Kategoria: 1988

#718 Married to the Mob (1988)

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On the surface Married to the Mob had nothing to interest me: I’m not particularly big on mob movies and the cast here didn’t seem to include anyone with the kind of comedy chops that will provide some sure laughs.

Luckily the movie turned out much different than I anticipated. Instead of a lowest common denominator gangster film, Married to the Mob is a movie about starting anew and trying to let go of your past that won’t let you go. This is not a laugh out loud comedy, but one that manages have a lot of heart.

Michelle Pfeiffer is totally gorgeous and lovable as the widow trying to start all over again. Both Matthew Modine and Dean Stockwell are likeable in their roles, but both somehow seem just a bit off. Stockwell in particular tries his very best to be as repulsive as possible, but ends up a much too sympathetic mob boss.

80s-o-meter: 70%

Total: 82%

#713 Mac and Me (1988)

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An awful, cheap copy of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Mac and Me takes a lot of notes from its role model and executes them in a disappointing fashion.

For a movie build upon an illusion of an alien character, the puppetry work here is really subpar. Not only are the puppets plasticky and generally off putting, they always look just that – Puppets – without ever giving the impression of real, actual breathing creatures. The movie is sprinkled with the most blatant product placement of the 80s and there’s a constant stream of absurd scenes like a totally random dance party taking place in MacDonalds and revival of a whole family of half-dead aliens by making them sip a few drops of coke.

A collection of poor design choices, Mac and Me is like E.T. with all the magic, fun and joy stripped out of it.

80s-o-meter: 84%

Total: 17%

#711 Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)

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Totally surprising chemistry between Steve Martin and Michael Caine provides a great amount of laughs in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a tale of two money-swindling riviera playboys set on a war path.

This is one of those 80s comedies that leaves very little room for improvement. The setup is original, the pacing feels just right and the plot itself bears a strong resemble to its two protagonists, always hiding an extra ace up its sleeve. Although Martin’s and Caine’s performances are impeccable, a two man show this isn’t: The two male actors are perfectly complimented by Glenne Headly who gives the two veteran actors a run for their money.

For whatever reason, we humans are drawn towards lovable rapscallions, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels provides two of them – best in the business – for the price of just one.

Almost sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

80s-o-meter: 88%

Total: 96%

#704 The Rescue (1988)

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Need to infiltrate and North Korean border and rescue four navy seals taken to a prison camp? No worries, according to The Rescue it’s pretty much a walk in a park – that is, if you’re a gang of four teens and a 10-year old kid.

What we have here is a strange mix of an action movie done like it was a book out of the The Famous Five series. On the other hand there’s shootings, bombs, knife fights and multiple dead Koreans and on the other it’s all just one safe adventure in the style of a Disneyland ride, up to the point of actually riding down in a sewer pipe like it was an amusement park waterslide. Had they really followed the action-adventure tone of the movie they should’ve amped up the characterisation between the actors to be more distinguishable so that they wouldn’t be so wishy-washy and easily forgotten.

Production wise the movie is professionally shot, and actually offers some semi-decent action towards the end, but unless you’re a 12-year old and the year is 1988, The Rescue might be a mismatch for you.

80s-o-meter: 86%

Total: 61%

#694 Nightfall (1988)

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Based on Isaac Asimov’s classic short story of the same name, Nightfall is a pretentious and pompous scifi movie that somehow feels a bit like an hour long episode of some new age soap opera. It starts without an actual beginning, continues with a crawling pace without much development and terminates as suddenly as it started.

There’s plenty of terms, customs and connotations we are somehow expected to be aware of when we probably wouldn’t be interested in them even if we had the movie explain them to us.

If you disliked Dune, you’ll absolutely loathe Nightfall.

This is definitely not a good kind of bad movie, or something that could be dubbed a guilty pleasure. Unlike some other scifi turkeys, Nightfall enjoys absolutely no cult following of any sort – a rare feat for a bad scifi movie of this epic proportions.

80s-o-meter: 30%

Total: 21%

#688 The Boost (1988)

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I’ve mixed feelings about The Boost. On the other hand it’s a pretty interesting and lifelike depiction of living on a fast lane and snorting some speed to keep you going – but in the end there’s just too little going on here besides the drug theme.

Similarly to many other movies based on a book, The Boost suffers from sped up pacing while trying to shoehorn everything in the 90 minutes running time. The events, people – even years – come and go and never hang around long enough to leave a lasting impression. Some abridging and additional screenwriting would’ve done this movie a lot of good.

James Woods’ on the edge act is spot on, and watching him walking around the screen like a ticking human time bomb suits the movie perfectly, and makes one feel uneasy in a good kind of way.

The Boost’s angle is a bit off and as it is, it feels too much like a paid public service announcement constantly shaking its finger at the viewer. There are other movies about drugs – and the dangers within – that have done all this in a much more subtle, yet more powerful way.

80s-o-meter: 88%

Total: 64%

#687 Nightmare Sisters (1988)

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What do you do when you have some leftover 35mm film from your previous movie you just finished? You could haphazardly come up with a story and shoot another movie in four days.

Well, that’s what the team behind this movie did anyway. A direct to VHS movie release that soon disappeared from the public eye, Nightmare Sisters has since become something of a cult classic, famous for bringing three cult b-movie actresses for scenes of full frontal nudity that borderline soft porn. The early 90s versions shown on cable networks featured a cut of the movie with the most raunchy scenes cut out, and those rumoured cut out scenes present on current releases naturally added to the cult status of the movie.

