Dangerous Curves + Hunk

I am writing a birthday present to myself today, as opposed my Amityville Murders article which I wrote out of deference for Diane Franklin. That's not to say I didn't enjoy something special in her honor, what with the recent vogue for social distancing having reactivated my feelings about the bodacious brunette I've been championing as both an influence and friend for six years. I subscribed to Amazon Prime so that I could enjoy a rare 1990s appearance by Franklin, credited under her married name, in an episode of USA's short-lived spin-off of 1987's acclaimed The Big Easy.

"The End of the World" (s02e011) starred Diane Franklin De Laurentis as Zoey Simone, a psychic who can see not in the future but the present, whom lead detective Remy (Tony Crane) brings in to locate his kidnapped partner, played by Leslie Bibb. Turns out a young male bomber has a grudge to settle against N'awlins on behalf of his corrupted sister, and after Bibb's Janine corners the suspect in a uniform company, the hunter becomes a hostage.

There was a lot of silly dialogue involving pigs and ribs, and I can't help but think "incel" about the main antagonist. Yet I smiled upon seeing Diane Franklin in something that I missed back when I was a mere preteen. This would've been first aired around the time I discovered Monique Junet, and as someone who is deathlessly enamored with Diane even in her late 50s, she makes me feel so happy.

Ditto Kimberley Kates, for that matter, who I caught up with in a couple of seductress roles after she made her splash opposite Diane in Bill &Ted's Excellent Adventure. I think of her just as fondly as one of the most beautiful women I've ever had to great fortune to speak to. There was one movie in which Kimberley plays a tart trophy wife who lusts after Jared Leto's pool boy, Highway, and another in which she is a bordello belle who sweetly relieves Stephen Dorff of his virginity as he tracks down his main obsession, an abducted Ami Dolenz, the film called Rescue Me. “Happy birthday, Fraser.”

Coincidentally, Rescue Me was a Cannon Film, released a decade after Diane Franklin made her debut in the company's Last American Virgin and after the split between Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. It starred none other than Michael "American Ninja" Dudikoff in a central role opposite Dorff, so it could've conceivably been a relic from the 1980s dusted off for the early 1990s. Diane Franklin and Kimberley Kates both have given me so much love that I will never see them as the ingenues of their initial acting days, and I cannot give back enough gratitude to either for the pleasure. I adore them as adults, and turning 36 only replenishes the honey pot. I know they did something wonderful for me recently, but in trying to rebuild the fractured confidence that's been lying around, I need to rediscover some humility.

But I also need to stay true to my own intelligence as I try to respect those of these two women. So I have to tell myself again that when it comes to the genre of movies Diane and Kimberely will be remembered for, I have a kind of blind spot. You see, movies like Rescue Me or The Last American Virgin exist in a sort of vacuum for someone born in 1984. Before American Pie, I grew up thinking of teen comedies as programming filler for the very same USA Networks which aired that episode of The Big Easy with thirty-something wife/mother Diane Franklin De Laurentis.

I mentioned it in regards to Kimberley's Mosquito-Man, the fact that there was once an after-hours cable block called USA Up All Night that was like Cinemax with censors. And if you watched it religiously, it was like an orphanage for all the mercenary youth-oriented films that were so insanely prolific throughout the 1980s. There were Marilyn Chambers and Linnea Quigley vehicles also in circulation, to be true, but I will always associate USA with Rhonda Shear and Hardbodies and others of that ilk, many of which were objectively even worse. It also reminded me that though the teen comedy assembly line sped up in 1985 to an absurd degree, it was still functional up until the end of the decade, with brand names like Crown International and Vestron Pictures.

Which brings me to HUNK (PG, Crown International Pictures, 102 mins., theatrical release: Mar. 6, 1987) and DANGEROUS CURVES (PG, Lightning Pictures/Vestron Video, 93 mins., video release: Feb. 1, 1989), two late 1980s flicks which bore those very distributors on their wrappers. I had only the vaguest possible memory of the latter thanks to my uncle's VHS collection (it was on the same tape with John Hughes' The Breakfast Club, as aired on The Movie Channel, and I never did rewind that cassette to the beginning to watch Dangerous Curves), and the former was mentioned on a Patreon bonus episode of the now-defunct "'80s All Over" podcast by Eric D. Snider, who had written a piece on it prior. Dangerous Curves is one of those films I struggled to remember just minutes after finishing it, and Hunk already has Snide Remarks written all over it.

As someone who harbors little to no nostalgia for the midnight snacks of his childhood, and whom doesn't even love The Last American Virgin as much as Diane Franklin herself let alone the modern online critic circle, I am not the authoritative voice one wants for trashy ol' teen movies. I mourned the passing of Louisa “Carmela” Moritz, but I'll be damned if I say you should watch Hot Chili just so you could remember her by that (the same applies for Joe Rubbo once he passes). Walter Chaw admitted to wearing out a VHS copy of My Chauffeur out of youthful infatuation, but Deborah Foreman couldn't save that flick for me, at all. There are even people who found Diane Franklin suitable masturbation material based off The Last American Virgin, which only makes me question its fan base and even Diane herself (who has repeatedly used the phrase “sex education” in her remembrances) harsher.

Not every teen movie needs to be Gregory's Girl, I understand, but I do have some prevailing standards. And if I hadn't made it clear from the start, I love the players even as I loathe the game. Hunk, for instance, actually has a very good lead performance from John Allen Nelson as the titular panty-melter, and unlike Eric D. Snider, I will give Nelson credit also for helping to burn Killer Klowns from Outer Space into my memory cells (he was Officer Dave, the third in the triangle between Grant Cramer's Mike and Suzanne Snyder's Debbie). Between both Hunk and Dangerous Curves, I also have to mention several luminaries, be they Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Avery Schreiber, and James Coco.

But I have to speak frankly about Dangerous Curves, which is as formulaic a teen comedy as a committee has ever conceived. It's a vessel for PG-rated cheesecake, undistinguished turns from overqualified actors (even Martha Quinn is too good for this) and as many then-contemporary teen film clichés one could cram into a 90-minute run time. A mismatched pair of collegiates, one studious, the other hedonistic, both bumbling clods? Check. Road trip to meet up with a girl? Check. Cherry red Porsche and Ferrari automobiles begging to be hijacked? The former car applies to the latter box, so this check was already cashed. Parade of swimsuit-clad babes? The movie is called Dangerous Curves, after all!

There are other easy boxes to tick off, but you can connect the dots already and deduce the film's plot all too easily. The studious boy, Chuck (Tate Donovan), is entrusted with driving a Porsche down to Lake Tahoe to ensure a prosperous career at Faciano Industries. CEO Louis Faciano (Robert Stack), friend of Chuck's dad from their 'Nam days, threatens Chuck with bodily harm if his daughter doesn't get her birthday convertible on time. Chuck's horndog buddy Wally (Grant Heslov), aka Mookie, aka Homey Boy, tags along as a necessary evil. One parking ticket at a Circle K later, Chuck loses the Porsche only to find it is the grand prize in a beauty pageant. Chuck and Wally scheme to retrieve it while mingling with the sexy talent, the awkward Chuck falling particularly for a supposed tomboy named Michelle (Danielle von Zerneck). Allies include a beach bum named Bam Bam (Robert Klein) and a depressive cabbie named Hector (Robert Romanus); foes include the sailing extortionist who seized the Porsche, Krevske (Leslie Nielsen) and the dotty pageant manager herself, Miss Reed (Elizabeth Ashley).

