Okay, I admit I’m going to cheat a little today. This was on my list to cover, and then Todd at Forgotten Filmcast invited me to be a guest on his podcast and talk about this movie. So what I have for you today is a cheat treat. Instead of writing a review/essay on this movie, you get the link to Todd’s site and the podcast.
This was an end of Summer film, I was starting my last year of grad school, we had just celebrated our first year of marriage, and Dee was getting ready to start a new job.
In the 70s and 80s, you just expected a Mel Brooks film every couple of years. They were even more reliable than James Bond in that era. Anyone who is a fan of Brooks knows that some of his films are hits and some are misses. Even the ones that may not be top drawer have things to recommend them. “History of the World Part 1” has several great moments but many more that are labored and feel a bit clunky.
A parody film will of course try it’s best to make fun of those things that we know well, but what if we don’t know them well or at all? The opening joke on 2001 is crude but it’s funny because of the knowledge we have of that opening and the use of the music. I think the Stone Age section is really an old fashioned sketch comedy routine, but it has the advantage of playing off of a bunch of Caveman movies, like “One Million Years B.C.” and “Caveman”. It is also relatively brief.
There is another sketch that plays with the “Ten Commandments” and it is basically a one joke premise that gets it’s laugh and then gets off the stage. The same cannot be said for the follow up segment on the Roman Empire. In spite of a few borsht belt jokes that work, and a couple of visual gags, this segment feels very long and not very involving. It plays like an SNL bit that goes ten minutes when it should have been two. Everybody puts their heart into it but it mostly lays an egg.
The French Revolution segment has many of the same problems, but it works better for a couple of reasons. Whenever Mel added Harvey Korman to the cast, the jokes work better. I have used Count De Monet as a punch line for forty years. My guess is there are people out there who use the line “It’s good to be King” and don’t even realize that this is where it came from. Brooks himself is the star of the two long segments and seems more comfortable as the King than he does as the Comic. Hard to believe but That’s my opinion.
The highlight of the film comes between those two segments. It is relatively brief, it sticks to it’s one note joke, but gets huge mileage out of it, this is the “Inquisition” number. Brooks as Torquemada, sings and dances through a number that Busby Berkeley could be proud of. The aquacade is a brilliant twist and the production design for the whole sequence is perfect, especially the slot machine. The song is like so many great songs from Brooks other movies, it is well thought out, it sticks to the conventions of the type of tune it is supposed to be, and it is as funny as all get out. This segment alone justifies the whole movie.
While it is completely unnecessary, I think I would give “History of the World Part 2” a chance, the trailers featuring Hitler on Ice and Jews in Space are short and to the point, helping this film get it’s legs back under it.
In 1981, I had a summer job, driving a truck and delivering photographic supplies to printing houses and design firms around Southern California. One of the places I delivered to, printed movie posters. I could not get my hands on the James Bond posters that they were producing, but someone had an extra of this films poster and I still have it in my collection.
Just about every hot young actor in the late 1980s got to dress up and play cowboy in this western, squarely aimed at the teen audience of the time. There had been a mini renaissance of westerns, that would continue for another five or six years. There were not a lot, but there were certainly more than the period between 75 and 85 when the only light in the saloon was Clint Eastwood.
There are a few other actors of note in the film, Terry O’Quinn plays a lawyer who tries to get the regulators to act within the law. Terrance Stamp is a mentor to the wild kids and it is his demise that provokes the actions that follows but also stops any sense of story development or additional character. Finally, Jack Palance steps in and plays his signature bad guy role, the next year he would do the same part in “Batman”. It’s also fun to note that Patrick Wayne, the Duke’s son, has a part in the film as lawman Pat Garrett, who will eventually be responsible for ending the career of Billy the Kid. Brian Keith shows up for one scene, disappears into an outhouse and never becomes part of the story again, this was another wasted opportunity, I guess so they could continue to show the young guys riding and shooting.
