VALLEY GIRL (1983, TUBI) TOP SECRET! (1984, 4K UHD) REAL GENIUS (1985, IFC)
A hangout flick that's also a time capsule of a specific time/place in pop culture (downtown L.A. and San Fernando Valley circa the early '80's), "Valley Girl's" youthful characters aren't fishing for laughs during their parties, mall trips, visits with friends, concerts, phone calls to Top Ten radio stations, etc. We're welcome to ridicule how these teens-going-on-30 talk with their now-cliché valley lingo, but director Martha Coolidge and her writers aren't mocking them. The relationship between good girl from the valley Julie (Deborah Foreman) and sensitive city punk Randy (Nicolas Cage in an early breakthrough role) takes place mostly off-screen (or in a voice-less driving montage) after their cute-meet at a party. Convos/peer pressure from Julie's girlfriends pushing her to reunite with ex Tommy (Michael Bowen) makes the bulk of "VG's" story, not Julie/Randy getting-to-know-you scenes. It's a miracle Cage gets us to sympathize with Randy given his limited screen time, or that his bestie Fred (Cameron Dye) is such a douche. And is it me or does "Valley Girl" and "The Graduate" end exactly the same except the former sugarcoats the bitter pill Julie and Randy are about to swallow? 'It's fine' but not that much fun. 2.85 UNSCHEDULED POOL CLEANING VISITS (out of five). Shame Colleen Camp/Frederic Forrest as Julie's hilarious hippie parents don't get more scenes. :-(
The sad passing of Val Kilmer in April has led to a re-assessment of his work, with "Top Secret!" (his first feature film, and a leading role at that) getting a fair share of new viewers. Sandwiched between "Airplane!" and the first "Naked Gun" (the other two ZAZ movies you have to buy on a 4K Box Set in order to get this otherwise exclusive 4K disk), "TS!" lacks the Ted/Elaine relationship around which "Airplane!" hung out its endless gags. Kilmer and Lucy Gutteridge are cute together and mostly nail the jokes, but they're no Ted and Elaine. To me the highs (Nigel post-bull walk, Swedish backwards bookstore, Nick Rivers' concert, giant dove statue) outnumber the lows (compressed Omar Shariff, fireplace singalong, pizza joint dance-off). Come for the hit-or-miss gags/jokes, stay for the Val Kilmer sing/dance show. 3.75 CHOCOLATE MOUSSE GRUNTS (out of five).
"Valley Girl" director Martha Coolidge, the writers of "Bachelor Party"/"Police Academy" (Neal Israel and Pat Proft) and now-proven-star Val Kilmer teamed-up for "Real Genius," which started slow and wasn't clicking with me early on. But I knew THAT famous 'Tears for Fears' song was coming, so I stuck around. Neither wide-eyed boy genius Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret) or enjoying-life-to-its-fullest brainy legend Chris Knight (Kilmer) seem interesting or worth following as newest and veteran recruits, respectively, of William Atherton's genius university. Trying to crack a laser project the military wants to use to do stealth murder of foreign enemies, Atherton pushes his students to the brink without telling them what the laser's real objective is. Gradually the supporting cast (primarily Robert Prescott's butt-kissing, a-hole teacher's pet Kent and Michelle Meyrink's nerdy/cute Jordan) started not only winning me over, but their interactions with the leads highlighted Jarret's and Kilmer's comedic timing. Kent (who looks much older than everyone else in the cast) becoming angrier at being bested by Chris kept getting funnier, and Atherton somehow ends up being a bigger prick here than in "Ghostbusters" (but not as scummy as in the "Die Hards").
Lazlo Hollyfeld's absent-minded background gags about rigging a contest pay off at the end, a nutty-as-hell WTF! finale I didn't see coming and made me gasp with amusement. It's a simple nerdy-but-cool kids vs. adult/military squares comedy, one that dials back the T&A and relies on the charm of its actors (plus one heck of an '80's soundtrack) to land its jabs. Not a classic, just an absurd fairytale. 3.15 HIDDEN CLOSET TUNNELS (out of five).
Tom Hanks, John Candy and Rita Wilson join the Peace Corps and volunteer in Thailand. Hijinx ensue. Highly entertaining comedy. In this movie we get to see a real bridge get constructed and spectacularly destroyed. It's funny a throwaway 80s comedy features spectacle that we would probably only see now in a Christopher Nolan film.