With a title like Dangerous Curves, I expected something sexier and livelier than the non-entity I had to watch. I was hoping to come across a Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry for the crowd who only want their License to Drive. No go. Everything that happens here is slavishly beholden to the instruction manual, yet the cake that has somehow baked itself deflates upon contact with the fork.

This is One Crazy Summer without Savage Steve Holland (or anybody who could cut a single one of its cast), Spring Break without Sean S. Cunningham (faint praise, indeed) and Risky Business after it has been dismantled beyond recognition by auto pirates. It makes no demands of Tate Donovan, fresh off SpaceCamp and rehearsing his later nerd role in Love Potion #9, or Danielle von Zerneck, fresh off La Bamba and soon to end her sadly nondescript acting career on a high note with 1995's Living in Oblivion. It casts Grant Heslov, soon to be George Clooney's partner in production, as the promising Curtis Armstrong/Fisher Stevens sidekick and strands him on the surf without a board. And as for the storied Mike Damone, the legendary host of Unsolved Mysteries, the king of Second City cut-ups, and the once and future Lt. Frank Drebin? Just keep adding up those checks, because the laughs are strictly on the one hand.

The only interesting thing I can say about Dangerous Curves, directed with sunshiny vacuousness by full-time cinematographer David Lewis and written by a trio of TV hacks, is that Valerie Breiman (She's Having a Baby, Casual Sex?), who plays Michelle's best friend Blake, got the inspiration to write and direct her own low-grade resort comedy immediately after this. That film was Going Overboard, which you may know marked the screen debut of some mensch by the name of Adam Sandface. I forget his real last name, I'm sorry. Didn't he make a movie recently about selling jewels? That was one of the best of 2019, I can attest to that. Shame that I can't place him beyond the first syllable.

Thank heavens for Hunk, a real American hero and not just in the Bud Light sense. Dangerous Curves reinforced my prejudices against the teen sex comedy as being as tasteful as used bubblegum and as beneficial as shooting guns in the air to kill off the Coronavirus. I may not have toilet paper at this time (those Charmin ads breaking up the viewing process are taunting me), but Hunk was as much a relief. Here is a bad movie with personality, as well as dialogue, satire, sentimentality, and many other things Dangerous Curves didn't have. Granted, the star power isn't as electric and the camera is shier in approaching too many strategically-covered nubile bodies (both these movies are tame as hell compared to the ones I've mentioned with Princesses Diane and Kimberley). Hunk is in the gutter but laughing at the weirdly-shaped clouds, which is a true sign of unforced amiability.

Hidden somewhere in the sculpted physique of John Allen Nelson is the mind of that sexy body's previous owner, Bradley Brinkman (Steve Levitt). The movie begins with Hunk (that's his actual name, Hunk Golden) cruising to a short-notice psychiatrist appointment and confessing to one Dr. Susan “Sunny” Graves (Rebeccah Bush) that he no longer wants to be The Stud, and that “time is running out” for poor Bradley and himself. The fantastical story of Bradley/Hunk is Faust updated for the Big Eighties, as a wimpy computer programmer makes the mistake of offering his soul for success and stature. First, Bradley is a victim of that old Weird Science, as his PC prints out a manifesto called "The Yuppie Program" that saves his job with Mr. Constantopolis (Avery Schreiber). He then blows his bonus on a rundown beach house in the resort community of Sea Spray, populated by the Beautiful People he wishes to become one of, as he brainstorms a follow-up to his supernatural runaway success.

Too hopeless for Charles Atlas to reform, Bradley finally meets at his dud of an open house party the literal dream woman who's been making the scene, O'Brien (Deborah Shelton). She is the emissary of Dr. D (James Coco), and has come to complete the transformation by offering Bradley a trial period, up until midnight after Labor Day, of an irresistible alter ego. The nebbish signs his contract via hypodermic pen and wakes up the next morning as Hunk Golden, complete with new accessories and a fortune to burn. After getting his own back against the volleyball-playing snobs who humiliated him while he was Bradley, Hunk is ready for the spoils of social victory, from a 24-hour metabolism to trend-setting fashion choices and, of course, a sex drive ample enough to plow through the entire female populace of Sea Spray in a matter of weeks.

After conquering a sexy woman in a mermaid costume (Andrea Patrick), Hunk gets a rude awakening courtesy of Dr. D himself. If he doesn't want to revert back to Bradley's body, Hunk will have to agree to be the Devil's latest agent of chaos upon death and murder the entire community of Sea Spray on the way to starting the third world war. From this point on, the film plays out in linear time as Hunk and Sunny become out-of-office romantic interests. Hunk also becomes a media sensation after saving her life, although because he's still Bradley, he starts to regret and rebel against the spotlight further. It all culminates with a key to the city ceremony approaching that dreaded deadline, although it is certain that Hunk is a decent enough man to save his soul. But what will become of Sunny?

What gives Lawrence Bassoff's movie an edge over Dangerous Curves is the casting of both Bradley and Hunk. Steve Levitt has a junior Gene Wilder's visage and plays the dorky role refreshingly straight against the hyper-campy competition. The real surprise, however, is John Allen Nelson, who suggests Bruce Davison as a tanned and toned surfer dude. Here is a performer who has a little more to offer than the arch pretty boys and hangdog wisenheimers of your average teen flick, and Nelson projects a natural charisma and innate humor which never lets you forget that Bradley still exists. A dream sequence in which Bradley escapes from hell to reunite with his mortal body keeps the fantasy credible. Bassoff (Weekend Pass) is also more ambitious with his screenplay in terms of humor; references to Letterman, Geraldo Rivera and Chuck Norris are tossed off with aplomb if not consistent levels of laughter, and Nelson isn't too hunky that he can't deliver a prize line of dialogue or three:

"Sea Spray by night means the Sand Castle [bar]. The men are low on body fat. The women are high on themselves...and whatever else is going around."

"I finally meet a beautiful woman and she wants me to bomb Pearl Harbor. Talk about romantic."

"You know you've made it when your garbage is front-page news."

Game as he is, Nelson isn't allowed to upstage James Coco, who is clearly having a ball with his various mephistophelian guises in a posthumous performance (he died shortly before the film's release in March of 1987). Deborah Shelton is passable in her first role since Body Double, mainly because of the comic opportunities afforded her. Supporting performances by the actors playing the bullies and freaks of Sea Spray (i.e. Cynthia Szigeti as local busybody Chachka) are enthusiastic if not terribly memorable. The only role which I felt didn't work completely is the broad portrayal by Robert Morse of a Robin Leach caricature, a gratuitous flash of homophobia so brazen that he's actually named Gaylord.

Much like My Chauffeur, which was another Crown-brand exploitation comedy with a lead performer who deserved better (Deborah "Valley Girl" Foreman, herself), Hunk is at once engagingly high-spirited and regrettably lowbrow. Whereas David Beaird undercut the old-fashioned screwball airs of My Chauffeur with pointlessly vulgar elements, Lawrence Bassoff compromises the integrity of his own fairy tale with misjudged broad strokes. When Hunk gets down with a former candy stripe nurse named Laurel Springs (Melanie Vincz), the result isn't as titillating or as funny as it could be, a common predicament of vintage teen sex comedies. The PG rating is admirable at first because it suggests tactfulness, but the movie's limp swipes at yuppie idiosyncrasies are kid gloves poking your ribs. And your own personal tolerance for corn will ultimately determine whether you accept the time-honored morals this film reheats; unlike The Sure Thing, the journey isn't so unexpectedly charming to make up for the destination.

