AICN's Tribute to the Summer of 1982 (Part 7(?): KHAAAAAAAAN)

[Space Pirate Roberts]

Part 1 - E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

25 Years Ago: The Best Genre Year Ever! Part I

Part I Of An AICN Series!

Nordling Remembers E.T.!

I was twelve years old in 1982.

Man, that’s a great age when you’re movie-crazy.

Keep in mind, I’d been weaned on a pretty remarkable run of films, things like JAWS and THE EXORCIST and HALLOWEEN and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE and TIME BANDITS and SUPERMAN II and THE SHINING and MAD MAX 2 aka THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ ROAD WARRIOR and a li’l number called STAR WARS and another li’l number called RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. To see these movies in first run... to be in the audience as we all saw them for the very first time, as we laughed and cheered and freaked out and how unbelievably GREAT everything was... to get the full impact of them... I had a charmed childhood. It was a glorious time to be an audience, like movies were expressly being made for me.

I had seen many R-rated films before 1982, particularly on cable, but I was a master of negotiating my way into a theatrical viewing of any R-rated movie I was interested in. Seriously. I was like Robert Preston in THE MUSIC MAN. I could sell it. Admittedly, it was always easier to talk my parents into an R-rated action film than to talk them into an R-rated comedy. There was something about the subversive humor of the day that really set my dad on edge, and I had to work my way around him to see ANIMAL HOUSE or THE BLUES BROTHERS or BLAZING SADDLES or UP IN SMOKE.

I’m sorry, dad. As an adult, all I can say to you is forbidden fruit tastes twice as nice. I did see them. And I think they may have corrupted me exactly as much as you were afraid they would.

1982 was one of the first years where I was tracking all the films I was most desperate to see. I had discovered STARLOG a few years earlier, and the more I read it, the more excited I got about the potential of films. As I read early reports on stuff, I got crazy about what they might be.

For example, I was a big fan of Robert E. Howard, and I loved the CONAN stories. I had scoured used bookstores for cheap paperback editions of his books and libraries, and I had read pretty much his entire body of work. When I walked into a theater and saw the gorgeous painted poster for CONAN THE BARBARIAN for the first time, it was like getting punched in the face. It was consciousness-expanding. That film went from being something I didn’t know existed to something that I had to see in order to continue living. I went from ignorant to rabid in one swift blow to the skull.

I had to negotiate to see it, too. I had an advantage because my mom was a big reader of SF and fantasy, and a lot of the time, she wanted to see the films as much as I did, so I was able to convince her by telling her how good it would be before I ever brought up the issue of the rating. In the case of CONAN, I fucked up my chances by telling my mom that THE SWORD & THE SORCERER, which came out a few months earlier, was “pretty much the same thing.” We went to that one, and by the time Richard Lynch rips himself open in order to let Richard Moll walk out of the ruined pieces of his body, my mom had decided there was no way in hell I was going to CONAN. I proposed a deal, since CONAN was coming out right around my twelfth birthday. We worked on the terms for a while, but finally the deal was settled: if I made only A’s and B’s on my report card, I’d be able to take my friends with me to see CONAN for my birthday party.

I don’t think there was another single semester where I did quite that well in school in my entire career as a student.

As the summer wore on, I think I just wore my parents down, asking to see one R-rated title after another. I also spent part of the summer with my grandmother, who barely paid attention to ratings. That was a huge help, since I was able to convince her that PORKY’S was about Warner Brothers cartoons and THE THING was “sort of like E.T.”, strategies that paid off in some of the most memorable theatrical experiences of the year for me.

Recently, I’ve found myself struggling not to be disillusioned with the state of genre filmmaking. Horror, for example, is growing more anemic with every remake and every PG-13. Sci-fi is practically an allergen to the studios.

So how do we fix that? I think the first thing we do is we look back at a year where people were getting it right. And, no, I don’t think the answer is simple imitation, but more an understanding of why that whole year seemed so special to those of us who were there when it happened.

To that end, I’ve been talking with AICN contributors over the last few weeks and recruiting them to help me write a series of articles about the films that knocked us on our collective asses that year, and what we’ll be publishing are more than just reviews. Instead, we’re going to talk about what it was like that year, when you could go to a theater and walk from one screen to the next seeing BLADE RUNNER and E.T. and DEAD MEN DON’T WEAR PLAID and THE THING and STAR TREK II and POLTERGEIST and CREEPSHOW and 48 HRS. and TRON, just to name a few. Maybe we’ll stir some memories in some of the guys making genre films right now, and maybe... just maybe... we’ll remember how high we’re allowed to aim and stop just phoning it in as an industry.

If nothing else, we’ll have some fun in the process.

Since I was 12 years old, I’m going to pick 12 movies that I think really defined the year, 12 movies that pushed me as a viewer in ways that I don’t think I’ve ever been pushed in any other way. These aren’t ranked in any order, though. I can’t tell you which one of these films has influenced me the most, because they’re all part of this incredible adrenaline blast to the jugular that was 1982.

I’m not going to review all 12 myself. I wanted to try to get a wide range of reactions to share with you, so I asked some of the other contributors here at AICN to take a shot at some of these titles.

First up today, I’m going to run a piece on the film that was the biggest box-office hit of all time by the end of that year, the quiet little movie that ended up completely dominating the cinema landscape. I remember how unassuming the ads for the film were. Universal managed to keep E.T. completely out of the press before the movie came out, and there was next to nothing known about it. “Less is more” turned out to be the best possible strategy, and word of mouth turned out to be the best sales tool they could have hoped for.

But don’t take my word for it. Check out what our very own Nordling has to say about it:

"I've been wishing for this since I was ten years old."

If you came here looking for a critical breakdown of Steven Spielberg's E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, you're not going to get it. Sure, I'll talk about what works, and I may even rant a little bit about the 2002 re-release. But this film is too ingrained into my childhood. It's too much a part of me. Everyone has that sacrosanct film, that one movie that really nails him or her. E.T. is that for me.

"We're in the middle, Elliott. You can't just join any universe in the middle."

Before I get into it, some background. I was 12 years old in 1982. I guess once you're not 12 anymore you stop officially being a child and become an adolescent or whatever. Maybe it was the last year of my childhood. I'll definitely say it was the purest. It was the greatest movie summer ever. POLTERGEIST. KHAN. BLADE RUNNER. THE THING. You know the drill. That summer helped make me into the movie geek I am today.

continued next post...

[Space Pirate Roberts]

These were the years after EMPIRE. It seemed a millennium since that film, and the Great Question was still unanswered. We had the figures, we had the toy lightsabers, and we played every possible scenario in our backyards. Do you remember that? Do you remember playing? The kids on my street - Scott, T-Boy, Little Kris, our token girl Tracy (who we would sneak kisses from time to time), Stevie Cook, and myself - were unabashed movie freaks. It was easy back then. Video hadn't really taken off yet, not in our neighborhood where VCRs were still a luxury item. The last summer, 1981, we went every single weekend to see RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. That's just what you did. Talk to any thirty-something and remind them. You'll see. Instead of the Internet, we had a magazine called STARLOG. I read it religiously, probably like my dad's generation read Forry Ackerman's FAMOUS MONSTERS. I read it gleaning every piece of science fiction movie news I could. And I remember in the fall of 1981 reading it and learning that Steven Spielberg was making another science fiction film. They didn't know the title, but the working title was A BOY'S LIFE. Spielberg was being very secretive about the film, not revealing many details.

"Just swear the most excellent promise you can make."

Now, even at 12, I knew who Spielberg was. JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, RAIDERS, of course. I even liked 1941. I didn't understand what they meant by it being a flop except that it didn't make as much money as the others. JAWS, especially, was a major event for me. I was 5, and my family (and when I mean family, I mean parents, uncles, aunts, cousins the works. We must have had 20+ people in the theater that day) saw it opening weekend, as my family loved to fish and JAWS is the ultimate fishing story. I remember asking my dad to let me know when the scary part came. It's to his credit he didn't.

"Can't he just beam up?" "This is reality, Greg."

Our weekends during that summer of 1982 consisted of either going to movies or begging our parents to drop us off at the movies. Back then, we saw movies in herds. Whole city blocks of kids would all go together as our parents' orchestrated minivans for the child migration. Back then, kids as young as 6 or 7 would be dropped off with the older 12 or 13 year-olds watching out for them. I was one of the older kids so I kept an eye out. We didn't go to the movies to hang out or to be out of our parents' hair, although I'm sure they appreciated the away time. We came to be enthralled, transported, entertained. Sure, we'd sneak into some of the R movies. I remember sneaking into THE THING just as the fat guy's chest opened up and ate the doctor's hands. I quickly turned around and didn't see the rest until a year later on cable. Chickenshit me.