Clue (1985): I recently saw a short video on the origin of the word Clue (search for it, it's very interesting), and made me want to rewatch this masterpiece. Today's perfect for it. I got the 4k disc from Shout when it came out, and they kept the option to watch with one of the 3 random ending. I think it's the first time I've ever choose that option, and I've seen the movie very often. I don't know why I never did it, maybe because they're all very funny. In the extras, the writers keep talking about how they struggled to write the movie. It seems so simple now that it exists. I'm sure the 3 endings gimmick would be a huge success nowadays. Back then, they basically blamed it for the failure of the movie. It's also very fun to hear each and everyone involved saying this is their favorite movie they ever did and how much fun they had making it.
SPIES LIKE US (1985) Chevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd play two government office goofballs who get their first field assignment behind enemy lines. What they don’t know is that their blundering meant to be a distraction for the real spies. This premise is mostly a setup for a series of skits where the guys try to maintain their cover in increasingly absurd situations, with Chase as the overconfident doofus and Ackroyd as the eggheaded doofus. I can see why this has a nostalgia/cult following, and there were some good bits, but Chase and Ackroyd have both been better elsewhere.
30 days of Georges Melies, day 16: THE KNIGHT OF THE SNOWS (1912) A prince and an evil baron compete for the hand of a princess. They both consult the same sorcerer, who gives each man very different visions. It’s a lot more plotty than others on the list, and I’m afraid I had to go to the wiki to ascertain just what the story is. And here's still more devil/Satan imagery from Melies. I wonder how he got away with this, or if that’s just how they do things in France.
I love this movie. 🤩 Bernie Casey and Frank Oz get big laughs by deadpanning, you can see Donna Dixon falling in love with Akroyd on-camera, and even Bob Hope drops by. 'Soul Finger' 4evah! 🤟😁
Funny how this "bewb" comedy is one of the better Greydon Clark films. This has the requisite fat guy that is named Dorfus, need I say more? Wished Joe Don Baker gave a detailed interview about his era (era) in Clark films.
Up the Academy (1990) 8-year-old Sam was all in on MAD Magazine—every issue. It’s how I saw so many R-rated movies, as I couldn’t go to the theater but could read them as redone by Mort Drucker. Imagine my joy when the Usual Gang of Idiots decided to make a movie, just like those new kids, the National Lampoon.
Publisher William Gaines — yes, the same guy who did Tales from the Crypt — told The Comics Journal, “What happened is that we had a contract with Warner Brothers to put out a MAD movie. It’s like four years old now. They came up with a script that we didn’t like, and then they came up with a script using our scriptwriters that they didn’t like, but meanwhile they threw this script onto our desk … Although there were many things in it that I thought were offensive and should be removed, generally, I liked the script. And I thought, “Well, in addition to a MAD movie, there’s nothing wrong with having something like Lampoon did with Animal House.” Animal House was “Lampoon Presents” and really had nothing to do with the magazine; it was just using their name, and it was a good movie, and it was very successful, and it made Lampoon a lot of money. I guess. So we were going to do the same thing. “MAD Magazine Completely Disassociates Itself from Up the Academy“. But that was too long for them; they couldn’t think in that many words. They put the damn thing out without all the deletions they had promised to make, which means they’re liars. I’m talking about one of my sister companies [laughter] … And there we were connected with it, and there wasn’t much we could do about it. I paid Warner Bros. 30 grand to take MAD‘s name off for television. So, for $30,000, we got out of being associated with it on Home Box Office. It won’t say “MAD Magazine Presents,” and Alfred E. Neuman won’t be in it. And it was well worth $30,000.”
It is quite like many other sex comedies that came after the men of Delta House. Chooch (Ralph Macchio) is the youngest son of an organized crime family; El-Hashid “Hash” Amier Jr. (Tommy Citera) is the son of an oil sheik; Eisenhower “Ike” MacArthur (Wendell Brown) is the son of a faith healer who keeps marrying young wives and Hash keeps schtupping them (see, I did learn from MAD!). Oliver Holt (Hutch Parker) has a governor for a father and just wants to sleep with his girlfriend Candy (Stacy Nelkin, who is Ellie Grimbridge, and if you get that, welcome to the site), except his father doesn’t want a teen pregnancy getting in the way of his re-election.
