Awesome ’80s in April: Yes, Madam! (1985)

yes madam

When I decided to watch a bunch of movies from the 1980s this month I was thinking about all of the stereotypical films from that decade that I knew of as a kid. I was thinking about dumb comedies, big action flicks, slashers, and low-budget B-movies. Lots of other movies were made in the 1980s, of course, but my plan was to stick to the kinds of movies that made me think of the ’80s. I wasn’t interested in foreign language films, or art-house movies.

I’ve mostly stuck to that, but the Criterion Channel is running a series of films starring Michelle Yeoh and I just “had” to watch at least one. Yes, Madam! is the film that made her a star in Hong Kong and is at least partially responsible for a slate of action films starring women that became popular at the time.

Yeoh stars as Senior Inspector Ng, a Hong Kong detective who teams up with Senior Inspector Morris (Cynthia Rothrock in her first big role) from London. They are after some secret microfilm stolen by some gangsters.

Well, actually it was accidentally stolen by a couple of bumbling crooks, but the gangsters want it so you get the cops and the gangsters chasing the dimwits, and the gangsters doing everything they can to keep the cops from getting it first.

It is very similar to a lot of American action movies made in the 1980s. The plot is pretty silly, and the acting is not always great, but the action is a lot of fun. American films tend to involve a lot of gunplay, but Hong Kong films eschew the bang bang for the kung pow. Both types of films usually involve some comedy, but American films tend to have a wise-cracking lead hero, and their Hong Kong counterparts are more slapstick, and more physical with the comedy.

So it is with Yes, Madam! Yeoh and Rothrock kick some serious ass. There are a lot of fight scenes and all of them are fun to watch. The comedy doesn’t fare as well, but I’ve never been a fan of slapstick silliness. It is big, goofy fun, and well worth the watching.

Awesome ’80s in April: The Bedroom Window (1987)

the bedroom window poster

After a work party, Terry (Steve Guttenberg) talks Sylvia (Isabelle Hubbert), his boss’ wife, into going back to his apartment and to bed with him. After the lovemaking, Terry goes to the bathroom. Sylvia hears a noise outside. She sees a man attacking a woman. She struggles with opening the window and the noise startles the man, and he runs away.

She thinks about calling the cops to tell them what she’s seen, but she fears this will lead to her husband finding out about the affair. The next day they learn a different woman was raped and murdered not far from the apartment, just 30 minutes after the attack Sylvia witnessed.

Still fearing retribution from the husband, but now believing the man Sylvia saw was likely the man who murdered the other woman, Terry decides to call the police and pretend he was the witness. Sylvia gives him the details of the attacker and at first, the conversation with the police goes well.

Naturally, there are complications.

In order to arrest the killer they need more information from Terry, but he can’t give that information because he really didn’t witness anything. More murders occur and Terry’s desire to tell the real truth increases, but Sylvia remains unwilling to come forward. Terry does some investigating on his own and meets Denise (Elizabeth McGovern) the girl who was attacked outside his apartment.

The Bedroom Window follows some standard Noir tropes but with interesting modifications. Steve Guttenberg is either a brilliant choice for the lead actor, or an awful one. I know him from the Police Academy movies and Three Men and a Baby. He has such a goofy, gentle presence it is difficult to believe he could seduce someone like Isabelle Hubbert. Though it is quite easy to believe he could be the typical noir patsy.

But that’s just it, Sylvia isn’t the typical femme fatale. She isn’t involved in the murders. She doesn’t set Terry up. She simply witnessed one assault. She does become a cold fish the more Terry tries to convince her to come forward as a witness, but before that, she seems like a lady in a loveless marriage looking for some fun.

Denise is an interesting monkey wrench in the proceedings as well. She becomes a secondary love interest to Terry, but she’s also deep into the mix of trying to figure out who the killer is. She seems more out of a detective story – the plucky kid who helps the detective – than a film noir. She’s also the only actor who even attempts a Baltimore accent which is kind of distracting.

Terry makes idiotic decision after idiotic decision which digs him deeper into trouble. The film never quite makes me believe he’s as dumb as his actions make him out to be which caused me to yell at the TV more than once.

Director Curtis Hanson, who would later make LA Confidential one of the all-time great neo-noirs, keeps things moving briskly and with great style. The Bedroom Window isn’t great, but it is well worth watching if you dig neo-noirs with a slice of erotic thrillers thrown in.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Stage Fright (1987)

stage fright poster

I did work study for the theater department for most of my years at college. I had an amazing time. For each show, we’d spend weeks in rehearsals working several hours every night and building the sets on the weekends. Then we’d put the show on for three weekends in a row. It was a small theater department so we often had folks from outside the school performing and working. It was much more like community theater than your typical university theater.

Everybody working a show from the actors to the director and the stagehands became a small family for a few months. And because it was a community theater often the same people would come back and work the next show, and the next. I made some great, lifelong friends at that theater.