So, summer 1982. Steven Spielberg has a new movie out, and I would be damned if I was going to miss it, and certainly wasn't going without my friends. So we all got into Scott's dad's Suburban, and headed out to Northline Mall Cinemas.

"We're here. We are here. Where are you from?"

A starfield. A single flute. The pan down, and we realize we aren't on some alien world, or in outer outer outer space. We are home. And then we see the Ship, like a Christmas ornament, settled onto the green earth. Then we see them. The little creatures, lovingly tending to and wandering amongst the plants. And the story begins.

I am not a child of divorce. At the time, my home was, as far as I could tell, a happy one. Elliott's one-parent world was as alien to me as E.T. was. Only one of my close friends had even grew up with it, which has to be some sort of statistical anomaly, but there it is. I did understand Elliott's sense of loneliness. I had my friends, and I knew how much I loved them, and what it would mean for me to lose them.

The kids played D & D. That endeared me to the movie right away. Those kids were us. Me and my friends, hanging out at each other's houses, eating pizza, drinking Dr. Pepper, and killing goblins and orcs and dragons. I make no apologies for being a geek. It's who I am. In fact, it's sort of a litmus test of mine. You probably won't get into my inner circle if you can't identify with me in that respect. To make that connection, to be with people who truly get you, who truly have your back, that's a rare thing, no matter what the movies say.

And so Elliott goes out to pick up the pizza, and makes that connection. Even if the connection comes from several million lightyears away.

"Because, um, grownups can't see him. Only little kids can see him." "Give me a break."

Here's something about E.T., and only a few, few other movies... it gets childhood intrinsically, so completely RIGHT. High praise indeed for Melissa Mathison's script, which has the cadence and the smart-assery that is inherent in every kid. Childhood is messy and joyful, dangerous and crude. Everything is truly an adventure, and nothing is certain. The kids cuss, like I certainly did. They ride their bikes recklessly, just one skid or sharp turn away from slamming into the pavement and serious injury. There is a sense of danger every day. And when you're a kid, you LOVE it. There's nothing, absolutely nothing, like waking up a summer's day and having no idea what the day will bring. Spielberg nailed that. When he replaced the guns with walkie-talkies in 2002's re-release, I wasn't so upset about the fact that he altered his classic movie so much as I was that he completely took out the sense of danger that as children we thrived upon, and enjoyed, and ultimately learned from. Are the guns inappropriate? Of course they are. That's why it works. Those kids were afraid for their lives. Wasn't it glorious? To be the hero? To genuinely risk something? Kids understand that, better than people realize. And, so we watched, and so we were thrilled. We weren't talked down to, or patronized. And we loved it.

You can show me the wires, the models, the clay, the drawings, the CGI, and I still think E.T. is real. It's interesting to me how the kids were surrounded by all of the tech every day and still absolutely believed that he was real. The set was almost like playtime, and E.T. reaches an intimacy that none of Spielberg's later films ever quite reached. The relationships felt real and lived in, and the home life was genuine. Later, when the government tarps the house, it feels like a violation of everything we held dear.

"Here he is!" "Here's who?" "The man from the moon, but I think you killed him already."

It's fascinating to me now how Spielberg got such great performances out of the children. I watched the making-of doc on the DVD set and saw how Steven and Henry communicated, and how open everyone was to not just saying the lines but genuinely feeling them. Watching Spielberg give direction to Thomas as he said goodbye to E.T. was a little like seeing the wizard behind the curtain, but instead of decreasing my admiration for his work it increased it. He showed and still shows a great affinity for actors and it impressed me that he's not just a technical director but a very humanistic one as well.

And what can be said about John Williams' score? It's simply beautiful, written at the height of his powers. The last 15 minutes of the film are practically an opera. E.T. wouldn't have nearly the same effect without it.

Another minor rant - the CGI in the 2002 version. Okay, they made the face more expressive. I'm cool with that. But some of the CGI is used to fill in the places where our imaginations did just fine. I didn't need to see E.T. running in the forest - the light did that just fine. And I wondered what, exactly, I was seeing. The sense of wonderment at E.T., not being able to see what he was clearly, sparked the imagination, and too many films today insist on showing rather than being subtle and clever and letting our minds fill in the blanks. Sure, it looks great. But it stopped being mysterious. The added scenes in the film were nice, but again, they fill in the blanks that my mind didn't need filled. The original film is a lean, perfect thing. No offense, Mr. Spielberg, but I really don't watch the 2002 version very much. I watch the original, and I keep that sense of wonder.

"Is he dead, momma?" "I think so, sweetheart." "Can we wish for him to come back?" "Uh-huh." "I wish." "I wish too."

And so, as E.T. sickens and dies, for the first time ever in a movie (but certainly not the last), I cried. And I'm not talking about squinting out a couple of tears from the sides of my eyes. I flat-out bawled. It was probably the first time I was ever hit with any kind of loss, even if it was just a movie. Behind me, two girls started laughing, presumably at me. I was pretty loud. And that's when my friend Scott turned around and calmly said, "Shut up, or we'll all beat the living shit out of you." He gave them a pretty hard stare. And they clammed up. Not a peep. And then Scott turned to me, smiled, and handed me a Kleenex. And when the film ended, and E.T. home, the six of us walked out into the afternoon sun, where Scott's dad was waiting. It was a beautiful, perfect day, and I loved my friends so, so much. I've lost track of them over the years, but I still remember that day, and how it really made a difference in my life.

And you know what? That's not even the best time I saw E.T.

"I'll believe in you all my life. Every day."

A couple of weeks after, my mom throws a Tupperware party at the house. My sister's in high school at the time, it's a Friday night, so she's out and about. So, promptly, she kicks my dad and I out of the house. Now, it's funny - I get my love of movies from my parents, but in different ways. My mom just loves the whole movie-going process. She loves going out to dinner, and seeing a great movie. My dad, however, loved movies differently. He loved great character studies, and a lot of the films of the 1970s. His favorite movie at the time was ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. He loved ALIEN, and he wasn't a sci-fi kind of guy. "Truck drivers in space!" He loved the real people aspect of it. So I feel like I got some of his sensibilities from him when it came to movies.

That night, we go to get some burgers at my uncle's hamburger joint, Roznovsky's, and decide to go to a movie. "E.T.!" I exclaim. "Haven't you seen that?" he asks. "Yeah, but you haven't! I wanna see it again." So we go. And as E.T. sickens and dies, the flood starts again. Can't help it. Even now, play E.T. in front of me, and I'll cry. It's damn near Pavlovian. And then I turn to my dad, and I see something amazing.

"You must be dead, because... I don't know how to feel. I can't feel anything anymore. Have you gone someplace else now?"

You have to understand something about my dad. He was a big man. He worked in oil fields as a draftsman. In my world, he was John Charlie Steve McQueen Bronson Wayne. Toughest guy in the world. When he came to school for report card day the other kids would do a double-take and ask me later, "THAT'S your dad?" I'd nod and say, "Yeah. Tough, ain't he?" And so it came as something of a shock to see him sobbing, tear-tracks on each side of his face, as he watches this little rubber suit die on screen. He was profoundly moved by this children's film. And my dad, at that moment, ceased to be The Great Impenetrable in my life, and became a living, breathing person. It was a major paradigm shift for me, and it radically changed my relationship with him. We talked more. I wasn't so afraid of him. I found I had so such more in common with him than I thought. It was wonderful.

In 1983, my father was diagnosed with colon cancer, which four years later spread to his bones. He died July 15th, 1987. E.T. was the last movie I saw with him, just him and me, by ourselves. Sure, the family went to other movies, but it was the last time my dad and I went together. It might have been the last time we did anything together, just him and me. I can't really remember. But when you're 12, and the whole world is ahead of you, you just can't recognize those times when they happen.

"Come." "Stay." "Ouch."

It's really difficult for me to judge Steven Spielberg too harshly. A lot of people talk down on him as a filmmaker, saying he's too sentimental, his films have easy answers, that he's too populist. They say that like it's a bad thing. But in 1982, he brought me closer to my friends and family in a way that really hasn't happened since, not with a movie. Not like that. I chase that feeling every time I sit down to a movie, in my darkened church, waiting, hoping for the emotions to come. Sitting there in the dark, with the people I love, knowing that they got your back, that they get you, that you have so much in common with them, even if it's just watching a little alien creature leave his friend to go home. Knowing that it may be the last time.

