The Totally Awesome ’80s in April: 2025 Edition

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I feel like I’ve been a bit remiss in my movie theme watching (and writing) this year. I don’t know why exactly except that I’ve been busy. Busy with work. Busy with family stuff. Busy watching (and writing) about movies for Cinema Sentries. I thought that giving up on my music blog would give me more time to write for this one. And it has to an extent, but I seem to be posting more about things that aren’t a part of the month’s them than are.

It is also difficult to get into that groove. For so long I posted music everyday it had become a habit. I’m still working on making this blog a habit.

Which brings us to the Totally Awesome ’80s in April. This will be my third year with this theme and I’m excited about it. Historically I do really well with it. Since it tackles an entire decade and not a specific genre it is much easier to find movies to watch. I especially love the 1980s because I grew up in that decade and have a ton of memories watching movies as a kid, but also because there are a ton of movies geared towards adults that I didn’t watch.

It has been really fun to dive into a lot of those movies these last two years and watch films that would not have interested me as a pre-teen.

I’ve already watched three movies from the 1980s this weekend and I should have some reviews posted this coming week.

Now that’s what I call awesome.

Awesome ’80s in April: Starman (1984)

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I have this very vague memory of watching Starman as a kid. This would have been the mid to late 80s, I was in my early teens, definitely pubescent. I think Mom rented it. I wouldn’t have known who John Carpenter was at that point, but I’d definitely known Karen Allen from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I’d probably seen Tron by that point and known Jeff Bridges from it.

Starman seems like a very mature movie for me to have watched at the time, so I’m guessing Mom got it for her and since I knew those actors and I liked alien movies I gave it a watch. I definitely remember not liking it, finding it rather boring.

I know I was pubescent because Karen Allen has an early scene in her underwear and that image has stuck in my brain all these years later.

I’ve since become a very big John Carpenter fan, but have put off watching this since that early viewing for having that memory of it being dull.

But it is the Awesome 80s in April and I’ve been watching a lot of early Jeff Bridges movies so I decided to give it another shot.

I still found it to be kind of dull.

Boring means something different to me now, and Starman definitely has its merits, but there is still something flat about it that didn’t appeal to me.

Karen Allen plays Jenny Hayden, a woman living on her own in an isolated lakeside cabin in Wisconsin. She’s a widow, having recently lost her husband in an accident. She spends her nights watching old home movies of him and feeling sad.

The Voyager 2 space probe makes contact with a distant alien race. They send Jeff Bridges (or rather an alien form that eventually takes the shape of Jeff Bridges – or rather Jenny’s late husband who is played by Jeff Bridges).

He immediately decides the planet is hostile and takes Jenny hostage on a road trip to that big crater in Arizona. They eventually become friends, and fall in love. Meanwhile, they are being chased by the Military led by Mark Shermin (Martin Cruz Smith) who is really a scientist interested in aliens, and unlike the rest of the Army men, doesn’t want to hurt the alien.

Basically, it is a road movie with the two leads getting romantic while Bridges is a fish out of water.

Allen and Bridges are great (Bridges was nominated for an Oscar). He gives his alien a lot of physical quirks and ticks. Carpenter and cinematographer Donald M. Morgan created some lovely images. Some of the effects are a little dated, but there’s nothing cringe-worthy.

It is a fine little film, but there’s just not much to it. Carpenter says he was inspired by The 39 Steps and It Happened One Night both of which are much better films. He also says he was trying to get away from the thriller/horror films he’d become famous for. But it should be noted he made Big Trouble In Little China after this.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: X-Ray (1981)

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It wouldn’t be the Awesome ’80s in April without at least one dumb slasher. You may not believe this when I tell you, but I’ve actually grown rather particular when it comes to watching dumb slashers. I no longer have the patience for low-budget, dumb slashers if they are poorly made or have no sense of style.

I have this thing on my streaming service device that lets me browse through every movie ever made. I can sort by genre, or the year it was made. I can browse by actor or popularity, etc. It gives me a brief synopsis, and details on who stars in the film and even connects to YouTube to let me view the film’s trailer.

Tonight I sorted by year, clicked on 1981, and then went looking for horror films. I skipped past the big ones, the popular films, the ones I’ve seen already – films like The Evil Dead, Halloween II, and Scanners. I found a couple of films that looked interesting but when I watched the trailer I could see they were cheaply made and looked bad.