But there I go again, comparing wheat to chaff. Movies like Dangerous Curves and Hunk are not built for fawning retrospectives by discriminating film fans; they were meant for articles as small as the screens they eventually got the most saturation from. Letterboxd has proven that everyone's a critic nowadays, and again it reminds me just how frustrating it can be to devote your attention, serious or not, to what is essentially marshmallow spread. If I am lucky, a movie like Hunk at least has an endearing performance from an inexperienced actor and some genuine mirth; if not, I get movies like Dangerous Curves, which aren't worth an iota of your nostalgia even with so much proven talent. But just like in real life, you have to count your blessings, and at least you didn't have to read about my opinions of that truly horrible Adam Sandler movie from 1989.

Dear God, if anyone were responsible for killing off '80s nostalgia for me, it would be Shecky Moskowitz. At least Diane Franklin and Kimberley Kates will outlast all my worst memories of life and cinema.

A Little Sex + Casual Sex?

A LITTLE SEX
(R, Universal Pictures, 95 mins., theatrical release date: April 2, 1982)

CASUAL SEX?
(R, Universal Pictures, 88 mins., theatrical release date: April 22, 1988)

Nobody goes to the movies for a sex education class, but most coitus-based mainstream comedies are actually more invested in the equally dirty deed of romance. This is especially true for both A Little Sex and Casual Sex?, then-contemporary '80s throwaways whose forthright titles are pillow talk concealing more pressing concerns on the minds of voraciously carnal singles. Is marriage a surefire cure for a wandering eye? How do you measure physical compatibility when you're fretting over the danger of STDs? Can you be seduced by either of these movies tonight and not hate yourself in the morning?

In the case of Bruce Paltrow's A Little Sex, there's nothing a TV-based sensitivity and some pixie dust can't do for a naïve beeline to the Chapel of Love. This is only natural considering MTM Enterprises (as in Mary Tyler Moore, of course) optioned this as their first theatrical release, splitting the $6,000,000 bill with distributor Universal Pictures (who also loosed Casual Sex? upon us). Paltrow (creator of MTM-TV's The White Shadow) and writer/producer Bob DeLaurentis have ported over the fairytale of New York from Mary's flagship sitcom and skewed it to a more male curiosity, but their overall philosophy is no different than the one voiced in her theme song: "You're gonna make it after all." This is true even if you're a freshly-wedded stud who's been tirelessly cuckolding your future spouse during the 10 months you were live-in lovers.

Michael Donovan (Tim Matheson) works as a commercials director, so he's confronted with temptation no matter where he goes, be it on the set or at a dinner date or strolling down a Madison Avenue past a hallucination's worth of provocatively-dressed women. His older brother Tommy (Edward Herrmann), a veterinarian at the Central Park Zoo, knows via regular conversation that Michael's raging libido is as natural as a "birth defect" and bets the $82 in his wallet that his brother will slip up and cuckold his bride, Katherine Harrison (Kate Capshaw), who teaches at the Mother of Christ parochial school for girls.

And Michael does slip, first with Philomena (Wendie Malick), the clarinet-playing girlfriend of Kate's longtime friend and Julliard teacher Walter (John Glover), and then with an aggressive wannabe actress named Nancy (Susanna Dalton). Kate catches him in the latter clinch, and all comedy goes out the window as Michael stews in the resulting guilt and loneliness. The rest of the film is an arduous string of failed reconciliations (Mike types out a list of 18 past conquests to demonstrate previously nonexistent honesty) and pleas for advice from both sides. The dejected Kate turns to her mother, Mrs. Harrison (Joan Copeland), who relates the time she caught Kate's father in bed with her grade school teacher ("their own private PTA meeting"), an act she confronted first with sober discussion and then with a broken ankle.

DeLaurentis' script cheats as often as his central character, withholding substantial information about Michael & Kate's affair (they've been going together for years rather than months, which Michael offhandedly complains about at the onset) and indulging too much in cutesy tricks and on-the-nose banter. Their introductory encounter finds Michael and Kate, presented as perfect strangers, provoking "Why, I never!" reactions from old ladies at a fruit stand as he challenges her to a foot race. "You always cheat!" Kate protests after Michael trips her up on the stairs of their apartment complex. "And I always will," Michael counters, "as long as I get you in the end." This symptomizes the faults of DeLaurentis and Paltrow, who lack the genuine sophistication or the lively comedic touch needed to invest us in the splintered relationship at hand.

Tim Matheson and Kate Capshaw are underserved by such regressive schmaltz. Having hunked himself up considerably since Animal House, Matheson labors to find the sincerity in a caddish character limited by his entitlement and hang-ups. Michael appears to have real intimacy issues no amount of Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo on the part of Mary Tyler Moore can counter. He's open about his nuptial responsibility to an old flame, Sandy (P.J. Mann), who arrives out of the blue and asks him out to a harmless dinner. But he (and DeLaurentis) disregard this for dreary scenes of Michael being overpowered by callow stereotypes of maneater femininity: Philomena assures him he'll get better at removing his wedding band on the next tryst, and Nancy all but tears off her clothes in her seduction of Michael. Capshaw, in her feature debut, is infinitely more charming under Paltrow's boxy direction than even Steven could manage. But her Katherine never develops a consistent personality. She hops into bed with Walter seeking to understand the concept of loveless sex, but is finally reduced to an indignant doormat who delights in walloping Michael with a field hockey stick.

Tis a pity, since Walter is played with refreshing subtlety by John Glover. Known for officious supporting roles in the likes of 52 Pick-Up and Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Glover refuses to turn Walter into a cauldron of self-absorbed ressentiment. He demonstrates a beguiling warmth in his scenes with Capshaw epitomized by his farewell delivery of the inevitable question all platonic friends should ask when eyed for a rebound. The good sense Glover demonstrates is more abundant in Edward Herrmann's droll portrayal of Tommy, and both actors realize the amiable honesty DeLaurentis attempts in his script. Herrmann, bless his departed soul, is the movie's saving grace, providing a no-nonsense combination of intellectual and fraternal superiority. He also gets DeLaurentis' funniest one-liners. When his brother arrives late for his wedding rehearsal on account of a back massage from a buxom mattress spokesmodel, Tommy zings Michael thusly: "Science is the art of observation. You got lip gloss on your ears."

Casual Sex? has its own stifling mundanities to overcome, attempting a farcical look at female sexuality instead of male and with the death's-head specter of AIDS plaguing the "whole man-woman relationship thing." Lea Thompson, perky as ever, is Stacy Hunter, who played the field during the sexually active first half of '80s, with a peculiar weakness for artistic types. Her best friend Melissa (Victoria Jackson) has feared to tread, blooming late during her second year of college and nearly hitching herself to an inattentive slob. What with her straight-to-the-camera philosophy about "sex [being] a good way to meet new people," Stacy appears blithely disinterested in romantic union as opposed to revolving-door boyfriends and daredevil nymphomania. The next thing you know, Stacy is pondering celibacy in the face of mounting health scares and crinkling her face at the very thought of "safe sex," as if prophylactics were an automatic dealbreaker.

