Awesome ’80s In April: Firestarter (1984)

firestarter poster

One of my aims for this series is to watch films that I knew about as a kid during the 1980s but for whatever reason have never bothered to watch. All kinds of films were floating around the cultural ether – films that I’d seen trailers for or seen on Siskel & Ebert, or that my friends were talking about, but that didn’t appeal to me for some reason. Or that I just never wound up seeing. As an adult, a lot of these films have some kind of appeal, but not enough to usually make me sit down and watch them.

Firestarter is a good example of this. It starred Drew Barrymore, who was the biggest child star at the time. I was actually too young to watch the film when it came out in 1984, but she had something of a career resurgence in the 1990s by taking on more mature (and sometimes scandalous) movies like Poison Ivy (1992), The Amy Fisher Story (1993), and Boys on the Side (1995). I was a fan of the actress as a teenager and though Firestarter was a few years old at that point it was still very much part of the culture. It was often shown on cable television and the video stores still had copies of it on their shelves.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Firestarter was part of my cinematic memory, even though I never did watch it. It is that kind of thing that fascinates me and those are the types of movies I’ll be trying to watch this month.

The film is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name and follows one of his more regular themes – that of people with psychic ability and the secret government agencies that want to exploit it.

Barrymore plays Charlie a girl with pyrokinetic powers. She and her father Andrew (David Keith) are on the run from those secret government agents. Years before Andrew and his wife were given experimental drugs by that agency which gave her the ability to read minds and him the ability to control them. The agency killed his wife and kidnapped Charlie. He got her back and that’s why they are on the run.

Eventually, they get caught and the Agency director (Martin Sheen) and his hitman (George C. Scott pretending to be Native American and sporting the most ridiculous-looking ponytail) attempt to befriend Charlie so they can get her to master her powers.

Writing all that out makes the film sound pretty good, but I’m afraid I have to tell you it is mostly a snore. The government plot is dull as can be, George C. Scott’s performance is just plain odd, and for a more about a girl who can start fires with her mind (and is titled Firestarter), it sure takes its time letting the girl start fires with her mind. It finally gets going in the last fifteen minutes or so and that scene is a real corker with tons of action and blazing fire action. But getting there takes a lot of effort.

Oddly enough it did make me want to read the book. The bones of the plot are good, and exactly the sort of thing King is good at writing. There is a scene in the film where Charlie and the father are picked up by an old man and taken back to his home where the man’s wife fixes them lunch. It is a perfectly fine little scene in the movie, but you just know King expanded it for multiple chapters allowing these characters to really bond and for us to get to know them. That’s the sort of thing King excels at, but that tends to get shortened down to nothing on the big screen.

Awesome ’80s in April: Night of the Comet (1984)

night of the comet poster

While working on my list of movies I wanted to watch during the Awesome ’80s in April I headed over to Letterboxd, turned on their giant list of all films, filtered out everything but movies made in the 1980s, sorted it by highest rated, and systematically made my way through the entire list. I was looking for movies I had never seen, but had always wanted to watch. Or movies I’d never heard of but that looked interesting (one of the cool things about Letterboxd is that it lets you see how your friends rated any film, and read any reviews they might have written).

Night of the Comet falls into the latter category. I’d never heard of it before, but it was rated pretty highly by people whose thoughts on movies I respect and the plot sounded interesting.

Honestly, even after all of that, I expected something much cheesier. The plot synopsis sounds like Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Night of the Living Dead at the end of the world. But what I got was something more thoughtful, and well-made than that synopsis makes you expect.

An opening salvo tells us that a huge comet will be passing by Earth for the first time in millions of years. Everybody is excited. Parties are being held outside to watch the comet pass. The whole world is outside watching. The whole world except for Reggie (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Larry (Michael Bowen). They work at a movie theater and Larry has convinced Reggie to help him rent out a reel to some guys who will illegally duplicate it. Reggie really wants to see the comet pass by, but Larry is willing to pay her a whole $15 bucks and that’s hard to turn down.

They wind up spending the night in the steel-lined projection booth. The next morning they wake up to find that the comet has turned everybody (well, almost everybody) into red dust. A few people did survive but they seem to have been turned into brain-eating zombies. Larry meets his end pretty quickly and Reggie returns home to find her sister Samantha (Kelli Maroney) is still alive. Turns out that after an argument with her mother Sam slept in the steel-lined shed.