When it comes to E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, I can't be critical. It is an integral part of who I am and why I am that way. And I am very proud to have been chosen by Ain't It Cool News to write this for their ongoing 10th Anniversary celebration. Thanks so much, Harry and Drew. E.T. is the most important film to have ever happened to me, and I will cherish it and share it with my family for years to come.

"I'll be right here."

Alan "Nordling" Cerny

As Nordling said, this is the last big series of articles I plan to run as part of our 10th anniversary. I’m going to publish at least one a week for the next couple of months, and as we watch this summer take shape, and as the rest of the year plays out, I hope you guys enjoy taking a look back a full quarter-century to a moment when this fiendish movie addiction that’s had me and all of my friends and co-contributors hooked for most of our lives really seemed to deliver something special each and every time we went to the theater.

I believe it can happen again, too. That’s the whole reason I continue to write for AICN. I want another summer like this one, a summer that will inspire the next generation of writers and directors and fans. It’s our obligation to pass this love of film along to others, and a challenge I hope someday I can meet.



Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles

Hot damn, I wish I had a story like that. Truly touching. Alas, being born in 1982, I can't really remember the first time I saw ET, or a time when it wasn't part of my consciousness for that matter.

[Scourge]

I was nine in 1982. Between 1977 and 1985 we had The Bad News Bears, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, Superman: The Movie, Alien, The Muppet Movie, Star Trek The Motion Picture, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Clash of the Titans (it may be silly now, but still... Ray Harryhausen is awesome), Superman II, The Great Muppet Caper, The Shining, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Conan The Barbarian, Poltergeist, The Dark Crystal, Return of the Jedi, Gremlins, The Karate Kid, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, The Terminator, Back to the Future and a ton of other things (not least of which were all the Disney releases and re-releases between those years). Even the crap was sometimes good (Smokey and the Bandit, Every Which Way But Loose...), and for those looking for a bit more artsy fare, Amadeus came out in 1984, which I saw in first run and which remains one of my favorite movies to this day.

It really was an amazing time to be kid. Cable tv was just ushering in a new at home experience in the late 70's/early 80's and Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, Richard Donner and Tobe Hooper were like an allied front bent on providing the best entertainment experience possible on the silver screen.

When E.T. was re-released in 2002, my son was 9. It was a joy to take him to the theater to see this on the big screen to experience it as close as possible to how I experienced it 20 years before. Not only that, but we took one of his then friends who was a year or more older. He'd lost his mom tragically a few years before. He'd also never seen E.T. so this was his first exposure to the film. That kid was completely and utterly moved. I know he cried; quite a bit actually. And when it was over he exclaimed "That was the best movie I've ever seen." E.T. will always be in my top 5 movies of all time, and I well up every time I see it.

[Space Pirate Roberts]

Part 2 - Tron:

25 Years Ago: The Best Genre Year Ever, Part II! Harry Remembers TRON!

Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here.

I published the first article in this series a couple of weeks ago, and the reaction to it was pretty great. Nordling kicked it off with his look back at the summer of E.T., and I talked a bit about my preoccupation with getting around the ratings of movies as a 12-year-old movie geek.

Of course, this was before I was a movie geek. It’s before I’d ever heard the term movie geek. Fandom was much lonelier when I was growing up. Sure, I had friends who were big fans of various things, but not everyone, and certainly the guys who were really movie crazy the same way I was were few and far between. At the age of 12, I was living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I felt like I was a million miles from all the things that I was interested in. I was a weird kid, already desperate to get closer to the way movies were made. I read everything I could get my hands on. I treated each new issue of STARLOG like homework, devouring it several times over until I could regurgitate the material within. I loved the coverage of the cinematographers, the production designers, the FX guys. I loved seeing behind the curtain. I wanted to know who helped create these amazing worlds I was seeing when I went to the theater.

I remember reading about TRON and thinking it sounded like a big crazy hoax. Like there was no way they were really doing what they said they were doing. They said they were going to make a movie about a guy who gets sucked into a computer, and it was going to be like MARY POPPINS, but for the stuff inside the computer, all the animation... was going to be done by a computer! It just wasn’t possible. I was pretty nuts about video games, and I had seen what the best graphics at the time were like, and I was sure that in my infinite-12-year-old wisdom, I knew what the limitations of the computer were because of my time spent in an arcade.

The first time I saw TRON, having already played the videogame and having already heard the score and having already memorized every still released, I wanted to make sure it was going to be the best. So I talked my parents into a trip to the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, the only 70MM screen in the area. It was a giant single screen complex, designed to be part of the tourist attraction. And they typically booked event movies. Despite the presence of the hotel and the theater, the area around that part of downtown Chattanooga was, politely put, pretty shitty. Even so, my parents turned the day into an event, braving a trip a few blocks into the neighborhood for lunch at an Italian dive called Mom’s that was, according to my Dad, the best Italian food in the city. And afterwards, stuffed with a meatball sammich and ripe with hype, I pretty much lost my mind for the movie. More importantly, for the way the movie looked. It was 2001 for the videogame generation, and it rocked me.

When I first started talking to Harry about doing this series, I knew I wanted Harry to be the one to write about TRON, and when he heard the premise for the articles, he immediately IM’d me back: “I get TRON, fucker.” He showed it at BNAT for a reason... he loooooooves this movie. Unabashedly and completely. He gets why this one felt so important that summer. He remembers... and that’s what this series is all about.

So here’s Big Red hisself, tearing it up as only he can.

1982.

That was the last year that I was wholly innocent. The last year my family was together. The last year that my friends were forever. My last full year in Austin, till college. It was the year Prince released 1999 and that year seemed forever away. It was the year that had me singing “Who Can It Be Now?” and referring to Australia as “The Land Down Under.” I was “Hungry Like a Wolf,” and Michael Jackson became one in his “Thriller” video. The world was just dealing out coolness left and right. There were new video game systems with wildly advancing graphics and David Letterman debuted on Late Night after Carson. It was the year KNIGHT RIDER, CHEERS and REMINGTON STEELE hit the air. It was the year STAR WARS officially hit Home Video. The year I read Stephen King’s DIFFERENT SEASONS and discovered Shawshank, Apt Pupil and The Body. It was also the year that blew my mind totally in theaters.

When Drew asked me to write about 1982, I demanded to write about TRON. It wasn’t the best film of 1982, but to me... it was the one that most influenced the rest of my life. I was 10 years old when I saw TRON. 10. That’s an impossibly young age. I had been watching ROCKY III twice a day, right out of school that year. However, I’ll write about that, when I write up ROCKY III and FIRST BLOOD later. Just two weeks before TRON, BLADE RUNNER had blown my mind totally. That had been the first R-rated film I saw by myself. “Yes, I’m 18.” And the box office guy said, “Keep saying that kid!”

I was a total arcade junkie at the time. My friends, Roland, Rylan, Josh and the kids I was in Cub Scouts with – all flooded the arcade. And there in the Gold Mine and/or Le Fun (R.I.P. to both) – had been this game TRON. The graphics seemed cool, the music was cooler. But when I read in STARLOG that it was to be a movie, I played with additional vigor. Now remember, this was 1982, the year that Q-BERT, DIG DUG, POLE POSITION and ZAXXON came out. At home my friends and I were playing STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK trying to get the force as often as possible so the walkers wouldn’t kill us. But TRON was special, it was a Video Game, that was going to become a movie… and in my life experience since – this was the only film that came in the wake of a game, that blew the game totally the fuck away.

TRON, the movie made playing Video Games seem important. It hinted at the idea that somehow computers could talk to each other. More than that – it said that inside this connected universe of computers – our souls were seeking out like-minded souls and communicating. Not just that, but that inside that universe, there would be corporate powers, working to homogenize and incorporate programs into their giant Master Control Programs. And then there was TRON, a single program, by a guy with a handle… ALAN 1. And his “character” in this universe was named TRON. And he fought for all the users out there to break the corporate control that attempted to monopolize the free communication of ideas and concepts.

This was a Frank Capra populist film with Disney animation and some of the earliest CG out there.

It made Computers cool. It made Jeff Bridges cool.

However, nothing was nearly as cool as Syd Mead and Moebius’ brilliant design for the TRON universe and the accompanying Wendy Carlos music. It spoke to me. “Little boy, this is the world of COMPUTERS!”

That year at Robert E Lee Elementary, they introduced for the first time ever – a series of computers and began teaching us elementary BASIC programming. Other than a simple password program, and a Q&A program about Beans the Magical Fruit, I hadn’t seen much potential for Computers. However, right after TRON, I got my SuperPet with built in tape drive. I also began going to the public library looking for Programs to write. I became obsessed with trying to create and animate a computer stick figure, but my typing skills sucked and made the 14 pages of program impossible to input. But I kept at it.