Chooch wants to go straight, so enter new recruit, Rodney Ververgaert (Harry Teinowitz), who likes to make things explode.
They’re all being brutalized by Major Vaughn Liceman (Ron Leibman, the Emmy and Tony-winning actor who asked for his name to be removed from this movie; he was also married to Linda Lavin and Jessica Walter, which is pretty good when you think about it), your typical bad guy in a teen sex comedy.
Candy ends up getting sent to military school as well, so Liceman sets the couple up and takes pictures of them in the act while demanding that he gets to sleep with Candy to protect Oliver’s father’s election. There’s also a snobs vs. slobs soccer game, Tom Poston playing the most stereotypical mincing gay character ever, Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas as a coach, and the mind-blowing Barbara Bach, Lady Starke as Bliss, the teacher every boy in school wants.
Thank you so much for the back story on this movie. I remember very well seeing it when it came out with high expectations (i, like you, grew up a MASSIVE fan of Mad..specifically its parodies..i STILL buy compilations when they drop). I remember loathing it and never revisiting. Your history helps explain why.
(editors note: i watched this movie with the full understanding it was released in 1980. I was wrong. Its 1979. Soooo it doesnt qualify but i saved it for today so im going with it).
My decision to find more obscure titles for sploitation categories is not working super well for me as im finding some stinkers. In this case this movie is a blatant rip off of Animal House..which i went in knowing. I did not realize that it would be a movie where someone said "lets make a copy of Animal House with a horribly unfunny crass john-belushi-clone in the lead and we'll just make it up as we go!!. Oh, we should only cast 45 year olds as the college students. Oh, and remember how Bluto burped in a funny way???..we're gonna run with that and do a 25m fart contest!!! bwahahahahaha! Maybe tack on a courtroom finale JUST LIKE THAT ONE SCENE IN ANIMAL HOUSE! I give this movie 0 out of 4 tapped kegs.
VALLEY GIRL (1983, TUBI)
ReplyDeleteTOP SECRET! (1984, 4K UHD)
REAL GENIUS (1985, IFC)
A hangout flick that's also a time capsule of a specific time/place in pop culture (downtown L.A. and San Fernando Valley circa the early '80's), "Valley Girl's" youthful characters aren't fishing for laughs during their parties, mall trips, visits with friends, concerts, phone calls to Top Ten radio stations, etc. We're welcome to ridicule how these teens-going-on-30 talk with their now-cliché valley lingo, but director Martha Coolidge and her writers aren't mocking them. The relationship between good girl from the valley Julie (Deborah Foreman) and sensitive city punk Randy (Nicolas Cage in an early breakthrough role) takes place mostly off-screen (or in a voice-less driving montage) after their cute-meet at a party. Convos/peer pressure from Julie's girlfriends pushing her to reunite with ex Tommy (Michael Bowen) makes the bulk of "VG's" story, not Julie/Randy getting-to-know-you scenes. It's a miracle Cage gets us to sympathize with Randy given his limited screen time, or that his bestie Fred (Cameron Dye) is such a douche. And is it me or does "Valley Girl" and "The Graduate" end exactly the same except the former sugarcoats the bitter pill Julie and Randy are about to swallow? 'It's fine' but not that much fun. 2.85 UNSCHEDULED POOL CLEANING VISITS (out of five). Shame Colleen Camp/Frederic Forrest as Julie's hilarious hippie parents don't get more scenes. :-(
The sad passing of Val Kilmer in April has led to a re-assessment of his work, with "Top Secret!" (his first feature film, and a leading role at that) getting a fair share of new viewers. Sandwiched between "Airplane!" and the first "Naked Gun" (the other two ZAZ movies you have to buy on a 4K Box Set in order to get this otherwise exclusive 4K disk), "TS!" lacks the Ted/Elaine relationship around which "Airplane!" hung out its endless gags. Kilmer and Lucy Gutteridge are cute together and mostly nail the jokes, but they're no Ted and Elaine. To me the highs (Nigel post-bull walk, Swedish backwards bookstore, Nick Rivers' concert, giant dove statue) outnumber the lows (compressed Omar Shariff, fireplace singalong, pizza joint dance-off). Come for the hit-or-miss gags/jokes, stay for the Val Kilmer sing/dance show. 3.75 CHOCOLATE MOUSSE GRUNTS (out of five).
