80's Trash of the Week: Cat People

Having recently become a cat owner, I decided to revisit this psychosexual spankfest by Paul Schrader, better known for writing Taxi Driver and directing arthouse faves like Affliction and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. What compelled him to remake the creepy Val Lewton horror classic Cat People as a bizarre mythical tale of kitties and titties is beyond me, but IMDb trivia says he admits that one day he was so high he refused to get out of his trailer and direct. By the end of the movie, you'll believe it.

Nastassja burned into my 12 year old retinas

The original was delightfully creepy and dreamlike, where a young girl's fears become a frightening reality. This one just seems tawdry and serious, because it's about people who fuck leopards. Schrader and his production designer, Ferdinando Scarfiotti, craft a beautiful mythical past that seems to exist in a timeless corner of our brains, peopled with Jungian archetypes. Rather like another psychosexual fairy tale of the '80s, The Company of Wolves, this is much darker and erotic, and while it is sometimes silly and overlong, it is unique and engaging. Unlike another "animal people" movie of the period, Wolfen, it manages to draw us in, and is probably best compared to another stylish, sexy horror film- The Hunger.

The dreamlike quality of the mythical scenes

It begins in a desert village at the dawn of human history, where an animist tribe appeases the hungry leopards by sacrificing a virgin to them; we see a beautiful young woman tied to a enormous tree, and at night the leopard comes. He doesn't eat her, so she is brought to his cave, which is curiously marked with a drawing of a cat with human hands. From here we move to modern-day New Orleans, that most lurid of American cities, always a hotbed of sexual violence, whether it be from vampires, voodoo queens, or cat people. Paul Gallier (the always creepy Malcolm McDowell) picks up his sister Irene (Nastassja Kinski) at the airport, after a long time apart. Kinski plays the virginal naif perfectly, and her sensuous body belies her behavior.

Malcolm McMeowell

Her brother is quite the opposite, and immediately gets caught in panther form when he frequents a brothel. They coop him up in the zoo, where Irene goes to visit and meets Oliver, the friendly zookeeper (John Heard). Yeah, really... see where this is going? Ed Begley, Jr. plays a rather careless curator, and Panther-Paul yanks his arm off for his troubles... and then he somehow escapes. As Irene finds herself falling for Oliver, her brother makes his own advances on her- since she is the only sexual partner who won't be torn to shreds in the climax. She rebuffs him and he goes back to hunting hookers, which eventually leads police to his basement.

He doesn't mind eating her after sex

As a dreamlike story of myth, the movie works great. The opening scene, with Giorgio Moroder's haunting synth theme, is great at drawing us in. Once Irene gets entangled with Paul, she behaves like a jealous kitten and takes a swipe at his colleague Alice (Annette O'Toole) while she bathes topless in the swimming pool. This mirrors the original film, which I think was much better. In Jacques Tourneur's original, Irene is young Serbian woman who thinks she is one of the cat people of her village- Satanic cultists who take the form of a black cat. That film plays it off as a psychological issue, and keeps the cat in shadows, so we're not sure if she turns into one or just thinks she does.

Her hubby Michael McKean is one lucky bastard.

Unfortunately we are pretty sure people turn into cats in this one; our first introduction is a leopard under the bed in a whorehouse, where the prostitute has just left her john. It doesn't take a genius, and it's a mistake to remove any suspense about the nature of the creatures. The film does work very well as an erotic dream piece, partly through generous application of breasts, including the bountiful Annette O'Toole, and the lithe Nastassja Kinski. Malcolm McDowell's Paul is not a remorseless sociopath, but a slave to his urges; while he cuddles with a woman he knows he will tear apart, he says he feesl bad because he likes her. It doesn't stop him from nibbling a bit of her skin left on his belly when he wakes back up in human form, though.

Big cats are dangerous...

The brother and sister have a feline grace to their movements, but occasionally it gets a bit silly, such as when Irene washes her cheeks like a cat; it happens after a formative, primal moment, after she sleeps with Oliver and loses her virginity, and I suppose it is meant to signify her transformation. It doesn't work; something more subtle was in order. The screenplay is a bit of a mess, and breaks its own rules a few times. The new ending is terrific, and bookends the story perfectly, but the way there is long and meandering. While it was certainly enjoyable seeing Ms. Kinski cavort in the nude, as stories go I prefer the original version.

...but a little pussy never hurt anyone.

Beers Required to Enjoy: 1
Could it be remade today? Underworld 3: Lycan Sex Party
Quotability Rating: Zero
Cheese Factor: Mild
High Points: Dreamy visuals and a litter boxful of nudity
Low Point: Script written on cocaine binge
Gratuitous Boobies: More titty than kitty

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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.