My parents somehow thought my interest in computers was a good thing. The movie made me and countless others dream about the possibilities of computers at a time where it was just next to impossible to get em to do anything cool. 1983’s WARGAMES was the follow-up film that made me realize that I could change my grades and book air flight with a computer and told me I could somehow hook a phone up to my computer and make it do something.

But TRON was why I got my first computer. Why I wanted to do something cool with a computer.

I wanted to play games at FLYNN’S, and I very much wanted a Light Cycle. And the idea that LOVE could exist in a computer. Well, it was an awesome thought.

There’s a whole host of people that respect its history as a groundbreaking film in terms of its use and reliance on CG – but to me – that was the glitz that caught my eye, but it was the ideas the film put forth that really entrenched this film in my mind.

The idea of a computer plane of existence is actually the least far fetched of any and all the fake universes. We each forge identities and resist the “MCP” of our choice.

I have TRON shoes. I own a 16mm Scope print of TRON. And I’d kill for one of those original TRON discs. It’s a holy grail to me. I think it is amazing that Steve Lisburger hasn’t had Disney begging him to make a sequel to this film. Can you imagine FLYNN today? However, I kinda love that it’s a stand-alone film. It’s a piece of my childhood, one of the pieces that formed a part of my personality that may sometimes have me greet my friends as “programs” and doing Jeff Bridges impersonations and how many chats have I ended with “end of line”?

There’s a part of me that imagines all of us “programs” online in glowy Moebius suits. It makes me smile. TRON is a geek’s geek film. It’s one of my faves!

Nicely done, Harry. Reading this made me go out and finally pick up the film on DVD, and I not only watched it, I watched the whole making-of documentary on the second disc. I think I’ve gotten a healthy shot of TRON nostalgia, and you really nailed all the things that made the film such a potent brainbender for a kid that summer, and also the reason the film remains a landmark moment in film technology and animation.

Because I took so long putting up this second article, I’m going to be back this weekend with one more, in which Obi-Swan, my co-screenwriter, is going to talk about a film that was tremendously important to a smalltown Pennsylvania boy.

I’ll also have my own reviews of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, REIGN OVER ME, and SHOOTER up by Friday morning, so I’ve got a lot to do, starting riiiiiiight... now!

[Advocate]

10 saw Transformers the Movie. Cried when Optimus died. I think all the male kids in the theater did. Laughed when we heard Spike scream Shit! And Ultra Magnus saying "Open goddamn it." Cried when I saw Old Yeller, cried when Cujo was turning back to being a normal dog as he was shot. ET never gave me that emotion.

[Space Pirate Roberts]

Part 3 - Creepshow:

25 Years Ago: The Best Genre Year Ever! Part III! Obi-Swan Remembers CREEPSHOW!

When I first met Scott Swan, the guy I’ve been working with for the last 20 years, we were sophomores in high school. At the time, it seemed like CREEPSHOW was already set in stone as a horror classic, but it was only three years old. For a lot of people my age, the film served as a sort of gateway drug to the world of the EC comics that inspired it in the first place. It certainly paved the way for HBO’s TALES FROM THE CRYPT in terms of the general aesthetic, and it allowed Stephen King and George Romero to send a love letter to those comics.

I remember picking up the Bernie Wrightson comic adaptation of CREEPSHOW before I got a chance to see it. I was at a SF/horror convention in Chattanooga, and Stephen King was one of the guests that weekend. I bought the book and walked around with it, ready to spring it on King if I happened to run into him. Sure enough, as my friend and I got on the elevator at one point, King came trotting up and hopped on with us. Instead of asking him for an autograph, I froze completely, staring up at him and clutching the book to me, terrified. Until that moment, I didn’t realize how much I looked up to King. Seeing the film later that year, I was blown away by it. The mix of horror and humor is always tricky, so when someone pulls it off just right, it seems even more exciting.

But with Scotty... well, he was a Pittsburgh boy, and Romero meant something more to him. I’ll let him tell you all about it...

The words “anthology” and “horror” should almost never be said in the same sentence, particularly when in the context of making a movie. Frequently, when a genre filmmaker has a go at combining the two, even with the best of intentions, by and large the results are unspeakably terrible. It’s a rare trick to try and pull off, like a trapeze artist performing a stunt that’s killed his whole family. Many have tried, and almost all have fallen flat. Throw humor into the mix and you’ve got a surefire recipe for suck. But every so often, just once in a generation usually, someone comes along and actually gets it dead right. And not only do they get it right, but they make it look so damn effortless.

That’s CREEPSHOW.

My admiration for the films of George A. Romero started with a documentary that was shown on PBS in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when I was around ten years old. Although the documentary (which I’d love to eventually track down on video) was about the makeup effects of Tom Savini (with the bulk of it focusing on the original DAWN OF THE DEAD), a great deal featured George Romero. Watching Romero work behind the camera not only helped to awaken my own interest in horror filmmaking, but made me an instant fan of this under-appreciated filmmaker.

Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I was all about horror movies... especially the horror movies that my parents considered too strong for me to see... which, at the time, was a number of them. I managed to keep up with all the movies by reading FANGORIA. If you were a kid in the 80’s, Fango was Playboy for gore. I’m still a fan of the publication these days. In particular, though, I’m fond of the issues I’m in (for MASTERS OF HORROR, ahem, ahem, shameless self-promotion). When I was a kid, the transgressive images brought to life by makeup effects geniuses like Savini fueled my interest in the genre. I think, maybe subconsciously, I knew even back then this genre would be the eventual career path for me. Sadly, many of the films covered in the magazine my parents refused to let me see. And this was before VHS arrived in our household, so if I missed something while it was in theaters, tough shit.

I did manage to see a surprising number of R-Rated horror films, however, thanks to my Rated-R savior... my friend’s dad, who would frequently escort a group of us kids to the movies. He had no problem taking us to some of the most insane horror films ever made. On one such outing back in ’82, we arrived at the theater and were greeted by a poster featuring a skeleton behind a ticket counter. The tagline of the film read, “The most fun you’ll ever have being scared.” Okay. I’m in, I thought. I knew the name Stephen King, even though I had never actually read any of his books, and I remembered the name George Romero from the Tom Savini documentary, even though I hadn’t had the opportunity to watch any of his films yet (remember, kids, no home video at that point). I was, however, very familiar with the EC brand of horror comics, even though I wasn’t aware at the time that this was the touchstone King and Romero were paying homage to.

The lights went down and BLAMMO! I was nailed to the back of my seat and didn’t blink for the following two hours. I don’t even think I took another breath until the movie was over. The impact the film had on me is profound and it only took a few minutes to hook me on that first viewing. For those of you who haven’t seen it, here’s a little breakdown for you. And even if you have seen it, you’ll hopefully enjoy my reminisces.

Following a brief wrap-around opening, featuring Stephen King’s creepy son Joe Hill/King (now a published author in his own right, and a damn fine one by most accounts) and that groovy Pied Piper-ish animated skeleton, the movie begins with “Father’s Day,” a story about a wicked old man who returns from the grave to exact revenge on his greedy asshole heirs, and in particular on his murderous daughter. It features the only re-animated corpse in Romero’s entire filmography to climb out of a grave, plus Ed Harris does a funky disco dance, which makes it a definite must-see. The movie moves along with “The Lonesome Death of Jody Verrill,” in which Stephen King turns in, without argument, his greatest screen performance as the title character, a poor (possibly retarded?) fellow who is consumed by space weeds. Next up is “Something To Tide You Over,” a surprisingly moving and dark revenge tale featuring, as crazy as it sounds, Leslie Nielson and Ted Danson. These guys are wonderful together and Romero’s never been better with an ensemble. The fourth story is my favorite. “The Crate”. It’s a classic monster in a box story and this is the section of the movie where Romero shifts into a lower gear and takes his time unfolding the tale. He allows us to soak up the characters and dark humor and relish a few extremely bloody moments. The final story is the one everybody remembers, even if they’ve forgotten everything else, called “They’re Creeping Up On You.” E.G. Marshall and about a million cockroaches fight for control of a high-price skyscraper condo. In many ways, this reminds me of his most recent film, LAND OF THE DEAD. This is the one segment in the movie where King drops the F-bomb like they’re about to put the word on moratorium and he wants to wring out as much use as he can before it’s gone. As an impressionable twelve-year-old sitting there in the theater, Marshall’s portrayal of pure, unrepentant wickedness rattled me, and the shocking sight of his demise ruined me for months. It might just be one of the greatest visual moments in horror movie history.

