The Hollywood Knights

THE HOLLYWOOD KNIGHTS
(R, Columbia Pictures, 91 mins., theatrical release date: May 16, 1980)

As long as there are cars and girls to be romanticized, there will always be a place for filmmakers to wax nostalgic about their high school nights spent cruising the metropolitan strip looking for action and adventure. The benchmark example remains George Lucas' American Graffiti, which was both entertaining and expressionistic in following four Modesto seniors' last tastes of adolescent freedom. We will need sewers, too, which is appropriate in the case of THE HOLLYWOOD KNIGHTS. 

Having built enough of a fan base among after-hours HBO aficionados and suckers for low-hanging slapstick, Columbia/Tri-Star overcame music licensing issues for The Hollywood Knights' initial DVD release in 2000. That Universal Studios managed to put Bob Zemeckis' I Wanna Hold Your Hand on plastic four years after seems a grave injustice.

Writer/director Floyd Mutrux pleads naiveté several times in the audio commentary track (exclusive to the DVD, not on the Blu-Ray release) when he shares ideas that are blatant cribs from American Graffiti and its ilk, from the disc jockey-as-Greek chorus device to the peeping tomfoolery of horn dogs from on high to the sobering depiction of society's fall from grace after the 1950s. But what Mutrux hasn't done with The Hollywood Knights is allow it Lucas' sense of levity, nor turned the period setting into a kitschy cartoon a la Grease, nor went for John Landis' droll burlesque which made Animal House its own trendsetter.

Instead, The Hollywood Knights, cult following be damned, is exactly what it is to the naked eye: the inbred bastard offspring of all three established blockbusters. And in 1980, too, where comedy fans could look forward to Airplane! and Used Cars and The Blues Brothers and Caddyshack and Stir Crazy and 9 to 5 and Private Benjamin. In what stunted brain does The Hollywood Knights share a pedestal with these films, let alone its exalted forebears?

Aping George Lucas' patchwork plotting but adding the kind of gratuitous vulgarity which made it more pliant to the easily amused, Mutrux comes nowhere near close to capturing the spirit of ‘65. He clearly wishes he it were ‘56 instead. The three years of history that existed between Lucas and Mutrux's respective settings doesn't exist, and the soundtrack doesn't even scratch the surface of what I'd imagine listening to the radio in 1965 would be. For one, the only hit song of that year heard in The Hollywood Knights is "Wooly Bully," which was the Year-End #1 song of 1965 and also heard in More American Graffiti. Except for a couple nods to The Supremes, there's little of the Motown sound. No British Invasion at all, no Dylan or McGuire, no Tom Jones, no Righteous Brothers, not even the deathless likes of "I Got You Babe," "I Got You (I Feel Good), "(What a) Wonderful World," "Hang on Sloopy," or even "The Name Game."

He does use "Little Darling" by The Diamonds, in the exact same way American Graffiti did. Maybe Mutrux should've set it in 1964 given that "Baby Love," "Rag Doll," "Goin' Out of My Head," and an a cappella rendition of "Under the Boardwalk" represent the lion's share of a single year's chartbusters. The point is that Mutrux could care less about the ostensible year this takes place in, and that I might be stalling from having to describe the many other ways this movie bombs.

The gist of the movie is that the title posse are into cars and girls, which means that the news of their beloved hangout, a drive-in diner named Tubby's, being closed the day after Halloween at the behest of the Beverly Hills Residents Association will not do. Mutrux doesn't even do thing one with the possibilities of October 31. Where are the costume parties, trick-or-treaters, jack o'-lanterns, fucking anything to make me believe in Halloween?!

Anyway, Tubby's is set to be torn down by the richies, so The Hollywood Knights, a completely anonymous bunch led by the wannabe mythical Newbomb Turk, decide to pull a few pranks at various societal gatherings in between pit stops at their beloved diner and other negligible run-ins with ladies, lawmen and lame-os. Because none of these jokers has any conceivable personality, their appeal lives and dies with their front man. As played by Robert Wuhl in his first movie, Newbomb Turk is as boring as he is boorish. You'd never guess he would be ready for prime time someday (cf: Arli$$) based on Mutrux's film, where Wuhl is the very poor man's John Belushi (lesser than John DiSanti from 1979's King Frat) crossed with an equally broke schmuck's Bill Murray (he's not even Steve Guttenberg).

Turk's most inspired act of sabotage is to kidnap an obese nerd (Stuart Pankin) and, in the place of the scheduled magic act during a pep rally, scream and fart a rendition of "Volare." And Wuhl's not even the least bit funny doing that. It's as if he‘s trying too hard at something Belushi could cruise with. Not that Mutrux writes anything for Wuhl on the level of "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!" The sophomoric comedy is mostly visual, and Mutrux bungles every one of them, including several gags that would thrive in the late 1990s under better directors. Mutrux even rips off National Lampoon magazine's own high school satire during the aforementioned rally. And Turk's other fast ones involve the oldest of standbys, from flaming dog doo to peeing in the punch to ogling/spying on numerous girls to what we will call Chekhov's Pie Wagon.

