisma which he instead plays way too sour-faced and stoic. Given his beginnings as Jeff Spicoli, the precursor to the likes of Bill & Ted & Wayne & Garth, you'd think Sean could make lemonade out of the material, but he seems to be out of his element and doesn't commit with the same compelling brio he reserves for his dramatic roles. That being said, Penn does endeavor, particularly when he consoles a regretful, drunken Miss Tatlock after she places him under "obligation."

If it's not love that you need, then he'll try his best to make everything succeed, I suppose.

The real weak link throughout is, no surprise and all shanghai, Madonna. In only her second major film role following Desperately Seeking Susan, she is making a dreadful reach in the kind of role you expect from one of the Old Hollywood fixtures she rapped about in "Vogue." Alas, she proves no exception to the rule that being an established pop icon doesn't automatically make you a star actress. Madonna is perpetually frigid and awkward as Miss Tatlock, her appalling inability to mine humor or honesty in any situation marking her as fatally unfit for a farce, let alone any movie trying to sell her as a 1930s missionary. To be fair, it's not as if the screenplay gives her an arc, making half-hearted references to a phony identity and a loose morality which are not followed up on. This disingenuousness is emblematic of both the character and the performance.

Put these miscast lovebirds together and you got a movie that doesn't so much sing as yowl like a cat with a stiletto through its tail. The romantic heat between them is vaporous, a form of anti-chemistry which invites more speculation on their notoriously erratic private lives than any investment in their celluloid personalities. I mean, compare this to Rob Reiner's The Sure Thing, released a year before Shanghai Surprise, which deliberately modernized Frank Capra's It Happened One Night with two then-unknown actors who weren't real life items. That John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga clicked charmingly whilst Penn and Madonna flounder from one crummy confrontation to the next shows up the utter famine of faith on behalf of all involved.

Shanghai Surprise disgraces all of its varied lineages, not just the Casablancas and The African Queens of rosy vintage, but even the more contemporary James Bond and Indiana Jones sagas. The supporting players don't even compel on the most rudimentary level of exposition, and their motivations are contrived to the point of abject confusion. The plot, adapted from a novel published in 1978, has all the meticulous structure of a fifth-rate Choose Your Own Adventure book, with threads involving bogus diamonds and the sanctioned intimidations of Mei Gan going absolutely, implausibly nowhere. The recreated Chinese backdrop, which should be distinctly colorful, is staged with dispiriting drabness by director Jim Goddard, who makes even mid-eighties John Glen (Octopussy, A View to a Kill) look like classic Terence Young (From Russia with Love, Thunderball).

Going back to Howard the Duck for a second, and the mention of Lea Thompson and Jeffrey Jones. That movie is terrible, yes, but at least one could feel duly ashamed that actual talent went to waste, as Thompson was so beguiling in Back to the Future and Jones was in peak form in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Shanghai Surprise offers no such luxury, with the slight exception of Sean Penn, and even then his off-screen cockiness put merciful paid to any notions that he and Madonna's presence alone was publicity enough. They weren't working actors who managed to find themselves in a flop, these two willed it upon themselves and have done little to lighten up in the meantime. Shanghai Surprise stinks of a massive ego trip to this day even if its principals continue to ignore it, and so should you.

Still my guitar gently weeps.

Witchboard

WITCHBOARD
(R, Cinema Group, 98 mins., theatrical release date: December 31, 1986)

Kevin S. Tenney has quite the propensity for possession, what with his two initial cult hits, both franchise fodder, focused on disturbances in the spiritual realm casting dire palls on the material world. Maybe he must have felt tired of the slasher conventions from his collegiate beginning, although his most famous film, the sophomore effort Night of the Demons from 1988, has definite influences from its early 1980s body count brethren. Tenney's debut Witchboard, however, doesn't wait too long to get to the conjuring even as its dials down on the carnage, certainly an intriguing comparison point given the E.C. Comics-friendly madness of his next project.

Like Sam Raimi before him, Tenney had a fairly kitchen sink drama sensibility which gradually was renovated into a blood fountain. Witchboard is distinctly character-oriented for undemanding shock cinema, its male leads being estranged best friends who harbor an ever-festering resentment based on their love for one woman. It's a soap opera for gorehounds, where confrontations and consolations coexist with bodies thrashing against walls, demonic POV tracking shots and the occasional ax murder. But mostly it's driven by a string of séances dependent on that reliable of slumber party excursions into the supernatural, the Ouija board.

Yuppie vineyard heir Brandon Sinclair (Stephen Nichols) has been using it routinely to speak to the ghost of ten-year-old David Simpson. At a party hosted by former flame Linda Brewster (Tawny Kitaen), Brandon invites her to make contact with David as her newest beau, working class prodigy Jim Morar (Todd Allen), stews in drunken jealousy. Snarky Jim agitates David so much, the specter deflates the new tires on Brandon's Cobra convertible. Linda takes it upon herself to communicate with David solo for a peaceful resolution, but she develops a fixation with the Ouija which puts her at risk when her naivety allows the apparition to wreak violent, vengeful havoc on Linda, Jim, Brandon, and their friends.

