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I’m honored to again be invited to provide Mr. Pupkin with a guest list. With Bad Movies I Love, it’s hard to narrow it down to just these nine, but here’s my attempt to do so:
They
quit making ’em like both of these within a couple of years of DOLLS’
release, as the Hays Code finally fell and Hollywood could finally start
giving us profanity and nudity. THE OSCAR was supposed to be a big
event in 1966, but is all but forgotten today, never released on home
video in any form and rarely aired despite a name that should lend
itself to cable repeats every February. It’s as if all of Hollywood
wishes it never existed, which would be understandable. Like RAGING
BULL, it’s two hours about a louse, but this one (played by Stephen
Boyd) is Hollywood’s louse. At least, after he quits working as a nudie
bar host and elbows his way to the top of the “glass mountain” of
filmland. Misshapen metaphors abound as the screenwriters (including
Harlan Ellison and erstwhile Oscar winners
Rouse and Greene) swing for the fences with every single line, giving
us wall to wall head-scratchers like: “You got a glass head. I can see right through it. It’s how I know you’re stupid!” And: “You take one from column A and one from column B. You can an egg roll either way.”
Ellison
and co-star Tony Bennett saw their budding big-screen careers end at
the beginning here, and there’s no shortage of actual Oscar winners
making fools of themselves: Ernest Borgnine, Walter Brennan, Broderick
Crawford (as the token bigoted redneck sheriff) and Ed Begley among
them. You’ll get character names like Frankie Fane, Kappy Kapstetter
and the immortal Hymie Kelly (Bennett). One thing you won’t get is
profanity. Since
this is 1966 and the Code still rules, Bennett has to call Boyd out on
his “birdseed”. The moral to the story? Well, if you ruin lives, cause
suicides and abortions, step on absolutely everyone and destroy
everything you touch out of your own selfishness, you’ll be nominated
for an Oscar, but someone else will win it. THE OSCAR itself ruined
careers and received a far worse punishment than Frankie the Heel: 45
years of banishment. You’ll love it too if you can find it, I betcha.
On
the other hand VALLEY OF THE DOLLS has been revered as perhaps the
ultimate Bad Movie We Love for 45 years. The differences? The
screenwriters didn’t try too hard (I didn’t even mention the OCEAN’S 11
style attempt Ellison and Co. made to create a new, hip language
throughout THE OSCAR) and actually showed its performers
performing, giving us reason to believe that these were talented people
even if all the signing was dubbed. Jacqueline Susann’s trashy novel
became a trashy movie, but the only Oscar winners embarrassing
themselves were a horribly miscast Patty Duke and Susan Hayward. The
one professional performance is from TV journeyman Paul Burke (NAKED
CITY), who manages to keep a straight face while squeezing Duke’s face
and trying to make the 20 year old actress (playing 26) look
“thirty-six” with puffy cheeks and bloodshot eyes from the Dolls and
booze. DOLLS’ charm comes from a cast full of TV names, and Barbara
Parkins and Sharon Tate are hilariously wooden in contrast to Duke’s
hystrionics. Special mention goes to Martin Milner, who actually
appears to be phonetically reading his lines off a teleprompter, even
when walking out on Duke’s Neely. Everyone sleeps with everyone,
everyone takes pills, and everyone
gets swallowed up by Hollywood. Still, VALLEY OF THE DOLLS has been
forgiven, probably because it’s been a consistent money maker while THE
OSCAR was a notorious financial flop. No matter, they’re both trashy
and overblown and like everything else on this list, downright lovable.
Horn Section’s original review of THE OSCAR:
It’s
hard to narrow those R-rated late niters from the OnTV/Preview days of
the early Eighties down to just two, because almost all of ‘em were bad
movies that I
loved. At least when I was thirteen. THE SENIORS was scripted by
Stanley Shapiro (OPERATION PETTICOAT) and directed by Rod Amateau (DOBIE
GILLIS, LOVELINES). With their involvement, this is a Skinemax comedy
with a touch of class, plus a very young Dennis Quaid. Quaid is one of
four college seniors unwilling to graduate, terrified of the prospect of
working hard for a living. They concoct a scheme to stay as graduate
students “assisting” in a bogus sex study, first partaking of all the
participating young lovelies, then (when the workload gets too great)
gradually moving “upstairs” while continuing the study that’s designed
to never end. Their unsuspecting front man is Nobel Prize winner Alan
Reed, who is much more warped than the guys realize. Amateau and
Shapiro add lots of wonderful veteran characters to the fun as
investors, including Edward Andrews (as the greedy banker), Woodrow
Parfrey, Alan
Hewitt, and a great Ian Wolfe as the “Seniorist” partner who’s very
hard of hearing. Oh, and long before her stint on THREE’S COMPANY,
Priscilla Barnes shows us her all (but doesn’t say a word!). With all
these classy vets, it’s still a T&A flick through and through
despite the capitalist satire lurking underneath. WAY underneath.
