I was in the second grade when this movie came out back in 1984. It was also one of the few movies in this endless series to actually open on Friday the 13th. Looking back, it was interesting to see a lot of 8 and 9 years old get excited about a movie that had absolutely no business seeing at that age. Whether the adults liked it or not, these movies did play a part be it big or small in our young lives. They were to my generation what the “Saw” movies are to today’s generation of kids. The sight of bloody violence on the big screen (as opposed to real life) is still exciting to many, and this has been the case for longer than any of us really realize. Still, it would be several more years before I actually bothered to see it, and on television with all the good parts taken out no less.
I got to see this one recently at the New Beverly Cinema as part of the “Tommy Jarvis Trilogy” of the Friday the 13th franchise. This trilogy is comprised of Part IV: The Final Chapter, Part V: A New Beginning, and Part VI: Jason Lives. When the title “The Final Chapter” was thrust at us on the big screen, you can imagine the uncontainable laughter that erupted from the audience. I’m sure Paramount Pictures really believed that this would be the very last one… that is, until they saw the box office grosses.
We have seen Jason killed off so many times over the years, but it’s important to note that when he got a nice big ax to the head in Part 3-D, that was the first time in the series that Jason was actually “killed off.” In the very first movie, it was Jason’s mother swinging a rusty machete at teenagers who remind her not only of her baby boy, but of the body she used to have. Jason didn’t appear in that one until the very end when he gave us one of the biggest jumps out of your seat moments in movie history. Jason wasn’t even killed off in Part II. Sure, he got his ass kicked, but it was not a fatal blow for he was slowly grabbing his machete while our virginal heroes walked away. When Part III came along, it was assumed that Jason finally met his maker. That is, until Paramount saw that they made $36 million off a movie with a budget of $2.5 million.
When Part IV starts, the police have arrived at the scene of the crime and Jason (wearing the hockey mask that was first introduced to him in Part III) is being covered up and shipped off to to the morgue undergo an autopsy. When he arrives at the hospital, Jason is dropped off in the care of the biggest slob of a doctor/coroner, Axel (Bruce Mahler). Seeing slobber all over his burrito like a dog, watching women in skin tight spandex clothing doing aerobics (with the volume on mute no less), I wonder what would make this man think that he could be a god to women. Axel does ends up making out with Nurse Morgan (Lisa Freeman) regardless of the fact that she is utterly repulsed by him. Of course, if common sense was used by the characters in this movie, then this would be no longer than 30 minutes. Who wants to see a slasher film that short?! These two get murdered (big surprise), and Jason somehow makes it pass security with his hockey mask on, and he goes right back to Crystal Lake.
Well, he ends up going next door to Crystal Lake actually as he drops in on a mother and her two kids who have rented the adjacent house next door to a bunch of teens who are out and about to have a fun time. By that, I mean drinking lots of beer, smoking lots of pot, watching vintage porno movies, having as much premarital sex as humanly possible, and some mandatory skinny dipping. You know, your normal weekend in Los Angeles. You know what happens next; Jason comes in to do his Benihana act on everybody like a drunk with power landlord who never hesitates to evict tenants who haven’t paid in months.
The “Friday the 13th” movies have routinely featured actors who you never really hear from again after you see them in these cinematic spectaculars. However, Part IV features two actors who are still working today, Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover. We get to see Corey as a pre-teen with all those drug addiction years ahead of him (he’s clean now, good for him), and he plays the young Tommy Jarvis who has a passion for making masks of all kind. Crispin Glover plays Jimmy, a man who has had no real luck with women. Throughout the movie, he gets woman advice from Ted (Lawrence Monoson) who seems to know everything about them. Guess who gets laid first. No, it’s not who you think…or maybe it is.
Of course, the one thing we do look forward to in these movies are the kills. Jason definitely gets some nasty cuts in they were most likely even more nasty until the MPAA came in and said:
“Uh, no I don’t think so.”
One of the classic moments in this film features a guy getting it right in the groin. Oh to be in a theater when this scene was displayed on the silver screen. It’s one of the few times where you can see a whole audience of men grab their crotches, thankful that it was not them who suddenly got turned into falsetto singers. There is a nice shower scene as well which ends with Jason doing his Norman Bates routine. It’s not as suspenseful as the original “Psycho,” but it sure as hell is a lot bloodier!
Much has been said over the years of how sexist towards women these movies are. Granted, there are some women (with very toned bodies no less) who are treated like sex objects with magnificent bodies to display, and who are out to seduce whatever men who end up locked in their sights. But at the same time, most of these movies feature women as being the bravest and most heroic of the bunch. They’re the ones who find the courage (even after they compete with Jaime Lee Curtis for the “Scream Queen” title) to defeat Jason after all others have failed (because they were busy making out or doing drugs). Why do critics keep forgetting that it’s usually a lone woman who is left alive after all this bloody carnage has reached its inevitable end?
Actually, I wonder why men don’t get more offended than women do at these movies. Most men in these slasher flicks are lucky if they makes it out alive before the end credits, and it’s usually thanks to the women they team up with. Men in these movies are usually portrayed as sexually challenged or socially inept. They come off as being ever so desperate to get laid like most men are, and they come off as profoundly idiotic. Some of them think they are born Casanovas, but their egos are quickly crushed, and they are brought down to earth eventually to realize that they are more likely to be teased by the ladies and fall for it. You think women have it bad in these films? Look at how the men are treated. They are treated like they think more about Mr. Happy more than anything else. Now even while most men do, there is always that one man in the bunch who is so unlucky with women that he has better things to worry about, such as surviving and killing Mr. Voorhees with that one good shot.
Why don’t men protest these movies the way women do? I tell ya, it’s bad enough having to go through puberty when you are also dealing with a mass murderer wearing a hockey mask. It’s not only the hormones that are jumping up all over the place, there’s also body parts of all kinds flying about in the air, not to mention all the blood that makes a mess of everything. Think of all the house painting and new wallpaper the homeowners will need to get once they get ready to rent out the house again!
It’s a kick to see such a young Corey Feldman here. To see him before he sadly felt into a nasty drug addiction (which he has since overcome) and before he did “The Goonies” and “The Lost Boys” does feel a little strange as we are so used to him as an older guy, and he does show promise in this sequel. Seeing him jumping up and down in his bed when he sees one of the women next door undress brings back a lot of memories. Just don’t ask me to tell you which ones, ha, ha, ha! Corey is actually pretty good here as he goes from innocent naïve young boy to a seriously disturbed boy as a result of witnessing Jason’s rampage. I also admired how fast he was in shaving off his hair so he could look like Jason as a boy, and he managed to do all this in record time while Jason was waving that rusty machete at his big sister. Give me another actor who could have made that seem somewhat believable, I dare ya!
Crispin Glover is also a big kick to watch in this movie, and I’m not sure he’s changed all that much since. We get to see him here before he hit it big as George McFly in “Back To The Future,” and before he got all those bizarre panic attacks about doing the sequels which he ended up dropping out of. Hopefully I’m not giving too much away, but he does score with the women in this one, and this had one audience member yelling out:
“YOU GO MCFLY!!”
You also gotta dig Glover’s nice spastic dance which more or less predated the break dancing era. No one dances like Crispin does, and no one else dies like he does in this movie. Could he be as strange as the characters he plays? Maybe so, but these days he seems to be using it to good effect. That voice of his never changes, but he has come a long way since his infamous David Letterman interview.
This “Friday The 13th” sequel is also notable as it is the last one Tom Savini did the makeup effects for. Having worked on many different horror films of the immensely gory kind like “Dawn Of The Dead” (the original) and “Maniac” among others, his work has a realism to it that is as uncomfortable as it is brutally effective. This is even more so when you look at the rest of the sequels in this series where the kills look utterly fake and are played for laughs more than anything else. Apparently, Savini based a lot of makeup work on what he saw as a combat photographer and soldier in Vietnam, so there is an authenticity to his work that many have to give him credit for. Whatever you think about Savini’s work, there’s no doubt that he is brilliant at what he does, and that other makeup artists have to work twice as hard to even come close to outdoing his bloody accomplishments.