Finally, I landed on X-Ray (also known as the superior title of Hospital Massacre). It looked like a dumb slasher flick, but the trailer indicated it was well-lit and had a sense of style so I found a copy and hit Play.

The plot is simple. Susan Jeremy (Barbi Benton) stops by the hospital to get some test results. She can’t find her doctor and is detained by another one. Everyone who looks at her test results and x-rays makes disturbing faces as if she’s ready to die right then and there, but they won’t tell her anything. She’s forced to take more tests and stay overnight. It is Kafka-esque in its absurdity. Also, a crazed killer is on the loose.

When she arrives at the hospital no one seems to know where her doctor is. She’s told to look for her on the eighth floor. The elevator takes her to the ninth floor where she’s met by some creepy dudes in masks who say that the construction on that floor is making the air toxic. On her way back down the elevator gets stuck.

Her doctor isn’t in her office. A friendly medical student directs her to another doctor who looks over her test results and frowns. She’ll have to stay and take more tests he says. He makes her strip down and does a full examination of her body. He takes some blood.

The blood sample comes back and the doctor makes more frowny faces. He talks to the nurses in hushed tones. Over and over Susan asks what’s going on, is there something wrong? But the hospital staff won’t tell her anything. Just that she needs to stay overnight for observation. She’s put in a room with half a dozen other women, all of whom leer at her and openly discuss how she must be dying.

Meanwhile, the psycho killer is brutally stabbing anyone who gets in his way. It was he who switched her lab results and x-rays to indicate she was terribly sick. It was he who killed her original doctor.

In the opening scene, which amounts to a flashback we see young Susan making fun of a young boy who gave her a Valentine’s Day card (naturally this film takes place on a Holiday as Halloween and Friday the 13th had proven to be very popular and profitable). So we know who the killer is and what his motivation is, though we aren’t supposed to be able to figure out which adult in the hospital he is (it isn’t actually that difficult to guess.)

When Susan realizes a killer is on the loose she tries to tell the doctors and the nurses but they don’t believe her. They give her a sedative and tie her down. There is a feminist reading of this film where Susan is being treated like every woman everywhere – always being controlled by the men around her, never, ever listened to. I’m not sure the film is smart enough to have pulled that off on purpose but that reading mostly works.

It is well-lit. The Cinematography isn’t deserving of any awards but it looks good. A part of me always scoffs when films like this have hospitals lit by lamps and pin lights instead of the huge fluorescent real hospitals use, but it’s stylish and looks nice on the screen. Director Boaz Davidson has a sense of style, and there are several striking images. My favorite is when the killer holds a sheet up in front of him and is brightly lit from behind. It makes no sense plot wise but it sure looks cool.

The story is nonsense. The killer’s motivations are dumb even for this type of movie. His method of gaslighting her makes no logical sense since his ultimate plan is to just kill her. Etc., and so forth. It is a dumb slasher. But like I say it has some style and it looks good (and it does have some depth if you want to read it that way) and sometimes that’s what you want on a Friday night.

Awesome ’80s in April: The Killer (1989)

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I naturally think of action movies when I think about 1980s movies. Action films along with slasher horror and romantic comedies defined the genres of 1980s cinema. When I think of 1980s action films I think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Chuck Norris. I think about big explosions, increasingly bigger guns, and witty one-liners.

Big, bigger, and biggest defined American action films in the 1980s. But in Hong Kong, they were making a different kind of action film. Led by director John Woo, Hong Kong action films were much more stylized and interesting than their American counterparts. Woo’s action films were operatic in tone. They utilized slow motion and close-up gunfire. They also relied more heavily on telling a compelling story with thought paid attention to developing its characters. The explosions weren’t always big, but the emotions were.

I’m not extremely well versed in Hong Kong cinema, and I’ve only seen a few John Woo films, but watching The Killer reminded me that I need to dig further into them.

The Killer stars Chow Yun-fat as Ah Jong a hitman. Paid to assassinate a Triad leader he accidentally injures a nightclub singer named Jennie (Sally Yeh), leaving her partially blind. Ridden with guilt he begins visiting her secretly and eventually, the two become friends, without her ever knowing who he really is.