Gleefully silly--just check your brains in and enjoy. Since AIDS was
just a few years away and casual sex with total strangers for science’s
sake was the major plot driver, THE SENIORS evokes a particular time
and place. (Personal note: Ryland Merkey has a small role. He was one
of my college drama teachers.)
SENIORS
predated ANIMAL HOUSE by a few months; H.O.T.S. followed the Landis
comedy and therefore was heavily influenced by it. Ubiquitous in its
day
for us adolescents waiting for the parents to fall asleep, H.O.T.S.
featured quite an impressive list of nubile lovelies. Lindsay Bloom,
Pamela Jean Bryant, Susan Kiger, the voluptuous Lisa London, and, in an
unforgettable cameo, a sky-diving Angela Aames (…ALL THE MARBLES). The
“huddle cam” of topless female touch football players is probably the
most memorable image from this one. Danny Bonaduce’s “Shake It” song
(not much lyrical heft, I’ll put it that way) accompanying a wet T-shirt
contest ranks a close second. They couldn’t afford the character
actors found in SENIORS, hiring the likes of Ken Olfson (the poor man’s
George Wyner) to play the Dean. Written by Cheri Caffaro (GINGER) of
all people. You had to be there. If you were, then you already know
that some like it H.O.T.S.
Mel
Brooks lost something when he stopped collaborating with Gene Wilder
and gave himself more time on-camera after the twin triumphs of BLAZING
SADDLES and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. The result: SILENT MOVIE and HIGH
ANXIETY, both pretty funny but increasingly repetitive and
self-indulgent. It was at this point of diminishing returns that Brooks
decided to try the sketch movie, a genre that even at its best
(KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, GROOVE TUBE) is undisciplined by its very nature.
From a filmmaking standpoint, HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART 1 is an
absolute mess, with the least successful segment (the Roman empire)
lasting the longest and the opening segment building little momentum
with one clunker after another.
HISTORY
is sloppily made with clumsy attempts to tie things together
(“Miracle!”), Brooks mugging shamelessly and giving himself a half dozen
roles, and (with collaborators like Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor and
Wilder missing) more toilet jokes than ever before. Why on earth does
this effort get some love? The second half. No, the narrative doesn’t
improve, but Brooks’ Spanish Inquisition by way of Busby Berkeley almost
reaches the heights of “Springtime for Hitler”. Then he gives us a
French Revolution that is tasteless, childish and very quotable (“Wait
for the shake!” “It‘s GOOD to be da King!”). It’s never gets any less
slapdash, but HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART 1 finally wears you down and
makes the jump from painful groaner to guilty pleasure in its final 45
minutes. “The King and the Piss-Boy” might not quite have the same ring
to it as “The Prince and the
Pauper”, but Brooks proves that he can’t go wrong even when he isn’t
going right. At least until LIFE STINKS, that is.
November
1985 began with DEATH WISH 3 atop the box office and ended with ROCKY
IV’s record setting opening weekend, making it the ultimate month for
80’s action. Both featured iconic action heroes embracing the times and
becoming larger than life superheroes. With Paul Kersey’s entire
family completely wiped out by his third cinematic adventure, he’ll have
to make do by dating a DA young enough to be his granddaughter and
avenging an old war buddy who somehow smuggled two Browning machine guns
home from Korea (and past the cops’ strict “no gun” policy).
Absolutely nothing in DW3 makes sense: Kersey orders rocket launchers
and elephant guns through the mail, executes purse snatchers with the
latter to the cheers of an entire neighborhood, and in perhaps the
biggest stretch of all, boiling cabbage “smells wonderful“. A complete
riot literally and figuratively from beginning to end, DEATH WISH 3
becomes a little more entertaining with each viewing. The very
definition of a Bad Movie We Love.