80's Trash of the Week: Student Bodies

Before there was Scary Movie, there was Student Bodies- a bizarre 80's horror spoof that veers from the campy and ridiculous, to self-referential genre deconstruction. The cast has mostly disappeared; in production quality it's on par with teen dreck like Joysticks; hell, even the producer took the Alan Smithee route, but it still has its charms. With a villain called "The Breather" and an impossibly goofy janitor named Malvert, you just can't lose.
It's tongue is so firmly planted in its cheek that it actually reaches its ass cheeks, but as an early spoof of horror films it will get a few chuckles from fans of Halloween, Friday the 13th, Carrie, Black Christmas, and other staples of the "born in '70s, grew up in the '80s" generation. The title cards let you know what you're in for:

This film is based on a true incident.
There were 26 horror films made last year.
None of them lost money.

Well, I'm sure this one did. They do what they can with the zero budget and a plot written on cocktail napkins. The camera approaches a house at night, and the time stamps first read "Halloween," then "Friday the 13th," and finally "Jamie Lee Curtis's Birthday," and we see a girl alone, being hassled by a heavy breathing prank caller. About the only name you'd remember in the credits is a pseudonym- Richard Belzer plays "The Breather," the film's bumbling killer, as "Richard Brando."

Richard Belzer makes "Breather" a lot of fun.

Before "Homicide," Belzer was quite the funnyman- he really hams it up here as a sort of whiny Brooklynite with bad asthma, constantly kvetching to the audience as he stalks his prey. We see him trudge up the stairs, stepping in wads of gum, and finally he springs out on the girl and kills her with... a paper clip. That's the kind of gags we get here- it was sort of funny as an 11 year old in '82. When her boyfriend comes out of the shower, Breather kills him by trapping him in a trash bag. We see the Body Count tallied on the screen, and much of the humor is from little goofy comments with arrows, like "CLUES!!" when someone finds a bag of trash bags.

Breather in the girl's locker room

The infamous Malvert and his girlfriend

When the parents come home, they're more horrified at the mess than the bodies, so there's some dry humor mixed among the goofy gags. The best parts are the characters themselves- Breather is almost like Woody Allen in an iron lung, and when we get to the school we meet the creepy janitor known as Malvert-- a gangly, double-jointed freak known only as "The Stick" in the credits. He's visible in all his limb-flailing glory in this video at 1:17, dancing with his sex doll. The rest of the crew include a pervy Principal, a buzzcut shop teacher obsessed with horsehead bookends, and a severe English teacher who looks like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Zen and the art of wood shop

What plot there is revolves around two the virginal gal Toby (long before Scream, this movie had "Sex Kills" gags) and her friend Hardy trying to solve the murder. Of course, Toby gets blamed because she's always snooping around the crime scenes. She roams from suspect to suspect as the body count goes up, and the film pauses for fourth-wall-breaking asides, such as the Rocky Horror Picture Show-esque narrator showing up to say:

Ladies and gentlemen, in order to achieve an "R" rating today, a motion picture must contain full frontal nudity, graphic violence, or an explicit reference to the sex act. Since this film has none of those, and since research has proven that R-rated films are by far the most popular with the moviegoing public, the producers of this motion picture have asked me to take this opportunity to say: Fuck you.

Malvert bring keys, AND cheese!

It has its moments, especially when "The Stick" shows up to perform some sort of creepy contortionist gag with his blow-up doll girlfriend, or peeing in the punchbowl. Abruptly near the end, the film changes tone from brash stupidity and tries for a few cheesy Wizard of Oz references- "it was all a dream!" and then goes after Carrie. It's nothing great, but as far as intentionally cheesy '80s flicks go, it's a classic. If you include it with other horror spoofs like Pandemonium with Tom Smothers, it rises to the top.

Beers Required to Enjoy: as many as possible
Could it be remade today? see Scary movie 6
Quotability Rating: low
Cheese Factor: extra sharp
High Points: Malvert!
Low Point: blind dude vs. wheelchair guy
Gratuitous Boobies: DENIED!

Her button reads "the answer is NO!" but Toby's boobs might have helped this film.

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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.

80s Trash of the Week: Raw Deal! Nobody gives him a raw deal!

Nobody gives him a raw deal!

Shortly after the masterpiece that is Commando, Arnie took a nose-dive in this silly movie about an FBI agent who's now a sheriff in a podunk little town just because he roughed up a suspect too harshly. You believe that shit? Now he's stuck wearing a flannel shirt and chasing guys in his Jeep, instead of wearing a suit in Chicago, where his wife would rather be. It starts off well enough, with Schwarzenegger chasing a guy impersonating a motorcycle cop through cornfields, a junkyard, and a construction site. You can see a brute like Arnold in a lumberjack outfit driving a Jeep. A cornfed farm boy playing a small town cop, sure. How does he stop the guy? He sets him on fire. We begin to see why he was demoted from Federal agent. When he threw the book at a suspect, he probably shoved the Encyclopedia Britannica up the guy's ass.