Stacy and Melissa opt for a week's vacation at the Oasis Spa, which caters to fitness-conscious singles and welcomes patrons with gift baskets full of condoms (enough to safeguard the entire planet, sez Melissa). On their first night, they and the other guests engage in a geographically-themed matchmaking party ("Ecuador? Ecuador?") where Melissa is paired with the negging Matthew (Peter Dvorsky) and Stacy is stuck with Vinny Valcone (Andrew "Dice" Clay), a palooka from Paterson, New Jersey, who refers to himself in the first person as "The Vin Man," often to the sing-songy refrain of Tom Jones' "She's a Lady" ("I'm the best from the East/I'm a wild, crazy beast"). Stacy would much rather be with aerobics instructor Nick Lawrence (Stephen Shellen), a bohunk with stunted adolescent dreams of becoming a rock god, while Melissa is pined for by another staffer, Jamie (Jerry Levine), the closest thing to a Perfect Man at the resort.

Screenwriters Wendy Goldman & Judy Toll have adapted their 1985 musical performance piece of the same name, the question mark at the end a reflection of the lip service paid to AIDS and other venereal maladies. But under Ivan Reitman's production auspice and his wife Genevieve Robert's one-shot direction, Casual Sex? wouldn't have felt out of place a year before the play's debut, when Blame It on Rio and Where the Boys Are '84 premiered theatrically. The heroines sunbathe at a nude beach and engage in slumber party conversations about vibrators and orgasms. Men and women alike are characterized in the broadest terms befitting the typical low-rate sex comedy of those "innocent" years. The caliber of actors and filmmakers here are surely better than the bulk of those, but Casual Sex? is only two steps up the evolutionary ladder from, say, The Allnighter.

This hedging of bets is there in the way the soundtrack flogs Buster Poindexter's "Hot Hot Hot" from the main titles on down to almost every scene transition to follow (a far more tolerable Kid Creole song is withheld until the end credits, and the nominal composer is Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks). It's there in gags involving girl-watching goons getting hit in the groin by projectile tennis balls. It's there in the tender lovemaking scene between Stacy and Nick, only now the ingénue breaks the fourth wall a la Ferris Bueller for a wry punchline. And it definitely shows as the movie strains to wrap itself up by rewarding Stacy and Melissa their happily ever after coda. In much the same way as A Little Sex and its deliberately juvenile competition from Porky's on down, Robert takes a preoccupation with sex and removes all the pleasure from it. With the exception of Jessica Rabbit, the cold hard truth about cartoons is that they just aren't sexy.

The leading ladies certainly are, even Victoria Jackson as the inexperienced Melissa. Her spacey comic style is like Kimmy Robertson emulating Melanie Griffith, and it's wholly endearing. And yet the vivacious Lea Thompson, a seasoned starlet if ever there was one by 1988, runs into more trouble here than when she played Beverly Switzer in the woeful Howard the Duck. She is hardly the Ms. Matthew Broderick that Genevieve Robert tries to coax out of her (Elizabeth Shue would've been more natural were she willing to go au naturel), and Thompson's reliable effervescence peaks early on during a montage of Stacy's oversexed past (e.g.: her dilettantish guffaws at a hack comic's pelvic undulations) and never builds back up again.

And then Robert rolls the Dice.

Having declared his John Travolta parody the best thing about the otherwise lousy Making the Grade, Andrew "Dice" Clay builds upon that muscular goofiness to deliver an honest-to-goodness comic creation as the Vin Man. All the ingredients of his impending superstardom are here, the leather jacket and "bada bing, bada boom" dialect and dimwitted machismo (complete with pet name for his dong), but they fuse with Goldman & Toll's sketch-minded satirical acumen to make the Vin Man like something Clay could have conceivably workshopped for the Groundlings troupe. When he raps a long-winded confession joke at Melissa that lands with a plop, he bounces back with "Well, they're not all golden, honey." Although it is implied that Vinny and Melissa make a meatball sandwich on the beach, the Vin Man saves the cheese for Stacy, who is so initially charmed she refers to him as "a living argument for birth control."

The guido can't help it. Not even a demonstration of dating tips gleaned from "The Pretend You're Sensitive Handbook" makes him seem less of a nuisance to Stacy, who has agreed to let Nick live with her back home in L.A. But Nick turns out to be even more of a selfish deadbeat than Vinny, who retreats back to Paterson only to experience a rush of soul-searching ("I've forced myself to take a closer look at the Vin Man. Ya know, open 'im up, pull him out, dissect 'im like a frog"). A dynamite ending would've had Vinny arrive on the same soundstage as Stacy and Melissa, during which Stacy would say the rightful closing line ("What can I say? Life is bizarre!") and then proceed to jump him the same way she did her old sous-chef, Gunter Kroger. It would've made more sense than the tacked-on joint New Year's/Christmas epilogues we do get, which unbecomingly smothers both Clay and the film in creamed corn.

(An alternate ending, preserved on the DVD, involves a character played by Bruce Abbott of Re-Animator fame, whom I hate to admit I didn't notice at all when I watched the film.)

As it stands, Casual Sex? is another perfunctory late '80s studio comedy. Goldman & Toll don't really do much with the resort setting besides recycle the usual dream sequences (the funniest involves Nick sweeping Stacy off her feet as her past lovers interrupt to inform her of what else came next), schlock rock numbers (Nick miming a godawful Dan Hartman ballad to Stacy's face) and deadpan asides to the audience ("I'm concerned about this penis size thing"). On the evidence of their respective sex comedies, Genevieve Robert and Bruce Paltrow are the more compatible soul mates next to their hetero-genous seekers. Mating social commentary with celluloid conventionality, A Little Sex and Casual Sex? are, to quote Rick Moranis, "a long ceremony [leading to] a short honeymoon."

Project X (1987) + The Accused (1988)

PROJECT X
(PG, 20th Century Fox, 108 mins., theatrical release date: April 17, 1987)

The Roger Corman Academy is known for turning out some formidable directors back in the 1970s: Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Ron Howard, and Jonathan Demme (R.I.P.). But the most ignored of them has to be Jonathan Kaplan, which is a shame because he has a skill with economy that could've only come from filming on the cheap and tawdry. Scorsese himself broke Kaplan into Corman's good graces, which resulted in the sexploitation efforts The Student Teachers and Night Call Nurses. Then he directed Jim Brown in The Slams (for Roger's brother, Gene Corman) and Isaac Hayes in Truck Turner (for AIP). In 1975, Kaplan delivered a B-movie hit for Columbia with White Line Fever, only to bomb two years later with the Terence Hill vehicle Mr. Billion.

The failure of that film must have caused some apprehension amongst the majors, because nobody paid attention when Jonathan Kaplan rebounded in 1979 with what I consider one of the greatest teen angst movies of all time, Over the Edge. Funded by Orion Pictures and starring both Matt Dillon and Vincent Spano in their debut roles, it should've restored the Parisian Kaplan to the top of the B-list. Over the Edge was instead handled with kid gloves due to the controversy kicked up by Walter Hill's hoodlum-rousing The Warriors. It got buried as a limited release, only to reemerge in 1981 through the festival circuit and HBO. By 1983, Kaplan got his chance to return to the big screen, after a trio of TV movies, with Heart Like a Wheel, a biography of drag racer Shirley Muldowney which netted Bonnie Bedelia a Golden Globe nomination.