Hot on his trail are the gangsters who paid him to kill the Triad leader (his face was seen during that hit which may lead others to know who ordered the murder in the first place) and Detective Yi Ling (Danny Lee).

Ah John and Detective Ling develop a respect for one another as they both have a moral code and are both quite good at what they do. I was reminded quite a bit of Heat while watching this as the games they play with each other are reminiscent of Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in that film.

The action sequences in this film are incredible. I’ve watched several other 1980s action films this month and most of those big action sequences pale in comparison. American films tended to rely on the bigger is better principle. As long as things were constantly blowing up they called it a day. But Woo injects his film with a real sense of style. His action sequences are exciting.

And beautiful. All those close-up shots done in slow motion with operatic music playing really give those sequences a delicate beauty. There are a few scenes located in an old church filled candles that are stunningly gorgeous.

The story itself is fine. I can’t say I’m really moved by any of it, but I appreciate that the film is making an effort with it. It is definitely better than what they were doing with Rambo III.

But nobody watches action films for the story and what Woo and company provide us with those action sequences is more than enough to make The Killer highly recommended.

Awesome ’80s in April: Breathless (1983)

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I have a lousy memory. I can’t remember the details of things. I deal in impressions and feelings. This is especially true with movies, music, and books – all art really. There are songs I’ve heard a million times, that I’ve sung along to since I was a little boy, but if you were to ask me right now – if you were to put a gun to my head and force me to recite a lyric or tell you what the song was about you’d have a lot of cleaning up to do and be no less the wiser.

There are movies I’ve seen multiple times, that I absolutely love, but that I could not describe the plot to you any more than I can speak French to my wife. There are lots of other films that I know I’ve seen, that I remember enjoying, but the details of what and why are completely lost to me. I can remember it being joyous, or devastating. Sometimes I’ll remember images or specific scenes. I might quote a line of dialogue, but the details just disappear.

I’ve seen Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless at least twice. it is a great movie. An important one. I know it was an early entry into the French New Wave and endlessly influential. I can see Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in that little bedroom and walking down that Parisian street. That imagery is iconic. I know they have great chemistry. But I really don’t remember what happens.

All of which is to say I came to Jim McBrides’ remake of Breathless with Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky with a relatively clean slate. Since I can’t remember the details of the Godard film, I wasn’t constantly comparing the two.

The setting was moved to Los Angeles (versus Paris in the original) and the character’s nationalities were reversed (the man is American here, the woman French). I think the basic plot points – the story if you will – are more or less the same but I really couldn’t tell you what details were changed. Honestly, I watched this film about a week ago and I had to read the Wikipedia summary to remember much of what happened in this one.

Jesse Lujack (Richard Gere) is a Jerry Lee Lewis-loving drifter. He steals fast cars and likes to ride. He reads Silver Surfer comic books. He steals a Porche in Las Vegas and drives to Los Angeles in hopes of finding Monica Poiccard (Valérie Kaprisky) an architecture student he had a torrid affair with one weekend while she was visiting Vegas.

On his way, he zips around a traffic blockade, and accidentally (more or less) shoots a cop when he makes chase. On the run from the law he still comes to UCLA, finds Monica, and tries to convince her to come to Mexico with him.

At first, she rebuffs his advances. That weekend was fun but she has work to do. But he’s so charming, so much fun, she eventually gives in. Much of the movie is spent watching them wander around LA, goofing around. He tries to get some money owed to him, and she spends some time with her professor whom she’s also having an affair with.

I don’t remember a lot about the Godard film, but I do remember it is infused with this sense of carefree joy. Godard felt that the French films of his time lacked a certain something that could be found in the cheap American gangster films of the 1930s and 1940s. He made his own version of those films, with modern cuts, music, and filmmaking. His film went on to influence countless American movies.

McBride’s film gained modest critical praise and made a little money, but slipped into obscurity pretty quickly. Godard’s film feels very 1960s even though it mimics film noirs from two decades prior. In the same way, McBride’s film feels very 1980s and has the sheen of neo-noir on it.

I’ve been watching a lot of Richard Gere films from this period and geez that guy was a star. It simply exudes charm and sexiness even when he’s playing a creep like he is here. There is a long scene early in the film where he’s just driving down the road, talking to himself and singing along to Jerry Lee on the radio. I could watch him doing that forever. It’s no wonder Monica drops everything to run away with him.

