BOP 50 of the '80s: Selections 15-11
15) Aliens
My first viewing of James Cameron’s action/sci-fi masterpiece remains to this day one of my fondest cinematic memories. As a young lad I was quite the fan of future Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and had been eagerly awaiting the release of his latest blockbuster Predator for many months. When it finally arrived it was being shown second in a double-bill with Aliens at our local cinema. We debated skipping the first film in favour of watching Commando on video again in preparation for the Arnie-fest that was to follow, but in the end decided we might as well go. It was effectively a free movie and who knows, maybe it would be okay.
At this point I’d never heard of Aliens. I’d seen Alien a few years earlier, and while I enjoyed it, it tended a bit too much towards the horror genre for my taste. At the time, however, I had no idea Aliens was a sequel. In fact I knew absolutely nothing about it. This never happens any more. An interest in film, access to the Internet and writing for BOP means I’m rarely surprised by a film and am never going to one blind, something I kind of miss.
As you may have guessed, Aliens absolutely blew me away. The pacing, the effects and the suspense, but above all the kinetic non-stop action had a huge impact of me. It is the first film I saw that I can remember thinking, “who made this?” rather than focussing on a particular actor or star and more than anything was responsible for kick-starting my interest in the cinema. (Ash Wakeman/BOP)
In a decade that saw many sequels outperform their predecessors, Aliens perhaps had the hardest job of it. There must have been times in pre-production when James Cameron wondered how he would even reach the bar set by Alien, which had revitalized the science-fiction/horror film after the '70s had mostly shown friendly, warm-and-fuzzy extraterrestrials who only wanted to help mankind. But after Alien reminded us that not all beings from other planets, much like not all beings on Earth, are benign, Aliens had the proverbial hard row in upping the scare factor, not to mention the body count. But James Cameron came through with a tightly-paced, action-packed film that not only improved the F/X - particularly the Alien queen - but increased the emotional factor by giving beleaguered Lt Ripley something more to protect than the ship's cat in young Newt, sole survivor of the colony that The Company installed on the planet where the Alien first took over the Nostromo, ignoring Ripley's dire warnings to avoid that planet at all costs. Sadly, the franchise didn't take the warnings of its second entry to heart and nuke Alien3 from space, as that would've been the only way to ensure that waste of celluloid never hit the theatres,though the franchise did redeem itself somewhat with the fourth installment, Alien Resurrection. But the Alien series hit its zenith with Aliens, and as rumors of a fifth installment continue to float about, it's a good time to recall the excellence that is Aliens, and hope anyone seriously contemplating a fifth Alien film will do the same. (Stephanie Star Smith/BOP)
14) This Is Spinal Tap
In 1984, documentarian Marty DiBergi turned the unblinking eye of his camera on the legendary British heavy-metal band Spinal Tap. In the middle of a comeback tour in support of their most recent album, DiBergi followed the band through the ups and downs; the triumphs and, too often, the failures; the degradations; the power struggles; and their ultimate devolvement to the point where, like David Gates' Guitar Man, they just had to find another place to play.
Of course, the genius of Spinal Tap, the mockumentary about the "World's Loudest Band" is that the entire enterprise is played dead serious whilst taking itself and its targets, rock musicians and the pompous critics who try to sound like they know what they're talking about when they haven't a clue, not seriously at all. And it's this very earnestness that helps ground the film when it takes to some of its greater flights of fancy, such as the string of drummers that have joined Spinal Tap only to die under rather bizarre circumstances shortly thereafter. The film is greatly helped in this regard by the happy fact that the three cast members who form the core of Spinal Tap - Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer - are musicians themselves, and took to playing in clubs as the pseudo-band in order to create the group's backstory; their experiences were ultimately used in lieu of a formal shooting script. The trio were so convincing, in fact, that after initial screening audience members approached Rob Reiner, who plays Marty DiBergi and also directed the film, and told him he should have chosen a more well-known band to focus on in his rockumentary. The band took on such a reality of its own that early home-video versions of the film included disclaimers that the band didn't really exist.
But where Spinal Tap delights the most is in skewering the music industry and those who feed off it: the concert promoters, the record producers, the interviewers, the rock critics, the rock historians, the groupies, etc, etc, etc. There are many jabs at famous musicians, but none are so blatant as to invoke ire; astute viewers, however, know who's being parodied when, and the joy is in finding and savoring these moments. And the performance pieces are nothing short of brilliant in their Murphy's Law Meets Headbanger Chic lunacy; after watching Spinal Tap, it's hard to think of Stonehenge and dwarves in quite the same way again.