Moriarty no doubt asked me to write this piece because he knows what CREEPSHOW means to me. Before I sat down to write this, though, I’m not sure even I knew how profound an effect this movie has had on me. But the process of having to think back and recall my reactions and emotions has caused a weird realization for me: this movie is probably the reason why I find writing horror movies so rewarding. Today, Moriarty and I have had the tremendous good fortune to work alongside many genre icons and contemporaries of Romero’s on the first two seasons of MASTERS OF HORROR. As an adult now working in the horror genre for the past several years, it’s easy to lose touch with those early inspirations. CREEPSHOW is exactly that for me... an inspiration. I don’t think I’d be the same person creatively without having had this movie thrust upon me at such an early age. In my humble opinion, horror movies are supposed to frighten us, but they also need to entertain us at the same time. This can be tricky, but it’s something George Romero has been an expert at since NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. And with CREEPSHOW, I don’t think the man has ever been better.

I’m going to have another of the 1982 pieces for you a little later today, bringing us to 1/3 of the way through the series at this point. There are other writers still working on theirs right now, and I’m enjoying watching them all come in. I’ve also found myself motivated to try and make sure that the latest script I’m working on feels like the sort of film that would have played great that year, the sort of film that inspired me in the first place.

Thanks for the recollections, Scotty. I’ll be back with Capone’s piece on another iconic ’82 horror film in just a little while.

Somehow I've managed never to have seen this one. Gonna have to rectify that.

[Space Pirate Roberts]

Part 4 - Poltergeist:

25 Years Ago: The Best Genre Year Ever! Part IV! Capone Remembers POLTERGEIST!

Controversy has dogged this film since its initial release. Part of it, of course, has to do with authorship. I’m always surprised how many people are happy to state with authority that the film was directed by Spielberg instead of the credited Tobe Hooper. It’s the sort of rumor that is attractive to some people, and so it perseveres. Maybe part of that is because this is one of the first films where Spielberg exerted a strong hand as a producer. He’s got a story credit on the film, and originally, he was going to co-write it with Stephen King. That fell through, though, and instead, the script is credited to Spielberg and the team of Michael Grais & Mark Victor. There are touches throughout that certainly mark the film as part of the Spielberg stable, like when someone’s watching A GUY NAMED JOE on TV at one point, the film that Spielberg eventually remade as ALWAYS. And I’ve known people who got scenes in both E.T. and POLTERGEIST confused since they look like they were shot blocks from one another, part of that same Spielburbia that was so much a part of his identity as a filmmaker at that time.

The main controversy, though, had to do with the film’s content. This remains one of the most shocking PG rated films ever made. It was originally given an R, but Spielberg has long been a master of working the MPAA, and he managed to get the rating dropped on appeal. It’s a trick he’s accomplished several times (including with this summer’s TRANSFORMERS, evidently), and within a few years, it was one of the incidents that led directly to the creation of the PG-13. There are moments from this movie that were burnt into the memories of every kid who saw it in the theater, including our own Capone...

POLTERGEIST -- A REMEMBERENCE, or How I Learned about Maggots, Hickeys, and Whether It Is Best to Go Into or Stay Out of The Light

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here. So Moriarty sent me a list of great genre films that came out in 1982. Motherfuck, there's no way that was 25 years ago. Now I'm old and depressed. I've always known I'm a little bit older than many of the regular writers on this illustrious site, but that may actually work to my benefit in collecting my rememberences about the film on Moriarty's list that immediately jumped out at me as the one I HAD to write about: POLTERGEIST.

Even before June 4, 1982 - the film's release date - I was prepared to see this film. For the first time in my life - I was 14 at the time - I read the novelization of a film before I saw the film. In fact, it was the first time I'd ever even contemplated reading a novelization. I was so nervous and anxious about crapping my pants in fear at seeing this movie that I wanted to know every spoiler-y moment ahead of time so I knew what to expect. Even then, I was driven to know as much about a film before its release as I could. It's a desire that has diminished over the years, because I've found the simple pleasures of actually walking into a movie knowing next to nothing about it.

My best friend Matt and I had already seen plenty of horror films in our time. We rented stacks of them religiously every weekend and just plowed through them like so much candy. Most of them were much more hardcore than POLTERGEIST (for instance, we'd already discovered Herschell Gordon Lewis, which weren't ever particularly scary, but we loved them). But there was something about advanced word on POLTERGEIST that was different. It was big-budget work from a major studio, and it wasn't being talking about like a B movie. Instead it was being discussed in terms often reserved for scare films like CARRIE or THE EXORCIST, which turned out to be unjustified, but the fact remained, this film was being taken seriously.

Matt and I arrived at one of the two, six-theater multiplexes near my suburban Washington, D.C., childhood home. We'd actually selected the complex a little further from our homes because we thought it might be less crowded. We were wrong. Although I'm sure the lines for the STARS WARS films were far longer, I can't ever remember seeing crowds like I did for POLTERGEIST. And I knew as soon as we walked into the mall that housed the multiplex (six screens was as big as it got back in '82) that we weren't getting into the showtime that we wanted unless we took drastic measures. Matt and I were sneaky little bastards back then: if we wanted to get into an R-rated movie (there was no PG-13 back then), we would hit a $2.50 matinée show, find an adult going to the same movie, each chip in an extra $1.25 for the adult's ticket, and pretend to be related to this stranger. But since POLTERGEIST was a PG-rated film, this trick wasn't going to cut it against these crowds.

I walked to very close to the front of the line, waited for a break to form in the line because someone turned their back to the moving line ahead of them for a brief second, and I sidestepped into the line, pretending to talk to the people in front of me. Sometimes if you just look like you belong somewhere, nobody questions your being there. More importantly, we got our motherfucking tickets.

Watching POLTERGEIST today, certain things jump out at me that I didn't understand when I was 14. The fact that the character of the 16-year-old daughter (the late Dominique Dunne, killed just months after the film's release by her ex-boyfriend) is shown in an early scene eating a pickle and ice cream is very telling, especially when you do the math when her mother (JoBeth Williams) is said to be 32 years old when this story takes place. I was a late bloomer when it came to drugs, so I probably didn't understand that the parents were smoking pot in an early bedroom scene. What makes that scene so much funnier is that dear-old dad (Craig T. Nelson) is reading a book about Ronald Reagan as he's passing the joint back and forth to his wife.

The one aspect to POLTERGEIST I could never have understood until I was much old was that, although Tobe Hooper's name is listed as director, Steven Spielberg (named as co-writer, story idea supplier, and producer) is clearly helming much of this movie. His sense of wonder permeates every discussion of the spirit world and certain camera angles are lifted right out of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and repeated in E.T., which was made immediately after this film and released one week later on June 11. I came from a classic nuclear family, so I always connected with the family unit in POLTERGEIST more so than the broken home of E.T.

Sitting in the audience with my deviously purchased ticket, I remember distinctly that the collective fear of the audience was greater than my own. The tension and screaming in the theater actually made me more terrified. I didn't even know what maggots were, but when I saw them crawling all over the chicken drumstick that had just been in that researcher's mouth, I could feel them on my skin and in my throat. Dear God, I nearly vomited. Today, it looks horribly fake, but in 1982, when that same man tore the flesh from his own face down to the bone, I was traumatized. And I couldn't wait to sit through it again the next day.

I think the scientific aspects of POLTERGEIST were what appealed to me the most when the film was new. I felt like these fantastical events were being taken seriously (again, much like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS). And these were not events that were only going to happen to this family; these were things that would be seen and felt by anyone entering their home, and, more importantly, these phenomena were being well documented. The scene in which the researcher watches the tape of the lost souls coming down the family's stairs is moving. Those poor people aren't a threat; they're just confused and unaware that they are even dead. And I know all this because a tiny angel played by Zelda Rubinstein told me so.

At the end of the film, as the home is collapsing upon itself, the oldest daughter shows up with a giant hickey on her neck after supposedly having a good-bye dinner with her unseen boyfriend. I didn't know what the hell a hickey was or how one gave or acquired one. But even at the fragile age of 14, I knew that Dunne's Dana was a world-class slut, and she got my hormones percolating. But not as much as Williams' Diane Freeling, who was the first MILF I ever milfed. She spent most of the film running around in short shorts or a long t-shirt, just begging those mischievous ghosts to give her the business, which they do when they toss her around her bedroom, giving us glimpses of her panties. Oh baby. It's hard typing with one hand.