"But wait, Johnny! What about Tony Danza and Michelle Pfeiffer, who are clearly the stars of this movie based on the DVD cover art?"

I'd pity whoever would say that, because neither of them are in the film for even a quarter of the time as Robert Wuhl is. They do appear onscreen together in a pitiful clone of the Ronny Howard/Cindy Williams subplot from American Graffiti, in which Danza's Duke chafes at Pfeiffer's Suzie Q wanting to escape the boring life of a car hop for a shot at acting. It's as obligatory as their names, as is another Knight's plight (Gary Graham's Jimmy) concerning his one-way ticket to Vietnam. Given how Pfeiffer was Mutrux's choice of leading lady when he was in talks to direct Urban Cowboy, it's astonishing how little she has to do with the movie.

Fran Drescher makes more of an impression than Pfeiffer, but this is the same year she starred in Gorp. So her main function is to prattle away with her two girlfriends while they undress in the unwanted company of the Knights. Although the two attempt to get it on later in the flick, it was never clear if Drescher's Sally is Turk's squeeze. Anyway, the future Bobbi Flekman is just as squandered here as Pfeiffer is.

Am I missing something? Well, Gailard Sartain and Sandy Helberg (another one who went on to Spinal Tap? And Joyce Hyser is in this, too?!) are incompetent patrolmen who incur the wrath of the Hollywood Knights by towing the car belonging to Turk's brother. Leigh French and Richard Schaal are two of the evil hoi polloi who can't keep from engaging in illicit sex in broad nighttime. Did I mention that the Knights are like the T-Birds crossed with the Delta Tau Chi fraternity except I can't remember a single one besides the three who are the most prominently hackneyed?

The Hollywood Knights is non-stop raunchy exploitation too cluttered and clumsy to enjoy on a basic level. It can't even climax with a convincing bang like Animal House given how tasteless it is even looking past the puerile humor, because it is such an unabashed rip-off of American Graffiti. Funny that Columbia Pictures were one of the many big studios who spurned George Lucas on his way to the top, only to greenlight this travesty. "And here I sit, sucking on brown Popsicles."

Mischief

MISCHIEF
(R, 20th Century Fox, 93 mins., theatrical release date: February 8, 1985)

I spent the inauguration day of Mr. 45  watching Better Off Dead, but there was nothing nostalgic about it. The effect felt like putting an old friend out to pasture after having been bitten by a slavering zombie. It should have felt like a reason to believe, but failing that, it became a requiem for whatever amber waves washed over the detritus of pop cultures past.

2017 marks the 35th anniversary of Porky's, and so when I revisited it, I tried to understand how something like that could have been such a blockbuster given that it was riding coattails of previous heavy-hitters like American Graffiti and Animal House. I still don't consider Bob Clark's movie to be in the same league as Lucas or Landis. Not even Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which I really like, could compare to either of those, let alone Diner. And dopier fare like The Last American Virgin, with its unearned "poignancy," or Zapped!, aka "Carrie in Charge," just leaves me cold.

To cut a long intro short, I don't fetishize the 1980s model of mindless adolescent entertainment as much as others do. If pressed to do so, I would look to 1985 as the definitive year of the teen comedy, because overall they were far more diverse and refreshing than the umpteenth "let's get laid" jaunt. Yes, you still had Porky's Revenge and Fraternity Vacation and Hot Chili and whatever other sludge was at the bottom of that well. But there was reason to be cheerful in the deathless deluge of teen capers that were still made-to-order.

Heaven Help Us, itself an evocative boys' club caper located in parochial school, may be the most underrated of the pack because script, direction and acting were all at peak warmth. Rob Reiner's The Sure Thing incorporated old-fashioned romance into its sexual confusion and "snob vs. slob" antagonism. Vision Quest had Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino, which went a long way towards humanizing another athletic perseverance curio. Better Off Dead made surreal strides towards being a live-action cartoon, although I think Joe Dante bettered Savage Steve Holland with Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Just One of the Guys has its minor merits, as does watching both Fred Ward and Lori Laughlin in Secret Admirer.

Even Back to the Future, despite its sci-fi trappings, sprung a novel twist on the "coming-of-age" template by placing a contemporary boy in a 1950s environment to play matchmaker to his future parents, Zemeckis & Gale milking the scenario for all the metaphysical and hormonally-conflicting anxieties they could.

Between the poles of hackneyed and inspired came Mischief, which is where '80s nostalgia meets '50s nostalgia and threatens to cancel each other out. Norman Rockwell's Porky's, the critical consensus was likely to refer to it back then. The writer and executive producer, Noel Black, once directed Pretty Poison and made a music-only short film which was a smash at Cannes. Then in 1983, he directed Private School, to a lowest-common-denominator majority. It had Linda Barrett, Mr. Hand, Emmanuelle teaching sex ed, the aforementioned Modine, topless Betsy Russell, and a bawdy ol' Harry Nilsson break-up anthem for its opening credits, the single best musical cue of any teen sex comedy of its time. And yet, the Porky's curse was still casting a pall over the movies geared towards teens.