The star of the film is clearly Emilio Esteves. He’d appeared in “Repo Man”, “The Breakfast Club” and “St. Elmo’s Fire” and was identified as a member of “the Brat Pack” who owned Hollywood’s young person film franchises in the 80s. He plays Billy the Kid, and Billy is basically a psycho in this film. In the 90s there were several films where crazy killers take to the road and act out their worst impulses. Well this is the 1880s version of that behavior. Having been brought into a troop of abandoned young men by Stamp’s character, he takes over and just starts killing as the solution to all his problems
Speaking of problems, the main one facing this film is the lack of plot. It is basically a series of vignettes while the gang is on the run and then they stop for a shootout, before the next pause and another shootout. The film never builds any tension, especially after the character played by Charlie Sheen, Emilo’s brother, exits the film. Whatever character arc was started earlier in the movie ends there and then it is merely one shootout followed by another. Some of them are well staged, and there is a pretty good scene in a saloon with a bounty hunter who doesn’t realize that the kid he is talking to is also the Kid he is after.
It’s not a bad movie, it’s just not very good. Dee and I saw it in theaters that Summer, after Amanda was born. About ten years later, I think I showed it to the girls as a rental from the video store, and that was the last time I saw it before today. Not much to recommend except Esteves and his bowler hat.
As this project rolls along, I get a chance to revisit some movies I have not seen for thirty years, and others that I have seen dozens of times in that period. I also get a chance to see some of my favorite films of all time, and today is one of those films. I absolutely love “Fright Night”. I think the premise is great, the soundtrak is a lot of fun, but there are some things here that are very special, and they are unique because it is 1985.
In no particular order, here are some of the things that make this film essential and make it something that I love. Number one, if the historical context. This is one of the first times someone in a story is flipping a house and it’s a vampire of all things. That has got to be some sort of metaphor for living off the dead that just seems to fit with the economic entrepreneurship that so captivated people at the time. Jerry Dandridge and Billy Cole are carpenters, trying to turn a wreck of a house into a goldmine, while strip mining the town of blood. The idea of an aging star, getting by on his former fame as a horror movie icon, as host of a late night Fright program is perfect. You could not do that today because those formats just don’t exist anymore, regardless of Joe Bob Briggs efforts. Streaming has killed the idea of regular TV, and hosted movies only exist in limited places like TCM. When the remake came along, they abandoned the television angle entirely.
A second reason that the film sticks in my head is the soundtrack, made up of pop/rock tunes created for the movie rather than merely adapted to it. Hard Rock bands did pop tunes for the film, and J. Geil’s Band title song works great at setting the tone at the end of the film. Sparks is a band that I enjoyed a bit, right now there is a documentary making the rounds on their career, I’d be interested in seeing it but I was only a casual fan. April Wine and Devo were bands that seemed to exist only in the 80s, so the fact they are on this record is completely appropriate.
Third in making this an essential, are the practical effects used to make the scary parts of the movie. There is a terrific combination of make-up, puppetry and visual effects that make the things in this movie feel more real, despite the fact that they may not look as good as some CGI effect might. The shot of Jerry Dandridge’s hand, with the extra knuckles to accompany the long fingers, is a simple moment but it really makes it feel well thought out. Evil Ed’s transformation when he has been staked by Peter Vincent, is both horrifying and heart wrenching. Watching the body of the wolf with the stake through it was disturbing. It’s clumsy movements as it crosses the floor are chilling and sad. That is followed up by a series of moments as Ed returns to his normal form, but is obviously injured and in pain. As he reaches out to Peter, we almost want to have him take him in his arms to comfort him as he dies. Both actors get credit here, but the special effects makeup has to be given a big slap on the back to go along with that.
The fantastic practical effects continue in the climax. Amy’s jaw makeup was a startling reveal that provided a great shock in the moment. Jerry in his vampire form looks much different from the seducer that he was a few minutes earlier. The decay of Billy Cole matches anything from Raider of the Lost Ark. Hell, I even like the animated bat attack sequence, which mixes techniques and helps sustain some suspense as the characters are engaged in a final fight.