Like all great horror fare, POLTERGEIST is ripe with social commentary and criticism. The cautionary tale of suburban sprawl. The belief that television may not only be bad for your eyes. The message about the dangers corporate greed (in this case, a real estate developer trying to save a buck by only moving graveyard headstones, but leaving the bodies six feet deep to have homes built upon them). But unlike traditional scare films, Spielberg and company have loaded the film with new age spirituality and extended discussions on dreamstates. To a kid barely in his teens, these concepts were more than a little lost on me, but the very thought that the spirit world and our existence are so closely linked, made me wish I had a poltergeist living in my home, so I could slide across the floor in a football helmet. And I felt certain that, after seeing POLTRGEIST, that I was fortified with the necessary knowledge and fortitude to dealing with such ghosts and repelling them if I had to.

And then there's that fucking evil clown that nearly chokes young Robbie to death. Or the evil tree outside his window that nearly swallows him. Some of the effects shots (courtesy of a still-young ILM) look cheap, the film is cluttered with continuity errors, equipment shadows, and even a few glimpses of crew members in the wrong place at the wrong time. I noticed some of these things even in my youth. I didn't care. Some of the iconic lines of the film were added to my daily life, much the way "May the Force be with you" and "Don't drink the Kool Aid" was. "They're here," "This house is clean," and the two that baffle me to this day: "Go into the light" and "Don't go into the light." Rubinstein's Tangina gives both instructions at different points in the plot, and both lines took hold in my mind as being good advice, and made me wonder which choice I would make when (not if) I was stuck between worlds forced to lead the lost souls to their final destination or simply come home.

POLTERGEIST is a tale of suburban apocalypse that holds a sacred place in my memories of that time in my life, about a year before I learned to drive and before girls started really catching my eye. More important, the movie put me off chicken drumsticks for years.

Thanks for reading.

Capone

The thing that sticks with me most strongly from this film is that remarkable effect at the end of the movie, one of the great miniature tricks of all time, when the Frelings’ house implodes. It was one of the most amazing things ILM pulled off in an era when they were regularly pulling off amazing things, and even now, I think it’s incredible, ingenious, and greatly effective.

M. Night Shyamalan talked in an interview a few years back about how there was some big secret of filmmaking that only he and Spielberg knew, but I think it’s pretty obvious from watching Shyamalan’s films what that “secret” is, and Capone touches on it in the piece above. It’s all about viewpoint. Spielberg frequently tells stories about fantastic events, supernatural and bizarre, but he always keeps his stories focused on the personal, no matter how big the events are. That perspective is what makes his films resonate, what allows us to identify ourselves in them. That’s what makes POLTERGEIST just as noteworthy today as it was when it was released.

We’ll have a few more of these articles later in the week, including the first one I’ve written for the series, about the very best weekend of that amazing summer.

[gamevet]

Nicely done, Harry. Reading this made me go out and finally pick up the film on DVD, and I not only watched it, I watched the whole making-of documentary on the second disc. I think I’ve gotten a healthy shot of TRON nostalgia, and you really nailed all the things that made the film such a potent brainbender for a kid that summer, and also the reason the film remains a landmark moment in film technology and animation.

Finally picked it up on DVD!?

I bought TRON, when it was nothing more than a single disc in a white case. I had the VHS version before that and when the TRON SE came out, I bought it day one.

My first veiwing of TRON, was at a friends house. We had rented a Video Disc player and a couple of other movies with TRON. I had already known about the movie, seing articles about it in Electronic Games & Video Entertainment and had played the arcade game (Seeing the full blown arcade unit, was a sight in its own) as well. We must have watched that movie about 3 times that weekend and to this day, its still one of my all time favorites, up there with the likes of Star Wars.

Its a real shame that Hollywood snubbed it at the Oscars. Most people thought of the computer generated effects, as not worthy of being voted for Best Visuals. Funny now, since CGI and the likes are commonly nominated.

[Space Pirate Roberts]

Part 5 - Teen Sex Comedy Trifecta:

25 Years Ago: The Best Genre Year Ever! Part V! FlmLvr Remembers PORKY’S, FAST TIMES, And LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN!

I’m a little bummed out that I’m having to rewrite the intro to this piece. Originally, I ran this article the night after Bob Clark’s death for fairly obvious reasons. This is the latest in the series of the 1982 pieces we’ve been running, but it also served as a really lovely obit in a way.

I have to say... I was positively Machiavellian as a kid when it came to seeing a film I wanted to see that was rated R. I found that it was easiest to get permission to see a violent film that was rated R, while anything that dealt with sex was a much harder sell. In the case of PORKY’S, I was visiting my grandmother in Memphis when the film was gearing up for release. It was spring break, and Fox was doing sneak previews of the film for a few weeks before the actual release. I didn’t know much about it, but that poster was enough to pique my interest:





Talk about promising. That poster was practically a dare for a 12 year old. I decided that I was going to see that film, no matter what. My grandmother was a sweet lady who knew that I was a shameless movie freak, and we had an arrangement... when I was staying with her in Memphis, I could pick the movies we went to see. She would look at the paper just to see the ad, but it was pretty rare for her to say no.

I don’t remember what the movie was that Fox used as the second feature for the sneak preview, but whatever it was, that was the easy sell. I talked about how much I wanted to see that one, and then I said we might as well go see the sneak preview of whatever this new movie was. “PORKY’S,” I remember saying, “sounds like it’s about cartoons.”

Grandma... please forgive me. It’s a safe bet that she was horrified by PORKY’S, and I certainly burned down some goodwill with the trick I pulled, but it was worth it. The film seemed completely crazy to me, dirtier than anything I’d ever seen before, and I appreciated every minute of it.

At the other end of the summer, I had to figure out a different strategy to get into FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH. I had the Cameron Crowe book, and I thought it was amazing. While PORKY’S was dirty, it seemed really broad and silly to me even at the age of 12. Crowe’s book, though, seemed to me like a primer for how to survive high school. It seemed unflinchingly true. And when the film came out in August, I was positively rabid to see it. I talked two of my friends into an elaborate theater-hopping scheme, and because of my descriptions of the book, they dedicated themselves to the plan with the intensity of the Impossible Missions Force. We made it in unscathed, and all of us were flattened by how great the film was. Phoebe Cates immediately became an obsession for all of us, and Sean Penn was an instant hero. That soundtrack introduced me to a new sort of California pop, and it was one of the first song soundtracks that I bought, playing it over and over that fall.

I asked my buddy Jeff, known here at AICN as flmlvr, to write this particular article because I don’t know anybody who loves teen movies the way he does. The point of this series was to recall what it was like to see these films in theaters, but Jeff didn’t see these three in their initial run. Still, as we talked, it became obvious that he had a take on why these films are still important entries in their genre. If you’re lucky enough to see Jeff’s first feature, INSIDE, you’ll see how clearly his love of teen movies shines through. In the meantime, enjoy his take on the three films that defined the teenage sex comedy that perfect summer twenty-five years ago...

When Drew asked me if I wanted to take part in this article discussing the above three movies, I jumped at the opportunity. I mean, why wouldn’t I? I’m obsessed with teen Movies. Pretty much all of them. Even the awful ones get me. I don’t know why. But fuck. They do. When the crazy dance showcase is about to start at the end of STEP UP and Tyler shows up to dance with Nora just in the nick of time... I can’t help but get into it. I know, I know. It’s a sickness. But when there’s a good teen movie, I don’t have to feel ashamed of my love. In fact, I can scream it loud and proud. Which I rarely get to do. That’s because good teen movies, the ones that transcend, are few and far between. But when they hit, the effects are timeless.

The maestro of the teen genre is widely considered to be John Hughes. His films have (for the most part) stood the test of time. And there’s a reason for that. He was tapping into a particular honesty. One that was unflinching, let you laugh at yourself, but most importantly was heartfelt in the best of ways. Since Hughes, there have been many many teen movies. Most of them (though near and dear to my heart) are considered bad, but within any genre, there’s always a few good shining examples in each decade. Examples that, as more time passes, are the ones people reference. Off the top of my head there’s CLUELESS, ANGUS, MEAN GIRLS, SHE'S ALL THAT (I know what you’re thinking, but lots of people love this movie), TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, AMERICAN PIE and maybe a few others. But two years before John Hughes began defining the teen landscape with SIXTEEN CANDLES, there were these three films from 1982. Three films that are, in their own way, just as influential. What you’ll find in each is a definitive sense of time and place, real characters, and most importantly... honesty.