Whereas Noel Black once possessed enough clout to make Private School seem like the proverbial thankless task, the director of Mischief is Mel Damski, who delivered his own turkey the same year as Black with Yellowbeard. There's nothing in his biography worth mourning. 

Mischief was also looked at by film reviewers in '85 as less the progeny of American Graffiti and more like a blue spawn of TV's Happy Days, with Doug McKeon from On Golden Pond in the Ron Howard role and first-timer Chris Nash as Henry Winkler. This is another modernized "period piece" that communicates its story purely though signifiers and stereotypes, only the seams stick out more by virtue of its Johnny Come Lately development. There's even a snippet of Rebel Without a Cause thrown in to set up an impressionable chicken race which is a transparent excuse for one of those most egregious teen comedy clichés: the "hilarious" destruction of a borrowed car.

You don't need to be Janet Maslin or Owen Gleiberman to stifle a yawn at the predictability factor here.


McKeon plays Jonathan Bellah, the self-described "dreamer" who would've been played much more colorfully in a contemporary setting by Anthony Michael Hall. He's got the rolled-up khakis and dentist's heir glow of the introverted geek. Nash is Gene Harbrough, the new kid in Nelsonville, Ohio, with the whole PG-friendly greaser accessory kit (slicked-up hair, leather jacket, blue jeans, motorbike) and stern concert violinist father, who we realize too late is played by Terry O'Quinn(!) Gene is Jonathan's new neighbor, and the awkward kid finds a big brother surrogate in the hip stranger. More pertinently, he finds a new tutor.

The reason for that is Marilyn McCauley, the local sexpot, played by Kelly Preston with deliberate shades of both Norma Jeane and Cybill Shepherd from The Last Picture Show. Jonathan wants a shot at her in the worst way, and bored Gene decides he'll make it his mission in life to turn the spaz into a stud. Not that Gene will have to go away empty-handed, as he himself is smitten with Bunny Miller (Catherine Mary Stewart), a perky sweetheart in an arranged courtship with loutish preppie Kenny Brubaker (D.W. Brown). On the margins of these competing courtships is ugly duckling Rosalie, a soda shop waitress who is biding her time until she can shed the braces and thick glasses and emerge bodaciously as the Jami Gertz we all recognized back in 1987.

The plot synopsis needn't go any further, and sadly, despite all the names I just listed in the cast, neither the characters. That's the fault which damns Mischief in the worst way: the rigid confines of these characters slouching and strutting through the equally limited plot. Jonathan realizes his wildest fantasy come true, but it means shattering both his naiveté and his appeal. Gene wastes no time establishing his delinquent-with-the-heart-of-gold bona fides and is ridden with angst over Bunny's inability to stand up against Kenny. Marilyn's more experienced ways throw Jonathan for a loop at the last moment, and he counters perfidy with petulance in the vomit-inducing tradition of Boaz Davidson, although Mel Damski directs his actors far better.

Earnest and laconic is the way Black fashions his script, which helps out immensely in the friendship that develops between Jonathan and Gene. Yet his oft-risible dialogue often betrays the loose tone and Damski's direction can't rise above anything better than workmanlike. These combine to give the scenes between Jonathan and Marilyn, which are the crux of the movie, a toxic sense of apathy. From the way Jonathan cavalierly clutches at Marilyn's breast after taking a pratfall to their inevitable bedroom encounter, in which Jonathan bluffs his way out of his lack of rubber-centric preparation but still climaxes traditionally, Jonathan's sexual awakening feels at once passé and piggish.

All Mischief truly delivers on is the Eisenhower-era nostalgia, from the sock hop outfits to the tacky Studebakers (I can hear Kathleen Turner laughing in my head), from the county fair kissing booth raising awareness of polio to the long-needled immunity shots (where's Wade Walker when you need him?). Just like American Graffiti and Lemon Popsicle, the period oldies are ladled over liberally: Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, The Platters, Mickey & Sylvia, a little Elvis, and Bill Haley's Comets giving Jonathan an ultimatum to "See You Later, Alligator" as he sneaks out through Marilyn's window. If you can get past some minor issues with the film's stated setting of 1956 clashing with the release of a few 45s (particularly the late Berry's), you can enjoy the swinging soundtrack on its own terms.

Other than those chestnuts, Mischief goes according to plan for anyone who has seen enough teen farces. Jonathan takes his first swig of hard liquor and commanders Gene's trusty but anachronistic Triumph, with obvious results. The conflict involving Kenny is good for a salacious prank at the expense of his dad's department store, but mostly it's tediously prolonged fight sequences and upturned milkshakes. And when the heroes find themselves in romantic straits on prom night, the one who's been recently kicked out of his house is forced to sleep out in the barren countryside.

With a better-than-average cast on board (Catherine Mary Stewart, despite being raised in Edmonton, credibly plays the all-American girl here as well as she did in The Last Starfighter or Night of the Comet) and a willing assemblage of pros to make the pastel-pretty visuals come alive (including DP Donald Thorin, set decorator Ernie Bishop and costumer Mina Mittelman), it's a shame Mischief works only on a strictly superficial level. This is yet another film that takes an obviously '80s (or '70s, in the cases of Davidson and Lucas, who gets ribbed right at the opening) sensibility to '50s growing pains. Two schools of "they don't make 'em like they used to" thought combined to excuse a film which begs to have been made better than it did.