Ok, I lied, I did save the best two things for last, so there was a bit of an order here. Although I am not sure there is any way to prefer one of these over the other. The final ingredients are the performances of Chris Sarandon and Roddy McDowall. These two provide some of the best moments of the film, one by giving the movie a heart and the other by adding sex appeal. Vampire stories have always had a sensuality around them, even when the character is repulsive. For most of this movie, the vampire is the most charming character in the story. Sarandon makes Jerry Dandridge a Lothario, who snacks on fruit, moves in a sensual manner and speaks with a lilt in his voice that is hypnotic and threatening at the same time. He also comes close to making the character sympathetic, part of that is the script but most of it is in his eyes. The scene where he begins to transform Amy, is done with delicacy and more flair than your average teen horror film ever saw before.
McDowell is an old pro who has been given a chance to chew up a meaty part and make an impression on us. He is full of nervous ticks and rushed delivery. His voice cracks when he is frightened and he can make his eyes widen in fear very effectively. I love his bitter tone when denouncing the modern audience which rejects traditional monsters in favor of lunatics chopping up teenagers. I already said it, his most effecting moments are really silent as he watches in despair what he has had to do to Evil Ed. The facial expressions are detailed but very subtle. This is followed up by the influx of courage that he finally feels The moment when Dandridge laughs at him a second time and says “you have to have faith for this to work” and suddenly learns that Peter Vincent now does have faith, is earned by McDowell’s performance. I thought both hero and villain were award worthy in this film.
I saw this film with my wife Dee in Claremont, in August of 1985. We had dinner with her friend from high school and college, Karen Ayers. Her is how 1980s it was, we had dinner at the Black Angus. Twilight Time had a limited run Blu Ray of this film (3000 copies) that I missed out on and hope to some day remedy. Today, I screened it on the only format I have ever owned it in, once more the trusty Laserdisc has come to my rescue.
I am also happy to say that I am a proud owner of this fantastic movie poster. It once adorned the wall in my apartment, but after I had kids, I put up some less disturbing images. At some point I will dig it out of the bin that it is stored in, and place back in a location of honor.
OK, I know, two Clint Eastwood films in the first two weeks, you might think I have a man crush. Well, you’d be right. I freely admit to being a Clint Eastwood fan, and Dirty Harry is the main reason. I’d seen some of his other films like “Two Mules for Sister Sara” and “Where Eagles Dare”, before I saw the original “Dirty Harry”, but those films, as much as I enjoyed them, did not leave a mark on me like the San Francisco Homicide Inspector did. From that moment on, I was an enthusiastic follower of Eastwood’s career, and the character of Dirty Harry Callahan showed up in four more films over the next eighteen years. “The Dead Pool” was his last outing in this role, and I think it’s safe to say, he won’t be returning to it again.
This film is pretty maligned, and I have to admit I have not been too keen on it over the years. In a podcast I did on the Lambcast back in 2017, I think most of the guests ganged up on the film and rated it pretty low. I think my discouraging words may have been influenced by the fact that I watched all five films in a short span of time and “The Dead Pool” is a lesser entry. That being said, it is actually a much better film than I remembered.
Harry Callahan has just finished a trial where a mobster has been convicted and Harry has been threatened for his role in the case. Meanwhile, a DePalma wannabe played by future action star Liam Neeson, is working on a horror film with a drug addled rock star who dies. It turns out that the director and several crew members had a Death Pool on celebrities going, and the deceased singer was on the director’s list. So Harry is on the case, mobsters are trying to kill him, and he has become a celebrity himself, and his name is on the list as well.