Together, they do what any red-blooded American teenager would do after a zombie apocalypse – they head to the mall. Actually, they head to the radio station first because a DJ’s voice can be heard playing records and they figure finding another human alive would be a good thing. The DJ is actually just a recording on a tape, but they do discover Hector (Robert Beltran) at the radio station. Hector almost immediately leaves the girls as he needs to find out if his mother is still alive (he’ll come back to the movie a little later). That’s when the girls go to the mall.

There are some scientists types who survived by hiding in an underground bunker. They must now try to rebuild humanity and that begins by running tests of the few other humans who survived to see if there is a chance at finding a vaccine to counteract the effects of the cosmic rays.

Night of the Comet does a great job of blending comedy with horror and thriller elements. The Buffy mixed with Night of the Living Dead elements I mentioned at the beginning of this post are more apt than I thought. Although it is more like Dawn of the Dead since a great portion of the movie is spent inside a mall. But it is a much better film than that synopsis might indicate. It was made on a tiny budget, but they put every dollar they had to good use. It is funny and thrilling, and has a nice sense of what it’s trying to do.

Awesome ’80s in April: RoboCop (1987)

robocop poster

I sometimes say that I grew up in the 1980s but came of age in the 1990s. What I mean is that I was 13 when the ’80s became the ’90s, so my teenage years were really spent in the early ’90s. The music, movies, books – the art – that really shaped me into the man that I would come are mostly from the early 1990s. That isn’t to say the movies from the ’80s aren’t important to me – they are, absolutely. It is just a different kind of important.

I remember laying on the floor in my bedroom with my stereo speakers pointed at my ears with The Smashing Pumpkins “Gish” surrounding me. That music had a hold on me, it touched something deep inside of myself. Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) might not be the most intellectual, or emotionally deep films, but they are great movies and they had a profound effect on the way I appreciate cinema.

Movies from the 1980s, or at least movies I watched during the 1980s affected me in much different ways. As a kid, as a young teenager, I mainly looked for thrill rides or things that made me laugh, things that excited me. The movies that did those things in abundance have stayed with me all of these years. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Gremlins (1984) still flood my memory banks with nostalgic joy. But they don’t necessarily inform my understanding of Art.

I’m getting way into the weeds for what should be a review of RoboCop. But I think this type of discussion is important for me to talk about as I’m delving back into the cinema of the 1980s.

RoboCop came out in 1987. I did not see it in the theaters. My parents would have never taken me to it. But I did watch it on VHS sometime later. I don’t remember when. My guess would be sometime around when the sequel came out in 1990, but I really don’t know. One of the things I love about the ’80s is how I did get to watch so many movies at home that my parents would never have allowed me to watch in the theater. Sometimes I’d watch these types of movies at a friend’s house, sometimes my father would rent them when mom was away for the weekend. Or sometimes I just wore them down with my asking (it helped if I could convince them that the movie was rated R over violence and maybe some cussing instead of sex and nudity.)

Whenever I watched RoboCop I loved it. I thought a supercop cyborg was the coolest thing ever. I loved his multiple-round firing pistol. I loved that he had such great aim he could shoot through a lady’s dress and hit the guy who was attacking her in the crotch. I loved the big robot villain that could shoot freaking missiles. I definitely loved the guns that could blow up cars and the explosive finale.

Watching it now, I’m less impressed with the bountiful action scenes and Robocop as a character. I am interested in the satire that director Paul Verhoeven fills the film with (stuff that flew straight over my head as a kid). The movie is clearly making fun of the militarization of our police forces and military. It mocks consumer culture (the inserted commercials are terrific – especially the goofy car commercial and the placement of said car into the hands of most of the film’s characters.) It ponders a future in which we privatize the forces that are supposed to protect us and how for-profit businesses might handle such things.

Truthfully, I don’t think it does these things particularly well. Verhoeven has never been particularly subtle with his messaging. So what I’m left with is an action flick with some big messages that doesn’t handle either aspect well. It is a fun watch, but not one I can say I’m interested in seeing again anytime soon.