The director for this particular sequel was Joseph Zito, and he has also directed such amazing B-movie classics like “Missing In Action,” “Invasion U.S.A.,” and “Red Scorpion.” Zito is one of those workmen like directors who gets the job done and gives the audience what they want. Other than that, his style of directing doesn’t really have any distinguishing characteristics to it. It takes a lot of movies produced by Cannon Pictures to keep a director like this working because he sure hasn’t done anything else outside of that. One of the last movies he directed was “Delta Force One: The Lost Patrol.” But if Zito really enjoys what he does, then I guess it shouldn’t matter too much what other people think of him.
Playing the immortal (whether you like it or not) Jason Voorhees in “The Final Chapter” is Ted White, but you almost wouldn’t know it since he had his name taken off the credits. Ted was selected for the role because he is a big guy (6’ 4” were talking), and he said that only did this movie because he needed the money. I’m sure that a “Friday The 13th” movie is not something you want to put at the top of your resume, especially when you’re playing a character whose face is hidden behind a hockey mask. But Ted, for what it’s worth, your Jason was one of the best and certainly one of the most threatening in this never ending series. From what I heard, you were not at all happy about working on this one, but please don’t think that this movie was a waste of your time. Remember, you could have been in “Jason X.”
And of course, you have Harry Manfredini’s music score which involves the endless wailing of woodwind instruments with the occasional trumpets and tubas blasting away at the climax of this endeavor. I wonder if there is any video of Harry conducting these scores with his orchestra. That would be a kick to see how he goes about conducting, let alone writing the score. I can see him telling the violinists to play all over the place, and that it won’t matter if it sounds off key as long as its really creepy sounding.
Look, no one is ever gonna mistake any of the “Friday the 13th” movies for great cinema, but nobody goes in expecting that either. “The Final Chapter” certainly wasn’t that, especially when you look into Tommy Jarvis’ eyes in the final moment (“The Omen,” eat your heart out). While this sequel is certainly dated stylistically, it actually holds up better than many of the others. This really was the last of this series that set out to be truly scary, and the series (for better and for worse) went downhill into comedy and pathetically ridiculous storylines. Even if it got a lot of the predictable hatred from film critics when it came out, it is nowhere as bad as some of the later entries, let alone many of the even cheaper knock offs it inspired in its path of success. It even looks much better when you compare to any movie over Part VI. I don’t really love these movies, but I do love watching them whenever they are on, especially when you’re watching it with an audience or a group of friends just so you can analyze how stupid the characters are.
“Friday The 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter” is a movie people will enjoy more than they ever care to admit. Call it a guilty pleasure if you will, but it is an entertaining one even if it “rots your brain” like others love to say. Any guy who tells you they hate these movies has got to be lying to a certain extent, especially when they are just going out the door to see the new “Saw” sequel. They’ll say it’s different, but c’mon! Who is you trying to fool?
**½ out of ****
Showing posts with label 1980s Films. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1980s Films. Show all posts
This review will have spoilers because this movie is just too much fun to talk about to leave anything out. If you have not seen the movie yet, see it before reading this review.
It was another great evening with New Beverly Midnights at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. With them, you can always count on having a fun midnight showing of 80’s trash. Seriously, just look at what they have lined up for the next few weeks: “Never Too Young To Die,” “Waxwork,” and “Action Jackson.” They are also going to be showing William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” which is not really trash, but one of his more underrated movies. But last night, we got to see Joseph Ruben’s “The Stepfather” which was released back in 1987. It tells the story of a man who is searching for the perfect family, and who is not having a lot of luck. But this is a guy who can’t seem to stomach divorce, so he ends up ending things a little viciously by murdering his whole family. But soon, he is on the lookout for a new family to make his own. But will it last longer than the last? WILL IT?!
“The Stepfather” has all the hallmarks of a cheesy 80’s horror movie; There is a lot of overacting, characters doing the dumbest things (there wouldn’t be a movie otherwise), a synthesizer score that has aged as well as the movie (which is to say, not at all), and a brutal killing or two. I remember when Siskel & Ebert reviewed this movie so many years ago as that was my first introduction to it. It’s too funny to believe that when this movie first came out, it seemed very intense. Looking at it today, we have to wonder what the hell we were thinking. Geez this movie looks corny!
Siskel & Ebert both gave “The Stepfather” thumbs down, which was unsurprising considering how they feel about horror movies in general. The one thing they did agree on (and this goes for anyone who likes or hates this movie) is that the movie has one truly great element, the performance of Terry O’Quinn as the title character. Roger Ebert was dead on saying that he made a really creepy villain. Terry gives us a man who is so terminally in love with the Normal Rockwell vision of the family, and who is one of the few adults that I can think of who can still laugh at old reruns of “Mr. Ed.” The fact that he said it took him till high school to realize that horses couldn’t talk should show just how deeply psychotic this man is.
What you have to love about Terry O’Quinn’s performance here is how he gives those around him a convincing façade of the happily married family man. Yet at the same time, his eyes completely betray the raging monster beneath the surface, and of how he threatens to kill again in the blink of an eye. Terry’s performance is truly frightening, and it is really the only thing about this movie that has not lost anything with age. There is no real psychological background as to why his character does what he does. This will drive a lot of people crazy in that it will make the movie seem completely senseless in its violence. If nothing else, the movie is a satire on those who believe that they can have the perfect family. We all should know by now that no such thing exists.
Terry O’Quinn also makes you believe how smart this psycho can be in terms of changing his identity. The movie opens with him washing himself up and shaving himself after butchering his family (the reveal of which is one of the movie’s most horrific scenes), and aside from the eyes which should give him away instantly, you could easily believe how someone like him could get away with it. That is, at least back in the 80’s. When things with the family he meets up with after that, you see him donning a whole new disguise which he just disappears into even while having the same over earnest voice.
What does this guy in? Well, he wants what none of us can never truly have – the perfect family. Any sane person can accept imperfection and love their family anyway, but not this guy. Also, when he finds a new love with Susan Maine (Shelley Hack), he tries to make her daughter Stephanie (the lovely Jill Schoelen) his own. With this family, the psycho calls himself Jerry Blake, and he buys Stephanie a cute little puppy (is there any other kind?). When Stephanie gleefully accepts this new bundle of joy, Jerry replies:
“That’s my girl!”
Right away, you know this relationship is screwed. Stephanie has recently lost her dad, and her mother Susan sees this relationship with Jerry as a second chance in life. But the problem is, you can’t replace someone’s father. You can be a father figure to this kid, but you can never replace this child’s true parents. But I guess some people want this family thing so much that they tend to overreach a little.
We also see Jerry completely overreact when he sees Stephanie kiss a local boy goodnight (the moment leading up to it is hilarious considering how many times they say goodbye to each other). Jerry treats this kid like he is trying to rape Stephanie which couldn’t be further from the truth. Earlier in the movie, we see Shelley and Jerry making love, and he has nothing but this blank stare in his eyes during the act. Have you ever seen a guy with such a hang up about sex? The fact that he is more comfortable with killing people than he is making love makes me think that he is the kind of guy that the late Jack Valenti would have loved to have on the MPAA.
Hey Blake! Some of us would love to be where you are. Why can’t you enjoy sex like the rest of us do?
Anyway, enough about Jerry for the moment, and let’s talk about others in the cast. While she overdoes it at certain moments in the movie, Jill Schoelen is very fetching in this role as the sullen daughter who, like any good teenager, sees through the bullshit and hypocrisy of her adult counterparts. She has never trusted Jerry from the first moment she laid eyes on him, and she yearns to be away at boarding school which is more of a punishment than anything else. The fact that she is later almost fooled into believing that Jerry is not the creep she thought he was is scarily believable, but she is still a teenager, and she again succeeds in cutting through the bullshit to get to the truth of the matter.
Shelly Hack is also good here even though she overdoes it from time to time as Jerry’s new unsuspecting wife. You have to wonder sometimes if she was so lonely that she would go after anybody like Jake, but you can see why she could fall for him, and how she could possibly blind herself to the man that Jerry is. Thank god for teenagers!