“The Dead Pool” may have been put together in record speed. Eastwood was finishing up his pet project “Bird” and he agreed to do a commercial film for Warner Bros., and some friends of his came up with this idea. His stunt coordinator and friend, Buddy Van Horn, who recently passed, was made the director of the movie because Clint knew, that like himself, Van Horn could shoot fast. The film was announced in January and done and released in July of 1988.
There are certain formulas that a Dirty Harry movie needs to follow. One of them is that Harry ends up in the middle of an armed crime event and intervenes. We get that scene about a quarter of the way into the movie. You also have to have a particularly violent death for the main bad guy, that is directly a result of Harry’s actions. When you see the harpoon gun on the set of the movie, it is not hard to imagine how it will show up again. It’s also good to have a chase scene, and the one in this movie is a little innovative, taking “Bullitt” as a template but twisting it in an unusual way.
This was Patricia Clarkson’s second movie, after “The Untouchables” the year before. She is Harry’s love interest and a bit of an antagonist in the early going. Jim Carey plays the Rocker who expires in the first fifteen minutes of the movie, and there is a spiffy take down of film critic Pauline Kael who notoriously labeled the original “Dirty Harry” as fascistic and racist. Tre are a number of red herrings in the story to throw some mystery in, but at the end of the day, the killer is a generic psycho without the character development that was afforded Scorpio in the first film.
My second daughter was born at the end of June, and I did not see a movie between her birth and this late July entry into the Summer. I finally convinced my wife to leave the baby and her older sister with my Mom, and we ventured out to the movies again, alone for the first time since my daughter arrived. I liked the movie well enough in 1988, I lost a little respect for it over the years, but watching it again today reminds me that craft doesn’t have to be art to be entertaining. When you have pros who know what they are doing, even if it is going through the motions, it can still captvate.
Since the moment I saw the above trailer, well before the movie came out, I was in love with the concept of Indiana Jones. As a kid I watched Tarzan movies and the Lone Ranger, and I have been a fan of James Bond since I first stumbled onto the paperbacks in the closet, upstairs where my brothers and I had our bedrooms. I love a swashbuckler and everyone knows that if Adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones (and Harrison Ford goes along with it).
This concoction of movie serial pastiche, is the brainchild of George Lucas, and was formulated with his friend Steven Spielberg as their own James Bond style adventure character. Lucas remembered the serials that played on a weekly basis at the movie theaters and late night television shows. Several years earlier, he took the concepts of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, and treated them with more seriousness but also a sense of fun to create the Star Wars story. “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, is a successful attempt to repeat the idea but with a different motif. When you mix in ancient lore, with Nazi’s and archeology, you get the seed of a world where a boy’s adventure story can come to life. Gunga Din influenced this character, well before the second film in the series which takes those concepts from the thirties and updates them, but keeps them in the 1930s still.
This weekend is the fortieth anniversary of the release of the film, which was an instant smash world wide and has spawned three completed sequels and is currently shooting a fourth. Octogenarian Indiana Jones will still be cooler than some slick new character created by the latest flavor of the month writer/director. This character has been an icon for four decades and any excuse to revisit with him is okay in my book.
Everyone will have their favorite sequence in the film. Maybe you love the opening which ultimately stands separate from the main plot. So much action happens in that first ten minutes, compared to most films of the time, that you will be hard pressed to catch your breathe before suddenly we are in a shootout, in a bar in Nepal, with the coolest girl you ever wished you had dated yourself (Karen Allen/Awesome). Of course that is just an interlude to a chase and fight through a Cairo marketplace, which is merely a precursor to a thrilling escape from an underground temple. That gives way to a chase on horseback, that ends in a truck fight that mimics “Stagecoach”, and we still have mysticism and melting Nazis in front of us.