Like all great films, This is Spinal Tap improves on repeat viewings; there is always something new to discover, some joke that was overlooked, or a set piece one has not thought of in some time, and always there are the bits we loved from our first viewing that never fail to amuse, from the hapless drummers to the Lennon/McCartney/Yoko parallels to the amplifiers that go to 11 to the misogyny of many heavy-metal groups to the elaborate-to-the-point-of-the-ridiculous sets for some bands' live shows. This is Spinal Tap is not only one of the best films of the '80s, it certainly ranks in the pantheon of best films of the 20th century, a satire that clearly loves its subject, but not blindly, and sees the absurdity that accompanies the sheer exhilaration of rock. (Stephanie Star Smith/BOP)
13) Ghostbusters
As a broke student, myself and my degenerate flatmates once spent an entire university break trapped in our shared house with little or no money to spend on anything accept the bare necessities (toast and beer) and no entertainment budget whatsoever. As a result we looked to our coffee-table sized Beta video recorder and our massive collection of two videos to keep us company.
These videos were Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii and Ghostbusters. Over the course of the holidays, I must have watched Ghostbusters a dozen times.
Towards the end we watched it with the volume off, doing the entire soundtrack ourselves. It never got old, it never stopped being funny.
To this day it remains one of my favorite films, and probably my favorite comedy. I have seen it more times than I have seen any other film and on a good day can recite the entire thing word for word. The surprising thing is that I’m not the least bit obsessive about it. I don’t own any merchandise; I don’t write Web sites dedicated to its greatness, I don’t attend onventions - I just really like it.
The concept helps. It’s an unusual blend of comedy, mild horror, science fiction and effects. It takes the high concept comedy made popular in the '80s to the extreme and in doing so becomes the very definition of a hyped event picture. However, it’s one of those rare films that live up to that hype. Visually spectacular and fast-paced, it would have been a decent film even had it not been a comedy. But once a brilliant ensemble cast, with stand-out performances from a never better Bill Murray and a brilliant Rick Moranis, are combined with a razor sharp and genuinely funny script, it becomes something special. (Ash Wakeman/BOP)
I think I saw this movie at least five times at the theater. Every time I found someone who had yet to see it, I had to convince them to go along with me. Though Bill Murray's fantastically sarcastic performance as Dr. Peter Venkman is the real draw for me, there's so much more to recommend the film. The script from Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis is the very definition of a concept drawn out to its ideal execution. As a result, like so many of the films on our '80s list, Ghostbusters is ridiculously quotable, so much so that I frequently do so without even thinking about it. "Listen...you smell that?" may be one of the cleverest lines uttered in movie history. (Kim Hollis/BOP)
12) Heathers
Arguably the best teen movie ever made, it's doubtful that Heathers would even be made in today's overly politically correct environment. The dark comedy about a high school girl who murders her popular friends and passes them off as suicides is hilariously and wickedly funny while being keenly insightful into the microcosm that is high school. Beyond looking at the high school cliques, what Heathers does adeptly is portray the often clueless, if well-meaning reaction of the adults to teen behavior that they don't understand. It is an eminently quotable movie as, for one, it introduced a brand new use for a chainsaw into the teen lexicon. Heathers also provided breakout roles for Winona Ryder and Christian Slater (channeling Jack Nicholson) as well as featuring Shannen Doherty as one of the Heathers. (Dan Krovich/BOP)
It is perhaps appropriate that Michael Lehmann’s feature debut crashes into this list as a late entry for the tail end of the decade we are celebrating. Heathers is a wonderfully dark teen comedy, in no small part a reaction against the large number of popular high school-based comedies that had been released over the previous ten years and their obsession with appearance and acceptance. Thematically it straddles the dark themes of suicide, murder and even attempted mass-murder amongst unhappy high school kids (things that a decade later would become taboo in a high school comedy) with the standard fare of acceptance, bullying and first love. Ultimately, in an ending that some felt was a bit of a copout, the message it delivers is that normality lies somewhere between the two extremes of vacant smiling homecoming queens and psychotic trenchcoat-wearing outsiders.