If that's your kick, then seek out Diner or Heaven Help Us, instead.

Sing Street

SING STREET
(PG-13, The Weinstein Company, 106 mins., theatrical release date: April 15, 2016)

In the 1970s, Van Morrison mused on the transcendent promise of rhythm & blues in his own thickly-brogued, folksy fashion, rekindling the romantic charge in Jackie Wilson's honeyed voice as well as his own passion for live performance as channeled by the 11-piece Caledonia Soul Orchestra. To cite one of Van's influences, Sam Cooke, he could no longer fight the feeling, and the It's Too Late to Stop Now LP of 1974, as well as its three-volume companion piece released over 40 years later, is on par with the Cooke who played the Harlem Square Club or James Brown at the Apollo back in the 1960s.

Fellow Irishman John Carney aims to capture that same revitalization of spirit through song, which is tricky business since his forte is narrative filmmaking. Through sheer force of intimacy, 2007's Once managed to convey that passion through the professional and romantic union of a busker and an immigrant on the streets of Dublin. It was also hailed as a miracle for the movie musical format due to its naturalistic, nuts-and-bolts scale. Carney's third film is a period piece set in 1985, neither the freshest or the most honest era for pop music let alone nostalgia. Not only that, but it's a teen film set in 1985, the year the genre exploded for the American market.

Chalk it up to Carney's grounded sincerity and filmic lyricism that Sing Street, were it time-warped back into the heyday of Hughes, could've usurped 92% of its competition on the strength of imagination alone.

Lots of youth-oriented pictures in the first half of the 1980s touted music-as-escape, the majority of which simple-mindedly reduced the concept to flashy montages or raucous house parties or dance bonanzas. In the hands of hucksters, such freedom came across as trivial. John Carney communicates the shared bond people can form over late night turntable binges, as well as the inspiration it can yield. There is a moment a little over 30 minutes in where two boys spin Joe Jackson and The Jam, crack jokes about rabbit pellets and brainstorm an original song. Carney fluidly expands that confidential moment of creativity into a band practice of the same tune and goes further from there. The rhythm of the film and the song interlock gracefully, and you can sense the main character's growing confidence handled with majestic precision.

Carney's human touch is more than fitting given that budding singer/lyricist Conor Lawlor's dizzying coming-of-age is all for love, specifically one for the beguilingly beautiful older girl who stands in waiting across from Conor's parochial school on Synge Street. She's Raphina, an aspiring model with a drug-dealer boyfriend whom she claims will whisk her off to London, land of opportunity. Conor asks if she'd be interested in being a video vixen in the meantime for his rock band. Before he knows it, Conor and his new friend, prepubescent entrepreneur Darren Mulvey (Ben Carolan), are hustling to form said group and produce said video for a non-existent song.

Advised by his college dropout brother Brendan and allied with homely multi-instrumentalist Eamon, who names the ragtag five-piece band Sing Street, Conor's individuality blossoms upon exposure to the likes of Duran Duran, Hall & Oates and The Cure. The band practice Conor & Eamon's new songs and film a second video on the way to their first gig at the midterm dance. Conor falls deeper for the orphaned Raphina whilst having to confront his own disintegrating family unit as well as the pressures from draconian school headmaster Baxter (Don Wycherley) and ruffian classmate Barry (Ian Kenny).

Forget all that you can read about Sing Street being a youthful version of The Commitments (do watch for Maria Doyle Kennedy as Conor's ma opposite Aidan Gillen), because this is on a higher level of cinematic nirvana. Think more of Bill Forsyth, who made the winsome Gregory's Girl in 1981. Think more of John Duigan, author of the affecting Danny Embling saga with The Year My Voice Broke and Flirting. Imagine a School of Rock if it had been written by Richard Linklater as well as directed by him. Carney's charm is reminiscent of those films, so rich with character-building sensitivity and mundane-seeming quirkiness and a naturalistic, guileless treatment of growing pains. It would seem to be a dreamer's version of a depressing reality, especially given how Dublin appears a one-horse town (the end credits offer an assurance that things have progressed in the economy and educational system), but there is way too much courage, wisdom and tenderness in Sing Street's slice-of-life playlist to ever write off as sappy, closet-pretentious button-pushing.

As Conor himself puts it to his bandmates, looking for the words to clarify Raphina's diagnosis that he's not happy being sad, "it means that I'm stuck in this shithole full of morons and rapists and bullies...I'm gonna try and accept this and get on with [life] and make some art."

Ferdia Walsh-Peelo is a terrific discovery as Conor Lawlor, the pint-sized New Romantic whom Raphina pet-names "Cosmo." More than just another lovesick archetype, Walsh-Peelo turns Cosmo's clumsiness into the stuff which makes him secretly the coolest kid on the block. It's got nothing to do with the fact that he walks into Christian Brothers School one day resembling a junior Nick Rhodes (although I smirk every time I notice it), but it's the incremental integrity and bottomless joy of discovery he demonstrates. Getting the girl may be a top priority, and rooting for him is an irresistible inevitability, but if he has more songs in his heart, then he truly deserves his name written in the cosmos.