Subtlety

When people compare Commando to Stallone's inferior Cobra, I get so emotional, baby. There is no comparison; Commando transcends stupidity and becomes art; it knows how ridiculous it is and embraces it like a long-lost sibling, which it then uses as a human shield to stop a hail of bullets, saw blades, axes and table legs. Unfortunately, Raw Deal has no wry Austrian grin on its face; we get one amazing set piece, but the rest is way too serious. Arnie hiding behind things for cover? What could shield his enormous physique?

Betty Crapper

We leave Hazzard County for Chicago when Arnie's old boss, Darren McGavin-- Kolchak the Night Stalker; the Old Man from A Christmas Story-- approaches him after a mob witness and all the Feds guarding him are slaughtered. He wants Arnie to infiltrate the Chicago mob and find the traitor who sold them out. That should be easy enough- a 250lb Austrian superman blends right in! After showing us his painful home life, with a bitchy wife who throws a "SHIT" cake at him, he fakes his own death with a marvelous, subtle plan. He parks his squad car at a gas refinery, which he then blows up. A baptism of fire. He is reborn, a new man, unrecognizable because now... he slicks his hair back like an Italian mobster.

I am perfectly disguised!

He plows into Chicago by beating up mobsters running high-stakes gambling houses full of rich folks in sleazy neighborhoods they'd never step foot into (Chicago boy Ebert found that especially amusing). He ices the shitcake by driving a tow truck through the building. Eventually a beleaguered mob boss hires him as muscle, since he's in the middle of a war. They hire a degenerate gambler broad named Monique to snoop on him, and she tries to get him into bed, but in post-'85 movie fashion, the only boobies we see are Arnold's. And I think they're bigger than hers anyway.

Honey, you really ought to wear a bra.

The next half hour is full of silly shootouts and car chases as the mob fights it out; there's a decent heist with a fake bomb squad, but nothing too memorable. For some reason, they decide to put a hit on McGavin, and make Arnie do it- but of course, he shoots the other mob hitters instead. McGavin is gravely wounded, and this gives Arnold the inspiration to root out the traitor HIS way.. by killing all the mobsters until he finds the guy. Process of elimination!

I went through zem like a bowl of gavadeel!

This leads to the movie's most memorable scene, which involves Schwarzenegger driving through a huge construction site in a Riviera convertible, shooting an H&K to "I Can't Get No (Satisfaction)" by the Rolling Stones. It's a great set piece, having him duel an earth mover and a dump truck, but unfortunately it fizzles out because the mob boss is elsewhere. Arnie suits up in a leather jacket with a bevy of guns, reminiscent of his famous role as The Terminator, but as he works his way up through the boss's high rise, it's not very exciting. Shoot, shoot, dodge. Shoot shoot shoot. He doesn't throw anyone out a window, or drop a mini-bar on anyone, or anything fun like that. Arnie does what he can with the script, but it gives him few chances to be the sardonic smart-ass we'd love in and Commando and Running Man.

Running Down a Goon

His buddy Sven-Ole Thorson from Conan the Barbarian shows up as a bearded thug, but they just shoot each other instead of brawling across the gleaming '80s decor. He finds the traitor because he's the only one left alive, cowering in a corner. I wish all police work was this easy! Turns out he's the balding weasel from "Murphy Brown," and he executes him in typical non-Arnie fashion, by tossing him a gun and waiting for him to pull it on him. He gave you a RAW DEAL, Arnie! Just shove a cocktail shaker through his heart and throw him off the top of the Hancock Building or something! The closest he comes to is when he kills the mob boss; he dumps a bowl of pills, which look like Good 'n Plenty candies, on his corpse. But he doesn't say a thing!

Now you're good and plenty dead!

After Arnie's obliterated every bad guy, he stumbles back to Darren McGavin's hospital room. The guy needs to learn how to walk again, and he's struggling. Arnie is supposed to encourage him, but he knows how silly this scene is. He's grinning the entire time, trying not to laugh at McGavin's earnest attempt at making this an emotional scene. It really bears watching, not only to see the effortless skill of a talented character actor, but also Arnie's evil grin as he calls him a girly-man for being a cripple.

Mein Fuhrer! I can valk!

You know who gets the raw deal? We do. Just remember: You should not drink and bake.

P.S. not to be confused with the good film noir by Anthony Mann from 1948!
P.P.S. Also contains the most horrifying pleasure trail outside of a werewolf movie:

Beers Required to Enjoy: 2
Could it be remade today? Straight to DVD
Quotability Rating: Low
Cheese Factor: Medium-Sharp
High Points: I Can't Get No Satisfaction
Low Point: the whole middle of the movie
Gratuitous Boobies: Just Arnold's mega-moobs

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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.