The rest of the cast, however, works on playing the emotion more than giving performances that are not unintentionally hilarious. One of the chief offenders here is Stephen Shellen who plays Jim Ogilvie, a man whose sister was Blake’s previous wife and victim. Jim spends the movie searching for this man and believes that he is still in the area and that he has married again. How hilarious it is that he comes to save the day like Scatman Crothers in “The Shining,” and ends up dying almost exactly like Scatman in “The Shining.” I love it, this guy comes in to save the day and gets killed. You can just picture it:
“Hello? Anybody home? I am here to save the day and…. AHHHHH!!!!! MY BACK! MY BACK! YOU’RE NOT FAIR! I CAN’T EVEN GET A SHOT OFF!”
I also noticed that there are not a lot of black people in this movie. I guess this is further proof to presume that the white man is really the one to fear! The one black guy in the movie, Lt. Jack Wall (Blu Mankuma), gives him the main reason as to why they haven’t been going after this guy; The police don’t have any leads to go on. The only thing that Jack suggests to Jake is to get a gun and blow the son of a bitch away. Guess where we see Jake next? That’s right, the shooting range. Still, he can’t get a shot off when it counts. Bummer!
“The Stepfather” was directed by Joseph Ruben, and he has directed a lot of thrillers that can be high on thrills, but completely low on logic. Several years later, he directed “Sleeping With The Enemy” with Julia Roberts which had several plot holes that could have been avoided. Of course, if you had the crush I had on Julia Roberts at the time, none of that really mattered. You just wanted to hold her, protect her, and hug her hug her hug her… Anyway, he also made that god awful movie “The Good Son” which was supposed to be Macaulay “Home Alone” Culkin’s big break into psycho territory. That movie sucked big time, but we may have to blame Kit Culkin (Macaulay’s much reviled father) for screwing things up on that one. Still, even if he is not as concerned as he should be with the script, he still does direct an entertaining thriller that never bores its intended audience, and he gets a great performance out of Terry O’Quinn.
For a horror movie, “The Stepfather” is actually rather chaste compared to other movies like all those “Friday The 13th” sequels. For those from the Joe Bob Briggs fan club, there is only one nude shot with Jill Schoelen taking a shower, but that feels kind of arbitrary in retrospect. In terms of violence, it is nothing compared to other movies of its kind, and it’s got nothing on “Hellraiser” among others. The violence though is very brutal. We see Jerry smashing Stephanie’s psychiatrist with a 2x4, and we have another moment where he smashes a telephone in Shelley Hack’s face. There is not a lot of blood here for those looking for it, except of course for that image of Jerry’s aftermath that opens the film. All the same, you do feel the brutality of what Jerry does in the movie. As cheesy as this movie may seem, it still feels pretty vicious after all these years.
“The Stepfather” works best as a guilty pleasure, and that makes it perfect for midnight showings like these. While it is certainly not great, I got a kick out of watching it again after all these years. It of course was followed up with the inevitable sequel, which is kind of funny considering that this movie basically tanked when it first came out. I guess that ITC Entertainment (the same group that gave us “The Muppet Show”) was betting on this to have a cult following, and I guess that paid off for them in the end. Plus, Jerry Blake is no supernatural being who can regenerate himself, so I am curious to see “Stepfather 2” to see how the money man resurrected Blake for another go around.
But what makes “The Stepfather” worth the price of admission, other than unintentional laughs, is the lead performance by Terry O’Quinn. He is creepiness personified here, and it is so great to see him doing so well after all these years in shows like “The X-Files,” “Alias,” and “Lost” among others. Terry’s performance was no fluke, and he continues to be a great actor to this day. While “The Stepfather” will be inevitably be remade, I don’t think any actor will be able to top what O’Quinn did in this movie. Who ever intends to prove me wrong, I wish you the best of luck… You’re gonna need it…
**1/2 out of ****
It was another great evening with New Beverly Midnights at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. With them, you can always count on having a fun midnight showing of 80’s trash. Seriously, just look at what they have lined up for the next few weeks: “Never Too Young To Die,” “Waxwork,” and “Action Jackson.” They are also going to be showing William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” which is not really trash, but one of his more underrated movies. But last night, we got to see Joseph Ruben’s “The Stepfather” which was released back in 1987. It tells the story of a man who is searching for the perfect family, and who is not having a lot of luck. But this is a guy who can’t seem to stomach divorce, so he ends up ending things a little viciously by murdering his whole family. But soon, he is on the lookout for a new family to make his own. But will it last longer than the last? WILL IT?!
“The Stepfather” has all the hallmarks of a cheesy 80’s horror movie; There is a lot of overacting, characters doing the dumbest things (there wouldn’t be a movie otherwise), a synthesizer score that has aged as well as the movie (which is to say, not at all), and a brutal killing or two. I remember when Siskel & Ebert reviewed this movie so many years ago as that was my first introduction to it. It’s too funny to believe that when this movie first came out, it seemed very intense. Looking at it today, we have to wonder what the hell we were thinking. Geez this movie looks corny!
Siskel & Ebert both gave “The Stepfather” thumbs down, which was unsurprising considering how they feel about horror movies in general. The one thing they did agree on (and this goes for anyone who likes or hates this movie) is that the movie has one truly great element, the performance of Terry O’Quinn as the title character. Roger Ebert was dead on saying that he made a really creepy villain. Terry gives us a man who is so terminally in love with the Normal Rockwell vision of the family, and who is one of the few adults that I can think of who can still laugh at old reruns of “Mr. Ed.” The fact that he said it took him till high school to realize that horses couldn’t talk should show just how deeply psychotic this man is.
What you have to love about Terry O’Quinn’s performance here is how he gives those around him a convincing façade of the happily married family man. Yet at the same time, his eyes completely betray the raging monster beneath the surface, and of how he threatens to kill again in the blink of an eye. Terry’s performance is truly frightening, and it is really the only thing about this movie that has not lost anything with age. There is no real psychological background as to why his character does what he does. This will drive a lot of people crazy in that it will make the movie seem completely senseless in its violence. If nothing else, the movie is a satire on those who believe that they can have the perfect family. We all should know by now that no such thing exists.
Terry O’Quinn also makes you believe how smart this psycho can be in terms of changing his identity. The movie opens with him washing himself up and shaving himself after butchering his family (the reveal of which is one of the movie’s most horrific scenes), and aside from the eyes which should give him away instantly, you could easily believe how someone like him could get away with it. That is, at least back in the 80’s. When things with the family he meets up with after that, you see him donning a whole new disguise which he just disappears into even while having the same over earnest voice.
What does this guy in? Well, he wants what none of us can never truly have – the perfect family. Any sane person can accept imperfection and love their family anyway, but not this guy. Also, when he finds a new love with Susan Maine (Shelley Hack), he tries to make her daughter Stephanie (the lovely Jill Schoelen) his own. With this family, the psycho calls himself Jerry Blake, and he buys Stephanie a cute little puppy (is there any other kind?). When Stephanie gleefully accepts this new bundle of joy, Jerry replies:
“That’s my girl!”
Right away, you know this relationship is screwed. Stephanie has recently lost her dad, and her mother Susan sees this relationship with Jerry as a second chance in life. But the problem is, you can’t replace someone’s father. You can be a father figure to this kid, but you can never replace this child’s true parents. But I guess some people want this family thing so much that they tend to overreach a little.
We also see Jerry completely overreact when he sees Stephanie kiss a local boy goodnight (the moment leading up to it is hilarious considering how many times they say goodbye to each other). Jerry treats this kid like he is trying to rape Stephanie which couldn’t be further from the truth. Earlier in the movie, we see Shelley and Jerry making love, and he has nothing but this blank stare in his eyes during the act. Have you ever seen a guy with such a hang up about sex? The fact that he is more comfortable with killing people than he is making love makes me think that he is the kind of guy that the late Jack Valenti would have loved to have on the MPAA.
Hey Blake! Some of us would love to be where you are. Why can’t you enjoy sex like the rest of us do?