Lucy Boynton perfects that same attractiveness of soul and body as Raphina, a sophisticated 16-year-old whose innocence is renewed by the affections of Conor. The Sing Street band mates, trained musicians all, appear to have less material to excel with than the leads, but John Carney does right by them regardless. Mark McKenna has that droll, lanky demeanor which automatically signals introversion, but there's a spark in his Eamon that makes him an invaluable asset for Connor. Percy Chamburuka gets a great introduction as "golliwog" keyboardist Ngig, whilst Karl Rice & Conor Hamilton shine as the elementary-aged bassist Garry and drummer Larry. Rice's impromptu costume for the band's first video shoot turns out be a corker, and he also dances with an elderly lady on the shuttle.

As Brendan, Jack Reynor plays the kind of boisterous, slacker savant that Jack Black does so well, but while he gets a handful of opportunities to demonstrate such (there's a putdown of Phil Collins worthy of Black's overbearing clerk from High Fidelity), Reynor also gets at the inner resentment brought on by his dysfunctional parents and his kid brother's prodigious ascent. When Conor sings "You just can't stand the way/That I turned myself around" in one song, it feels closer to his relationship with Brendan than Raphina. But Carney shades in lovely bondings between Conor and both these respective muses, and Reynor finds the soul in his own character as much as Walsh-Peelo and Boynton.

And then there's that soundtrack, which is another impeccable touch to add alongside Carney's proficiency with his actors here: "Rio," "A Town Called Malice," "Maneater," "Steppin' Out," "In Between Days," Motorhead's "Stay Clean," Genesis' "Paperlate," Flash & The Pan's "Waiting for a Train," and Spandau Ballet's "Gold." All of these top-notch selections are matched by the original compositions which take cues from the hits on show, written by Carney with assistance from Gary Clark of "Mary's Prayer" renown. "The Riddle of the Model" flaunts John Taylor-style slap bass and Walsh-Peelo's spot-on impression of Phil Oakey's monotone. "Up" takes flight both lyrically and musically, and "Brown Shoes" is a singular kiss-off anthem from Conor to his tormentors (although skinhead Barry is sold on being a roadie). But Clark's solo compositions, the gorgeous "To Find You" and the giddy "Drive It Like You Stole It," are the surest and best candidates for Oscar consideration, even with Adam Levine, the Maroon 5 singer who starred in Carney's Begin Again, collaborating with "Falling Slowly" award-winner Glen Hansard for "Go Now."

The synergy of song and plot in Sing Street is intoxicating. Conor and Raphina exchange a possible video idea for "Drive It Like You Stole It" modeled on the Enchantment Under the Sea dance from Back to the Future. An unspoken betrayal reflecting cruel reality is wrapped around Conor's fantasy of the video during rehearsal, where a group of oblivious teens fail spectacularly to emulate the '50s choreography from the movie. In Conor's mind, there is peace between his parents, Brother Baxter does back flips and Brendan comes through for true love with switchblade and motorbike. Only one of the latter will happen in the end, which isn't hard to guess, but I've never seen a reverie on film this magnificent. 

Sing Street is one of 2016's most pleasant little miracles. Like the best of its decade's pin-up pop, it has been blessed with an everlasting hook and a vivacious sense of itself. Carney weaves proven material both in teen movies as well as his own oeuvre into the best long-form music video never made in the ‘80s. It may hit the sweet spot for the fanatically nostalgic, but a coming-of-age movie this superior deserves its own DIY cover version, no vampire teeth required.

The Craft

THE CRAFT
(R, Columbia Pictures, 101 mins., theatrical release date: May 3, 1996)

Texas Frightmare Weekend 2015 is approaching fast, and I've been keeping up with the guest announcements and such. This is one of the most high-profile events in the three years I have attended, having missed seven previous conventions. The first year I went, I guess the biggest draw was Danny "Machete" Trejo, who packed such a crowd that I remember Mariel Hemingway referred to the line outside his photo op as the "Trejo 500." I wasn't in that line, honestly, as it was conflicting with my date with a princess...

Ahem.

But year two upped the ante in that it featured a full-scale gathering of personnel from the Terminator series, including Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Michael Biehn, Kristanna Loken, and Earl Boen. Even Hamilton's tormentors from the same year's Children of the Corn, John "Isaac" Franklin and Courtney "Malachai" Gains, were in attendance. I had a great time at that event, too, mostly because I spent it with a friend I made the previous year. And whilst I understood that the potential to top even that star-studded weekend celebration was possible, I had no idea what the 2015 roster would bring.

Suffice it to say, 2015 has done the same thing 2013 did in the presence of Diane Franklin: it has awakened the teenager in me.