Much of what Kaplan did in the aftermath of Heart Like a Wheel wound up on MTV, since he directed videos for Rod Stewart ("Infatuation," co-starring White Line Fever actress Kay Lenz, and "Lost in You") and John Cougar Mellencamp ("Lonely Ol Night," "Small Town," "Rain on the Scarecrow"). Which leads us to PROJECT X and THE ACCUSED, two of the topical dramas which were among his last feature directorial efforts of the 1980s. Kaplan graduated from Corman's fringy New World Pictures to a pair of heavyweight production teams responsible for some substantial blockbusters. Project X came from Walter F. Parkes & Lawrence Lasker, whose WarGames managed to conquer a sizeable chunk of the summer of 1983. The Accused came from established mogul Stanley Jaffe and his partner Sherry Lansing, as well as Paramount head Dawn Steele, who boasted the second-biggest hit movie of 1987 with Fatal Attraction.

From what I've researched, Project X is loosely based on real accounts of the U.S. Air Force having exposed roughly 3,000 rhesus monkeys to radiation far beyond the standard lethal dose in order to gauge human endurance during a nuclear war. But there was a larger controversy involving Kaplan's own dramatization when the Los Angeles Department of Animal Regulation, as spurred on by TV personality Bob Barker and the United Activists for Animal Rights, investigated an alleged 18 felony counts of animal abuse from several trainers. This went against the reports of the American Humane Association, who were officially active during filming, but Barker pressed on by going public with photos from the set which he believed showed chimpanzees being threatened with blackjacks. He was hit with a multimillion defamation suit from the AHA which was settled for $300,000.

Project X's lukewarm reputation has not been helped by being caught in such a scandal, and one might be tempted to view the movie with eagle eyes to see if the chimps' behavior may have been provoked by blunt force stimuli to validate what some claim is hearsay and others harmful. All I can say is that the movie did work on that visceral, primal level which helped make Over the Edge such a surprise.

The film pivots on one simian actor, Willie, in the role of Virgil, who is captured from his jungle habitat and put on the black market. He eventually lands in the care of Theresa "Teri" MacDonald (Helen Hunt), a grad student at the University of Wisconsin's psych department. Her intentions are to teach the playful animal sign language, although she strikes up a friendship with Virgil which ends once her grant is cancelled. She is told Virgil will be moved to a Houston zoo to receive proper care, but given his innate desire to fly, fate detours Virgil to the Strategic Weapons Research wing of the U.S. Air Force in Lockridge, FL.

His ‘sapien counterpart is Jimmy Garrett (Matthew Broderick), an insubordinate airman who is grounded against his will and assigned to the "Experimental Pilot Performance Project" at the Lockridge laboratory. It would appear that Garrett's ultimate goal is to innocently teach Virgil and the rest of the caged primates how to master a flight simulator, but Garrett notices the morale of his fellow draftees, Isaac Robertson (Johnny Ray McGhee, Kaplan‘s A-1 regular) and Watts (the great Stephen Lang), calcifying into stony silence. And he's picked up on Virgil's aptitude in talking with his paws, forming a bond just as deep as the creature once had with Teri. So when Garrett takes Watts' position as "lord of the apes" and is granted clearance to witness the end results of the chimps' VR air travels, he too is rattled by the radioactive death sentence Dr. Lynnard Carroll (William Sadler) has planned for the primates.

WarGames found Broderick, as the teenaged instigator David Lightman, in a race against the machine, one designed to simulate extreme and destructive conditions (like the arcade-friendly flight cabinets in Project X) but working of its own rationale and buying into the non-existent threat of "Global Thermonuclear War" with missiles bared and ready to launch. Project X renders the recycled peril a frigidly manmade decision as opposed to mechanical (Sadler, playing the first in his singular repertoire of chilly antagonists, specializes in evasively academic validation) and doesn't shy away from the physical casualties. However, it is also comparatively lighter in the lead-up to the nefarious reveal, with composer James Horner offering a dry run of the sounds that would make Titanic unsinkable a decade later and some cute monkey business in which Virgil's cellmates pick up on less civil gestures than the domesticated hero, who clutches a toy alligator in his first encounter with Garrett.

Jonathan Kaplan keeps a commendable pace before and after the 42-minute mark, the point where Garrett's affable naiveté as caretaker is shattered by his powerlessness upon witnessing the "graduation" ceremony for Bluebeard. Matthew Broderick, subdued in a way that must have thrown his Ferris Bueller fan base for a loop, adapts to the material with his reliably superb wits and expressiveness. Having been established as a miscreant, wheedling a ridiculous excuse for treating a girl to a champagne-fueled night flight, Garrett asks the right questions about the illogic of the experiments (namely, that a human pilot's knowledge of impending death is unlike how a chimp thinks) to get him fired by Dr. Carroll. He reaches out to Teri in fear but just as cravenly tries to take his mind off the horror by getting drunk and playing poker at an Air Force tavern. Just as excellent as Broderick is co-star Willie the Chimp as Virgil; when he discovers the frightening truth, his shrieks of alarm startle the viewer as much as it does Garrett.

Aided by master cinematographer Dean Cundey, Kaplan offers no-frills contrasts underlining the remoteness in Garrett's environment as another freshman to the project receives the same routine from Sgt. Krieger (Jonathan Stark, of Fright Night and House II: The Second Story) he once gave Jimmy. The movie does succeed at its stated goal of making the chimpanzees as intelligent as the humans, and there is a moment where the chimps in the vivarium taunt and stare at Dr. Carroll that is like a moment of eerie calm before they act upon their primal rage. The biggest hurdle in the story comes when Garrett and Teri lead the monkeys on their escape, a moment of uplift which allows Virgil to realize his wildest wish (as well as for Garrett to echo the misdemeanor which busted him down to the project) at the expense of credibility. Yet Kaplan's sleek effectiveness gives what could have been shameless melodrama a potent urgency, and both sets of actors are handled with care.

As a fan of Kaplan's Over the Edge, I suggest one watch out for appearances by Daniel Roebuck, who made a strong impression in OE scriptwriter Tim Hunter's River's Edge, as well as the two leads of that that ‘79 film, Michael Eric Kramer and Pamela Ludwig, in minor roles. Peter Gabriel's oft-misinterpreted "Shock the Monkey" (which literally happens at one point during the finale, as Dr. Carroll futilely tries to control the escalating revolt) is deployed for the opening credits, which leads to a cameo by none other than Dick Miller.

THE ACCUSED
(R, Paramount Pictures, 111 mins., theatrical release date: October 14, 1988)

Inspired by the New Bedford assault case of Cheryl Araujo from 1983, The Accused is the adult flipside to the family-oriented science fiction of Project X, a fight for autonomy from the perspective of a rape victim instead of a lab animal. Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster), who is as uncouth as Goliath but graced with enough integrity as Virgil, is a low-class waitress who decides to release a thick cloud of steam from a domestic quarrel by visiting her best friend at a roadhouse dive, The Mill. One thing leads to another, and soon Sarah, her senses weakened by casual marijuana and alcohol use, is sexually assaulted by three men on a pinball machine in the recreation room, a rowdy batch of yokels egging them on. This is staved off until the final act, though. Kaplan begins at the climax, fixating on the Mill's freeway-stationed exterior for the main credits, followed by Sarah bursting out of the front door in obvious distress, hitching a ride to the hospital where the doctor inquires about her recent bouts of intercourse and whether she carries a venereal disease.