Because of this, I love a movie about theater life. Stage Fright is a pretty terrific slasher film from director Michele Soavi that takes place almost entirely in a theater.

A small theater troupe is rehearsing a show about a serial killer who wears a big owl head while he attacks young women on the city street. It is set to open in just a few days, but the maniacal director Peter (David Brandon) doesn’t think it is ready. He locks all the doors, hides the key, and demands everybody stay all night to perfect the show.

Two actresses, Alicia (Barbara Capisti) and Betty (Ulrike Schwerk) find a way to sneak out because Alicia has sprang her ankle and needs medical attention. The closest doctor is at a psych hospital and naturally, a psycho-killer escapes while they are there and sneaks into their car.

You can guess what happens next. It takes a while for the bodies to start piling up. There is some enjoyable behind-the-scenes at the theater stuff. Some of it is on point, but some of it seems completely ludicrous. All of the cast is hungry, they need the job, they need the money, and they desire the fame. When the first girl dies the police are called and the press shows up. The director immediately tries to use it as a means of drumming up publicity.

But three days before opening night, he also fires one of his lead actresses, rewrites entire scenes, and makes big changes no director in his right mind would do that close to opening.

Not that any of this matters. This is a slasher film, not a theatrical documentary, but this nerd noticed.

Soavi has a great eye. In some ways the film is more Giallo than your typical slasher, which makes sense since he studied under Dario Argento. There is a great visual sense throughout the film, but especially in the last act. There is a scene in which the stage has been set in a most theatrically macabre way and then a fan clicks on and blows feathers all over and it is so strangely beautiful.

The killer wears that giant owl head for the entirety of the film and it is just terrifying. Once the kills do begin they come fast and furious. About halfway through I was mentally writing this review and I thought to myself that there wasn’t much gore for a slasher film. I was oh-so-wrong. Not long after that things get very bloody. The kills are good as the kids say.

The best slashers are typically no more than dumb fun. Stagefright is that, but it has more style, more of that special something that elevates far above most films in the genre. It comes highly recommended by me. Perhaps even more so if you’ve ever done any theater.

Awesome ’80s in April: Silver Bullet (1985)

silver bullet poster

For the last few years, I’ve been steadily (if perhaps a bit slowly) reading my way through Stephen King’s bibliography. I’m not even halfway through. Dude has written a lot of books. People have made a lot of movies based on those books. Most of them aren’t very good.

My working theory is that filmmakers focus on the monsters – the killer clowns, rabid dogs, vampires, and other assorted creatures of the night – and ignore the world-building, the characters, and all other non-horrifying story development. But while readers may come to King for the monsters, they stay for all that other stuff. At least I do. And so the movies wind up focusing on the wrong things that make King’s stories so interesting. That’s my theory anyway.

Based upon King’s Cycle of the Werewolf novella, Silver Bullet is (obviously) about a werewolf stalking a small town. Our hero is young Marty Coslaw (Corey Haim) who is bound to a souped-up wheelchair (which is named, in its very Stephen King way, the Silver Bullet). He has a nagging sister, Jane (Megan Follows) who narrates the film as an adult (another Stephen King trope) and a goofy, alcoholic uncle (a wonderfully hilarious Gary Busey).

There is a lot of small-town life that fills this film. There are community gatherings, family parties, funerals, and lots of Marty showing off his ability to get around without the use of his legs (he climbs trees and into his second-story window). The uncle rigs up an even better souped-up wheelchair that whizzes down the road at 60 MPH.

And of course, there is a lot of mutilations by a werewolf. None of it is particularly well done, and it is all pretty silly. You could call it a bad movie, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but it is also quite entertaining. It is exactly what I want a 1980s adaptation of a Stephen King werewolf movie to be.

Awesome ’80s in April: Call Me (1985)

call me movie poster

I freaking love the Criterion Channel. I say that every time I resubscribe. I don’t know why I ever take a break from it. I try to keep the number of streaming services I subscribe to down to three each month. Generally speaking, the wife gets a service, the daughter gets a service and I get one. I love Criterion but sometimes I want to watch a show on HBO Max or some other service and so I’ll pause my Criterion subscription. I’m always so excited when I come back.

Seriously, why do I ever leave?

Beyond having an amazing selection of incredible movies, the Criterion Channel is one of the few subscription services that actually bother to curate their films. They group their films by themes, or actors/directors, or other ideas. They often have interesting people come on and talk about their films. They include extras like audio commentaries and old making-of documentaries. Etc., etc., etc., It is a brilliant streaming service.

This month they are doing a series on Erotic Thrillers of the 1980s and 1990s. I’m thinking very seriously about making that my movie theme for May, but for now I’m talking about Call Me, a film I’d never heard of until I resubscribed to Criterion Channel (one of the many other wonderful reasons to subscribe).