Totally Awesome ’80s in April

mad max 2 poster

The 1970s saw the Studio System’s destruction and independent film’s rise. The production code died in the late 1960s and the new rating system allowed for more freedom in depicting previously censored items such as sex, nudity, language, and violence. Directors raised on classic Hollywood cinema such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, and Francis Ford Coppola, began making their own films and the New Hollywood era began.

The 1980s continued this trend, but even more so. Movies such as Jaws and Star Wars caused studios to realize movies could make more money than ever believed and the blockbuster era was created. The advent of the home video market created a boom in low-budget cinema that bypassed movie theaters altogether. Erotic Thrillers became all the rage. As did raunchy sex comedies, horror slashers, and sequels.

I grew up in the 1980s and so I have many nostalgic memories of watching movies like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, The Goonies, and Back to the Future on the big screen. But also wandering through the video store and renting films like First Blood, and Beverly Hills Cop. It was a wonderful time to be growing up watching movies.

The decade wasn’t just for big blockbusters though, plenty of smaller, highly acclaimed films came out as well. And there were loads of movies made for adults that I missed back then. I felt all grown up watching Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenneger blow up bad guys whilst spitting out one-liners and curse words, but I had no interest in truly mature fare like Gandhi or Platoon.

I did have an interest in the low-budget films that were filling the shelves of my local video store. I ate up silly comedies, even sillier horror films, and dumb action movies that were filled with dumb jokes, bloody violence, and lots of naked boobs. Hey, I was a pubescent boy, what did you expect me to like at that age?

I thought it would be fun to spend some time this month revisiting the decade of my youth, and maybe watching some films that slipped through the cracks not only while I was living through it but that I’ve not gotten around to even as an adult.

My goal is to not watch the big blockbusters of the 1980s, but films that epitomize the decade in other ways. In the same way, I’m not really interested in watching art-house films or foreign language films from that decade either (at least not for the purposes of this month’s theme). I want movies that scream they were made in the 1980s but aren’t something I would have been interested in watching during the actual 1980s.

Sort-of. As always I’ll wind up watching things that break these rules. I already watched Robocop which was a big hit and in fact was watched by me on videocassette when it came out in 1987. But I hope to not make that type of film the main films I focus on this month.

I made a Letterboxd list full of the types of films I’d like to watch. Unlike previous lists, I didn’t stop at 30 films but allowed it to grow (and it will likely continue growing for a few more days) to a number that I’ll never be able to complete. Honestly, I never watch all the films I put onto these lists so I figured I might as well make it big and impossible so I’ll have more ideas of things to watch when I’m thinking about what I want to watch.

The Friday Night Horror Movie Death Spa (1988)

death spa poster

Not to spoil anything but the theme for April is going to be Totally Awesome ’80s. I’ll have more to say about that tomorrow, but for tonight I went ahead and jumped forward a day, bypassing the end of Westerns in March. I grew up in the 1980s and so there are a ton of movies from that decade that fill me with nostalgic glee. There were also a ton of great movies that weren’t meant for kids and many others I just never saw. Still haven’t in some cases. Anyway, like I said, we’ll get to all of that tomorrow.

But for tonight I wanted to watch something that just sounds like it epitomizes the 1980s. The decade of Reagan was a boon for low-budget, ultra-violent, super cheesy, nudity-filled horror movies. It was also the decade of Jane Fonda exercise videos, Jazzercise, and so much spandex. Death Spa has all of that, and more.

It is everything I wanted it to be. I mean, a movie set in a luxury spa where the equipment comes alive and murders people. How can you not want to watch that?

That actually sums up the plot pretty well. At a posh spa in Los Angeles (aptly named Starbody Health Spa – where for the opening credits the appropriate letters get blanked out revealing the movie’s title in lights) the state-of-the-art equipment keeps malfunctioning resulting in multiple injuries and deaths. Is somebody committing sabotage for personal gain? Is there a supernatural entity bent on vengeance? The answer to both is “yes.” And it’s awesome.

The deaths are gloriously bloody and silly (one guy gets eaten by frozen zombie fish, another is burned alive in a tanning bed, and there is a blender that just won’t quit). The bodies are tanned, hard, and ensconced in spandex.

As they say, the 1980s were a different time. I’m so looking forward to digging deep into that decade. If Death Spa is just the beginning, I can’t wait to see what’s next.