I say that because the year marks the debut convention appearances of some of the biggest names from my 1990s childhood, particularly Neve Campbell and Skeet Ulrich, as in "Sidney Prescott and Billy Loomis from Scream." But you don't have to be Ghost Face to recognize that these two had made an earlier splash in 1996 before Wes Craven's self-effacing horror blockbuster laid bare the rules of horror both past and future. You don't even have to know who fellow first-time attendee Rachel True is, but it helps, because 2015 is when that old black magic comes to Dallas in anticipation of the 20th anniversary of The Craft.

Before Scream author Kevin Williamson archly intertwined John Hughes (The Breakfast Club) and Fred Dekker (Night of the Creeps) in the Robert Rodriguez-helmed The Faculty, The Craft stood out as the decade's most recognizable high school spookshow by injecting voodoo into the sardonic teen angst formula. This could charitably be called "Hexers," except that the central clique in this film aren't idle rich snobs but outcasts from the word go, a brooding collective of female misfits whom their callous peers have christened "The Bitches of Eastwick."

Or at least that's how Ulrich's Chris Hooker describes them to the new girl in town, Sarah Bailey (Robin Tunney), freshly relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Sullen Sarah carries the trauma of a mother who died giving birth as well as suicidal slashes down her wrists, and is now forced to make a fresh start at St. Benedict's Academy, a parochial school just as ripe with classism and cruelty as any non-uniformed establishment. Sarah gravitates towards the terrifying trio, regardless, after nonchalantly demonstrating her powers during French class.

Chris will go on to slander Sarah as punishment for her not putting out, thus giving her all the reason to devote herself full-time to the supernatural machinations of her black sheep BFFs. They all seem to lack proper self-esteem for various reasons. Grand high Goth Nancy Downs (Fairuza Balk) has a sluttish reputation of her own and lives in a trailer with her alky mom and deadbeat stepfather. Meek Bonnie (Neve Campbell) has burn scars down her backside from a traumatic accident, whilst Rochelle (Rachel True) is the lone Negro student and susceptible to the catty insults of the mean blonde from Night of the Demons 2.

Séances and slumber parties ensue, with such ritualistic bonding exercises as blood oaths, beauty makeovers and the ever-popular "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board." All in the name of Manon, an all-powerful, all-natural deity who is described through analogy as the stadium God and the Devil would play football on. The girls pray their troubles away, and Manon hears them, and so, in quick succession, Bonnie's damaged skin tissue regenerates, Rochelle's racist bully develops female pattern baldness and Nancy goes from poor to posh after willing her penniless, perverted stepfather into a stroke and inheriting his life insurance funds.

All's well for them and for the audience, as The Craft fancies itself a playfully macabre twist on teenaged fantasy for a spell, or until the spell wears off. The conflict begins when the increasingly resentful Nancy decides she wants invoke Manon directly through a beachside bonfire and demand his almighty powers. The next morning, she walks on water as various aquatic mammals die on the sandy turf, all the while she screeches that these are her "gifts." Sarah is rightly perturbed, but her self-centered friends remain blissfully ignorant. And when Sarah's own wish to have Chris wrapped around her finger goes horrifically awry, Nancy takes it upon herself to get even by murdering him.

Gradually, The Craft reveals itself to be another grasp at slick, superficial morality from the ham-fingered writer of Flatliners. The naturally-crafted Sarah is elevated to Good Witch status as Nancy, tempting irony by the casting of ex-Disney child star Fairuza Balk, devolves into The Even Worse Than Worst Witch. And the two other girls are stripped of their integrity and rendered ditzy foot soldiers. This banal development compromises whatever slivers of rebellion and wit the film has accumulated, a celluloid sacrifice of the soul.

Flatliners at least allowed its bratty principals the divine method of closure, something Peter Filardi and co-writer/director Andrew Fleming push aside here for cheap tricks. Rochelle, in particular, is egregiously short-changed by the film's formulaic forthrightness. Part of that is down to the casting of Rachel True, who looks way too sophisticated and smart to play the fourth banana in a juvie horror film (and for good reason, as she was pushing 30). There comes a point in the film where Rochelle should arrive at the same epiphanies as Sarah, having seen the devastation her vengeance has wrought on Laura Lizzie. But when the film approaches some kind of intriguing opportunity for a truce, it fails to follow through, turning the focus over instead to the nutty Nancy.

Neve Campbell's Bonnie is undermined just as poorly. Right at the moment her confidence is restored and she is allowed to morph from Basket Case to Princess, Filardi & Fleming treat her sex appeal as a sign of snobbishness, with nothing in the script aside from the most innocuous one-liner (late for school, she sasses "Sorry, my pedicure ran late") to demonstrate this personality shift. This is no less one-dimensionally prissy than the attitudes of straw villains Laura and Chris, and speaks to the thudding, finger-wagging desire to shame which constantly reduces most teen films to rank hypocrisy.

The lead actresses as a unit demonstrate charisma the film doesn't fully capitalize on, with the possible exception of Fairuza Balk's vamp/tramp volatility. Balk's bee-stung sneer and outrageous overbite are impossible to deny as she devours the scenery with as much relish as this story eats its tail. The sensuous, green-eyed Robin Tunney works hard to compensate for the film's compromised intelligence, but even she cannot save The Craft from the perfunctory prophecy which is a prolonged siege confrontation replete with pools of maggots and miles of snakes, followed by a misguided coda which renders its characters as unsociably sour as their stigma suggested.