I can’t begin to argue which film is “better” as if that designation would mean anything anyways. Both films are wonderful, even if I won’t remember any of the details in a couple of weeks.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Child’s Play (1988)

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Out of all the classic 1980s horror icons – Jason, Freddy Kreuger, Michael Myers, Pinhead, etc – the only one I had never paid any attention to was Chucky. I don’t really know why. I was too young in 1988 to have seen the original in theaters, and it may have come too late in the cycle of ’80s horror films to have had the same cultural cache, or at least the same influence on me. Most of those other franchises had just about petered out by the time Child’s Play hit the screen. The exception would be the Hellraiser franchise which got its start in 1987, but I didn’t watch it until 2012.

Or maybe the Child’s Play films didn’t get the same late-night cable TV airplay as the others. Like I say, I don’t really know why I never got around to watching Child’s Play.

I rectified that tonight and while I’m glad I did, I can’t say that I’m all that upset it took me this long to get to it.

Chucky, the knife-wielding, homicidal doll (voiced by the always wonderful Brad Dourif) is an iconic character. I’m definitely familiar with him but that familiarity comes from seeing clips from all the movies and various commercials or specials or whatever.

The thing about the first film in a long-running franchise is that it is often more subdued than the subsequent films. Sequels have a tendency of ramping things up. So it is with Child’s Play. I was surprised at how long it takes for Chucky to really show himself.

First, there is a scene demonstrating how the crazed killer’s soul got into the doll. Then we have to introduce the family he’s going to terrorize. There’s the mom Karen (Catherine Hicks) and the little boy Andy (Alex Vincent). The boy precocious and smart. He’s introduced by fixing his mother breakfast in bed which consists of an overflowing (and over-sweetened) bowl of cereal and a huge blob of butter on burnt toast. He wants a Good Guy doll for his birthday but she can’t afford one. Later some homeless dude has one for sale for cheap.

At first the doll talks in its normal voice. Everything is normal about it. Then the babysitter gets pushed out the window of their high-rise apartment. Andy says Chucky scared her and she fell. Andy says Chucky speaks to him (and his language is pretty filthy).

No one believes Andy, including police detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon). We get a few POV shots from Chucky’s perspective and a glimpse of him moving around, but for a good chunk of the film we don’t really see him in action.

This isn’t to say the film would be improved if Chucky were to be seen early on wreaking murderous havoc. I suspect we’ll get more of that in the sequels. Rather I’m simply stating how surprising it was to me to find the story weaving a mystery for the characters about whether or not Andy was making Chucky up or not, even though as an audience we know the doll lives.

It makes sense from the perspective of the filmmakers. They didn’t know this was going to turn into an iconic franchise. They were just trying to make a scary movie about a killer doll. They needed an actual story, with plausible characters. Later it can have films with more murdering mayhem, but the first film in a franchise needs grounding.

Or something. That concept makes sense in my mind, but honestly, watching it was a little bit of a drag. I wanted more Chucky, not more story, more grounding. Once the doll does come out it is pretty cool. The animatronics are great, and while he’s not in full-on shite talking mode yet, he gets in a few good lines. And the ending is pretty great.

I’ll definitely be checking out those sequels.

Awesome ’80s in April: 8 Million Ways To Die (1986)

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The other day I was in my local used bookstore and I picked up a copy of Lawrence Block’s 8 Million Days to Die. I don’t remember why I did. I’d never read a book from Block before. I read a lot of detective fiction so probably I’d just heard his name mentioned as a good writer of that genre. Anyway, I bought the book and read it. I liked it quite a lot.

It is the fifth book in Block’s series about Matthew Scudder an ex-cop, sort-of private eye. At no point did I feel I was missing anything having not read the previous four books in the series, but I liked it enough to know I wanted to start at the beginning. I still have been unable to find that first book in the series at the used store. Maybe I’ll have to buy it new.

Fast forward a few months and I got a review copy of a book entitled Into the Night by Cornell Woolrich. The manuscript of which was found unfinished in Woolirch’s desk when he died many years ago. Lawrence Block was tasked to finish it. I read it and reviewed it (which you’ll be able to read soon over at Cinema Sentries) and quite liked it.