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH

Out of the three films, this is the one I’m most obsessed with. Not just because of the movie itself, but because I am a ridiculously huge Cameron Crowe fan. This was the start of Mr. Crowe’s movie career, and like everything Crowe, it comes with a rich backstory. For those that don’t know, FAST TIMES originally started as a non-fiction book Crowe was hired to write. To do it, he decided to go undercover in a high school to find his story. For a year, he lived and breathed the high school world and befriended many of the people who eventually would become his characters. The book was published and genius was born. The plot of FAST TIMES follows a large group of students as they maneuver through one year of high school. It was adapted for the screen by Crowe and directed by Amy Heckerling, who would later direct another decade-defining teen movie in CLUELESS.

First things first, I’m 27, so I unfortunately did not get to see it in theaters on its initial release. That said, I remember vividly the first time I did. It's just one of those memories. I was 10 years old and baby-sitting on a Saturday night. The kid was sleeping so I was watching TV in the living room of whoever’s house it was. FAST TIMES was playing on TBS (or something similar) and I wasn’t quite sure what I was watching. I had already seen a ton of teen movies by then... and knew this was one, too... but it felt different somehow. Yeah, it was funny. Yeah, it dealt with sex. Just not at all in the way I’d been used to seeing in the genre. The characters didn’t feel like characters, they felt like people. The sex in it (what wasn’t cut out for TV) was awkward, not romantic, harsh and over quick. Sure, the first time I saw it I didn’t grasp or get everything in the movie. But it stuck with me. Which is what is important. I rewatched it on video a lot as I grew up. And each time I did, something new hit home. Everything about this movie is in the details. It is observational, honest and pretty much everything feels authentic. Simply put, it knows what it feels like to be a teenager. Sure, as the years have gone by things can be considered dated, but because of the honesty of its themes, it will never lose its edge or be relegated to guilty pleasure status.

And for those who haven’t read the book, definitely do if you can find it. It’s out of print, but well worth the read. Crowe stuck pretty close to the core of it when adapting the movie, but it’s great to get even more of these characters, which you definitely do in the book. Not to mention a great ending that takes place at Disneyland.

Trailer:



LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN

I saw LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN for the first time when I was 13. I always passed by it in the video store because it had a lame cover and there was always something I felt was more important to rent. I eventually broke down and rented it because I was on a mission to see everything at this particular store.

To this day, it’s still a painful watch.

This movie, out of the three, is the one that has aged the worst. It’s goofy, over the top in the best of ways, and sports some pretty ridiculous outfits. That said, it’s probably one of, if not *the*, most honest teen films ever made. While FAST TIMES is honest too, it also had affection for its characters. It had heart. This has heart, too, but the broken kind. The kind that’s not optimistic and the kind that everyone has probably experienced at least once... yet rarely seen on screen.

The plot is basically three friends who are obsessed with getting laid. Gary, the lead, becomes infatuated with Karen, the new girl at school (played by Diane Franklin, Cusack’s love interest from BETTER OFF DEAD). Only problem, his best friend Rick also digs her, and more importantly, has the balls to ask her out. Which means Gary is left lurching in the shadows as Rick dates the girl of his dreams. I know, not terribly original. But it’s how writer/director Boaz Davdison deals with it that makes it effective.

Basically, we all know that in teen movies, or romantic movies in general, the girl/guy always comes to their senses and chooses the right person. Which doesn’t always happen in real life. Especially during your high school years. You pine over someone, make your move, and sometimes you get accepted, other times you get rejected. It’s the rejection that sticks with you. Helps you mature, teaches you life lessons, prepares you for adulthood. Well, for those who dig rejection, this movie is for you. Gary stumbles through it pining over Karen. Soon Rick sleeps with her and gets her pregnant. Gary, being a nice guy, takes it upon himself to forgo the school ski trip to help her. He pays for the abortion by pawning his stuff and then takes care of her as she heals. As he does, it couldn’t be going better for Gary in his mind. They’re finally forming a real connection and he’s even helping her plan her birthday party. It’s at this party he’s decided to finally tell her how he feels. He even buys her an engraved piece of jewelry to go along with the eventual confession. We’re hyped. Psyched that he’s finally going to get the girl. He drives to the party. Confident. Happy. Goes into her kitchen...

... and finds Karen making out with Rick. Even though he got her pregnant and bailed, she’s forgiven him.

And when she notices Gary has walked in on them, she acts knowingly oblivious to his affections. Right then it’s clear to him. She just doesn’t love him. It’s just how it goes. You can’t force someone to love you. He's not going to win. So Gary gets in his car and drives away. The movie ends with a close up of him driving and crying. Not only that, it freezes on this particular image and lets the credits roll over it. Say what you will about the preceding 90 minutes, that ending is a truly honest moment. One that’s rare in American movies, even rarer in teen movies. PRETTY IN PINK somewhat dealt with this same theme years later, with poor Duckie getting shafted, but it was different, not only because Duckie wasn’t the lead, but also because his friendship with Andie was a life long one... and Blaine, who Andie ended up with, wasn’t a total idiot. Most importantly, it looked like Duckie was going to hook up with Kristy Swanson. So it gave you heart ache, but then quickly brushed it aside. Not here. Here you get to revel in it as those credits roll.

As I said, this movie isn’t perfect. The humor is the typical gross out sex humor, but the moments that are real, are terribly real. Watch it and see. Thankfully, MGM saved this movie from VHS/Ebay obscurity and re-released it on DVD a few years back.

Trailer:



Interesting to note how the trailer sells none of the story. It's all sex.

Which brings us to...

PORKY’S

This is a movie that was beaten to death by its sequels. But almost miraculously, it’s because of that, because of the hollowing of the franchise, that you can look back and really see what made this movie work. PORKYS, much like AMERICAN GRAFFITI, was a period movie. But even though it was period, it struck a nerve in its audience. Not just because it was funny, or because of its trailblazing nudity (which I’ll get to), but because it was honest.

Written and directed by Bob Clark, PORKY’S revolves around teens attempting to get laid at the legendary whorehouse PORKY’S, and becoming embittered in a feud with the owner and his sheriff brother. Along the way, sexual and comedic hijinx take place. Hijinx that we hadn’t seen on screen before. Lots of nudity. Lots of uncompromising situations. And umm lots of nudity. So much that it birthed an extension of the teen genre... the teen sex comedy. That’s right, in my opinion, the teen sex comedy started right here. PORKY’S was kind of like STAR WARS in that way. Obviously, it wasn’t a technical breakthrough or worldwide wonder, but the nudity and jokes in it were just as influential. After this movie *everyone* thought they could make a sex comedy. And everyone did. And it was done wrong many a time over the years. In fact, I think LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN was made quickly for this exact reason. Thankfully there, they tried something different. Most others didn’t.

Over the years there were many variations of the teen sex comedy (including the sequels). Some like REVENGE OF THE NERDS worked, others didn’t. But the reason most didn’t work is they forgot (or didn’t know) what made PORKY’S *work*. Sure, the nudity was a bonus... the talking point... but if it was all about that, then all these rip-offs would have been just as good. In my opinion, what made PORKY’S work was the feeling of true friendship amongst the teens. It was over the top, but it felt real. Further more, it effectively captured a specific time and a place. Bob Clark pulled this off equally well with A CHRISTMAS STORY. Both of those movies, you really felt like you were there. Looking back on a time long since relegated to memory. To me, the whole movie feels like the idealized moments you have of high school. The ones you look back on that make you say, “High School was awesome”. It’s like a greatest hits collection. It has some of the highs, some of the lows, but no matter what, made sure to tap into the memories in the best of ways... while still managing to tap into it honestly. Not only with the sex, but the struggles of friendship, growing up, and also the racial/bigotry that still takes place.

Again, if you doubt this movies influence, look back at what came out after. It’s crazy. The teen sex comedy eventually ran its course because studios wanted to make more money with PG-13 films... but it eventually made a worthy comeback with AMERICAN PIE.

Trailer: not on YouTube.

The teen movie genre isn’t always perfect. In fact, it’s mostly about niche marketing for maximum dollar. These movies make money because that audience wants something to see, something that speaks to them, and while they may *like* the movies, they rarely *stick* with them. They’re forgotten the next week. That can be attributed to many reasons, but the main one being, in my opinion, is that these movies are sugarcoated... suffocated... not honest... and in the end reflect a glossy shell of what they’re going through. But these three movies from 1982, combined with those of Hughes and a few others, stand tall as a pinnacle, not only as what a teen movie can do... but also for anyone who ever wants to remember what high school was like.

Thanks, Jeff. This isn’t the last word we’ll have on Bob Clark here on AICN. There’s a very special article about his life and work that I’m hoping to publish very soon. When Jeff calls it the STAR WARS of teen sex comedies, he’s not kidding. It’s still the second-highest-grossing Canadian film of all time, and what amazes me most in looking back at it is just how sweet-natured the film is. It’s raunchy, but there’s not a mean bone in its body.