Like Joel Schumacher before him, Andrew Fleming relies on visual panache and trendy flash as the be-all-end-all. There is an extravagant, earthy texture to Alexander Gruszynski's cinematography which also meshes well with the digital FX work used for levitation and catching butterflies. Fleming has a liberal fluidity with the camera, and combined with Jeff Freeman's editing and the sound design, the centerpiece séance is the most bewitching moment of The Craft, so to speak.

Graeme Revell's score stings and swoons admirably, but is engulfed by the alt-rock song selection which teases Juliana Hatfield, Matthew Sweet and Jewel at best, and overemphasizes a handful of poor cover versions at worst. The film begins with Our Lady Peace's grungy, garbled take on The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" and ends with Heather Nova listlessly draining the human touch from Peter Gabriel's "I Have the Touch." The makers of Charmed must have seen this and loved Love Spit Love's anemic retread of The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?" though. Maybe Charmed was the unofficial spin-off of The Craft the way Friends was meant to be "Singles: The Series"?

"Whatever!" seems like the right response, as The Craft labors under the pretense of authenticity to the Wiccan faith (the threefold karmic comeuppances in favor of "Do onto others...") but is grossly conformist at heart. Its rushed-upon-the-blade apathy is its tragedy, and although it is undemanding fun in the right setting, it does not honestly achieve the kind of magic which has kept it in cult circles for nearly two decades. E.C. Comics don't take themselves as seriously as The Craft double toils to.

Diner

DINER

(R, Warner Bros. Pictures, 110 minutes, theatrical release date: March 5, 1982)

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In what became the year of the teenage sex comedy, Barry Levinson's 1982 slice-of-life film Diner looked like an underdog then and still does even now. It was made for $5 million by a studio which had little faith in a dialogue-driven variant on the classic American Graffiti formula. The central sextet of actors could not develop into a cohesive until they all shared one camped, fetid trailer, saving their group moments until the end of the shoot. It was practically shelved until positive critical reception, spearheaded by influential New Yorker scribe Pauline Kael, brought Levinson's film reluctantly into the light. And a phenomenal Vanity Fair article not only acknowledges its influence on the likes of English novelist Nick Hornby and the prolific American filmmaker Judd Apatow, but also tells you straight up the reservations experienced by the likes of Kevin Bacon, Ellen Barkin and Mickey Rourke, the three cast members with the brightest, most prolific careers of the ensemble troupe.

Diner, however, remains a surprising, effortlessly bittersweet treat after nearly 30 years since its uncertain distribution. Better not to lump Barry Levinson in with the glorified puerility of the Bob Clarks and Boaz Davidsons of the world and instead see Levinson as the American heir apparent to Federico Fellini, particularly citing his 1953 story of encroaching adulthood, I Vitelloni. Here is a movie rich in character and conversation, and even when it's not, has the power of perception and passage. But where the Academy Award-nominated Levinson (here for Best Original Screenplay) really shines is in the presentation of community; the autobiographical Baltimore of Christmastime 1959 feels genuinely like a living thing of its own, a joint triumph of setting, production design, song selection, and minute details. There's always something on the margins which adds to the period precision; the swarming crowd of a movie theater, the hubbub of a dance hall social, the patrons of the titular all-night eatery. At one point, the camera holds on a serviceman asleep on a train station bench, a layabout whose presence is paralleled by the image of one of the principals emerging from his lazy indulgence.

That individual is Eddie Simmons (Steve Guttenberg), about to plunge nervously into the married life but whose irritability is felt in the contentious banter amongst his friends as well as his own mother (Jessica James). Riled from his late sleeping by his best friend Billy Howard (Timothy Daly), a surprise visitor bussed in from New York for the New Year's Eve nuptials, he proceeds to pester and threaten his knife-toting mom to the point where he coerces her to make a baloney sandwich for breakfast. His attitude towards women is sorely underdeveloped, even towards his own bride-to-be, Elyse, who needs to pass a rigorous football trivia exam to keep Eddie from calling the whole thing off. As he puts it, "If you want to talk, you always have the guys at the diner. You don't need a girl if you want to talk."

One of Eddie's confidantes is Larry "Shrevie" Schreiber (Daniel Stern), already a husband and just as stunted in communicating with his own wife, Beth (Ellen Barkin). "I can come down here, and we can bullshit the entire night away, but I cannot hold a five-minute conversation with Beth," Shrevie admits, pining for the days when sex was extensively planned out of wedlock. Instead of Eddie's preoccupation with the Colts, Shrevie is hung up on his library of 45s to the point where he lashes out at Beth for fudging up the filing system and even having the gall to not know who Charlie Parker is.

Billy earnestly proposes to his platonic friend of six years, Barbara (Kathryn Dowling), after an impromptu night of passion a month ago leaves her pregnant, but they fail to see eye-to-eye, just as well. "You're confusing a friendship with a woman and love," she reasons, but Billy's error is merely one of telling and not showing. The only exception to the romantic rule is Bobby "Boogie" Sheftell (Mickey Rourke), a smooth-talking salon employee compulsively addicted to sex and gambling.