Lawrence Block must have been on my brain because when I came across this adaptation of 8 Million Ways to Die I got all sorts of excited and watched it immediately. It is good enough that I wish they’d made half a dozen sequels and turned it into a television show.

It has been too long since I read the story to know how faithfully they adapted it to the screen. They definitely moved it from New York to Los Angeles, and I’m sure a lot of the details were changed, I don’t remember that ending at all, but the basics are there.

Jeff Bridges plays Matthew Scudder. He begins the film as a detective working for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. When a raid goes horribly wrong, ending with Scudder shooting a small-time drug dealer in front of his wife and kids, Scudder finds himself without a job and in a drunk ward. Cop politics handled the first, a several-day bender got him into the second.

At an AA meeting, someone hands him a note to be at a private gambling club at a certain time. There he meets Chance (Randy Brooks) the owner of the club, a high-class call girl named Sarah (Rosanne Arquette), and Angel Maldonado (Andy Garcia) a drug-dealing gangster. All three will become the major characters in our story.

But he also meets Sunny (Alexandra Paul) another call girl, the one who initially invited him to the party. She plays coy at first but eventually offers him $5,000 to ask Chance, who she says is her pimp, to let her leave town and leave the business for good.

Chance says he’s not her pimp, doesn’t have a hold on her at all, and has no problem with her leaving. By the next day she’s been brutally murdered.

Scudder isn’t the kind of guy – ex-cop or not, struggling alcoholic or not – to let that sort of thing go and so he’s on the case.

The script was originally co-written by Oliver Stone and R. Lance Hill with some rewrites added by Robert Towne. Director Hal Ashby was reportedly so drunk and stoned while filming that he was fired during post-production. A new editor was brought in who cut it to pieces and added some dialogue in post.

As such the film has a disjointed, shambolic feel to it. Ashby’s films often feel a little disheveled but this is even more so. There are abrupt cuts and references to things that never happened on screen (but clearly were intended to, and were probably cut).

It is also dingy and dirty, a modern film noir that isn’t afraid of the muck. Jeff Bridges is terrific as Scudder. He gets the look and feel of an alcoholic just exactly right. His performance is full of wonderful little details that make his character feel lived in. There’s definitely a touch of Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski in it, but more than that, too.

Rosanna Arquette is good as well, though her role doesn’t give her much to do. But really, this is Andy Garcia’s show. He’s terrific. Manic, and edgy. Charming, but always on the edge of violence.

It ends in a fury of shouting and violence that didn’t quite work for me. The whole film is a bit of a mess, to be honest, but also it’s kind of wonderful. I enjoyed living in this world for an hour and a half. I wish I could go back and make it a huge box office hit so we’d have more of these films with Jeff Bridges as Matthew Scudder.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Entity (1982)

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The Entity is a supernatural horror film that got lousy reviews upon its release and bombed at the box office. It was almost immediately overshadowed by Poltergeist which came out that same year and has now mostly been forgotten. But if you are a fan of things that go bump in the night and gnarly ghost stories then it is well worth checking out.

Carla Moran (Barbara Hershey) is a single mother of three kids who works all day and is taking classes at a secretarial school all night. She’s had a hard life, but she’s doing the best that she can. One night as she lies in bed she’s assaulted. She cannot see her attacker and when she is finally able to scream her teenage son Billy (David Labiosa) rushes in to find nobody in the room, nobody in the house, and all the doors and windows are locked. Perhaps it was just a terrible nightmare.

The next day she’s violently attacked again. This time her eyes are wide open and still she can see no one. The assailant is invisible. When the attack is over she loads the kids up and takes them to her friend’s apartment. She talks her into seeing a psychiatrist.

Dr. Sneiderman (Ron Silver) is incredibly kind. He never sneers at her claims of being raped by a poltergeist. He asks questions and responds. He doesn’t believe these supernatural occurrences really happened, but he never calls her crazy. He understands she believes they did. When she comes to his office covered in bruises, he asks a female nurse to come in while he takes a look at them. When he comes to her house to see the places in which she was attacked he repeatedly asks if it’s okay for him to come in (to the bathroom, her bedroom places of intimacy and privacy).

He believes her issues are deeply rooted in her psyche. Perhaps some childhood trauma. He wants to help. But the more they talk, the more he probes, the more violent the attacks seem to come.