And he’s right about just what a kick in the balls THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN is. That was a cable discovery for me. It was showing one night as a double-feature with HOT DOG: THE MOVIE, and I stayed over at a buddy’s house so we could see both of them. HOT DOG was exactly what we thought it would be... a snobs-vs-slobs comedy with several excuses for Shannon Tweed to drop her kit... but THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN turned out to be a massive bummer, and it really stuck with me. It’s sort of the bridge between FAST TIMES and PORKY’S, and it’s got ideas in common with both of them.

We’ll have more of these coming up soon, including my first contribution to the series where I’ll be writing about the single greatest weekend of the summer.

[Space Pirate Roberts]

Part 6: The Secret of NIMH:

25 Years Ago: The Best Genre Year Ever! Part VI! Cartuna Remember THE SECRET OF NIMH!

Hey, everybody. “Moriarty” here with some more Rumblings from 1982.

I’ve had a lot of people write in to ask me if they could contribute articles to this special series we’re doing this year. And I appreciate that. Some of the films people have mentioned aren’t films we’re going to be including in the retrospective, and some of the titles they’ve asked to do have already been claimed by ongoing contributors to the site. But what’s apparent to me is that the films of 1982 are burned into the memory of filmgoers who saw them that year with a special sort of intensity. In some cases, these are the movies that led people to do what they’re doing now.

Case in point: Don Bluth’s THE SECRET OF NIMH.

I’ve met a lot of animators in the time I’ve been in LA. A friend of mine from the early days in town was one of the first people I ever met who told me that it wasn’t Disney films that inspired him to pursue a career in animation... it was NIMH all the way. You have to remember that in 1982, Disney was in a slump. They weren’t the commercial powerhouse they are now, and they were barely releasing films at all. They sat out 1982 completely, but there were a few animated pictures released. THE LAST UNICORN has its fans, and I’ve always thought THE PLAGUE DOGS, based on the Richard Adams novel, was a dark and interesting film. But when Don Bluth led a small uprising and took a bunch of Disney-trained animators away from the studio to set up an independent company with the intent of adapting Robert C. O'Brien's Newbery-award winning novel, I doubt he had any idea just how much he’d be influencing a whole generation of young film fans.

One of those guys who had his future set in motion that summer was our very own Cartuna, the guy who is responsible for all those fantastic animations you see in the upper left-hand corner of the site. As far as I know, this is the first time Cartuna’s ever contributed a full-blown review to the site, but when he wrote me to say he wanted to write about this particular title, I knew we’d be in for something special.

Check it out:

I’ve always wanted a sparkly of my very own…

And holy cow, did we get one. In 1982, The Secret of N.I.M.H. flared into life, filled with magic, excitement, slapstick and beauty. It was darker, scarier, funnier, and had more heart than any animated feature that had graced the screen for MANY years prior.

It was proof that animation could offer more than simple fairy tales. It told a story that was, at its core, adult, but still didn’t need to have its nuts cut off in order to appeal to kids.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I didn’t catch The Secret of N.I.M.H. in the movie theatre. In 1982, I was eight years old, and had seen exactly three movies during their theatrical release: Song of the South, (re-released in 1980) Empire Strikes Back, and E.T. There was no theatre in my hometown (a rural backwater in the armpit of Ontario, Canada) and visits to relatively nearby cities which did have movie theatres were entirely dependant on the whims of my parents, and as a result, frustratingly infrequent.

But about a year later, the new canadian Pay-TV network, First Choice (which has since become The Movie Network) had a “Free preview weekend” where anybody with a cable converter could watch the channel unscrambled. The result, naturally, was me sitting in our basement for three days, mainlining whatever happened to be scheduled. I was a film-deprived kid, and I had to take it where I could get it.

I consumed whatever they fed me, and have no real recollection of the programming absorbed that weekend, except for one film: the Secret of N.I.M.H. From its first dark moments, with a pair of aged hands working magic over the pages of a diary while a voiceover lamented the death of a friend, I was slackjaw-hooked to the screen.

I was no stranger to cartoons, of course. Saturday mornings found me up early, eating soggy Fruit Loops in my couch-cushion fort, with the color bars humming on the television until the national anthem interrupted. I didn’t want to miss ANY cartoons, especially the older ones that were on earliest. I hadn’t quite put together that this was something I could do for a living, but I certainly recognized that the name Charles M. Jones signaled that the next cartoon would be a good one.

I don’t think I ever had much use for non-funny cartoons up until this point. They were always so corny and precious. There was never anything really at stake. Beyond the villains, characters tended to be either exceedingly bland, or nothing more than comic relief. I’ve come to appreciate these films. Quite a bit, in fact. But as a kid, they really held very little magic for me.

But this? A revelation. The Secret of N.I.M.H. was SO much more than I had known was possible with the medium. And it was the very first thing that made me think to myself: That’s it. That’s the thing I want to be involved in. I want to make animation.

I had always drawn. I filled boxes with looseleaf paper covered in scribbles. People gave me attention for it, told me to keep it up. It was definitely part of my identity. But until that point, though I had thought in a round-about way about drawing a comic strip, I had never really considered art as a profession. And so, in this way, N.I.M.H. altered the course of my life, like an injection of a mysterious glowing serum directly into my belly.

But where did it come from, this beautiful gem?

Disney Animation was at its lowest, having all but abandoned animation, in pursuit of what seemed to be more lucrative opportunities in live-action.

In the middle of production on the Fox and the Hound a small band of artists, led by Don Bluth, revolted. They packed their bags and departed Walt Disney Animation, where they had been groomed to replace the aging old guard (who had practically invented the art form) and turned their skills to the task of jump-starting a new golden era for feature animation.

Their first attempt would involve adapting a story that Disney had rejected, crafted by artists that Disney had ignored and undervalued, using techniques that Disney had discarded and a fraction of the budget that Disney would’ve spent on any of their features. And in the end, they kicked Disney’s sorry ass all over the place, creating something with more life and appeal than anything the Mouse had ever produced.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t reflected by the box office in what was a VERY tough summer, but the test of time has ultimately proclaimed The Secret of N.I.M.H. a classic, and an example of the best of what can be managed in the medium of animation.

It’s telling that Bluth’s Studio began with a bunch of animators working after-hours in a garage, because that labor-of-love feeling really comes through in The Secret of N.I.M.H. It feels like the sort of work that animators do for themselves, after they’re done earning their living for the day. They’ve finally been unshackled, and can just run free, letting their abilities define the edges of what is possible.

I suppose at this point, most folks have had the chance to view early pencil test animation. A sad and kinda frustrating truism of animation is that in the translation of a pencil test to cleaned-up and painted final cels, something is always lost. Some magical spark is blotted out, and however great the final work may be, it never quite measures up to the promise of those first scratchy drawings with their construction lines showing through.

The Secret of N.I.M.H. feels like a pencil test, in that the spark is still there. Somehow, they managed a lossless translation, and the result is a kind of energized vitality that is simply and frankly absent from the vast majority of animated features.

Our lead, Mrs. Brisby, is damaged. In her most lighthearted moments there is a sadness and fragility to her. Through great internal strength and the love of her children, she manages, but since the death of her husband she has been broken. Her marriage had always defined her. It still does - she is only ever referred to as Mrs. Brisby. Without Jonathon, she is rudderless. But her mother role gives her purpose, and her task to save her sick son gives her focus.

She seems to want so desperately to pass her responsibilities to someone else. She doesn’t want to make the hard decisions or plan her family’s course of action. But she is tougher and braver than she ever let herself realize, and though it seems as though she is exhausted by the weight on her shoulders, she really has no other options.

This is a children’s cartoon, folks! Why bother with all this? Surely no kid will identify with a widowed mother’s struggle? Isn’t this too bleak? Isn’t this too complicated? Too confusing?

HELL, NO!

This is an extremely compelling heroine with an easily communicated quest: Keep her family safe at all costs. That is why this movie is a classic. It is simultaneously simple AND complex, because somebody cared enough to go someplace deeper, and refused to dumb things down for the kiddies.

And who are Mrs. Brisby’s allies on her quest?

A miserable old bastard who’d prefer not to be bothered with her (Mr. Ages). A horrible, opinionated windbag who looks down her nose at the entire Brisby family (Auntie Shrew). The rats of N.I.M.H., who consider themselves above the ‘lower creatures’ and are more interested in their own political power struggles. And two terrifying monsters whose character design would seem to mark them as arch-villains in any other animated feature (The Great Owl and Nicodemus).

continued next post...