And then there's Timothy Fenwick, Jr. (Kevin Bacon), a reckless college dropout and drunkard who is introduced freaking out his underage date and punching out windows in the basement of the dancehall "for a smile." Billy, Shrevie, Eddie, Boogie, and Fenwick commiserate regularly at the Fells Point Diner, a greasy spoon café which the boys retreat to as if it was their own treehouse to banter about love, loss and whether Frank Sinatra or Johnny Mathis makes the better make-out music.

Flanked by the fast-talking, wise-cracking Modell (Paul Reiser), Levinson's boys' club is unflappable to the point of often stepping over each other's words and stammering in the face of verbal curveballs. The heated Sinatra vs. Mathis argument is taken to its logical end when Eddie inquires Boogie about his preference, and the rakish Romeo simply states "Presley." Both Steve Guttenberg and Daniel Stern's reactions are spontaneous and side-splitting.

Movies like St. Elmo's Fire, Fandango and Queens Logic (also with Kevin Bacon) rose up in the aftermath of the micro-success of Diner, all chronicling the bonds and burdens of tight-knit young adult friends in the process of accounting for real-life responsibilities. Diner, however, remains a singular achievement, a film which goes against Modell's ad-libbed gripe about "nuance" not being a real word by continually offering finely-sketched and wonderfully performed examples of actual nuance, so much so that the film takes on a literary transcendence.

The character of Fenwick, for instance, is a gem of lost innocence and misplaced rebellion. Frittering away his grandfather's trust fund despite being smart enough to compete on College Bowl, Fenwick has a knack for keeping his friends off-guard for laughs but is also bitterly distanced from his family. He's the one least likely to cope or compromise, which is something his friends each realize is imminent. A stunt in which Fenwick, choked up that someone has stolen the Baby Jesus statue from the church's Nativity display, strips down to his boxers and takes his place in the manger is farce and tragedy in equal measure. Bacon was betwixt Friday the 13th and Footloose at this point in his younger career, and makes a marvelous breakthrough.

Equally affecting are Mickey Rourke, who had a minor but memorable part in Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat prior, and the sumptuous Ellen Barkin in her screen debut (as were Daly and Reiser, going the full mensch). Boogie is preoccupied with hot tips and hotter girls, boastfully wagering his friends on the extents of his conquests, leading to the archetypical scene where he pulls the old "hole in the popcorn bag" trick to get ahead. Not only that, but he's in debt $2000 to the local sharks, who are violently losing their patience. And yet Rourke invests enough to keep Boogie from being wholly boorish, especially in his moments with Barkin's Beth, a former steady of his who desperately needs emotional instead of physical validation after Shrevie's self-righteous record collection tantrum. An awkward sense of integrity develops when he can't use Beth to fool his friends into believing he made it with his girlfriend.

Maybe the appearance of a classy horseback rider who calls herself Jane Chisholm (Claudia Cron), after the Chisholm Trail linking Texas to Kansas, could signal real love, but he is too confused after her first appearance to follow through. As Fenwick puts it, "Do you ever get the feeling that there's something going on that we don't know about?"

Even characters who on the outside embody the most gratingly childish attitudes towards their lot are performed and written with great finesse. Steve Guttenberg as Eddie, for instance, reveals a latent uncertainty behind his clingy Colts cultism and alpha male assertions, a sympathetic hesitation to commit fueled by the lack of wild oats sown and inability to fulfill his position as loving husband. The fact that we never really see Elyse may have the marginalizing feeling of a looming specter, but that doesn't take away from the humanization that occurs in regards to his character.

The undervalued Daniel Stern character of Shrevie could've been also reduced to sour petulance were it not for his casual ease with a one-liner and a lack of spite which makes his argument with Beth play a lot more poignantly. The fact that he concludes his tirade by recalling the song which played when they first met at a graduation party for Modell's sister, Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame," proves his musical romanticism is not completely pitiable, as he genuinely has love for Beth. As it is for much of the gender negotiations in Diner, the theme is communication breakdown and the raw expressions of stubbornly misplaced male ego. Not only in his encyclopedic memory of his record collection does Shrevie recall the type of maniacal impediments Nick Hornby laid bare in High Fidelity.

Levinson and his incredible cast of burgeoning big names treat the material with such genuine skill, that Diner manages to achieve that brilliant feat which makes the best self-reflexive passion projects work. It makes the personal universal. Even if you never watched a friend unzip his pants with a popcorn box seated above it or gazed in shock as a diner customer had a marathon meal consisting of an entire left side's worth of entrées, there are laughs and smiles in abundance. I never once felt the movie struck a false note, even when Billy commanders the piano at a dull strip bar for a boogie woogie infusion, and the dialogue both original and on loan (from Sweet Smell of Success, natch) display the kind of warmth and backwards authenticity that Shrevie would be proud of,  just so long as he doesn't blame any jumps or skips on his wife. Some things are better left silently forgiven.

We'll always have Diner, though, which proudly warrants a great big standing O. I'll gladly take a doggy bag.