80's Trash of the Week: The Gate

When I was a kid, I would have loved it if a Gate to Hell opened up in my yard. Especially under a spooky tree. That's the premise of The Gate, a late 80's horror film starring a very young Stephen Dorff. One weekend when his parents are away, with only his dog, his older sister Al, and his metal-head buddy Terry for company, Glen will have to battle a horde of demons infesting his yard, and find a way to send them... back to Hell!

You violated our hole

The story begins when akes up from a nightmare about his treehouse falling down in a freak lightning storm, and finds that the tree really has fallen. His father has already gotten some workers to start filling in the hole, but they find a geode full of purple crystals and give it to little Glen; this leads he and Terry to dig up the hole looking for more, and they find an even bigger one that they can't split open. When his sister is having a party against her parents' wishes, he and Terry manage to crack it, and it releases spooky vapors. And of course, creepy stuff starts happening. At first, it's pretty innocuous.

I wish my geodes summoned demons.

The party's over when they play "light as a feather, stiff as a board" with Glen, and he actually levitates into the air and breaks a lamp. But of course, that's just the beginning. His aging dog disappears... Terry sees his dead mother walking out of the mist, in a frightening hallucination. Moths they caught flying out of the creepy hole keep coming back to life. The movie doesn't always make sense; it's like a child's dream. a mirage of Glen's parents appears, and the worst thing they can say is "You've been BAD!" as if the demons are plumbing the kid's thoughts.

The glorious 80's

It takes a long time for the little demons to show up, but when they do, they are surreal and creepy. They first appear in that childhood staple, Under the Bed. Drooling monsters were segregated into three neighborhoods in my child: Under the Bed, In the Closet, or worst, The Cellar. There was always the chance that Something Under the Bed might grab your foot if you weren't properly covered. There's a great scare here when a huge arm comes after Al, but sadly, the giant hands only have one scene. They burst into a horde of little baby-sized demons, which are even creepier.

Somebody get a broom.

Their job is to catch you and take you back down the hole, but luckily they make it through the first night. Terry, the nerdy pal, lives in a room full of metal posters, including a bedsheet with "metal" spray-painted in red. At first it seems hilarious, but then I remember pinning up Iron Maiden albums with "Eddie" on them, and a "metal" bedsheet would have been the piece d'resistance of my shrine to Ronny James Dio in 1983. One of Terry's metal albums, by Sacrifyx (great name), tells him all about how to deal with demons, so they have a fighting chance. But just when they think they've closed the gate to hell, hell really breaks loose.

Terry jamming to Sacrifyx.

I wish my metal albums were by bands who disappeared after printing knowledge from The Dark Book. Sadly, my adventures with Satan began and ending with prank calls to 666-EVIL, or ringing the doorbell of 668, the Neighbor of the Beast. The movie does a great job of combining so many childhood fantasies- the creepy rock album with backwards messages, a hole in the yard being a gateway to adventure, silly party games turning real, and having scary stories you made up turn out to be true.

Sacrifyx and the Dark Book

Benefits of listening to metal

In Terry's case, he made up a story about a workman on Glen's house dying on the worksite, and being buried in the walls; after closes the Gate by reciting Bible verses, and a harrowing adventure down the rabbit hole, the scares begin anew when the wall bursts open to reveal a zombie workman conjured from his fears. In the end it is up to Glen to defeat the huge demon who bursts from the floor of the house after his friends are captured. One of the most memorable scenes is when the demon touches him and puts an eye on his hand, which he stabs with a pencil.

I thought my palms were supposed to get hairy!

The story takes a long time to build, and feels a lot longer than its 85 minutes, but it's pretty entertaining along the way. The actors aren't great, but they are very natural and become endearing. The movie is a lot of fun at points, and but it has very dated effects, and sometimes just gets a little too silly. I would have loved this as a kid, though. Apparently they are making a sequel or a remake; it'll never be an American Pan's Labyrinth but it could be great PG movie if done right. But we're not allowed to scare kids anymore no matter how much they might like it. That's a damn shame, because the most memorable movies to me have always been the ones that scared the living shit out of me. The chestburster from Alien; the clown, and the tree from Poltergeist, and every damn scene in The Thing. Well, there's always this:

There's extra fun if you have a pause button.

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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.

80's Trash of the Week: Night Shift

Love Brokers!

Michael Keaton might be best remembered as Batman, or Mr. Mom, or Beetlejuice, but he got his start in movies with Night Shift, with ex-Fonzie Henry Winkler. Directed by fellow "Happy Days" refugee Ron Howard and penned by 80's staples Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. This movie was on HBO approximately every 5 minutes in the 80's, and I watched it nearly every time. When it popped on Mojo+ HD- your cable source for movies even HBO won't play anymore- I decided to see if it lived up to my nostalgic adulations.