Birchfield County Deputy D.A. Katheryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis) appoints herself Sarah‘s prosecutor, but the battered client poses a huge risk as a case subject. Outside of being stoned and intoxicated, her ordeal could be cheapened by such looming double standards as provocative dress and flirty banter, the latter Sarah doesn‘t confess to until far too late in the investigation. To the goons who were there, Sarah was obviously teasing and putting on an exhibition; this "consensual" chauvinism is paralleled by Ms. Murphy's chief executive boss, Paul Rudolph (Carmen Argenziano). Leveling a lesser charge of reckless endangerment at the plea bargain, Murphy commits a flagrant offense to Sarah by denying her a proper courtroom recounting. It isn't until after Sarah has an unpleasant encounter with her aggressors' head cheerleader, Cliff "Scorpion" Albrect (Leo Rossi), and rams his pick-up truck in retaliation does Murphy seek a proper legal statute to go to trial with: criminal solicitation. "No deals," the women finally agree to demand in a precedent-setting act of litigation which will set the record straight.

There is transparent foreshadowing when Ms. Murphy and Lieutenant Duncan (Terry David Mulligan) consult the initial rape case with Mr. Rudoph while watching an ice hockey game, where the violence is expected to be cheered if not goaded on by the carefree spectators. Barmaid Sally Fraser (Ann Hearn) is only good for pointing out Scorpion and the two other aggravators; she provides unflattering truths to Murphy about Sarah's carnality and fled the scene of the crime without so much as an anonymous call. The only significant testimony could come from Ken Joyce (Bernie Coulson), the college student who has kept a sullen distance since reporting the gangbang. Murphy gets to him, but Ken becomes reluctant to take the stand once he's aware that his frat buddy, Bob Joiner (Steve Antin), will be indicted for the rape Ken knew he'd committed and serve the full prison sentence of five years.

In its own generous if grueling way, The Accused is a fitting reprise of the major theme of Project X, as studied complacency stirs a righteous call for justice. For Sarah, defiantly regaining her self-confidence by kicking out her dealer/musician boyfriend Larry (Tom O'Brien) and cutting her hair so as to resemble a trailer-park Laurie Anderson, it's the betrayal of her lawyer and the badgering of that odious bystander which activates her sensitivity to the beleaguered Ms. Murphy and the frightened Ken. Murphy's patronizing careerism gives way to bold humanity by acknowledging an equally independent, gutsy soul as vulnerable as she is unrefined. And Ken, the silent witness, selflessly experiences a moral awakening in distinct opposition to the nasty machismo of Bob and Scorpion.

The Oscar-winning Jodie Foster plays Sarah so phenomenally close to the bone to that it would seem to elbow out the solid work of Kelly McGillis (Witness, Top Gun) and "newcomer" Bernie Coulson, a Canadian actor who did one notable exploitation role as aggressive townie Jimmy Cullen in Paul Lynch's Bullies. McGillis does live up to her character's given name by turning in a performance as exquisitely composed as Kathryn Harrold (cf: Modern Romance, The Sender). Kaplan directs both the moodily blue-eyed Coulson and even schlock stud Steve Antin (that conspicuously gay monotone aside, it's his best work to date) within their element. The plot's true catalyst is Scorpion, the most boisterous of the six indicted cretins, embodied with disturbing gusto by Leo Rossi (Heart Like a Wheel, River's Edge, both Halloween and Maniac Cop's first sequels).

Foster, 25 at the time and painfully self-conscious, found herself at the second wave of her career but with trepidation about the alchemy of her character. It's a confidently heartbreaking portrayal, built from offhand sheepishness and bravado but suffused with a lonely pathos Tom Topor's script and Kaplan's more stylish camera seize upon. After returning to the Mill with Murphy and Lt. Duncan to locate two of her violators, Sarah is driven home and, her voice still cracked, asks whether her face looks good. She tries reaching out to her mother, who is typically frigid, hoping for a vacation which will allow her to recompose herself. The fact that Sarah's vanity plate reads "SexySadi" is tempered by the discovery that it's referring to her pet cat. The one subject she does have deep-seated knowledge about, astronomy, is cathartic rather than insular, especially since Sarah is not your average dippy star child or grotesque palm-reader.

When The Accused takes us to "show time," reconstructing the night of April 18 from Ken's confessional, it is very unpleasant and charged with a volatile sexuality brought on by Sarah's cocksure cock-teasing. Entertaining it is most certainly not, given one does not defend the predominantly piggish male crowd, but it is effective given the degree of character investment we've been spoiled with. You know enough about Sarah to realize she's flawed and fascinating, but the test which arrives 30 minutes near the end is whether you can deny the "blame the victim" outlook and perceive not just the three-pronged crime of forced entry, but also of excessive verbal abuse. Jonathan Kaplan puts us in Ken's horrified position over by the arcade on that night and as well as under oath (it pains me to consider Bernie Coulson another case of drug-addicted showbiz insouciance, since he is so capable under Kaplan's guidance).

Since his career peak with Over the Edge, Kaplan's ability to spin sensationalism into gold has been taken for granted. Both Project X and The Accused confirm that his talent runs deeper than most people have given him credit for. Whether it's restless teens banding together to send a destructive message to the PTA or a reckless young adult who commands our sympathy if not our pity in the wake of a degrading molestation, Kaplan paints broadly but knows well enough to keep a can of gray primer at his side. More so than the populist Ron Howard or even brilliant formalist Martin Scorsese, Kaplan is both accessible and resonating. That his fortunes waned after Bad Girls (1994) and Brokedown Palace (1999) is Hollywood's loss as much as it is ours. Give him some of our brightest contemporary talent and a worthy script again, and maybe we can all flash that signature Roger Corman grin.

Return of the Killer Tomatoes

RETURN OF THE KILLER TOMATOES
(PG, New World Pictures, 98 mins., theatrical release date: Apr. 22, 1988)

Remember when Fox Kids managed to crank out botched animated series based on the strangest choices of movies? In the early 1990s, there was a 13-episode run for Little Shop of Horrors, in which Audrey II was defanged and rechristened "Junior" alongside teenage variants on Seymour and Audrey. Once that wilted on the vine, Wes Craven's inaugural adaptation of DC's Swamp Thing begat both the live action program on the USA Network (former home of the Toxic Crusaders!) as well as Fox's Saturday Morning spin-off which lasted a paltry five episodes. Actually, Fox Kids' Swamp Thing probably hewed closer to the spirit of Jim Wynorski's The Return of Swamp Thing rather than Craven's 1982 film, notorious for its international version which unshackled Adrienne Barbeau's bosom.

