It is April 7, and I’m just now doing an Awesome 80s in April. That’s not entirely true; my last Friday Night Horror Movie was from the 1980s, and I’ve watched a couple of other movies from that decade. I’ll have those reviews up sometime soon. But this is my first real mention of the theme, and we are a week into it. As I mentioned last week, I’ve been trying to write more official reviews for Cinema Sentries, which means my time to work on my themes is lessened. But I’ll try to do a few more before the month is out (speaking of which, I realize I still haven’t written my movie journal for March… I’m so behind.
Anyway, I had a little free time this afternoon after watching and reviewing half a dozen movies for CS over the weekend, and I was happy to sit down with something I didn’t have to watch. The question then becomes, what do I want to watch?
I was tired and not in the mood to spend a lot of time deciding, and I definitely didn’t want to watch anything complicated that would make me think too hard. I found this film on a streaming service; read the blurb:
“Wild teens (Martin Hewitt, Betsy Russell, Sherilyn Fenn) crash-land on an island of drug smugglers.”
And figured, why not? A big, dumb, wild teenagers movie should hit the spot. And it stars Sherilyn Fenn, who I loved in Twin Peaks, so that was a bonus.
I definitely got the dumb part right. This movie is utterly stupid.
It begins with basically a music video. A song called “Out of Control” plays while a bunch of teenagers (or probably twentysomethings made up to look like teenagers) smile at the camera, dance, and shake their heads. The entire song plays, and we realize this is a music video created by one of the teens being played at the prom. Weirdly, the video quality of that video is better than the actual film we are about to watch. Weirder still is that after several minutes of watching a video where teens dance to music, we get more music and more teens dancing at the prom.
Eventually several of the teens slip away, jump on a small boat, which takes them to a small plane that is flying them to a small island for the weekend. The plane crashes, and the kids swim to a deserted island.
They freak out for a bit, and then one of them finds a hidden stash of booze and SPAM. So they settle down to a night of drinking, which leads to a game of Spin the Bottle, which leads to a game of Strip Spin the Bottle. Contrary to what my church leaders taught me, this does not lead to a lot of sexing. Almost everybody just passes out. One couple almost goes all the way, and the cool kid called Cowboy tries to get his girl down, but she says she wants her first time to be special.
This whole scene takes an incredibly long time. Music plays, and we see them spin the bottle and kiss, spin the bottle and kiss. Many times over, it’s spin the bottle and kiss. Then dance. Then someone recommends stripping, so it’s spin the bottle and take off some clothes. Over and over again.
Clearly this movie had no budget, so they had to pad out their run time with dancing and half nakeness.
I paused the movie at some point, which moved it into my queue of “Now Watching” on our streaming stick. My wife saw it, read that blurb, and asked me with a smile, “Are you enjoying your movie? It sounds like its just an excuse to have a bunch of teenagers run around in their bikinis.”
I corrected her that it was really just an excuse for a bunch of teenagers to run around in their underwear. She gave me that knowing smile (knowing that I’m a complete dumb-dumb) and I finished the flick.
Eventually, something more happens. The drug smugglers show up. The kids think they are there to rescue them and climb aboard their boat. Then things get nasty. The bad guys pull out guns, slap some of them around and attempt to rape one of the girls. Luckily that cowboy kid didn’t get on the boat, and he comes to the rescue. The boat burns, then explodes, and the kids are stuck on the island again.
No kidding, the girl who was nearly raped was the girl who told the cowboy she was waiting for something special before she had sex. Naturally, after that horrifying experience, she has sex with the cowboy.
I threw my remote at the TV.
Some more bad guys show up, and there is a little gunplay. This actually isn’t half bad. It isn’t good by any means, but it is better than dancing, kissing, or talking about kissing. Blah, blah, blah, our heroes win, and they take this plane to safety.
I probably just spoiled the entire movie for you, but really and truly there is no reason to watch this. The few moments that are interesting aren’t worth all the really boring bits.
themidnightcafe.org 