Batman 2.0 vs. the Fonz

Risky Business is probably the better-known killer pimp comedy, but Night Shift led the way. In the opening scene, we see two toughs throw a pimp out a window, comically landing in a basketball hoop. One of them is Richard Belzer, a comedian whose biggest role prior to this was in 70's skit comedy The Groove Tube. At first we're not sure whether we're supposed to laugh or not, and then one of the kids playing ball says that shot should count, so we know it's okay to chuckle at the pimp splattered on the pavement. New York in the early 80's was still a tough town.

Slam dunk!

Shortly after we meet Chuck Lumley, a doormat of a morgue technician who's getting stepped on by his boss, his fiancé, and the city. Back then it was a surprise to see "The Fonz" playing a nebbish, but he handled the role with aplomb, channeling Woody Allen but making the role his own. His boss bullies him into taking the titular graveyard shift, where he gets partnered with Keaton's Bill "Blaze" Blazejowsky, the hyperactive doofus who has so many wacky ideas he carries a tape recorder to save them all. Great ideas like feeding mayonnaise to tuna fish, so you don't need to add it to make tuna salad.

Ron Howard's bro Clint gets the best boobies.

He's a schemer who starts using the hearses to chauffeur people around the city, like Ron's brother Clint Howard. This movie's so old that Clint had some hair left on that big melon of his. He's always a fine addition to a comedy in my book. Another 80's icon who appears is Shelley Long, as Chuck's neighbor Belinda- who just happens to be a call girl working out of her apartment, whose pimp was slam dunked in the opening scene. Now, I know the obvious joke is how the hell could Shelley Long make a living as a hooker? But she looked pretty good here, dolled up in sexy gear and acting appropriately perky. We meet her when Chuck goes next door to ask her to turn the music down, and gets roughed up by a huge cowboy in his underwear, a precursor to Times Square's naked cowboy.

Before Cheers, she was a total whore.

Later, when Belinda needs help getting bailed out, she calls Chuck during Thanksgiving dinner. Being the pushover he is, he goes and his fiancé (well-played by Gina Hecht as a henpecking nightmare) follows with her parents. Once they find out what his friend does for a living, there is considerable strain on the relationship. This gives Blazejowsky one of his signature ideas- why not run call girls out of the morgue? With his gumption and Chuck's financial wizardry, they could all be rolling in dough. Belinda gets her working girls in for the deal, and soon Blaze is rolling like a pimp in a Stutz Blackhawk luxobarge, and Chuck is getting ulcers worrying whether they'll get caught. Their success of course raises the suspicions of the two killers from the beginning, so the cops are the least of their worries.

Pros-Tit-U-Tion...

There are some good jokes in the movie, and Keaton had loads of comic energy back then. He plays well off of the Fonz, and Shelley Long plays the role completely straight, and is at least as believable as Jamie Lee Curtis's whore with a heart of gold from Trading Places, even if she couldn't fill Jame's bountiful brassiere with her ass cheeks. Gina Hecht has the thankless role as the frigid, neurotic fiance who disappears halfway through the movie, but she makes the most of it. It's also the film debut of Kevin Costner, who you can see in the frat party scene. Howard wisely shows us a decent amount of boobs; in a movie about hookers you'd feel cheated otherwise, and this one delivers.

Charming 80's New York hookers

The movie has a great tone, and its vision of New York has a touch of the sentimental- even though we get a tour of 42nd Street pre-Disney era, it feels more like They Might Be Giants than Taxi Driver. That's expected of a comedy, but it's a nice touch; it would be easy to make New York too smarmy, and thankfully there are no Typical Jewish Old Ladies, Brooklyn Policeman, Funny Black Homeless Guy or other 80's urban staples. The rude delivery boys (Vincent Schiavelli), the persistent buskers who stick their saxophone in Chuck's face, and the killer pimps never seem too cruel, even when they shove a fire hose down Fonzie's throat.

Who wants to drink from the fire hose?

The film doesn't glamorize prostitution, either- Shelly Long comes home with a black eye, so this is no Pretty Woman. Howard and the scriptwriters don't make the violent scenes very funny, but instead juxtapose them with a funny ending, like a bunch of Girl Scouts beating Chuck with their cookie boxes, or having a pimp shoot himself in the foot during a gunfight, in a believable manner- when pulling a gun from an ankle holster. The ending loses steam, but it's great to see Michael Keaton do his hyper dummy act, which would eventually be crafted into classic performances like Beetlejuice. The movie spends a little too much time showing us how Chuck grows a spine, but this movie holds up well. If you haven't seen it, you should give it a shot- I miss Funny Guy Michael Keaton, and wish he'd get another chance to do comedy.

Extra helping of boobies.

Beers Required to Enjoy: 1
Could it be remade today? It would seem quaint
Quotability Rating: Medium
Cheese Factor: Low
High Points: Michael Keaton's antics
Low Point: Ending drags
Gratuitous Boobies: 4 distinct pairs to make up for Shelley Long's AA cups

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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.