She wants his help, but more than anything she wants him to believe her. When an attack happens at her friend Cindy’s (Margaret Blye) house Cindy’s belief in what is happening greatly moves Carla. At this, she begins pushing away from therapy and seeks the help of some parapsychologists. They take over her house with scientific equipment and eventually try to capture the Entity with specialty equipment.

The Entity is an odd mix of tone and a jumble of themes. Hershey and Silver are terrific as Carla and Dr. Sneiderman. I especially love those character details about Sneiderman. And Hershey portrays Carla with a great deal of empathy. Both go a little off the rails towards the end of the film, but that’s a script problem, not the actors. The best parts of the film are just them talking.

As you can probably see from this review some of the underlying themes of the film are about how women who make claims of assault are treated. The men in the film tend to not believe her, they make negative claims about her sanity. They objectify her or use her for their own purposes.

The worst part of the film is when she’s being attacked. There are a couple of really harsh assaults and even though we can’t see The Entity, his presence is felt. The scenes are meant to be uncomfortable and they are especially so as I was expecting something more along the lines of Poltergeist, not something so heavy.

From an audience perspective, we see that she is being attacked by some invisible force so all of the mystery of whether or not she’s just imagining it is sucked out of the room. The attacks are a blunt force. Almost immediately in the film, we witness her being attacked. Before we even get a picture of who she is, she’s being slung across the room. The film is relentless in that way. It isn’t a ghost story. There is no mystery. Perhaps that’s the point, it ties in better with how men tend to not believe women.

But it also wants to be a thriller, a scary horror film. And those two ideas – women are assaulted all the time and it is horrifying and they are rarely believed – and gee isn’t this an exciting horror film about ghosts and monsters attacking a woman seem to be at odds.

But there is enough here to like. Think of it as the opposite side of the Poltergeist coin and maybe you’ll enjoy what you see.

Awesome ’80s in April: Nighthawks (1981)

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I was born in the late 1970s and so while I did grow up in the 1980s I didn’t really come of age until the early 1990s. So, the films that I watched during the 1980s were mostly kid stuff. In the years since I’ve watched most of the more popular and critically acclaimed films from that decade, but there are still tons of films I’ve missed.

I’ve said it many times before but one of the things I love about doing these little monthly movie themes is that I always discover films I’d never heard of before. Nighthawks did okay when it was first released but it seems to have been mostly forgotten, which is too bad because it’s pretty good.

I didn’t intend to watch so many Sylvester Stallone movies when I began the Awesome ’80s in April, but here I am four films deep and looking at some more to watch. Nighthawks was made fairly early in his career. Or I should say fairly soon after he found success with Rocky in 1976 (for he had been playing bit parts since 1969). He’s still clearly hungry and still trying to figure out just what kind of star he’s going to be.

It has some interesting behind-the-scenes production stories. Originally the film was written as the second sequel to The French Connection and it was going to be a buddy cop film with someone like Richard Pryor playing off of Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle character. But when Hackman declared he was done with the character they turned it into a stand-alone film.

The original director, Gary Nelson, was fired before he even really got started – just one week into production. When the next director, Bruce Malmoth was delayed for a day, Stallone took on the director’s duties so as to not lose a day of shooting. That caused trouble with the guild and he was fined for it. Later both the studio and Stallone made substantial edits to the film when it did poorly at early screenings. Supposedly Stallone cut out several scenes that focused on Rutger Hauer’s character.

None of this really matters of course, what we wound up with is what we’ve got, and what we’ve got is pretty good.

Stallone stars as Sergeant Deke DaSilva of the New York Police Department. He, and his partner, Sergeant Matthew Fox (Billy Dee Williams) work undercover (the film begins with a wonderful scene in which Stallone dawns a dress and a plastic face mask posing as a little old lady trying to catch some purse snatchers). They are quickly pulled into a new, elite squad designed to catch an international terrorist known only as Wulfgar (Rutger Hauer in his first American role).

Wulfgar has just come to New York City. He’s on the run from his European financiers due to running afoul to their good graces. One of his bombs killed some kids and he shot one of their men whom he believed had led the police to his doorstep.

He’s trailed by English Police Inspector Hartman (Nigel Davenport) who recruits DaSilva and Fox into his elite squad. A long chunk in the middle of the film is all about Hartman training the cops on how to catch Wulfgar which basically amounts to them throwing out all their police training and being willing to break the rules and kill the man if they can. This section is rather tedious.