But the one which managed to outlast all of them was adapted from a movie nobody ever expected to be revived, even for children. And I include the Toxic Avenger saga in the mix. That was about an eco-friendly superhero (think Captain Planet with elephantitis squeezed into a tutu) on the most basic of levels; although the films were incredibly debased, they could plausibly be toned way down for possible "Toxic Tots." Instead, the genesis for this ne plus ultra of schlock cinema kiddie adaptations came from an episode of Muppet Babies ("The Weirdo Zone"), which made a sight gag out of 1978's Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! was widely dismissed as a overworked attempt at sending up monster movies, reveling in its own ineptness but hardly as funny as any random segment from The Kentucky Fried Movie. That reputation still exists, but in the VHS boom such sins were completely forgiven and it got celebrated as a proto-Airplane! despite the fact that Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker's embryonic Kentucky Fried Movie existed a year before, and remains the funnier movie to this day. A lot of people felt Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! was merely cynical in its openly amateurish satire, with a ratio higher in the misses than in the hits.

It garnered its expected cult following just the same, and when that aforementioned Muppet Babies installment achieved surprisingly high ratings, New World Television sent the word to their film distribution wing and Four Square Productions was enticed to make a sequel on a $2,000,000 budget. The result was Return of the Killer Tomatoes, which became the nerve center for the revived Attack of the Killer Tomatoes franchise to come, from the Fox show to the NES video game (although an 8-bit Sinclair version was developed in 1986) to a succession of further sequels and re-releases of the '78 film, including a "Director's Cut" vidcassette from Disney!

I'm here not to squash Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! but instead shine a grow light onto Return of the Killer Tomatoes, which endures for better reasons than its predecessor and recently got the red carpet treatment from Arrow Video. Whereas Attack! labored witlessly to spin its cheap conceit into a kitsch ruby, this time creative partners John De Bello, Costa Dillon and James Stephen "Rock" Peace settle more into a pleasantly silly groove worthy of, say, Killer Klowns from Outer Space minus the Chiodos. The mostly unfamiliar cast includes one obvious standout (we'll get to him) and is tarted up by someone who knows how to play to the lowbrow material the right way. And several of the jokes actually manage to seem good enough to have really inspired future movies which I also like.

Framed within a mock-public access late show in which the host (Michael Villani as Bob Downs) advertizes a call-up contest to win a "Pot o' Gold" worth $9.22, Return of the Killer Tomatoes cheerfully preempts itself at the beginning and several times during the movie proper, which picks up in the aftermath of the Great Tomato War. Having foiled a corrupt politician as well as leading the do-or-die charge during the Battle of San Diego Stadium, Lt. Wilbur Finletter (Peace) is now a pizzeria owner who works around the government ban on marinara by any means necessary, from mayonnaise to peanut butter to boysenberry sauce. He employs his nephew Chad (Anthony Starke), who makes a fateful delivery to the house of Professor Gangreen (John Astin), the mad…er, angry scientist committed to breeding a new strain of ferocious fruit by genetically evolving them into human form through toxic waste and a 25-cent Seeburg jukebox with no pesky 45s of "Puberty Love" (Alex Winter must have taken note when he made Freaked).

Chad, however, experiences said emotion when Gangreen's assistant Tara (Karen Mistal) greets him, unaware that she as well as the commandos guarding the lair evolved from the Finletter family foe. Tara isn't the kind of girl you take home to uncle, especially if yours flashbacks an entire five-minute montage whenever the Red Menace is invoked, but before you can say "nice stems," Chad gets beet-cheeks even though the reception is both unrequited and hostile. He returns to the shop to create his banana-and-Raisinets signature pie, but Tara has fled from Gangreen's with a neglected mutant tomato, F.T., in tow and delivers herself to Chad.

Can Chad learn to love a literal hot tomato? Will Gangreen and his sidekick Igor (Olympic swimming champ Steve Lundquist), a blonde bohunk with dreams of anchorman glory (watch out for the Ted Baxter degree and Diane Sawyer cut-out in his bedroom), steal Tara away from Chad and facilitate the breakout of a double-crossing archenemy of Uncle Wilbur? Which lucky lady shall win a date with Rob Lowe? And is Wilbur ever going to get rid of that dumb parachute?!

Nobody was jumping off New York's Golden Gate Bridge to know the answers, but that doesn't make Return of the Killer Tomatoes an overripe failure. Maybe because the 1980s were the salad days of ZAZ, "Weird Al" Yankovic, The Dead Milkmen, and Savage Steve Holland, but John De Bello has made tremendous strides compared to the undemanding humor of the original. Oh, it's still sophomoric and senseless enough to honor its lineage, but the energy level is cranked up and there is more follow-through in both premise and parody.

The biggest surprise is the influx of legitimately amusing running gags, from the self-explanatory skin flick "Big Breasted Girls Go to the Beach and Take Their Tops Off" teased at the intro to Igor's wildest wish to host the nightly news (his KIGR van is a garbage truck) to the ipecac-friendly menu items at Finletter's Pizza to the undeniable show-stopper, a fourth-wall obliteration as riotous as the "Spaceballs: The Video" premiere which cuts shameless product placement deeper than Wayne's World and challenges the generic inventory out front in Repo Man. If George Clooney sees his participation here as a Secret Shame, that's only because there is an alternate universe where his character of horny schemer Matt is Clooney's life, pitching Subway sandwiches, Geico insurance and Honey Nut Cheerios to save his bacon project after project.

On the contrary, this is the best vehicle for Facts of Life-period Clooney (no contest when the competition includes Return to Horror High and the unfinished Grizzly II: The Concert), as it is he who sets the sponsorship lampoon into motion and commits so hilariously to it. Even for a stock character of the era, Clooney demonstrated potential which would serve him well once the Coens harnessed his comic abilities. It's every bit as infectious as watching the more seasoned John Astin dramatize his maniacal archetype to the highest hilt, a precedent which helps loosen up the proceedings so that even the central lovebirds have their opportunities to land a decent joke. The absurdly alluring Karen Mistal, who'd go on to play Cake Lase in Savage Steve Holland's New Adventures of Beans Baxter, is alternately sensual, spacey and subservient, a Weird Science-caliber dream girl in extremis ("I cook 815 international dishes, perform 637 sexual acts [and] use all the popular home appliances").

With black-market tomato smugglers ("the real Acapulco Red"), a Sinatra-style "love theme" suitable for toaster shopping and punching mimes, Miami Vice and Mr. Potato Head jokes, and "master of disguise" Sam Smith (Frank Davis) instigating the first and best ever barroom brawl located within a pizzeria, Return of the Killer Tomatoes is a welcome reversal of fortune compared to its predecessor. The conventions Lampshaded in this film are more flexible in regards to self-aware sarcasm, from a rejiggered theme song calling attention to its own prefab development to a romantic hero who gets heartsick over produce, hallucinating "giant zucchinis and man-eating artichokes."

Sadly, Crest wouldn't go on to manufacture tomato toothpaste despite the valiant efforts of George Clooney, who instead shilled the Bat Credit Card to our eternal damnation.

In a healthier show of interest, Arrow Video picks up the slack from prior distributors Anchor Bay, who never bothered to correct their bare-bones, full-frame DVD release in the time we knew them. Arrow's BD transfer, a 2k scan from a 35mm interpositive, places it in the proper 1.85:1 theatrical format and buffers the film to its proper 80s movie sheen. The LPCM 2.0 track allowed me enough fidelity to understand the theme song's processed-vocal lyrics, which accounts for something. Extras aren't as copious here as they were for Vamp or Slugs, but director John De Bello's audio commentary and lead actor Anthony Starke's video interview are comprehensive and entertaining. "It's okay for you to drool."