I will take one brief moment to address the supposed plot hole that was famously used to deflate the geeks on “The Big Bang Theory”. The idea that nothing Dr. Jones does would change the outcome because the Nazi’s would still get melted anyway, whether he was around or not. This is the kind of thinking that sees no difference between a four hour plane flight and a two or three day road trip. If all you care about s the destination, then you are missing the point. There has to be a struggle, we need to be emotionally connected to what happens, the audience needs to be swept up in the events. You don’t determine the Heavyweight Championship by a flip of the coin. The chance that something a character does will make a difference is what we want, if it ultimately fails, that does not mean it was not worth trying. Look up any definition of “adventure” it will not be synonymous with “outcome”.
I have written about experiencing this movie a few times before:
I saw this movie with my wife at the Alhambra Cinema in the big theater at the corner of Main and Atlantic in my hometown. We went back several more times that summer, with friends, family and by ourselves. The Summer of 1981 was defined by Adventure. You know the film, you know the name. Let’s simply celebrate a cultural Icon, some great film makers, and the idea that going to a movie should engage you emotionally. Internet smartassess need not apply here.
The first time James Cameron got all wet was Piranha II, but he has mostly disowned that experience. Before he made the movie with the big boat, he made this underwater adventure with a big science fiction theme that while not exactly a flop, certainly underperformed at the box office. It’s reputation was significantly enhanced when a “Special Edition” that reflected Cameron’s original vision of the film was released on Laserdisc. That’s right my friends, once again, Laserdisc comes to the rescue. There have been subsequent VHS and DVD releases including the Special Edition, As of this moment, a Blu Ray version is somewhere in the treasure trove that Disney aquired when they bought 20th Century Fox.
Most of the first two hours of the film are a enhanced reality version of a potentially believable story. A nuclear sub has sunk near an experimental underwater oil rig, and the military has commandeered the facility to perform a rescue operation. There are multiple crisis’s that effect the oil rig workers and the SEAL team that has joined them. Some of those are a result of the deep sea environment, some are the military implications, but the biggest issue is the relationship between the rig’s ramrod Bud, played by Ed Harris, and his estranged wife Lindsey, the designer of the platform, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
As events play out, it becomes obvious how deeply the two feel for each other, regardless of the professional quarrel they are having. The ultimate scene that demonstrates their love is the dangerous option they take when only one diving suit is available to escape from a crashed submersible. In the end, it does get stretched out a bit but the passion that is felt plays in a very real way and it was one of the creative touches that Cameron added to his story.
Michael Biehn appears in another of Cameron’s films here, as Lt. Coffey, the leader of the SEAL team. In addition to the rescue operation, there is a hidden agenda that the military has that might conflict with the commercial rig. That complication gets more intricate when Coffey develops a form of nervous syndrome related to the high pressure atmosphere they have to breathe in. In the extended version of the film, that localized nuclear problem is a microcosm of a bigger confrontation that is being played out worldwide by the Americans and Soviets.
The water tentacle sequence was one of the first major uses of CGI other than framework. It was the main reason the film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, and set the groundwork for Cameron’s use of the same technology more extensively in his next film, Terminator 2. The set decoration was also nominated but lost out to the equally inspired “Batman”
This was a movie that I saw solo. For a few years, we had one car and the kids were at a daycare and Dee worked in downtown Los Angeles. If my classes ended early enough, I could see something before having to drive downtown to get her and then get the kids. This was like a 1pm screening at another of those Cinema General Theaters that you find in the mall, only this time I was at the Los Cerritos Mall on the Southeast part of L.A. county.
One of the legends around the film had to do with how rigorous the shoot was and how hard it was on the actors relationship with the director. The popular phrase “Life’s a Bitch and then you Die” was altered an on tee shirts worn by many of the crew, it read “Like’s Abyss, and Then you Dive”.
Technically, the title of this film on home video is “The Adventures of the Great Mouse Detective”, but somewhere along the way, the precursor phrase gets dropped. IMDB doesn’t require it, it stops being used in the promotional material, and even my search page on the poster site that I use, which is very fussy, acknowledges the shorter version. So the added words were probably a marketing tool when the film was released on VHS. What is frustrating is that neither title really should have been used. This should be “Basil of Baker Street”. The story is that Studio Chairman Michael Eisner , seeing the disappointing box office of “Young Sherlock Holmes” ordered the title change to the incredibly literal “The Great Mouse Detective”. The animators subsequently mocked that decision by bandying about alternate titles for other Disney Classics like “Seven Little Men help a Girl”.