Paul
Kersey seemingly executed roughly ten percent of New York City’s
population in his third outing. Meanwhile, there’s only one death in 91
minutes during ROCKY IV, but don’t think the 147 to 1 disadvantage in
screen deaths makes Balboa’s fourth outing any less outlandish than
Kersey’s third. After all, Balboa gets more ripped at age 40 than he
ever was before, and
does it with good old fashioned lumberjack work and mountain climbing
while opponent Ivan Drago needs all the steroids he can get despite
being 15 years younger, 70 pounds heavier and 10 inches taller. Gee, if
Rocky had only trained in Siberia a decade earlier. RAMBO aside,
Stallone shows us he’s a pacifist at heart, articulating (sort of) that
“it’s better for two guys to be killing each other than 20 million” and
winning the Cold War singlehandedly. His post fight speech gets a
standing ovation from Gorbachev himself! Well, okay, the fake
Gorbachev, looking like Frank Drebin just got through with him. More
reliant on montages and more exaggerated than ever, ROCKY IV is so high
comedy that Brigitte Nielsen’s accent isn’t even one of the 10 funniest
things here. After these antics, both Bronson and Stallone almost
sheepishly tried to scale things back with subsequent sequels (though
DW4 is pretty funny in
its own right). Still, we can all be thankful these long running
franchises simultaneously embraced their inner cartoons for these
classic time capsules of Eighties hubris. Watch them as a double
feature, and for maximum recreation of the time and place, spin ZZ Top’s
“Afterburner” during intermission.
Talk
about government waste. Who needs a Department of Homeland Security?
THUNDER RUN shows us that Forrest Tucker can defeat the terrorists
single handedly with a train jumping(!) eighteen wheeler and a lonely
desert road to fight ‘em on. Oh wait, Tuck is no longer with us. Never
mind. The old school action stalwart’s presence alone would make this
one lovable to The Horn
Section, but this Cannon product from the studio’s heyday is as packed
with goofy charms as “Thunder“ itself is with timely gadgets. (“Hit
Number Four!”) Try not to think about how unlikely it is that John
Ireland would miss the pickup in the back of the semi while the
plutonium is being loaded. While you’re at it, ignore the exceedingly
easy to crack code our government is using at the test facility and the
fact that someone thought police were still being called “the fuzz” in
1986. Instead marvel at the genius of using Volkswagen beetles with
heat seeking rockets against Tuck, and his countermove with Molotov
Cocktails. Hey, it worked for him against THE CRAWLING EYE, right?
THUNDER RUN doesn’t make much sense, but it’s as much fun as almost
anything else on this list, especially during its second half. In a
perfect world, Tuck would’ve had a second run with THUNDER, preferably
with a
traitorous redneck sheriff in cahoots with surviving terrorists and
Larry Storch as a bearded, accented hitchhiker. But alas, THUNDER RUN
ended up being Tuck’s swan song, as he passed away five months after its
release. We’re still awaiting a DVD in the U.S. Preferably wrapped in
space age plastic, son!
Before
his career killing screenplay for THE SCARLET LETTER (also a Bad Movie,
but no one loves it) Douglas Day Stewart wrote and directed this
equally ludicrous but much more entertaining jaw dropper that vanished
from theatres in three weeks and never has made it to DVD. Kenmont
College in California treats debate like most
schools treat football, with bleachers packed to the gills with the
woofing, fist-pumping student body for mere practices. Coach Roy
Scheider and captain Tim Quill (son of a U.S. Senator) are the Knute
Rockne and George Gipp of college debate despite never even winning
their conference during the Quill “era“. Jami Gertz and Kirk Cameron
are incoming freshman aces recruited from Chicago and Watonga, Oklahoma
respectively, with the latter really struggling with his accent. To
Stewart’s credit, Watonga is a real town in Oklahoma (note: my
grandmother lived two counties away) and is therefore one of LISTEN TO
ME’s precious few script elements to exist on planet Earth.
Quill,
the Ferrari-driving B.M.O.C. who can get any woman he wants, uses
“Richard Cory” as an ice-breaker (nothing like a poem ending in graphic
suicide to
make a lady feel at ease). Scheider, who runs the campus (like all
debate coaches, right?) sets him up as Cameron’s mentor, and they both
compete for Gertz’s heart while the two rookies rise quickly. Meanwhile
Quill tries to break away from an almost certain U.S. Presidency that
will be set up by father Anthony Zerbe as soon as he debates before the
U.S. Supreme Court in the “first National Championship in 15 years”.
Quill normally wouldn’t have much to worry about given that ethics and
facts take a backseat in coach Scheider’s approach. Cameron’s
self-described “shitkicker conservative” is even funnier today when one
considers the actor’s subsequent political path. You’ll also be pleased
to learn that Christopher Atkins is as wooden as ever nine years after
Stewart’s BLUE LAGOON. Aside from one accurate town name, the only
other realistic element in the film might be slimy Zerbe as a U.S.
Senator. I can buy that. Overwrought, melodramatic and shamelessly
manipulative, LISTEN TO ME is a long overlooked treasure trove of
unintentional comedy.
LINK TO MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
1 comment:
One of the greatest regrets in my life is that I fell asleep watching "The Oscar" when I finally managed to catch a showing in a midwest hotel room. Stupid travel fatigue!
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