Shoot to Kill

SHOOT TO KILL
(R, Touchstone Pictures, 110 mins., theatrical release date: Feb. 12, 1988)

A pip of an opening sequence heralds the decade-long comeback of the Civil Rights era's leading man in Roger Spottiswoode's Shoot to Kill. On a sleepy San Franciscan night, a jewelry heist bursts onto the scene, the perp revealed as the store's owner, Mr. Berger, undisguised and still in his evening dress. In walks Sidney Poitier as Special Agent Warren Stantin, a G-Man of 22 years experience, to suss out the reason for Mr. Berger's jittery self-theft: someone is pointing a gun at his wife, having previously shot their dog, and is demanding two pounds of stones or else. To prove he's not bluffing, the faceless criminal lets the maid out of the Berger's mansion in plain view of Agent Stantin and the SWAT team, and pops her just as ruthlessly.

Stantin submits to the gunman's demands whilst taking a sniper for back-up, though once they've driven out to the pier, Stantin is left with another dead body, that of Mrs. Berger, and a fugitive who has successfully eluded his tail. This instills a determination in both parties as one flees north towards Washington and the Canadian border, the other struggling to identify the cleverly-concealed psycho on the slimmest of descriptions. It will get worse once Stantin receives a report of a fisherman's death in Bishop Falls, murdered in the same manner as Mrs. Berger and all of his clothes stolen as the thrill-killer blends himself in with the slain sportsman's wilderness expedition.

This looks like a job for the man we once called Mr. Tibbs, but is indeed Sidney Poitier in his first starring role since 1977's A Piece of the Action, his third partnership with Bill Cosby and his fifth time behind the camera, to boot. Those lighthearted capers, which also included Uptown Saturday Night and Let's Do It Again, showed Poitier attempting to break away from the steely prestige he was associated with, an iconoclastic populism Poitier carried on when he limited himself to directing in the ten year hiatus from acting. But his frustratingly spotty track record, which peaked with Stir Crazy and would go on to include such stiffs as Hanky Panky and Ghost Dad, created a longing for Poitier's greatest gift to cinema: his very own unmistakable presence.

Being 1988, Sidney Poitier came back to a Touchstone-distributed action programmer where he shared top billing with rising star Tom Berenger, whose post-Platoon glories are as inconsistent as Poitier's directing credentials, but acquits himself well under the circumstances as much as the returning Poitier. Berenger is wild man Jonathan Knox, a guide-for-hire whose girlfriend Sarah Rennell (Kirstie Alley) just so happens to be leading the hiking quintet which includes the clandestine killer. Agent Stantin, having never roughed it once in his metropolitan life, demands Knox's assistance to prevent a vigilante rap, the solitary tracker knowing full well Stantin is going to slow him down.

Sarah's out there, though, with four happy-go-lucky tourists and one impostor, though in a shrewd display of casting, the expedition is a rogues' gallery of venerable character actors. Who can it be? Is he Andrew Robinson, who cuts the widest swath in unsettling villainy by his association with Dirty Harry and Hellraiser? Or Richard Masur, who was in Spottiswoode's Under Fire as the spokesman for El Presidente and also once perverted Dana Hill's innocence in the 1981 TV movie Fallen Angel? I thought I recognized the late Frederick Coffin, a.k.a. "Holden McGuire," as Ike, the orange-haired yokel ("Disco's stupid!") from the eternally skeevy Mother's Day! And just where do I even start with Clancy Brown! Poor Kevin Scannell (Turner & Hooch) is the odd man out, but that can throw one off, just as well.

I will refrain from spoilers (thanks for nothing, Touchstone Home Video!) except for one minor reveal: It isn't Richard Masur. His recently-divorced Norman is the only supporting role written with deliberate red herring traits (he shares an elevated cart over a gorge with Kirstie Alley and queries about her boyfriend's potential for jealousy), but Masur is too endearingly anxious to come off as a threat, even if Fallen Angel, which was directed by the same man who gave me the Moon Goddess of Summer Girl, proved otherwise.

When the villain inevitably outs himself, he sends the rest of the men plummeting to their rocky doom, the better for Alley's Sarah to guide him to the border without incident. At the same time, Stantin and Knox have their own reluctant game of "follow the leader" to navigate, and it's not without danger, either. Take the aforementioned conveyor cart, which the killer has sabotaged by jamming a large trunk in the clutch. Knox has to climb the rope from one side of the gorge to the other, which is scary enough given the distance below him, only to make it halfway there before the trunk comes loose and the cart slides down and knocks him off the rope. Hurtled violently against the cliffs, Knox has to rely on Stantin using all the strength in his aging body to hoist him back up to safety.

Spottiswoode and cinematographer Michael Chapman (who also plays a minor role as lawyer for the diamonds broker whom the villain keeps in touch with) create for that first 40-odd minutes leading up to the killer's reveal an efficient genre pastiche with pure currents of dry humor (e.g.: a fried marmot dinner between Knox and Stantin), gut-twisting set pieces and Poitier jumping back in the saddle with both his authoritative charisma and his overlooked comic timing intact. Once Sarah becomes hostage, though, the script becomes a protracted grind in which those once consistent pleasures are reduced to fleeting embers.

Shoot to Kill's confidence goes so downhill that the movie doesn't even conclude in those treacherous natural environs, with a literal cop-out on land which belabors the inevitable scene of déjà vu involving Poitier aiming his gun at the madman, once again using a human shield. The slickness finally becomes helplessly transparent and the script is revealed for the shambles it is. And then you start questioning the killer, whose frightening intelligence at the start is bogged down by formula dunderheadedness which makes you wonder if he has any real accomplices ("my men" he refers to at the start), why he's keeping Sarah alive given his hair-trigger temper and just what happened to his lethally calm aim when the bullets start firing in all directions.

Suffice to say that whichever of the line-up (Scorpio, Ike, the Kurgan, the Other Guy) is our baddie, it ends up being a waste of one man's evident talent. Or all of them, including Masur. And perhaps even spunky, endangered Kirstie Alley.

Poitier and Berenger, though, are given enough action and rapport so that Shoot to Kill becomes entirely watchable thanks to them. The manhunt eventually becomes a chore to sit through, but Knox cracking wise about Stantin's newfound ruggedness as well as the immortal grizzly encounter show glimmers of life which kept me interested despite the script, which originates with story writer Harv Zimmel (a real-life outdoorsman) but also includes touch-ups from Michael Burton (Flight of the Navigator) and, most pertinently, formula action specialist Daniel Petrie Jr. (Beverly Hills Cop, Toy Soldiers). There's a single comic-relief allusion to Stantin's racial identity, and Knox has but one zinger about "mountain boys" as he tries to warm up Stantin's body during a blizzard. Mostly, it's a battle of persistence that is highly entertaining up until the domesticated final stretch.

Shoot to Kill winds up with its barrel jammed once there is no more Pacific Northwest to take in. But for the excitement our then-60-year-old Sidney Poitier inspires, it's fairly irresistible. Do note that the film's international title was changed and that, in this particular trailer, there is a line which doesn't appear in the movie, just to deter you from suspecting a cross between The Defiant Ones and Survival Quest.