Unfortunately another line it straddled was between independent and mainstream cinema and despite being generally well-received, it didn’t amount to too much at the box office. However, it is a film whose reputation has grown over time and remains a firm video and DVD favorite, for some a cult classic, for others an unhealthy obsession. It also helped launch the careers of both Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, who became the alternative teen heartthrobs of the early '90s. (Ash Wakeman/BOP)
This commentary must be preceded by the admission that Heathers is arguably my favorite film of all-time (it competes with Casablanca depending on my mood), and it is not much of an exaggeration to say that it turned out to be a life altering movie for me.
On a more subjective note, Heathers must be included in a list of great '80s movies for the combined points that it could not have been made at any other point in film history other than the end of the '80s and that it continues to be a reference point in popular and general culture. I am incredibly biased, but I continue to be amazed at the number of references that show up in sitcoms as well as movie reviews to a movie that barely made a million dollars upon it’s initial release. (Yours truly was directly responsible for at least of 0.01% of that as I spent $100 between repeated viewings and all but dragging people to showings). References such as “What is your damage?”, “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?” and more general references to a controlling clique being Heathers have turned up. The reviewing reference point for the recent Mean Girls was, more often than not, Heathers.
On a more personally surprisingly note is that Heathers (as in the Beltway Heathers) seems to have a become political term - at least in an online fashion.
As has been pointed out before, Heathers can be taken as direct answer to the John Hughes films of the '80s and no matter how much more cynical we may have become since then, Heathers absolutely could not be made now. A film dealing with the possible bombing of a school? Never, ever to be made now. I'm not even sure if one could take the tongue-in-cheek approach to suicide (Teenage suicide. Don’t do it)
I’d like to believe that the movie continues to hold up over the years and I attribute part of the holding power due to the dialogue. Granted, some references have aged, but at the same time Daniel Waters' script created its own language that sounds like teen speak but isn’t necessarily from any particular time. Good, bad, whatever, the movie also remains timeless as kids simply don’t change.
The John Hughes films seem simply pandering in comparison to Heathers. Of course, everybody identifies with the Breakfast Club but Heathers takes an approach where one isn’t necessarily supposed to identify with any of the particular characters but more the overall situations. However, I can’t vouch that any of that holds up on a mass basis. I have no unbiased point to review this movie after all these years. You can criticize the ending as losing steam and I’d be happy to agree with you, but it doesn’t diminish the overall movie for me. I can recite this movie line for line and can annoyingly cross-reference at a moment's notice (imagine a idiot savant version of Dennis Miller limited to a single pop culture item to reference). Heathers turned a cinematic crush on Winona Ryder (from Beetlejuice initially) to a complete and utter obsession. My former mainstream-only movie going habits were twisted to the point that movies that I’d only read about could be well worth watching. A cynical movie goer was made and a affinity for black comedy was affirmed. Color me impressed that my site mates voted to place Heathers as high as they did, as it just failed to make the top ten. (Jason Dean/BOP)
11) Caddyshack
So shortly after the death of Rodney Dangerfield, it is fitting we spend some time singing the praises of Caddyshack. There's much to love about this comedy for comedy's sake: Bill Murray's goofy groundskeeper and his Lama story, his Masters fantasy, and his nemesis rodentia; Chevy Chase's nonstop nonsequitors; "Noonan!"; Spaulding; the Baby Ruth; the Bishop's perfect round; "You'll get nothing and like it!"; Lacey Underall; night putting. It's all great stuff from Murray, Chase, and director Harold Ramis from the days before they became comedy legends.
That said, for me it is the interplay between Dangerfield's boorish Al Czervik and Ted Knight's perfectly pompous Judge Smails that makes this movie such an enduring pleaser; let's face it, no one can pull off polite seething quite like Ted Knight did. (Calvin Trager/BOP)
At first, I loved Caddyshack almost exclusively for the groundhog (apparently, there's just something that works about pairing Bill Murray with these creatures). Over the years, though, I've come to fully appreciate how well all of the pieces work together to make a perfect comedy about golf. Indeed, it's Murray who is the film's centerpiece, but his role is really only a supporting one as he works in the background behind Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight. The talents of all three were used to an ideal level as Chase would never be so likeable and hilarious, Knight would never be so cantankerous, and Dangerfield would give the performance of his career. (Kim Hollis/BOP)
Read selections 50-46
Read selections 45-41
Read selections 40-36
Read selections 35-31
Read selections 30-26
Read selections 25-21
Read selections 20-16
Read selections 10-6
Read selections 5-1
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