Anyway, enough about Jerry for the moment, and let’s talk about others in the cast. While she overdoes it at certain moments in the movie, Jill Schoelen is very fetching in this role as the sullen daughter who, like any good teenager, sees through the bullshit and hypocrisy of her adult counterparts. She has never trusted Jerry from the first moment she laid eyes on him, and she yearns to be away at boarding school which is more of a punishment than anything else. The fact that she is later almost fooled into believing that Jerry is not the creep she thought he was is scarily believable, but she is still a teenager, and she again succeeds in cutting through the bullshit to get to the truth of the matter.
Shelly Hack is also good here even though she overdoes it from time to time as Jerry’s new unsuspecting wife. You have to wonder sometimes if she was so lonely that she would go after anybody like Jake, but you can see why she could fall for him, and how she could possibly blind herself to the man that Jerry is. Thank god for teenagers!
The rest of the cast, however, works on playing the emotion more than giving performances that are not unintentionally hilarious. One of the chief offenders here is Stephen Shellen who plays Jim Ogilvie, a man whose sister was Blake’s previous wife and victim. Jim spends the movie searching for this man and believes that he is still in the area and that he has married again. How hilarious it is that he comes to save the day like Scatman Crothers in “The Shining,” and ends up dying almost exactly like Scatman in “The Shining.” I love it, this guy comes in to save the day and gets killed. You can just picture it:
“Hello? Anybody home? I am here to save the day and…. AHHHHH!!!!! MY BACK! MY BACK! YOU’RE NOT FAIR! I CAN’T EVEN GET A SHOT OFF!”
I also noticed that there are not a lot of black people in this movie. I guess this is further proof to presume that the white man is really the one to fear! The one black guy in the movie, Lt. Jack Wall (Blu Mankuma), gives him the main reason as to why they haven’t been going after this guy; The police don’t have any leads to go on. The only thing that Jack suggests to Jake is to get a gun and blow the son of a bitch away. Guess where we see Jake next? That’s right, the shooting range. Still, he can’t get a shot off when it counts. Bummer!
“The Stepfather” was directed by Joseph Ruben, and he has directed a lot of thrillers that can be high on thrills, but completely low on logic. Several years later, he directed “Sleeping With The Enemy” with Julia Roberts which had several plot holes that could have been avoided. Of course, if you had the crush I had on Julia Roberts at the time, none of that really mattered. You just wanted to hold her, protect her, and hug her hug her hug her… Anyway, he also made that god awful movie “The Good Son” which was supposed to be Macaulay “Home Alone” Culkin’s big break into psycho territory. That movie sucked big time, but we may have to blame Kit Culkin (Macaulay’s much reviled father) for screwing things up on that one. Still, even if he is not as concerned as he should be with the script, he still does direct an entertaining thriller that never bores its intended audience, and he gets a great performance out of Terry O’Quinn.
For a horror movie, “The Stepfather” is actually rather chaste compared to other movies like all those “Friday The 13th” sequels. For those from the Joe Bob Briggs fan club, there is only one nude shot with Jill Schoelen taking a shower, but that feels kind of arbitrary in retrospect. In terms of violence, it is nothing compared to other movies of its kind, and it’s got nothing on “Hellraiser” among others. The violence though is very brutal. We see Jerry smashing Stephanie’s psychiatrist with a 2x4, and we have another moment where he smashes a telephone in Shelley Hack’s face. There is not a lot of blood here for those looking for it, except of course for that image of Jerry’s aftermath that opens the film. All the same, you do feel the brutality of what Jerry does in the movie. As cheesy as this movie may seem, it still feels pretty vicious after all these years.
“The Stepfather” works best as a guilty pleasure, and that makes it perfect for midnight showings like these. While it is certainly not great, I got a kick out of watching it again after all these years. It of course was followed up with the inevitable sequel, which is kind of funny considering that this movie basically tanked when it first came out. I guess that ITC Entertainment (the same group that gave us “The Muppet Show”) was betting on this to have a cult following, and I guess that paid off for them in the end. Plus, Jerry Blake is no supernatural being who can regenerate himself, so I am curious to see “Stepfather 2” to see how the money man resurrected Blake for another go around.
But what makes “The Stepfather” worth the price of admission, other than unintentional laughs, is the lead performance by Terry O’Quinn. He is creepiness personified here, and it is so great to see him doing so well after all these years in shows like “The X-Files,” “Alias,” and “Lost” among others. Terry’s performance was no fluke, and he continues to be a great actor to this day. While “The Stepfather” will be inevitably be remade, I don’t think any actor will be able to top what O’Quinn did in this movie. Who ever intends to prove me wrong, I wish you the best of luck… You’re gonna need it…
**1/2 out of ****
Ahh, “The Delta Force.” One of my many favorite movies from the 1980’s! Phil Blankenship and Amoeba Music did a midnight showing of this movie the other night at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Although not as packed as usual, the crowd was excited to see Chuck Norris kicking terrorist ass as if he never really stopped. The first time I saw this movie years ago, I was actually surprised at how well made it was. While there are parts of it that are unintentionally hilarious, even more so considering how dated this film has become, the first half of the movie is actually well directed and well written for the most part. The last half of the movie is pretty much what you expected it to be, a cheesy action movie with heroics and explosions. But even on that level, I always thought it was a kick ass experience, and the kind you don’t usually expect to get from Cannon Pictures.
At the showing of the movie, Phil welcomed a very special guest who was in the movie, Natalie Roth. Natalie played the young girl with the Cabbage Patch Kid doll in the movie, and she took the time to take some questions from the audience. She said that Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin were both very nice to work with, and that Lee Marvin was in bad health throughout the shoot (this was his last film before he died). Natalie also talked about getting to see this movie several dozen times to see herself on the screen. Funny how she was let into an R-rated movie considering her age at the time (7 or 8 my guess), but anyway. Today, Natalie still acts and lives out in Los Angeles, and her most recent film is “Forget About It” which is available for rental exclusively at Blockbuster. While a “Blockbuster exclusive” doesn’t really inspire a lot of confidence, it is great to see that she is still around and doing her thing.
“The Delta Force” comes to us from the purported 1980’s king of action movies, Cannon Pictures, led by Menahem Golan (who also directed and co-wrote the screenplay) and Yoram Globus. A lot of their movies would rank in the “so bad it’s good” catalog of films, while other films they released were utter crap that were more depressing and pathetic than laughable. They made B-movie stars out of Chuck Norris as well as Charles Bronson, and Jean Claude Van Damme among others. With all this in mind, you can’t really go into a Cannon Pictures movie with a lot of high expectations (the lower the better actually). That’s why “The Delta Force” is unique in that respect. You don’t expect the writing or the acting to be any good in movies like these, and while there is some laughable overacting to be found here and there, the performances for the most part are spot on.
The film was based on the real-life hijacking of TWA Flight 847 on June 14, 1985, and it uses a lot of those same moments from it like the press conference with the pilot in Beirut. The movie starts off taking some to introduce us to some of the soon-to-be hostages like Shelley Winters and her husband played by Martin Balsam, her granddaughter Ellen whom manages to get her mother to buy that doll she wants. We meet Harry and Sylvia Goldman who are celebrating their silver wedding anniversary, Father O’Malley (George Kennedy) and his two sisters from the church (one played by future “NYPD Blue” star Kim Delaney), and we meet the two terrorists who end up hijacking the plane, and they are played by Robert Forster and David Menachem.
Now having an American actor play an Arab terrorist seems laughable and just stupid, but Robert Forster pulls this role off without it ever being laughable. As Abdul, he makes an excellent villain whose not just another one-dimensional bad guy who revels in what he does. Robert makes him threatening in how much he is willing to die for his brothers, and it doesn’t matter how delusional and crazy he is because he so believes in what he is doing. This movie was made back when Forster’s career was heading seemingly into oblivion, but he did finally make his comeback with Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown,” and we have not forgotten how great an actor he is since.
David Menachem, on the other hand, seems to overact a bit too much to put it mildly. As Moustapha, his eyes open up so wide that I was convinced they were going to pop out of his head and then ricochet off of one of the hostages. He is a kick to watch, but his performance does generate some unintentional laughs from the audience at the midnight showing. Moustapha is always on the verge of shooting someone, but he never does. The one moment he does shoot happens much too late for him.