Anna (Patricia Charbonneau) is a young journalist for an indie newspaper in New York. She’s in a fairly lifeless relationship with her boyfriend. One night she gets an obscene phone call from what she thinks is her boyfriend. The dude tells her to show up at a local bar and to leave her panties behind. The boyfriend is a no-show, but there is a strange dude who starts to hit on her. Getting away from him she hides in the bathroom where she witnesses a cop kill a transwoman over some stolen cash.

The obscene calls keep coming. She soon realizes they aren’t coming from her boyfriend but some stranger. She likes what he says. She gets really into it. She’s pretty sure the caller is the weird guy who was hitting on her in the bar (Stephen McHattie). He happens to be connected to the murder but she doesn’t know that yet. A young Steve Buscemi is also connected to it. He plays a character called Switchblade which is pretty awesome.

It never quite finds a way to seamlessly combine the erotic parts of the film with the thriller. So you wind up with some scenes where these scary dudes are trying to locate Anna because they think she’s got the cash, and scenes where she’s doing the sexy talk with some random on the phone. Eventually, those things come together but for most of the film’s run time, it feels like two different movies.

I quite liked Patricia Charbonneau in this, I’ll be interested in catching some other things she’s done, although looking at her career on IMDB it appears to be spotty at best. I do really like films from the 1980s that were shot on location in New York. It is always cool to see the city during this time period.

Awesome ’80s in April: Dune (1984)

duen movie poster

I’ve had a copy of Dune, the Frank Herbert novel, on my bookshelves for years. I’ve never managed to read it. I’ve tried a couple of times but I can’t get past the first few paragraphs. It is so dense, so full of new words that I feel immediately lost and that it isn’t worth my time to dig in.

I’ve had a DVD copy of Dune, the movie directed by David Lynch on my shelves for years as well. Until recently I had never managed to watch it. I tried once, many months ago, but didn’t get past the first few minutes. It was so full of exposition and new ideas that I was almost immediately lost and it didn’t feel worth my time to try and dig in.

Last year I did watch Dune, the movie directed by Denis Villeneuve and quite liked it. I’m a big fan of his films in general, and he somehow made this dense world full of numerous people and clans and ideas seem understandable and manageable. So, I figured now was the time to give Lynch’s adaptation another shot.

It was a notoriously expensive bomb. Lynch’s original cut ran about four hours and the studio made him cut it down to just over two. Critics hated it, audiences mostly stayed away, and Lynch has since disavowed it and refuses to speak of it in interviews.

It continues to be reevaluated by new audiences, and the general consensus of it is an ambitious failure.

It was David Lych’s third film. His first was Eraserhead (1977), a really weird, surrealistic body horror flick that became a cult hit. Mel Brooks of all people loved it and hired Lynch to direct his next film, The Elephant Man. That was a much more straightforward film, and it became a big hit and an award-winner. This is how Lynch came to direct Dune, a big-budget sci-fi epic.

I love it. With caveats. The plot is near incomprehensible even with multiple characters explaining what they are doing and with our ability to hear their thoughts.

Most of it takes place on a desert planet, the only place where the people of this universe can get something called spice. Which is a mind-altering drug, it can extend a person’s life and it allows people to bend space so they can travel across the universe in seconds. Or something. There are various warring clans who all are fighting over this planet. But it all seems to be covert. Outwardly the Emperor of the Universe has given control of the planet to one family. Their son is named Paul (Kyle MacLachlan) and he’s apparently some kind of messiah figure.

Everyone has weird hairstyles, one guy can float, and Sting spends a lot of the time practicing fighting with his shirt off. There are cool electronic shields of some kind, people have to wear these weird nose pieces on the spice planet and, oh yea, the planet is full of giant sandworms.

There is so much going on in this film that it is impossible to explain and even more impossible to understand. But it looks really cool. And it is populated by loads of great actors including Patrick Stewart, Brad Dourif, Linda Hunt, José Ferrer, Dean Stockwell, Max Von Sydow, and Sean Young.

The style and look of the film are completely Lynchian. So even while I wasn’t always sure as to what was happening on screen, I sure enjoyed watching it.

Watch Tom Waits Perform “Ol’ 55” On VH1 Storytellers

If you don’t remember Storytellers was VH1’s sort-of answer to MTVs Unplugged, whereupon they invited various artists on their stage not to play acoustic instruments but to talk about the songs (the stories if you will) they had written over the years and then perform them. It was a really cool show, actually, and it was always neat to hear people talk about their songs.

Tom Waits performed on the show in 1999 and it is epic. Waits is a great songwriter, of course, and a great storyteller (and bullshitter). His Storytellers is full of all three in ample doses. It isn’t available anywhere commercially. I posted the show a while back (but it is currently unavailable on my blog, I’ll get it back up eventually) but you can listen to the whole thing over on the Archive. It is well worth your time.