Eventually, it becomes a cat-and-mouse game between DaSilva and Wulfgar and that’s when the film is at its best. There is a good scene set inside a subway line, and a terrific one on a tramway car high above the ocean, headed towards Roosevelt Island.

It looks gorgeous too with some wonderful cinematography by James A. Cotner. Stallone and Hauer play their parts well. Overall it is a good little 1980s thriller and one worth seeking out. But there is a reason why it slipped into obscurity as it doesn’t do anything particularly special with pretty standard material.

Awesome ’80s in April: The Rambo Trilogy

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After years of getting bit parts and going nowhere, Sylvester Stallone sold his script to Rocky and somehow talked the right people into letting him star. It became a huge success and launched his career. In 1982 he starred in First Blood, the first Rambo movie. That film launched him into superstardom and made him one of the biggest actors of the 1980s.

What I didn’t realize until just now is that in the time between when he made Rocky in 1976 and First Blood in 1982 he made six other films including two Rocky sequels. Other than the Rocky sequels, most of them were only moderately successful. He is credited as a writer or co-writer on most of them. He also directed the first two Rocky sequels, Paradise Alley in 1978 and Staying Alive, the Saturday Night Fever sequel. It is interesting to look at his career at this stage and realize he seemed to think of himself as something of a Renaissance man.

But this isn’t about Sylvester Stallone, it is about John Rambo, the quintessential 1980s action hero. The Rambo films became something of a template for action films in the 1980s. You are probably picturing Stallone right now as Rambo, muscles bulging, a bandana wrapped around his long hair, sweat dripping down his brow as he fires a massive machine gun at countless bad guys.

Truth is the subsequent films became exactly that, but that first film, First Blood, actually attempts some real drama and a social message. It is more of a character study than an explosive shoot-em-up. For the first two acts anyway.

John Rambo is a Vietnam vet. He returns home to find his country not only isn’t proud of his service but angry at it. His fellow soldiers are spat upon when they return. He heads to the mountains to find his old friend. But when he gets there he finds his friend has died. It was cancer they wrote on his death certificate but his wife thinks it was Agent Orange from the war that really got him.

Disheartened he walks into town looking for a bit to eat before he moves on. He’s immediately picked up by Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy). The Sheriff basically tells Rambo they don’t want his kind – dirty drifters who need a shower and a haircut – in his town and drops him off past the bridge. Rambo is having none of that and turns right back around.

He’s arrested then and essentially tortured by the local cops. Rambo, flashing back to his time in ‘Nam, when he was captured by the Vietcong and tortured, flips out and escapes. The chase is on and once again the police go too far, shooting at Rambo when he’s done nothing to deserve being killed. At this point, the film turns into an action film. Rambo’s former CO (Richard Crenna) shows up and lets the local yocals know they are facing the best damn Green Beret he’s ever seen and it’s best to give up.

The action is tight and well-composed all the way up until about the last fifteen minutes at which point it gets ratcheted up to ridiculous levels.

It is those levels that will serve as the inspiration for the following two sequels. In Rambo: First Blood Part II he’s offered a pardon from prison (for he did get sent to prison for killing all those cops in the first film) if he’ll go back to Vietnam. The mission is to infiltrate an old prison camp and see if there are still any POWs there. Naturally, there are and once again Rambo gets to kill a lot of people.

First Blood made a big deal about how the authorities were the villains. The cops hassled and tortured him just for existing, the military more or less turned their backs on him. That’s an interesting point of view for a 1980s action flick. Rambo II contains a little of that, with Rambo basically being used as an expendable pawn who is sent to Vietnam to basically prove that there aren’t any POWs left and everybody can be happy now that the war is over. But mostly it is a chance to let Rambo fight in the jungle.

With Rambo III our hero gets to fight in Afghanistan. His old CO is captured there and Rambo has to get him out. This time any pretext of a real plot of subtext is thrown out of the window in order to allow for more shooting, more explosions, and more dumb fun. Let’s just say there is a scene in which Rambo jumps inside a tank and fights off an attack helicopter and leave it at that.

There have been two subsequent Rambo sequels made – one in 2008 and another in 2019. I haven’t seen them. Those first three feel like enough.