Another strong performance in the movie is from Hanna Schygulla who plays the head flight attendant Ingrid. She is put in a very difficult position as the terrorists force her to pick out the Jews from the passports taken from all the passengers. This is another actor who shows a lot without saying anything, and her close-ups throughout the film illustrate how she somehow manages to hold herself together in this horrific situation. I love that moment she has with Robert Forster before she leaves the plane. Robert’s character sums her up perfectly:
“Ingrid, you’re a brave women.”
The second half of the movie is probably what you would expect it to be, a kick ass action movie with the good guys easily defeating the bad guys. At this point, the movie does get a little too corny with the Americans being so gung ho and excited about going into action. We see them laying back on their plane as they head to the middle east, some of them chatting and laughing, others reading the latest edition of Mad magazine.
How many times have you heard dialogue like this?
“OK, let’s rock and roll!”
“Let’s do it.”
I have to say that Chuck Norris is not a bad actor. Many think he is flat out terrible, but that’s flat out not true. True, he is not a great actor like Laurence Oliver and he never will be (even Chuck himself would admit that), but as a film actor he is excellent even if he does play the same kind of character in all the films he does (let alone “Walker, Texas Ranger”). The strength of being a film actor is in showing things without saying them. If you can telegraph how your character is feeling without speaking, then that is the mark of a very good film actor. Chuck back then had a lot of those moments, and he is easily a more competent screen presence than many that came after him be it Jean Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal, both of who have since been consigned to direct to video hell. Regardless of what you may think of his politics (way too conservative for many), Chuck Norris did have a lot more going for him than many would realize.
Having Lee Marvin in a movie like this certainly gives it more dramatic heft and believability, and that’s even if things get more ridiculous as the movie goes along. His face all craggy gives you all that you need to see how much combat he has been through. It is almost fitting that this was his final movie as he served in the military as a Marine (I believe he was buried in Arlington Cemetery). Lee is perfectly cast as the unsentimental leader of an elite anti-terrorist force who has no time for pity, and who is always looking out for his men. RIP Lee Marvin.
Before I forget, I have to bring up the film score by Alan Silvestri who later went on to compose music for “Back To The Future” and “The Abyss” among others. This is a classic 1980’s score that made much use of synthesizers at the time. It some ways, it is a cheesy score, but I liked it a lot. It hits some strong emotional notes, and the theme song is one that will stay in your head long after the movie is over. I am lucky enough to have this score on audio cassette, and I do listen to it every once in awhile. It was recently re-released on CD as a limited edition, and it was limited alright because it sold out before I got a chance to buy it (DAMN!!!).
“The Delta Force” is easily one of the best movies that Cannon Pictures could have ever hoped to have released. Sure, it led to a lot of crappy knock offs and sequels that were not even trying to be as good. “Delta Force 2” was a direct rip off of Timothy Dalton’s last Bond movie, “License To Kill.” Sure, it had a great and a truly despicable villain in Billy Drago, but jesus this movie was beyond cheesy and stupid! The less said about “Delta Force 3,” the better. Chuck Norris’ film career may have gone to direct to video hell ever since his brother Aaron started directing him in just about every movie he did. But after all these years, “The Delta Force” actually holds up pretty well (that’s probably being a bit generous, but anyway). It has also led to some great retro t-shirts that you can still see popping up on the internet or at the shirt store near UC Berkeley. You may have seen them here and there saying:
“I don’t negotiate with terrorists. I blow them away.”
***1/2 out of ****
At the showing of the movie, Phil welcomed a very special guest who was in the movie, Natalie Roth. Natalie played the young girl with the Cabbage Patch Kid doll in the movie, and she took the time to take some questions from the audience. She said that Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin were both very nice to work with, and that Lee Marvin was in bad health throughout the shoot (this was his last film before he died). Natalie also talked about getting to see this movie several dozen times to see herself on the screen. Funny how she was let into an R-rated movie considering her age at the time (7 or 8 my guess), but anyway. Today, Natalie still acts and lives out in Los Angeles, and her most recent film is “Forget About It” which is available for rental exclusively at Blockbuster. While a “Blockbuster exclusive” doesn’t really inspire a lot of confidence, it is great to see that she is still around and doing her thing.
“The Delta Force” comes to us from the purported 1980’s king of action movies, Cannon Pictures, led by Menahem Golan (who also directed and co-wrote the screenplay) and Yoram Globus. A lot of their movies would rank in the “so bad it’s good” catalog of films, while other films they released were utter crap that were more depressing and pathetic than laughable. They made B-movie stars out of Chuck Norris as well as Charles Bronson, and Jean Claude Van Damme among others. With all this in mind, you can’t really go into a Cannon Pictures movie with a lot of high expectations (the lower the better actually). That’s why “The Delta Force” is unique in that respect. You don’t expect the writing or the acting to be any good in movies like these, and while there is some laughable overacting to be found here and there, the performances for the most part are spot on.
The film was based on the real-life hijacking of TWA Flight 847 on June 14, 1985, and it uses a lot of those same moments from it like the press conference with the pilot in Beirut. The movie starts off taking some to introduce us to some of the soon-to-be hostages like Shelley Winters and her husband played by Martin Balsam, her granddaughter Ellen whom manages to get her mother to buy that doll she wants. We meet Harry and Sylvia Goldman who are celebrating their silver wedding anniversary, Father O’Malley (George Kennedy) and his two sisters from the church (one played by future “NYPD Blue” star Kim Delaney), and we meet the two terrorists who end up hijacking the plane, and they are played by Robert Forster and David Menachem.
Now having an American actor play an Arab terrorist seems laughable and just stupid, but Robert Forster pulls this role off without it ever being laughable. As Abdul, he makes an excellent villain whose not just another one-dimensional bad guy who revels in what he does. Robert makes him threatening in how much he is willing to die for his brothers, and it doesn’t matter how delusional and crazy he is because he so believes in what he is doing. This movie was made back when Forster’s career was heading seemingly into oblivion, but he did finally make his comeback with Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown,” and we have not forgotten how great an actor he is since.
David Menachem, on the other hand, seems to overact a bit too much to put it mildly. As Moustapha, his eyes open up so wide that I was convinced they were going to pop out of his head and then ricochet off of one of the hostages. He is a kick to watch, but his performance does generate some unintentional laughs from the audience at the midnight showing. Moustapha is always on the verge of shooting someone, but he never does. The one moment he does shoot happens much too late for him.
Another strong performance in the movie is from Hanna Schygulla who plays the head flight attendant Ingrid. She is put in a very difficult position as the terrorists force her to pick out the Jews from the passports taken from all the passengers. This is another actor who shows a lot without saying anything, and her close-ups throughout the film illustrate how she somehow manages to hold herself together in this horrific situation. I love that moment she has with Robert Forster before she leaves the plane. Robert’s character sums her up perfectly:
“Ingrid, you’re a brave women.”
The second half of the movie is probably what you would expect it to be, a kick ass action movie with the good guys easily defeating the bad guys. At this point, the movie does get a little too corny with the Americans being so gung ho and excited about going into action. We see them laying back on their plane as they head to the middle east, some of them chatting and laughing, others reading the latest edition of Mad magazine.
How many times have you heard dialogue like this?
“OK, let’s rock and roll!”
“Let’s do it.”
I have to say that Chuck Norris is not a bad actor. Many think he is flat out terrible, but that’s flat out not true. True, he is not a great actor like Laurence Oliver and he never will be (even Chuck himself would admit that), but as a film actor he is excellent even if he does play the same kind of character in all the films he does (let alone “Walker, Texas Ranger”). The strength of being a film actor is in showing things without saying them. If you can telegraph how your character is feeling without speaking, then that is the mark of a very good film actor. Chuck back then had a lot of those moments, and he is easily a more competent screen presence than many that came after him be it Jean Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal, both of who have since been consigned to direct to video hell. Regardless of what you may think of his politics (way too conservative for many), Chuck Norris did have a lot more going for him than many would realize.
Having Lee Marvin in a movie like this certainly gives it more dramatic heft and believability, and that’s even if things get more ridiculous as the movie goes along. His face all craggy gives you all that you need to see how much combat he has been through. It is almost fitting that this was his final movie as he served in the military as a Marine (I believe he was buried in Arlington Cemetery). Lee is perfectly cast as the unsentimental leader of an elite anti-terrorist force who has no time for pity, and who is always looking out for his men. RIP Lee Marvin.