Regardless of the title, the film was subsequently successful and is a bit of a transition from the older Disney style to the renaissance that was to come with “the Little Mermaid”. This was also the first Disney film to make use of the then innovative concept of computer generated images. The climax of the movie inside the gearworks of the Big Ben Clock Tower were created using computer wireframe designs.
Before I had kids, I might occasionally feel odd about attending a children’s film with just my wife, but I had always been an animation fan so this was going to be a theatrical experience no matter what. It has been a number of years since I saw this and the first thing that I realized I’d forgotten is how good the animation here looked. “Oliver and Company”, which came two years after this, looks primitive by comparison. This was truly fluid animation and the character designs were more natural despite the cartoon nature. The main characters are detailed and they move in dramatic animated fashion. . The villain is Ratigan, a rat posing as a mouse, he is large, barrel chested and elaborately costumed in all of his scenes. When you add the vocal performance of Vincent Price, it will be easy to see that this will be the most memorable character in the film.
Basil by contrast, is lean, his clothes are not flashy, and the voice actor is not nearly as distinctive. He is played more as a dilettante than the sharp, incisive character we know from the Basil Rathbone version of Holmes. (Yes, the name Basil in the book series was inspired by the actor most famous for playing Holmes). At one point he despairs of having been outwitted, and that personality quirk made the character less compelling as a result.
There are a number of terrific scenes in the film but I want to highlight just two of them. When Vincent Price sings the villain song, it takes place in Ratigan’s lair, and the variety of mice and the activities they engage in are pretty vivid. It is here that we get our best looks at the bad guy and the details really make this a shining moment in the film.
The second sequence of note takes place in a beerhall. First of all, this is a Disney film and the fact that the mice are all drinking beer is a bit odd. There is also plenty of cigarette smoking taking place, but this is years before anyone was putting disclaimers about tobacco products in the credits. During the sequence, there are a series of vaudeville style performers on stage and all of them are interesting animated acts, including a juggling octopus. As with most scenes in a story like this, there is also a fight and there are several creative moments in that confrontation.
The story is not too sophisticated, it is a kids version of how a bad guy might try to take over the world. Set in the Victorian period on the Jubilee, it involves Ratigan attempting to replace Queen Victoria with a mechanical substitute who will name him as first advisor. That Basil and Dr. Dawson (not Watson) will prevail is not ultimately in doubt, but the cute little girl mouse who brings them into the plot does become an object of rescue and that will work for a young audience as well.
I was really impressed with the look of the film, and maybe that is because I enjoyed it in all of it’s glory on my Laserdisc player. I am in the process of sorting all my discs so I can find the titles a bit easier, and this came up yesterday. I’m not a tech geek on this format, as many of the fans of this relic technology are. My player is simply plugged into the composite inputs on the TV, no other upscaling, no filters, and no fancy audio system. I once had several of those in place but it got complicated and those were not the main reason I am still loyal to the format.
If I do another post on my other movie a day site, recommending Summer Films for the family, as I have a couple of times before, “The Great Mouse Detective” will certainly go on the list. But even if you don’t have kids, this is an enjoyable, relatively short film that will allow you to appreciate traditional animation and Vincent Price, what more could you want?
I’m going to start with a reaction that I had as I was putting this post together, and it’s not about the film itself. I went looking for the trailer for the movie to include here, and the above is what I found. Before you read any further, I plead with you to watch this trailer, it does something that movie previews just don’t anymore, and boy should they. Instead of editing together a bunch of clips from the film, they have created an original promo that captures the spirit of the movie, without giving away all the jokes. The premise is set up in a fun way and the final shot of the cast and set tells you why this is a comedy. I am sooo happy to have found this, I hope you all like it as well.