"Valley Girl" director Martha Coolidge, the writers of "Bachelor Party"/"Police Academy" (Neal Israel and Pat Proft) and now-proven-star Val Kilmer teamed-up for "Real Genius," which started slow and wasn't clicking with me early on. But I knew THAT famous 'Tears for Fears' song was coming, so I stuck around. Neither wide-eyed boy genius Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret) or enjoying-life-to-its-fullest brainy legend Chris Knight (Kilmer) seem interesting or worth following as newest and veteran recruits, respectively, of William Atherton's genius university. Trying to crack a laser project the military wants to use to do stealth murder of foreign enemies, Atherton pushes his students to the brink without telling them what the laser's real objective is. Gradually the supporting cast (primarily Robert Prescott's butt-kissing, a-hole teacher's pet Kent and Michelle Meyrink's nerdy/cute Jordan) started not only winning me over, but their interactions with the leads highlighted Jarret's and Kilmer's comedic timing. Kent (who looks much older than everyone else in the cast) becoming angrier at being bested by Chris kept getting funnier, and Atherton somehow ends up being a bigger prick here than in "Ghostbusters" (but not as scummy as in the "Die Hards").
Lazlo Hollyfeld's absent-minded background gags about rigging a contest pay off at the end, a nutty-as-hell WTF! finale I didn't see coming and made me gasp with amusement. It's a simple nerdy-but-cool kids vs. adult/military squares comedy, one that dials back the T&A and relies on the charm of its actors (plus one heck of an '80's soundtrack) to land its jabs. Not a classic, just an absurd fairytale. 3.15 HIDDEN CLOSET TUNNELS (out of five).
Volunteers (1985, dir. Nicholas Meyer)
ReplyDeleteTom Hanks, John Candy and Rita Wilson join the Peace Corps and volunteer in Thailand. Hijinx ensue. Highly entertaining comedy. In this movie we get to see a real bridge get constructed and spectacularly destroyed. It's funny a throwaway 80s comedy features spectacle that we would probably only see now in a Christopher Nolan film.
STAKEOUT (1987, Dir. John Badham):
ReplyDeleteI did not enjoy this film!
You should try Another Stakeout, just to be sure ! ;)
DeleteClue (1985): I recently saw a short video on the origin of the word Clue (search for it, it's very interesting), and made me want to rewatch this masterpiece. Today's perfect for it. I got the 4k disc from Shout when it came out, and they kept the option to watch with one of the 3 random ending. I think it's the first time I've ever choose that option, and I've seen the movie very often. I don't know why I never did it, maybe because they're all very funny. In the extras, the writers keep talking about how they struggled to write the movie. It seems so simple now that it exists. I'm sure the 3 endings gimmick would be a huge success nowadays. Back then, they basically blamed it for the failure of the movie. It's also very fun to hear each and everyone involved saying this is their favorite movie they ever did and how much fun they had making it.
ReplyDeleteSPIES LIKE US (1985)
ReplyDeleteChevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd play two government office goofballs who get their first field assignment behind enemy lines. What they don’t know is that their blundering meant to be a distraction for the real spies. This premise is mostly a setup for a series of skits where the guys try to maintain their cover in increasingly absurd situations, with Chase as the overconfident doofus and Ackroyd as the eggheaded doofus. I can see why this has a nostalgia/cult following, and there were some good bits, but Chase and Ackroyd have both been better elsewhere.
30 days of Georges Melies, day 16: THE KNIGHT OF THE SNOWS (1912)
A prince and an evil baron compete for the hand of a princess. They both consult the same sorcerer, who gives each man very different visions. It’s a lot more plotty than others on the list, and I’m afraid I had to go to the wiki to ascertain just what the story is. And here's still more devil/Satan imagery from Melies. I wonder how he got away with this, or if that’s just how they do things in France.
I love this movie. 🤩 Bernie Casey and Frank Oz get big laughs by deadpanning, you can see Donna Dixon falling in love with Akroyd on-camera, and even Bob Hope drops by. 'Soul Finger' 4evah! 🤟😁
DeleteJoysticks (1983)
ReplyDeleteDir. Greydon Clark
Funny how this "bewb" comedy is one of the better Greydon Clark films. This has the requisite fat guy that is named Dorfus, need I say more? Wished Joe Don Baker gave a detailed interview about his era (era) in Clark films.
The opening title song is chef's kiss.