Before I forget, I have to bring up the film score by Alan Silvestri who later went on to compose music for “Back To The Future” and “The Abyss” among others. This is a classic 1980’s score that made much use of synthesizers at the time. It some ways, it is a cheesy score, but I liked it a lot. It hits some strong emotional notes, and the theme song is one that will stay in your head long after the movie is over. I am lucky enough to have this score on audio cassette, and I do listen to it every once in awhile. It was recently re-released on CD as a limited edition, and it was limited alright because it sold out before I got a chance to buy it (DAMN!!!).
“The Delta Force” is easily one of the best movies that Cannon Pictures could have ever hoped to have released. Sure, it led to a lot of crappy knock offs and sequels that were not even trying to be as good. “Delta Force 2” was a direct rip off of Timothy Dalton’s last Bond movie, “License To Kill.” Sure, it had a great and a truly despicable villain in Billy Drago, but jesus this movie was beyond cheesy and stupid! The less said about “Delta Force 3,” the better. Chuck Norris’ film career may have gone to direct to video hell ever since his brother Aaron started directing him in just about every movie he did. But after all these years, “The Delta Force” actually holds up pretty well (that’s probably being a bit generous, but anyway). It has also led to some great retro t-shirts that you can still see popping up on the internet or at the shirt store near UC Berkeley. You may have seen them here and there saying:
“I don’t negotiate with terrorists. I blow them away.”
***1/2 out of ****
Savage Steve Holland talks about "Better Off Dead" & "One Crazy Summer" at the Aero Theater - Written by Ben Kenber
After bringing in sell out crowds last week with the John Carpenter Tribute, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica brought in another big crowd out to see director Savage Steve Holland talk about his two classic comedies from the 1980’s, “Better Off Dead” and “One Crazy Summer.” But the big attraction of the evening was indeed “Better Off Dead” which still has a huge following 23 years (jesus!) after its release in 1985. Like many movies of our youth, the movie was a flop at the box office and was eviscerated by critics. Siskel & Ebert gave it two thumbs down, and Peter Travers (the usually astute critic from Rolling Stone magazine) tore it apart limb from limb. But in the end, it found its audience like many other movies do, on video, cable, regular television, and eventually DVD. Now, you would be hard pressed to find anyone your age that hasn’t seen this movie and loved it.Back in the 80’s, a negative review from Siskel & Ebert might have kept me from seeing the movie as I watched their show all the time. This was in part because I never got to go out to the movies much back then, and movie review shows like theirs were the closest I could ever get to it. Fortunately, my best friend from elementary school informed me that it was actually really good. So the following weekend, I rented it from the local video store, and my brother and I were laughing like crazy as we were watching “Airplane.” After all these years, “Better Off Dead” remains one of my favorite movies from the 80’s, and it has not lost any of its power to amuse. This was made clear by the response from the audience, many of which have seen this movie hundreds of times (10% of the audience there were watching it for the first time).
For those of you who haven’t seen it (where have you been?), “Better Off Dead” follows Lane Meyer (John Cusack), a teenager with an obsession for skiing and an even bigger obsession for his girlfriend Beth (Amanda Wyss). However, after to failing to make it on the high school skiing team, Beth dumps for the Captain of the team. Lane despairs of this and tries to kill himself in various ways, but never succeeds. Throughout the film, he has to deal with a crazed paperboy (“I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS!”), his mother’s horrific ways of cooking, his dad’s insistence on doing something about his Camaro which has remained immobile on his front lawn, his kid brother who plays with real laser guns and gets books on how to pick up “trashy woman,” and with a lovely foreign exchange student who has the misfortune of staying with the dorkheads…ahem… The Smiths next door with Ricky, a terminal nerd if there ever was one.
People adore this movie so much, and I think it was influence on a lot of writers and filmmakers today. This can especially be seen when you look at one of the best comedies so far this year, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” which has more or less the same plot.
After “Better Off Dead” was over and the end credits were finished, Savage Steve Holland was brought to the stage to an ecstatic applause from the fans there. Dressed in jeans and a white buttoned down shirt with a green baseball cap, he was ever so happy to see all the people who came out to see this movie he did so long ago. So thrilled with the response, he couldn’t have been a nicer or more happy guy to meet. Along with director Holland was Diane Franklin who played the French exchange student Monique Junot. Even though she’s now married and has two kids, she really doesn’t look like she has aged a day since the original release of the movie (seriously). Also along for the screening was actor Curtis Armstrong who plays Lane’s best friend, Charles de Mar. Curtis has worked a lot with director Holland, and he is also best known as Booger from the “Revenge of the Nerds” movies.
Savage Steve Holland said that the movie was indeed inspired by real life experiences of his own. Back in the day, he did have a girlfriend who dumped him for someone else, and he did think about committing suicide. One scene in the movie shows John Cusack tying an extension cord around his neck in his garage. Savage had talked about doing the same thing and attaching it to a pole in the garage while standing on a plastic garbage can. As he was doing this, he said that he became unbelievably terrified and couldn’t go through with it. Then the lid of the garbage can fell through and he fell into it, and the pipe above him broke, water came out, and he almost drowned in that same garbage can. His mother ended up coming into the garage to see what was going on, and she ended up yelling at him for breaking the pipe.
Savage had ended up making a short film regarding this subject in his life. It was intended to be serious, but it ended up getting the opposite reaction. People laughed, and they laughed hard at it. I’m sure we are as glad as he is that he didn’t succeed in killing himself, for then we would have been denied one of the funniest comedies many of us have ever seen.
“Better Off Dead” had ended up doing so well in test screenings that Warner Brothers (which had released the movie at that time) ended up giving him a whole lot more money to Savage so that he could make his next big movie, “One Crazy Summer.” The studio was so convinced they had a big hit on their hands, and they wanted to seize on the next opportunity to work with this young director. Unfortunately, “Better Off Dead” did not do well in its initial release, and while he did get the opportunity to make “One Crazy Summer,” Savage said that he was soon confined to “movie hell.” This was the place where you go where if your movie doesn’t do well on its first week let alone, all those friends you thought you had in Hollywood stop calling you and stop taking your calls.
One fan asked Savage what the difference was between the making of “Better Off Dead” and “One Crazy Summer.” With “Better Off Dead” he said, he had total creative freedom in making it and had no one looking over his shoulder. This made it the best experience he has ever had making a movie, and he has never had that same experience ever since. With “One Crazy Summer,” it was much different because he had a lot more money involved in making it, and the studio executives were on the set watching his every move. This may have been primarily a result of their initial response of when Savage first screened “Better Off Dead” for them. They apparently came out of horrified at what he did as though he made a sequel to the John Water’s cult classic “Pink Flamingos.”
Diane Franklin, as it turns out, is not actually French. After all these years, I was convinced that she was. She said that her father is in fact German, so that may account for her looking like she is from another country. As for the French accent, she said that she did take French back in high school and was very good at, and the accent itself came to her very easily. When she came in to read for the movie, she was actually up for both Beth and Monique. Diane’s daughter was in the audience (and foolishly tried to convince the audience that she was not actually related to her mother), and asked her if she was more interested in the part of Monique or Beth. I think the answer was pretty apparent when she said that she came into the audition as a French actress trying to master an American accent. She said that making “Better Off Dead” is still the best experience that she has ever had as an actress. On Savage, she said that he did a great job of creating a fun and comfortable atmosphere for all the actors to work in, and that he gave everyone a lot of freedom to play around with the characters.
One person had commented on another movie Diane had done called “The Last American Virgin,” and how the ending of the movie was one of the most depressing that he had ever seen (haven’t seen it, so I can’t possibly spoil it for you). Diane said that she had heard about a screening of that film at a drive inn movie theater, and how the audience members ended up throwing their popcorn at the screen and cussing out her character when she did whatever she did. It’s safe to say that she has had a more than memorable career in movies. Aside from “Better Off Dead” and “The Last American Virgin,” she also was in “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” where she again did her flawless French accent.