Welcome to the second edition of “Comedy Tuesday” here at 80s Nostalgia Central. Originally I had a different film slated for today, but one of my goals was to start with films I own on physical media, and it turns out I did not have the planned film, so this was a quick substitute which works out very well. I would not say this is a Forgotten Film, but it certainly is not one that people bring up regularly when talking about movies from 1982, one of the great film years ever. “Night Shift” is the first studio film from director Ron Howard. I’d seen his first film, the low budget Roger Corman Produced “Grand Theft Auto”, and the similar film that he starred in, “Eat My Dust”, they were perfectly fine B-movies, but this is a studio film and a big step up. By asking his “Happy Days” costar Henry Winkler to be in the movie, he certainly was trying to reasure the studio that they had a viable product. The trick was however that Winkler ends up doing the more sedate part rather than the flashy role.
When people do recall this film, it is probably for the blazing comet that arrived on the scene in this his first movie, Michael Keaton. The role of Billy “Blaze” Blazejowski calls for a dynamic performer with comic chops and the willingness to go big. Keaton took to this like a fish to water. The character comes across as a likable, maybe slightly irritating victim of Attention Deficit Disorder. Billy Blaze has a hundred ideas and thinks about them at a hundred miles an hour. His constant banter and riffing on something in front of him or one of his big ideas, is the thing that energizes this movie when the plot falls into too much exposition.
The story of an exuberant man trying to help a repressed man out of his shell is an old one. Recent examples might include “Hot Fuzz”, or from the 1980s “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”. When the hooker in the apartment next to him has trouble with the cops and johns because she has no pimp, Chuck and Billy end up taking on the task. This of course is way out of Chuck’s comfort zone, but as the music montage shows us, he is good at it and creates a viable business plan for Belinda, played by Shelly Long, and the girls she works with. Of course this is a middle brow, studio comedy, so the prostitutes are not drug addicts, the johns are not degenerates, and the two leads only get a little carried away with their success.
The secondary love plot is fine, and the criminal element that does show up to help create a climax is played for laughs, even though they have murdered one man and attempt to kill Chuck (although with a comic twist). Nothing about the movie is to be taken seriously. There is not a political agenda about women controlling their own bodies, or how the patriarchy turns women into objects. The sex is never really shown and when it is suggested, there is never anything that would cause a maiden Aunt to get her ears red.
As I was listening to the movie, I was surprised at how solid the soundtrack songs were. Al Jarreau, The Pointer Sisters, Talk,Talk, Van Halen, Chaka Khan and Rod Stewart all have tracks somewhere in the movie. As I was listening to the title song, the thought went through my head that the studio band sounded like “Quarterflash” a one hit wonder from the era who played in a style that is clearly early eighties standard. Surprise, surprise, it was them, so they were not entirely a Quarter Flash in the pan.
This is Michael Keaton’s movie, despite the fact his is not the lead role. In the decade of the 80s, he was the comedy go to actor, and it was not really until “Batman” that he was able to shift out more to dramatic roles. That’s OK however because most of those comedies were really funny because he was in them. I saw this film with my wife in one of the Cinema General Theaters in what was then the Santa Anita Mall. It was a four screen multiplex that I’d also seen the early Ron Howard films in. Mall Cinemas almost always had matinees and those were at a discount price. For a young married couple that sort of thing mattered.
In 1983, director John Badham had the unique experience of having two major summer films open within just a couple of weeks of one another. “Blue Thunder” is a techno thriller with a conspiracy plot that opened first. I will be covering it later in the Summer. “WarGames” was the less expensive but more financially and critically well received of the two. It took advantage of the era in which it was made and told a nightmare story that was made convincing, even if the computer material was not accurate.
