by ariel esteban cayerportfolio
Lords of the Deep (Mary Ann Fisher, 1989)
Between The Abyss, Leviathan, DeepStar Six, and three others, the same movie came out 6 times in 1989 and this one, about giant telepathic manta rays hugging humans back to life and telling them they should stop polluting the planet, is undoubtedly the bottom of the deep sea barrel. Thanks again, Roger Corman.
If You Love This Planet (short; Terre Nash, 1982)
The Grey Fox (Phillip Borsos, 1982)
Sparse, simple yet compellingly beautiful Western, the rarely seen The Grey Fox tells of the life of soft-spoken, well-mannered American criminal Bill “The Gentleman Bandit” Miner, stagecoach robber jailed in 1868, released at the turn of the century — and who most notably coined the phrase “Hands Up!”. Involved on and off in train robberies in British Columbia, he would be jailed twice after that, only to escape on both occasions. Borsos crafts a sober, if slightly melodramatic account of the man’s life, carried beautifully by Richard Farnsworth, better known for his role in Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999).
Next of Kin (Atom Egoyan, 1984)
“As the film works self-consciously through the familiar clichés about family to produce a happily-ever-after ending, Next of Kin suggests that we respond more powerfully to repetition than to originality, to the familiar than to family, to acting than to bein, and to narrative than to life.“ — Monique Tschofen, “Repetition, Compulsion, and Rpresentation in Atom Egoyan’s Films”, North of Everything: English-Canadian Cinema since 1980, p.169
Degrassi Junior High, 3x01: “Can’t Live with ‘Em, Part One” (1988)
Never Too Young To Die (Gil Bettman, 1986)
Above: Peter Kwong as Cliff, a.k.a. my Halloween costume for 2013.
Forget Troll 2 or whatever bullshit: Never Too Young To Die might honestly be - alongside Miami Connection (1987), of course - the best worst movie of all time, the true unsung gem of the 80s; a reasonably big-budget, big-dick spy film starring John Stamos as Stargrove (cue theme song), Peter Kwong as Cliff the nerdy Asian inventor-sidekick (my onscreen doppelgänger and also one of the “Three Storms” in Big Trouble in Little China), Prince’s protégée Vanity as the love interest, George Lazenby as Stargrove Sr., a Robert Englund cameo and…last but not least….Gene Simmons as Velvet Von Ragner the hermaphrodite super-villain. Words can’t do it justice. It’s simply perfect.
Intrepidos Punk (Francisco Guerrero, 1980)
…loud, baffling, dumb, sexy and a whole lot of repetitive fun to be had.
Batman (Tim Burton, 1989)
Tim Burton’s third(!) feature film is a great piece of work that not only stunningly showcased his precise creative vision, but also provided a unique direction of heightened (albeit still deliciously campy) realism for the future of masked heroes on screen — ushering them into a whole new era of superhero and comic book-based films at a time where the Lundgren-starring The Punisher (1989) was coming out, Jim Wynorski was following Wes Craven with The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) and Christopher Reeve’s vehicle Superman franchise had just ended in 1987.
First film of Warner Bros.’ classic franchise, Burton’s Batman pitted its hero Bruce Wayne (embodied by Michael Keaton, in hindsight refreshingly older-looking compared to Clooney or Bale) against arch-nemesis and maker Jack Napier a.k.a. The Joker (Jach Nicholson, in a landmark performance).
Indeed, perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Burton’s highly expressionistic film, penned by Sam Hamm & Warren Skaaron, is how it revises Batman’s origin story and avoids making it the main focus of the story (see Nolan’s 2005 Batman Begins), rather focusing of Batman’s conflict with the Joker while weaving the origin into the central mystery through the main antagonist. The flashbacks to the fateful evening do open the film, but remain allusions until it is revealed that Jack Napier, the Joker, was indeed holding the gun as a young thug — portrayed by Hugo Blick, pictured above.
“I made you, you made me first.”
“Hey, bat-brain, I mean, I was a kid when I killed your parents. I mean, I say “I made you” you gotta say “you made me.” I mean, how childish can you get?”
This is break in canon that surely must have infuriated purists at the time, but ultimately makes for a stronger, and as time progresses, more original film — a decision heightening a fairly conventional conflict that otherwise fails to be particularly philosophical (the classic duality conundrum of chaos vs. order/dogma vs. anarchy to be much more richly explored in Nolan’s 2008 The Dark Knight in any case).
Past that, it’s classic damsel in distress (Kim Basinger), hero vs. villain narrative but the central maniacal plot of Nicholson’s The Joker becomes nicely tied to his physical appearance, his scenes of rampage also hilariously livened by songs from no other than Prince. Burton’s direction proves to be thorough and incredibly stylized throughout and Anton Furst’s standout production design (clearly finding inspiration in German Expressionism and all manners of Gothic and Fascist architecture) brings Gotham City to life in ways that haven’t been matched since on film — a look that would would be epitomized later in the superb Batman Returns (1992; review coming up) and gloriously turned on its head in Joel Schumacher’s exalted day-glo nonsense that were Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997), two films I am actually quite fond of and will revisit later this week as part of this impromptu Bat-a-thon.
Miami Connection (Y.K. Kim & Woo-sang Park, 1987)
Probably the pinnacle of cheesy 80s trash cinema, Miami Connection makes Never Too Young to Die (a personal favorite of mine starring John Stamos and Gene Simmons) look like an Antonioni film. All joking aside, this is the greatest, most hilarious film I’ve seen in a long time, featuring everything from cocaine-dealing ninjas to amazing songs about friendship and kung-fu, of course. To be given to royal treatment from Drafthouse Films sometime later this year.
They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)