Diane also confirmed that it was a woman who did the skiing sequences in the movie for her, and not a man as many had assumed. Savage noted that her stunt double actually looked almost exactly like her, and the only thing separating the two of them was the stunt double’s tan.
Also up for the roles of Beth and Monique was Elizabeth Daily who appears during the scene at the school dance singing the title track to the movie. But in the end, it was determined that Elizabeth was just “too hot” for either role.
Curtis Armstrong, who has been a regular in a lot of Savage’s films, came up with some of the more memorable aspects of the character he played. The scene where that bastard ski captain asks what Beth’s name is, and he quickly replies “Charles de Mar” was all his. That did a get a big laugh from the audience at the screening that evening. Curtis also came up with the top hat that Charles de Mar wears throughout the movie, and he said that it was inspired by his love for The Beatles and (in particular) George Harrison. Those familiar with The Beatles may very well know what he means. Armstrong also came up with the idea of bringing along that jar with the dead pig in it (I always wondered what that was). Curtis however could not take credit for one of the very best lines that Savage wrote for him in the movie:
“I have been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I’m no dummy!”
Curtis also talked about this brief conversation he had with the actress who played John Cusack’s mother in the film, Kim Darby. At one point while the both of them were on a break from filming, Kim came up to Curtis in his trailer, took him by the shoulders and told him:
“Watch out! They’re trying to destroy you!”
After that, she left his trailer and never spoke to him again. What the hell?
Savage also alluded to some deleted scenes that were taken out of the movie. Among them was how Lane’s mother Jenny (played wonderfully by Kim Darby) actually belonged to the cult of Gumby, and one scene showed her at the airport collecting money for the cult. Test audiences found that scene much too weird, so it was cut. There was another deleted scene that I would love to have seen where Lane’s father Al (the priceless David Ogden Stiers) comes home to find his wife vacuuming the lawn. One other cut out scene shows Lane trying to practice the theme to the TV show “Flipper” among the saxophone, and there is a seal there that ends up applauding another person when they do a better job of performing it than Lane does. Also, the scene of the paperboy falling off the cliff actually lasted a lot longer as Savage had about three minutes of that moment in the film. However, it gave the test audiences a rather sickened reaction, and the length that it ended up at in the film is just right as it is.
As for a special edition of the DVD release, there was no clear answer as to whether that will ever happen. Paramount did release the movie on DVD for the first time several years ago, but aside from showing the movie in widescreen, there were no special features of any kind. There wasn’t even a trailer for the movie on there either, and you’d figure that Paramount would at least have the decency to put that on the DVD release, but I guess they were unaware of the cult following this movie has. Shame!
If there is anything that seriously dampens the moods of all the fans of “Better Off Dead,” it is the rumors that the star of the movie, John Cusack, hates this movie. Savage responded that he got along great with John while they were making the movie, and that he really wanted John to like the movie as much as he did. Before they began shooting “One Crazy Summer,” Savage got the cast members of the film to hang out with each other in Cape Cod so that they could become comfortable with one another. During their time there, someone did a screening of the movie which they all went to. Twenty or so minutes into the screening, John walked out of the theater. Savage figured that he had to take a call or something, but he never did come back to the screen apparently. Savage later caught up with John to see what the problem was, and John told him that the movie was horrible and that it didn’t work at all. To this day Savage said, this is really a sore point for John that he is increasingly reluctant to acknowledge. This really brought the crowd down as John really did some of his best work as teen actor here.
Someone else from the audience also asked how Rupert Hine came to score the movie. One of the companies involved in the making of “Better Off Dead” was A&M records, and they also had worked on soundtracks for other films of the time like “The Breakfast Club.” Rupert was a featured performer on that soundtrack, but had never actually done a score for a film before. “Better Off Dead” was his first effort as a film composer, and the resulting soundtrack release from the film is awesome indeed. Right now, it appears to be out of print, so you will have to look especially hard for it. I still have my vinyl and CD copies of the soundtrack, and I am never getting rid of them, ever!
This evening was a lot of fun for everyone involved, and it says a lot about movie that lasts in the minds of many people decades after its release. All the fans who asked questions made it clear that this movie is one of their all time favorites, and that they still love watching it from time to time. One fan proudly proclaimed that this film is “bar none, the greatest movie ever made.” Such a fan this guy was, he got the director to sign an authentic air filter for a 1967 Camaro, just like the car that is prominently featured in this movie. Along with that, this diehard fan also had the original vinyl release of the soundtrack with him, as well as the original script of the movie. Can you dare to doubt this man’s love for this movie?
By the way, this same fan also pointed out that there is actually a website dedicated to the 1967 Camaro from the movie called Better Off Dead Camaro (http://www.betteroffdeadcamaro.com/). The site details the history of that specific Camaro used in the movie, and it even has details on how to restore the car to pristine condition.
Savage, Diane, and Curtis stayed around the Q & A was over to sign autographs for all the fans, and they even stayed for the second feature of the evening, “One Crazy Summer,” which was made right after “Better Off Dead.” While not as good as “Better Off Dead,” “One Crazy Summer” still does have its moments of sheer hilarity that had us laughing like crazy. The movie is especially notable for the scene stealing performance of Bob Goldthwait who ends up getting himself stuck inside a Godzilla costume and running around like crazy when someone accidentally throws a lit cigarette into the top of the costume.
Ever since the box office failures of “Better Off Dead” and “One Crazy Summer,” Savage Steve Holland has been relegated to working in television on shows like “Shasta McNasty,” “Zoey 101,” and “Lizzie McGuire” among others. However, it looks like he is about to make his comeback in films as he is currently directing the film “Legally Blondes.” This film does not feature Reese Witherspoon or the character she played in the last two movies, but actually focuses on two blonde girls and the things that happen to them. Savage promised us that it would be “really sweet.” Also, he has been hired to write “Howard Stern’s Porky’s,” and there should be no doubt that Howard will make this version all his own.
“Better Off Dead” more than deserves its place as one of the best comedies to come out of the 1980’s. This is a movie that John Cusack should really proud of alongside his other 80’s movies like “Say Anything.” Seeing it on the big screen at the Aero Theater with a packed audience gave me one of the best times I’ve had at the movies this year. What else can you say about a movie in which Steven Williams utters one of the most famous lines in cinema history?
“Now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that.”
The article’s over… You can go home now.
KNIGHTRIDERS (1981)
DIRECTED BY
George A. Romero
STARRING
Ed Harris - Billy
Gary Lahti - Alan
Tom Savini - Morgan
Amy Ingersoll - Linet
Patricia Tallman - Julie
Christine Forrest - Angie
Warner Shook - Pippin
Brother Blue - Merlin
*** out of ****
If you want to watch a great zombie movie, you pretty much go to one director: George A. Romero. Romero has pretty much invented the zombie sub-genre with his 1968 classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, his even better 1978 masterpiece DAWN OF THE DEAD, his underrated 1985 DAY OF THE DEAD, and his very good 2005 LAND OF THE DEAD. With a new film out in the theaters with his DIARY OF THE DEAD, Romero is still captivating audiences by using zombies and the humans who have to battle them as metaphors and analogies for his social commentary on the world.
But Romero hasn't always directed zombies or horror films like his 1982 anthology-film, CREEPSHOW. Romero has tried his hand on non-horror, although to much lesser success financially. One of these films is 1981's KNIGHTRIDERS, which is a take on the King Arthur legend and the fall of Camelot but in modern times. Starring a young Ed Harris in his third film, KNIGHTRIDERS was barely a blip on the box office radar but has managed to create a somewhat small cult following ever since its released 27 years ago. Is it Romero's best? No. But it's definitely a film that mainstream film viewers should try and check out because it's an extremely well made low budget film. Just don't expect Michael Knight and the Knight Industries Two Thousand to be anywhere near this movie.