This is one of the earliest examples of what would become a well worn path for thrillers in the next two or three decades, it’s a hacker story. David Lightman is a high school student who is absorbed in computer technology to the neglect of his classwork. He is very bright but as is typical in a teen story, he applies his smarts to only the areas he is interested in. David is played by Matthew Broderick, this was only his second film. Three years later he would also do a little hacking of his school records in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, which we will also be catching down the road. David and his friend Jennifer, played by Ally Sheedy, have accidentally penetrated a defense department computer system while looking for a gaming company. The defense computer has games that it uses in creating war scenarios, and David chooses Global Thermo-nuclear War to explore the computer games he has found. Unfortunately, a new automatic program has been installed to reduce human hesitancy about firing nuke weapons and the computer believes it is playing out the actual scenario.
In the late 70s and early 80s there had been several reports of Defense Department alerts that turned out to be false alarms, but never the less had initiated military preparations for a nuclear strike. 1983 was, after maybe 1962, the peak of the Cold War. There were nuclear disarmament movements in Europe, and in the U.S. there were calls for what was referred as a “Nuclear Freeze”. The Soviets were going through Premiers like crazy, with at least three different leaders in President Reagan’s first term. After the Soviet adventurism in Afghanistan, and the collapse of democracies in southeast Asia to Communist based regimes, the U.S. has started investing in new weapons systems that freaked out many in the population. The famous “Doomsday Clock” of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists had been moved to 3 minutes to Midnight and the arms race just made the scenerio in this movie more concerning.
“WarGames” succeeds on the basis of two important factors, the screenplay and the production design. The script by Lawrence Lasker and Walter Parkes was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Original Screenplay. They took a burgeoning interest in computers and turned it into a paranoid fantasy of world destruction that felt believable if improbable. The story is populated with characters we can relate to, like David and Jennifer, but also Drs, Falken, and McKittrick. When you add in the dubious General, you get a combination of characters who are easy to understand, have clever dialogue, and never really act in the stupid manner that would usually be found in a movie.
The film opens with a great sequence in a missile silo that has been created by the film makers on the MGM lot, but it comes across as very realistic. The two airmen who are tasked to launch, follow their procedures , up to the point of turning that last key. Michael Madsen makes his film debut as one of the officers, the other is veteran John Spencer, and it is his reticence to follow orders and kill millions that leads to the scenario of the film. Spencer sells us on the idea that even a well trained man, will have doubts when faced with a monumental decision like the one in the test that they did not know was a test. We quickly transition to the main set for the film, where the film makers create a NORAD War Room that is apparently a lot more elaborate than the real ones. Ever since “Dr. Strangelove” and “Fail Safe” the idea of a big board, showing all the military activities of the potential combatants has dominated the way we imagine how a modern war will be fought. This film takes the idea of the computers running everything, and gives us a visual tableau to see all of this on. Most computer movies have a single screen for everyone to stare at, and in the early 80s all you got were green letters against a black background. The production designers here create multiple screens that are like current big screen televisions, and colorful but simple graphics to play out the war scenarios that the computer, nicknamed the WOPR, is going though.
Admittedly, there is some back and forth action between the teen characters and locations that stretches’ the imagination. We supposedly go from Seattle, to Colorado, to Oregon and then back to Colorado in a brief amount of time. Some of this travel would have been engineered by the Air Force but the logistics are still a bit daunting.
So while the technology is old (enjoy the floppy discs and dial up modems), and the setting imaginative, this is a film that holds up as an entertainment because it is really about a situation that continues to be a problem. Tension around the world and fingers on a nuclear trigger has not disappeared. The school scenes will inform you why Broderick was a perfect choice for Ferris just a few years later, and movie magic continues to create worlds that we want to believe are real. One extra little treat, we saw John Wood who plays Professor Falken in the role of Salieri in the stage version of Amadeus the next January. Oh, and Mark Hamill was Mozart.
80s Nostalgia Central: A Kirkham a Movie A Day Project 