80's Trash of the Week: Masters of the Universe

1987 was a great year for the action movie. Arnie would solidify his action-star status with Predator; Paul Verhoeven would bring us to new levels of bleak satire and gore with Robocop; and Frank Langella would reach the nadir of his career as Skeletor in Masters of the Universe.
With a budget of $17 million that ballooned to $22 million, the He-Man movie had more money than Predator, Robocop, and Full Metal Jacket. Most of it seems to have been spent on an extended, boring chase sequence on hoverboards through alleys in the abandoned California town. The effects aren't bad, it's just horribly choreographed and directed. At one point when He-Man is supposed to be flipping over and coming back at a baddie flying after him, they just show Dolph Lundgren's head upside down. Great job. Darth Milk and I aren't good at the maths, but we figured out how you take a budget millions larger than 3 classics and get a crappy movie:

$17 million^^greyskull = CRAP

For you non-mathnerds, that means that when you expound millions of dollars to the power of greyskull, which is an imaginary number signifying infinite cheesiness, you will get the steaming poo pile that is Masters of the Universe.

The movie should have been a great success; it was based on a wildly popular toy and cartoon series, which I remember watching and loving. It was simple: Prince Adam was the Clark Kent of Eternia. With his Pete Rose haircut and gentle nature, no one would suspect that when he drew his magical sword and uttered "By the power of Greyskull!" he would transform into He-Man, savior of the planet. He was the only man powerful enough to stand up to Skeletor, the skull-headed conqueror who wanted to enslave all living creatures. He had some buddies to round out your toybox, too. Man-at-Arms, who had a G.I. Joe helmet and a porn mustache; Teela, the spunky gal sidekick who could hold her own in a fight, and being a kid's cartoon, we needed an animal and an annoying whiny character, so we had Cringer the Tiger and Orko, the flying douchebag. The cartoon is an 80's classic, and He-Man would give a moral to the story at the end of each episode, to keep us buying toys instead of smoking crack and stabbing each other.

Frank Langella needed money

When Mattel approached the Cannon Group to make a movie about He-Man, their fate was sealed. Infamous for such productions as the Death Wish sequels and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, they made some of the most memorable cheesefests of the 80's, and Masters of the Universe is no exception. The cartoon sprang from toys originally made for the 80's classic Conan the Barbarian, which had a bounty of breasts, blood and beefcake, and was deemed unsuitable for children. (Little did they know we all watched it on HBO anyway). So what was Mattel to do with all those toy molds? Give them some spare laser guns from Star Wars ripoffs, come up with some goofy names, and blammo, kids get to play with musclebound swordsmen in furry red banana hammocks without being associated with one of the most brutal fantasy movies of all time.

Surely pitched as Conan meets Star Wars

The toys were a big hit and spawned the aforementioned cartoon, but by 1987 He-Man was sort of played out. I was a junior in high school sporting my fro-mullet and I can't recall what the kiddies were watching by then, but Darth Milk was probably watching Mario Brothers and jumping on mushrooms in his backyard. Kids were playing Nintendo, and didn't care for He-Man's moral condescension and proselytizing anymore.

Even Orko boycotted this film

First-time director Gary Goddard was handed the reins, and Dolph Lundgren got the starring role after Sly Stallone snubbed his nose at it. He had made Cobra for Cannon the year before, probably the most ridiculous of his films. Dolph just came off of playing Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, and rivaled Arnold Schwarzenegger in both size and speech impediment, but never had the charisma. I liked Dolph in Showdown in Little Tokyo, and he does have a Master's Degree in Chemical Engineering, but he's pretty dry, and a forgettable He-Man.

"Around here, it's against the law to wear banana hammocks."

The rest of the cast isn't much better. Frank Langella dons some white makeup and becomes Skeletor, relishing the role, but most of the time he just gets to sit on the throne and look ugly. Max Von Sydow was the best part of Flash Gordon, but he wasn't covered in bumpy white latex. Billy Barty plays a little hairy dwarf troll named Gwildor, created for the movie as a replacement for Orko, the little floating wizard in a hajib and cape. While Orko is missed, mostly because I wanted to see how bad he'd look, Billy Barty is one of my favorite little people actors, and manages to craft a decent character out of the horrible dialogue he's given. He and Langella end up being the movie's only saving graces.

Luckily they land in a California town with a population of 5.

The movie also ends up being mostly set on Earth, for budgetary reasons. Now, I don't know how filming in abandoned Whittier, California was cheaper than finding some spot of desert to call Eternia. They begin out in the rocky wastes, where He-Man and friends are fighting with Skeletor's minions, who look like the Star Destroyer crew from Star Wars. They escape into Gwildor's little hobbit hole, where he shows them The Key, which looks like a medieval anal torture device. It's a musical key that opens portals to anywhere in the universe, and Skeletor has the other one already. So of course, they escape using the Key, and wind up behind a school in California.

Saurod is still bitter that he couldn't get a date to his prom.