PLOT
A group of travelling performers who dress up as knights and anything else medieval related joust on motorcycles and do serious stunt work to entertain small crowds across the country. The group is led by Billy (Ed Harris) who is idealistic and believes himself to be a modern knight. Others like Morgan (Tom Savini) feel as if they should be King and could do more with the troupe. While attracting crowds with their action jousts, the troupe's popularity begins to grow to the point that they're actually idolized in magazines. While the group is happy about their success, Billy is less so and feels that fame would only ruin his values and ideas for the group. It gets worse when a promoter offers the group lots of money in exchange for arranging larger events to entertain bigger crowds. Billy wants nothing to do with it, but Morgan and a few others feel that they have every right to money, security, and the fame. This leads to a division amongst the group members, recreating the Fall of Camelot in modern times.
REVIEW
KNIGHTRIDERS is an interesting film. It's one of those films that looks really ridiculous, from its cover, to its trailer, to the very synopsis I just wrote above. However, there's a lot of substance and depth to this film if you take the chance to look between the lines. Even though this is no zombie film [believe me, it's FAR from it], Romero still injects his personal commentary on society through the very well-written story and nicely developed characters.
For me, not sure for anyone else, I felt Romero used the whole King Arthur/Camelot history for this modern group of "knights" to give us a sense of how badly the world of commercialism, materialism, greed can corrupt a well woven society. The troupe goes well until a child asks Billy to sign his autograph over a photo in a motorcycle magazine. Billy, wanting no recognition, refuses to sign. Morgan, wanting to be a big shot, signs - starting the dissention within the group. The group barely has any money to spend, especially when props and weapons are constantly breaking down. And when they're offered money that they could use to make a life for themselves, members of the group begin to argue amongst themselves until half of the group leaves on bad terms. But those who leave for the fame and money soon come to realize that they're being marketed as characters that they feel no connection to and feel miserable until they decide to come back to their home. It's something we all see every day in our own lives, and with celebrities as well. We try to be someone that's not really us just to fit into the popular crowd. And while that's great for a while, you soon realize that you're popular for all the wrong reasons and you just want to be yourself again, even if it does cost you friends and popularity. Money and fame are two very powerful things that put people in far out situations. Reality TV is probably the biggest evidence of it and it isn't going anywhere any time soon. So for a film that came out in the very early 1980s, KNIGHTRIDERS holds up well because we're still stuck in the same phase.
Also for an early 1980s film, the subject of homosexuality is brought up, which I'm sure wasn't as acceptable back then as it is now. And while it's not really dug deep into, the fact that the group has an actual conversation about it [that actually starts out as an insult but soon turns deep and serious] is actually quite fascinating. And while some films nowadays can pretty much devote the entire film on the issue without much flack [even though there is still some] and some pretty much use the whole gay issue as a joke to lead to multiple punchlines, Romero treats the issue with just the right amount of respect and time it needs. It shouldn't be the focus of the film and it's not. The character in question, Pippin, accepts his sexuality and actually becomes lovers with another member of the group. Nothing more, nothing less. It is what it is and Romero moves on. Very classy, I think.
As for the characters, they're all very different personalities. Billy is pretty much the ideal one who doesn't want to compromise his beliefs in this troupe and what it stands for in order to gain some kind of notoreity from it. He's the leader and he makes sure he's heard, which sometimes leads to conflict. Especially with Morgan, who is the hot-headed flashy one who believes he's better than everyone and wants to be the leader because he feels he could take the group to a new level. Then you have the loyal sidekick, Alan. You also have very strong-minded women in Queen Linet, runaway and naive Julie, and mechanic Angie. Plus Merlin, the medical/spiritual doctor is the one with the advice and knowledge. There are so many different characters here that you can relate to. None of them seem like stereotypes or caricatures. Even with somewhat cheesy dialogue [well a film about motorcycle knights isn't gonna be exactly serious now], you totally believe the characters and the situations they're put in. The fact that I found the characters and the story compelling at times surprised me very much.
George A. Romero directs a fine film here as usual. The film does have its share of pacing and editing problems but you can tell Romero enjoyed making this film. With a very low budget, Romero made it all work and the film looks great. He really gets intimate visually with each character so that we can know who they are through their body language, actions, and especially they're facial expressions. Plus he shoots the motorcycle jousts and stunts very well. You're never out of the loop, as you can always keep up with the action as it builds and builds to its climax. Romero has a great eye for storytelling and it's no exception here. He knows how to make chaotic sequences look absolutely breathtaking. I can't say that about many directors. Nice to see he can direct more than just zombies or anything outside the horror genre.
The music of the film by Donald A. Rubinstein is pretty cool too. Very majestic in tone that creates an almost epic feeling for a film that's involves realistic people leading fantasy lives and proud of it. It just pulls you in and it almost makes you feel like you should ride a motorcycle and knock some other bikers off you come across with jousting sticks. Very cool.
The acting is also fantastic in this film. Ed Harris in his third film is awesome as Billy, the King of the troupe. He has great scenes where he just goes off on people when they try to destroy his dreams and is actually convincing in his performance. You'd really think he was Billy, because he commands every bit of dialogue he has in the film. If I had watched this film back in 1981, I would have been telling people that Harris would become a big star in the future. He had 'it' back then and he still has 'it' now. Tom Savini as Billy's foil, Morgan, was surprising in his performance. Known more for his make-up work in horror films, he was pretty damn good here. He was a total ladies man with that prickish, arrogant attitude. You wanted to kick his ass but at the same time wanted to be him and/or hang out with him. And I'm sure after seeing him in a speedo, women will want him. He's too cool here. Gary Lahti as Alan was very good as the sidekick. He had more of a subtle performance that really worked well against the more vibrant characters in the film. Liked him alot. Also like Patricia Tallman as naive Julie, who ran away from her abusive family to be with Alan. She was pretty funny and cute, adding much comic relief and boobage [yay!] to the film. You also get cameos from Ken Foree, Stephen King, and his wife Tabitha. Everyone is great here. Nice ensemble as usual in a Romero film.
My major gripe is that at 145 minutes, the film is just too damn long. I think some of the ending could have been tighter and edited a bit. Same goes to some of the action scenes and interlude scenes. Europe actually cropped the film down to 102 minutes, which makes me curious as to what was taken out. Honestly, I'm not really sure what I would take out here. Everything worked, even if it wasn't really needed to move the film along. Not sure if the shorter version makes the film a better one, but it definitely needed some clipping in my opinion.
THINGS I'VE LEARNED WHILE DOING A FASHION SHOOT IN LEATHER GLITTERY UNDERWEAR
1. A knight always practices his fighting techniques in the nude. How else would one practice thrusting his sword?
2. Chicks can't get enough of men who ride motorcycles. Why? Because if the sex is bad, they can still get off from the vibrations of the ride. Harley Davidson - the real Viagra.
3. Stephen King says the knights jousting are like professional wrestlers. Not true. Wrestler jousting lances are probably smaller, dude to that massive steroid abuse. Allegedly...
4. It's bad luck to give a chain to someone you like that was given to you by your ex. Yeah, it's inconsiderate but at least you can pawn it. Money talks, right?
5. Pippin doesn't know if he's gay or not. Clay Aiken has the same conundrum. Or so he claims...
6. King Billy doesn't believe in compromising his beliefs for the almighty buck. Sigh...the coda of the poor and homeless.
7. Crowds don't like internal strifes within a group. No shit. Billy and his group's disinegration is worse than all those Van Halen breakups combined!
8. Morgan got heckled while posing in a fashion layout wearing only underwear. I'm sure David Beckham didn't have this problem during his shoot. Then again, who would dare make fun of Becks when he's the master of kicking balls?
9. Alan dumped Julie and dropped her off at her house, even though she didn't understand why. No wonder she went off on those zombies in the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remake. Bitch was pissed!
10. William went back to beat up the cop that abused him and one of his group members. Now that's how you smoke ham!
THE FINAL HOWL
KNIGHTRIDERS isn't a film for everyone. You'll either like it or you won't. There's no in between with this one. I, however, really enjoyed this unique and interesting movie. Instead of blood, guts, and total violence, I got a story about characters who struggle with compromising their fantasy world for the luxuries of reality. And I don't know anyone who can't sympathize with that idea. If you're a George A. Romero fan and have never seen this film, I would definitely recommend it so you can see a different side to the man. Anyone else who is willing to take a chance on KNIGHTRIDERS should because I think it's a pretty cool flick. Color me knighted!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