Almost revisited this for today..in fact i may still do so...i find it a perfect 80s Raunchy entry for the category.
DeleteUp the Academy (1990)
ReplyDelete8-year-old Sam was all in on MAD Magazine—every issue. It’s how I saw so many R-rated movies, as I couldn’t go to the theater but could read them as redone by Mort Drucker. Imagine my joy when the Usual Gang of Idiots decided to make a movie, just like those new kids, the National Lampoon.
Publisher William Gaines — yes, the same guy who did Tales from the Crypt — told The Comics Journal, “What happened is that we had a contract with Warner Brothers to put out a MAD movie. It’s like four years old now. They came up with a script that we didn’t like, and then they came up with a script using our scriptwriters that they didn’t like, but meanwhile they threw this script onto our desk … Although there were many things in it that I thought were offensive and should be removed, generally, I liked the script. And I thought, “Well, in addition to a MAD movie, there’s nothing wrong with having something like Lampoon did with Animal House.” Animal House was “Lampoon Presents” and really had nothing to do with the magazine; it was just using their name, and it was a good movie, and it was very successful, and it made Lampoon a lot of money. I guess. So we were going to do the same thing. “MAD Magazine Completely Disassociates Itself from Up the Academy“. But that was too long for them; they couldn’t think in that many words. They put the damn thing out without all the deletions they had promised to make, which means they’re liars. I’m talking about one of my sister companies [laughter] … And there we were connected with it, and there wasn’t much we could do about it. I paid Warner Bros. 30 grand to take MAD‘s name off for television. So, for $30,000, we got out of being associated with it on Home Box Office. It won’t say “MAD Magazine Presents,” and Alfred E. Neuman won’t be in it. And it was well worth $30,000.”
It is quite like many other sex comedies that came after the men of Delta House. Chooch (Ralph Macchio) is the youngest son of an organized crime family; El-Hashid “Hash” Amier Jr. (Tommy Citera) is the son of an oil sheik; Eisenhower “Ike” MacArthur (Wendell Brown) is the son of a faith healer who keeps marrying young wives and Hash keeps schtupping them (see, I did learn from MAD!). Oliver Holt (Hutch Parker) has a governor for a father and just wants to sleep with his girlfriend Candy (Stacy Nelkin, who is Ellie Grimbridge, and if you get that, welcome to the site), except his father doesn’t want a teen pregnancy getting in the way of his re-election.
Chooch wants to go straight, so enter new recruit, Rodney Ververgaert (Harry Teinowitz), who likes to make things explode.
They’re all being brutalized by Major Vaughn Liceman (Ron Leibman, the Emmy and Tony-winning actor who asked for his name to be removed from this movie; he was also married to Linda Lavin and Jessica Walter, which is pretty good when you think about it), your typical bad guy in a teen sex comedy.
Candy ends up getting sent to military school as well, so Liceman sets the couple up and takes pictures of them in the act while demanding that he gets to sleep with Candy to protect Oliver’s father’s election. There’s also a snobs vs. slobs soccer game, Tom Poston playing the most stereotypical mincing gay character ever, Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas as a coach, and the mind-blowing Barbara Bach, Lady Starke as Bliss, the teacher every boy in school wants.
Also, it’s not good. It’s aggressively bad.
Thank you so much for the back story on this movie. I remember very well seeing it when it came out with high expectations (i, like you, grew up a MASSIVE fan of Mad..specifically its parodies..i STILL buy compilations when they drop). I remember loathing it and never revisiting. Your history helps explain why.
DeleteKing Frat (1980...79!?!)
ReplyDelete(editors note: i watched this movie with the full understanding it was released in 1980. I was wrong. Its 1979. Soooo it doesnt qualify but i saved it for today so im going with it).
My decision to find more obscure titles for sploitation categories is not working super well for me as im finding some stinkers. In this case this movie is a blatant rip off of Animal House..which i went in knowing. I did not realize that it would be a movie where someone said "lets make a copy of Animal House with a horribly unfunny crass john-belushi-clone in the lead and we'll just make it up as we go!!. Oh, we should only cast 45 year olds as the college students. Oh, and remember how Bluto burped in a funny way???..we're gonna run with that and do a 25m fart contest!!! bwahahahahaha! Maybe tack on a courtroom finale JUST LIKE THAT ONE SCENE IN ANIMAL HOUSE! I give this movie 0 out of 4 tapped kegs.