This subplot seems aimed at getting teens to go see a kid movie; Courteney Cox and her musician boyfriend are making out in his convertible when Gwildor steals their bucket of fried chicken with a grappling hook. Eventually they meet up when Skeletor sends his bad guys- Beast Man, Blade, Saurod, and Karg- through the portal to create some shenanigans. They beat up a coach and trash the gym, which was decorated for the prom! How horrible. A local cop, the dependable jerk character actor James Tolkan, gets involved and does the usual stupid stuff to further a plot- arrest the good guy, play with the Key so the bad guys can find them, and otherwise be a pain in the ass.

Surfin' Etern-I-A

The script by David Odell, who wrote the classic The Dark Crystal and the turd Supergirl, is definitely once again in the turdpile of the spectrum. He doesn't even have anyone say "By the power of Greyskull!" because He-Man never has to transform. If they had rented a tiger to be Battlecat, kept things in the desert- which can't be that expensive, since so many shitty B movies have been shot out there- this could have been much better. Moving it to Earth and giving us useless teenager characters confuses everything, and makes the battle scenes have to be in places like a music store. When Skeletor finally arrives, he rolls down Main Street like a float in the Thanksgiving Day parade, and they couldn't afford any extras, so California looks completely deserted except for a cop, two students, and the guy running the guitar shop.

"And what's that? Skeletor has shot down the Snoopy balloon!"

I wanted to at least get some laughs, but it's monumentally boring and barely worth watching to laugh at. At 106 minutes long, it drags on forever, inserting plots about Courteney Cox's parents having died in a plane crash, which lets Skeletor's hench-babe Evil-Lyn trick her into giving up the Key. And her boyfriend's musical memory helps save them in the end. In the director's commentary, Goddard says that the original ending made preview audiences weep openly; all I can say is, it was probably over wasting 2 hours of their lives watching Dolph Lundgren try to enunciate in English.

You may have "the power," but I have a gold lamé cape.

The final battle between Skeletor and He-Man is decent, and he does get to yell "I... have... The POWER!!" as he draws his sword. You can see they spent a lot of money on effects, but mostly it's repetitive, unexciting battles between people with laser guns in suburbia. When He-Man is finally captured, Blade tortures him with a laser whip, and they didn't even bother syncing Lundgren's flinches with the animated whip. Flash Gordon of seven years prior looks and feels better, and is a lot more fun.

Villain rule #48: Never build a bottomless pit in the throne room.

I will say that the costumes for the creatures, such as Saurod and Gwildor, are quite good. Cannon would go on to create more atrocious films like Captain America before their death knell was sounded in the early 90's. I will thank them from the bottom of my teenage heart for 1985's Lifeforce, with its abundance of boobies. The 80's wouldn't be the same without Golan-Globus and Cannon Group films, but sometimes that's not necessarily a good thing.

Beers Required to Enjoy: 3
Could it be remade today? IMDb Pro lists it. God help us all.
Quotability Rating: Zero
Cheese Factor: High
High Points: Final battle; Billy Barty
Low Point: Courteney Cox goes back in time to save her parents (weep)
Gratuitous Boobies: Nary a boobie. Needed a She-Ra cameo.

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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.

80's Trash of the Week: Night of the Comet

The Cold War inspired many post-apocalyptic nightmares from Hollywood in the 80's, but Haley's Comet only inspired a couple- Lifeforce and Night of the Comet spring to mind. I happen to have watched both last week, so I'll be inflicting reviews of both of them on you soon enough.

Red sky at morning, sailor's a zombie.

Night of the Comet is a silly post-apocalyptic teen fantasy about a comet wiping the Earth mostly clean of adults; well, except for a few survivors and of course, the inevitable zombies wandering the earth in a cannibalistic rage as the calcium in their bones is dissolved by comet dust.

I told you, I don't wanna see "the creature from the black chinos."

It's a good B movie and never tries to rise above it. It even feels like an old 50's movie, beginning with Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart-- The Last Starfighter), a spunky gal working in a movie theater when everyone else is out watching the comet graze the atmosphere.

Those were the days.

She's a video game junkie, playing my favorite- Tempest. She's got her initials REG in all the spots except one, where a mysterious "DMK" has gotten one of the top scores. This makes her feel miffed, so she gets her angst out by going upstairs to make out with the projectionist. He likes to trade films like It Came from Outer Space with other film nerds; this lets us know what kind of movie we're in for. When she wakes up in the morning, everyone has been replaced with a pile of red dust and clothes, and a scary black dude with a cap attacks her. This is nothing new for an 80's movie, where he would fit the mugger stereotype, but he's more interested in eating her internal organs than snatching her purse.

Gimme your wallet... and your liver!