The result is strictly run-of-the-mill as far as possession stories go, with "accidental" deaths, pregnancy scares, nightie nightmares (shrouded in mist, of course), and the mercenary services of a medium, in this case a wisecracking, rainbow-haired space case named Zarabeth (Kathleen Wilhoite) who uses adjectives like "gnarly" and quotes Tigger for that extra shot of forced whimsy. Also as insufferably eccentric is the town's single detective, Lt. Dewhurst (Burke Byrnes), who suspects Jim as the suspect based on solely his missing hatchet from his construction job. Every one of Dewhurst's shakedowns involves his manchild preoccupation with magic tricks, so much so that he's juggling oranges at one point apropos of nothing. That he doesn't arrive for the demonic showdown dressed like Bozo the Clown and wielding an oversized mallet is as baffling as it is merciful.

Tenney employs these touches to lighten the mood, undoubtedly, but they don't gel at all with the embittered melodramatics between Jim and Brandon. The movie hinges on repairing the camaraderie between these absentee ex-friends, who come across as catty right from the start only to eventually reconcile in a motel room, where they learn to laugh again. Oddly enough, atheistic Brandon is the movie's expository mouthpiece while loutish but loving Jim bears the so-called redemption arc which works about as well as you'd expect. Some viewers may actually be cheering for him to pull the trigger on himself in the climax.

But what about 1980s vixen/human hood ornament Tawny Kitaen? Between the poles of Tom Hanks and David Coverdale, the B-actress is touted in the vintage on-set interviews included with this special edition release as playing more than just a reactive piece of eye candy. In a word: HA!!! Linda Brewster is far from Final Girl material, as she needs to be rescued by not one but TWO love interests, bears the brunt of the film's many otherworldly torments and is even rendered vulnerable in that old standby, The Shower Scene. At no point does she ever come across as in control of her own destiny, nor does she effectively will out her inner demon at the end like even Mark Patton's Jesse Walsh did in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2. There isn't even an attempt to de-glamorize Tawny as she is invaded by the movie's ethereal bogey, the final stages only serving to make her look like a model on a photo shoot than anywhere else in the film.

To be fair, Tenney proves himself a workable horror craftsman at times even at this early stage in the game, and puts a lot of thought and effort into not only the framing, camera shots and cinematography, here handled by Roy Wagner, but his screenplay. Tenney's wit can be generous, as is his attention to character development, and the film does unfold as an engrossing enough mystery, at least until a ridiculous anti-climax/coda evokes an unwelcome "WTF?" reaction. Even though he leans too heavily on jump scares (a particularly annoying habit for Jim) and telegraphed close-ups of dangerous objects (Chekhov's sundial!), Tenney does hit some nerve-tingling strides involving one victim's sudden demise (think Final Destination) or a typically Raimi-esque chase sequence.

His touch with the actors, however, is particularly amateurish, especially compared to his deployment of the surprisingly large ensemble in Night of the Demons. If Tawny Kitaen fails to come across as convincingly possessed, then watch daytime soap star Stephen "Patch" Nichols and comic relief Kathleen Wilhoite try (and fail) their best to channel the spirits of James Spader and Annie Potts, respectively. The only performer with the decency to underact, the top-listed Todd Allen, could be seen as a grungy Andrew McCarthy, in that he is a pleasant enough non-presence, although Tawny is no Molly and, thankfully, there's not a Duckie in the gallery.

Because Witchboard is often released on home video in tandem with Night of the Demons, an audience has grown to such a degree that some have championed Tenney's debut film as superior. I don't buy that at all. Witchboard can only come across as a nervous cackle compared to Demons' disemboweling belly laugh. The dirtier system proved the better conduit for Tenney to let loose his puckish spirits, whereas if you used the disc of Witchboard as a planchette, you might end up as lucky as Morrissey did in his own song about Ouija boards: "P-U-S-H-O-F-F." Indeed.

Scream Factory, though, get a "P-A-S-S" for the deluxe high-def treatment they afford Witchboard. The movie looks like it's been preserved in that unmistakably 1985 amber and while the audio is of rougher quality, it's miles better than VHS. But it's the extras, of course, where the company outdo themselves. The Anchor Bay commentary track with Tenney and the film's producers remains enlightening and lively, about as perfect a rundown of the production as one could hope for, but is complemented by an equally cheerful new session with Tenney and a trio of the film's stars. Of course, you will want to see the video retrospective Progressive Entrapment to catch the still-adorable Tawny Kitaen giggly crushing on her male leads, but stay for more anecdotes involving O.J. Simpson and Parker Brothers. A B-roll bouillabaisse collects nearly two solid hours worth of candid on-set footage including more interviews, outtakes, effects tests, and a treasure chest of goofiness. All these plus he theatrical trailer, TV spots and a pair of still galleries to ensure you won't be able to spell right for a week. T-R-U-F-E.