She wanders the city on her dead boyfriend's moped, and eventually finds only a few people have survived intact- her ditzy cheerleader sister Samantha (Kelli Maroney- Chopping Mall), and a young trucker named Hector. Together they seek shelter from the few cannibals at the local radio station, which is still broadcasting. It's pretty boring for them (and us) ... So what would a few teenagers do if all the adults were dead? Go to the mall, of course!

80's overload

The mall scenes are reminiscent of the much better Dawn of the Dead, emphasizing the emptiness of the consumerist lifestyle. It seems to have influenced the Dawn of the Dawn remake too, because they run into the rent-a-cops who once ran the place, still staking out their turf. In the meanwhile, we cut to a remote underground science lab where eggheads Audrey (Mary Woronov from Eating Raoul and Rock 'n Roll High School) and Brian (Geoffrey Lewis from the Clint Eastwood orangutan movies) are discussing what to do with the survivors... they've heard the kids on the radio.

Santa will trade you presents for your sweet internal organs.

The story wobbles on the tightrope between a campy teen horror like Night of the Creeps and a more thoughtful movie like The Quiet Earth, where the allusions are much more clear. This makes it a little dull in spots, but the characters get to shine. Hector is sort of a typical heroic lunk, but he never does anything mean or stupid to further the plot; the girls are likewise realistic, with the older Regina a sharp tomboy, who reminded me of Linda Fiorentino in Vision Quest.

Stupid mall ninjas.

It comes off as a bit of a satire, and while it's certainly trashy, especially when the scientists show their true colors, it doesn't dip into exploitation at all. No gratuitous boobies here, and the violence is usually played for laughs. I give writer-director Thom Eberhardt credit for giving the movie its unique mood and tone, but wag my finger at the sloppy "DMK" payoff at the end- it's too flippant, and he ends up with the wrong girl! Watching the teens turn into chiding parents was a nice touch, though. If you like 80's movies, this is one of the lesser-known ones in the post-apocalyptic genre that is worth hunting down.

Robotron 2084: Save the last human family

Beers Required to Enjoy: Two Could it be remade today? No friggin' way Quotability Rating: Low Cheese Factor: Sharp High Points: Great premise and tone Low Point: Weak ending Gratuitous Boobies: Cheerleader in bra and panties

What pause buttons are made for.

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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.

80's Trash of the Week: Earth Girls Are Easy

I'll admit it. I'll watch anything with Geena Davis in it. Let me qualify that. Any movie with Geena in it. In that "Commander in Chief" TV show she had a forehead like Andre the Giant's, which terrified me. But since her first role in Tootsie I've had a crush on her (probably because I was 12 and she was in her bra & panties). I've always thought she had an adorably cute face with that big wry grin of hers. I even watched that superflop Cutthroat Island, which is actually pretty bad. But she's hot in her pirate outfit.

Geena's on the left

Before Beetlejuice, The Fly, and The Accidental Tourist made her a star, she was still taking projects like Julie Brown's Earth Girls Are Easy, as quintessential an 80's movie as ever there was. It's silly and over the top, garishly colorful, has campy special effects and a ludicrous plot, and tries to make some sort of comment on the dating scene, so yeah, late 80's trasharama. Imagine Casual Sex? with Jim Carrey, Jeff Goldblum and Damon Wayans as aliens instead of Dice Clay, throw in a bunch of campy Valley references and songs by Julie Brown of "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun" 15-minute fame, and you've got it.

Do you think we'll ever regret these hair-dos?

It's surprisingly watchable for being such a silly concept, because it never takes itself seriously. It teases you a few times, with a serious romantic subplot, but it's all played for a gag with a decent payoff, so don't let that bother you. Geena is Valerie, a hairdresser engaged to doctor Ted, which should be every gal's dream of landing a rich chiseled Ken doll of a man, but like that Ken doll, he is too disinterested in sex for her liking. She tells her co-worker Candy (Julie Brown), who gives her an awful frosty blonde make-over that screams '88, but when she tries to surprise him at home, he opens the door with a nurse in tow. She kicks him out and trashes the house in a "music video" scene, in her lingerie. While it's sort of a chick movie, the producers were wise to insist that we get plenty of bikini action.

I ran out of Kleenex.

Valerie spends her weekend moping by the pool, while in the cold reaches of outer space, we see a Flash Gordon-like ship observing Earth. Inside are 3 guys covered in bright fur, like they skinned muppets and made catsuits out of them. They've been alone too long and after watching a holographic porno, turn their scopes toward our planet, where of course they see Geena sprawled by her pool, tantalizing them with a little side boob.

Late 80's invention- the side boob.

They crash-land in her swimming pool and the fun begins. They're goofy and good-natured, after all they're Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans from the late-80's super-skit comedy "In Living Color," and Jeff Goldblum, who every went to for a studly nerd back then. She tries to hide them in the house but they want girls, so she ends up taking them to the hair salon for a make-over, which goes surprisingly well. Then we get an interlude for Julie Brown to sing "Cuz I'm a Bl