It’s a strange mix of sub B-movie plot and FX (all the actors did their own makeup, which mostly consists of a set of plastic fangs purchased from a novelty store), paired with a solid production work in the camera and the lighting departments. The end result looks quite professional and not shoddy at all, but as a movie .. well .. it is pretty lame.

With a plot good enough maybe for a 30 minute short movie, the editor has really struggled in the cutting room to meet the 80 minute mark. Every scene is about two to three times as long as they really need to be, and there are very obvious fillers all over the place. Given all this, it’s still a surprisingly fluid experience.

80s-o-meter: 88%

Total: 41%

#686 The Prince of Pennsylvania (1988)

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Sometimes a movie relies far too much to the audience’s tendency of teaming up with the main character no matter what kind of low-life he is.

In The Prince of Pennsylvania that main character is Rupert Marshetta, an oddball with a grudge with his family, his school and the small coal mining community he resides in. His father Gary, played by the always superb Fred Ward is a modest blue collar man who’s worked his fingers to the bone to have a nice house for his family to live in, to clothe them and put food on their table. After his no-good wife gets caught sleeping with Gary’s best friend, his no-good son decides to rub some more shit in his old man’s face by kidnapping him and intenting to rob the $200,000 Gary was offered to sell his land.

With a despicable family like this I really just felt sorry for Gary throughout the whole movie. Even when his crackpot son turns out to be the kidnapper, Gary at first refuses to believe it, and as the grimm reality sets in, he is being a really good sport about it all. And in the end, after finding out his wife had teamed up with his son to split the money Gary, the man with a heart of gold forgives her, even for the nasty cheating part.

The Prince of Pennsylvania is a massive misfire from the writer and director Ron Nyswaner who later got it together with Philadelphia (1993). The little cozy mining town succesfully established in this movie surely would’ve had tons of more sympathetic, believable stories to tell.

80s-o-meter: 80%

Total: 8%

#684 Bright Lights, Big City (1988)

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There are two fundamental problems with Bright Lights, Big City.

Firstly, Michael J. Fox is a miscast for this movie. While I can appreciate his will to step away from the lovable, at tops maybe a little mischievous boy next door role for a change, Bright Lights, Big City either isn’t the right vehicle for him, or he just didn’t have the chops to do really believable drama at the time.

In Bright Lights, Big City he ends up being that super likeable boy next door – who just happens to snort a ton of cocaine every now and then.

Secondly, despite the heavy dramatic elements, the movie fails to deliver much impact. There are a few exceptions to this – like that scene with Dianne Wiest – but as the end credits roll, one wishes the movie would’ve offered a little bit more substance and meat around the bones.

80s-o-meter: 88%

Total: 71%

#673 Fright Night Part 2 (1988)

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The big success calls for the inevitable sequel, so enter Fright Night Part 2.

The sequels rarely perform better than the original, usually either offering more of the same, or taking the franchise to a weaker direction. This is the case here as well.

Part 2 continues four years after the events in the original movie. In a hilarious theme that follows the movie through its running time Charley (William Ragsdale) has been going to a therapy sessions where he has been convinced that vampires don’t really exist. This all changes when a juvenile group of vampires appears to haunt him.

This group doesn’t really cut it as a memorable antagonist, bringing down every encounter and the eventual showdown with the enemy quite a notch. Mood wise the movie still gets it quite right, and the few effects there are, are quite inventive.

80s-o-meter: 92%

Total: 80%

#650 Hell Hunters (1988)

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Listed the in the IMDB as an American movie, but shot in Brazil and Philippines with most likely with a local crew, Hell Hunters is a prime example of how cheap most 80s action films shot outside USA look and feel like and why they aren’t generally included in this blog.

The production quality is plain bad and the same goes for the script and the dialogue. Most of the dubbed dialogue is hilariously bad, if you’re in the mood for that. If not, it’ll very quickly grow tiresome to listen to.

Outside the somewhat solid action scenes Hell Hunters can’t offer anything that hasn’t been done elsewhere a thousand times better.

80s-o-meter: 68%

Total: 12%

#648 Pulse (1988)

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Although Pulse’s idea of making the possessed electricity a cruel killer is pretty unique, the movie starts to soon follow trails often seen in similar movies: A little kid, shunned by his peers senses a great danger within the house, but none of the grown ups believe him before it’s too late.

This is not to say that some predictability is bad – in many cases following the beaten path but in a memorable way can create a genre cult classic. Pulse really does nothing in a memorable way and it certainly isn’t that long lost classic movie of the era. With that out of the way, there’s a lot to love here as well. The cinematography is solid and the movie successfully culminates towards the end. Cliff De Young has always been a great guy to be cast as the family dad and the same goes here, and Joey Lawrence as the 12-year old protagonist performs admirably and comparable to many top kids actors of the era.

Pulse doesn’t reach the standards of the other haunted house movies of the 80s – the likes of Poltergeist, House and Amityville Horror – but is still very much a recommended watch.

80s-o-meter: 90%

Total: 76%

#633 Talk Radio (1988)

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A provocative talk radio host starts to question it all on the brink of nation wide syndication in Oliver Stone’s intense thriller.

Taking place mostly inside one scene in radio studio in downtown Dallas, Talk Radio dives deep into the cess pool of the humankind in a mixed up world where the radio hosts, company business men and the audience come don’t fear to show their contempt to one another, but live in a strange kind of symbiotic relationship where they need to feed off one another.

As exhausting experience experience as it might be, it’s still a much recommendable one.

80s-o-meter: 82%

Total: 93%

#632 Child’s Play (1988)

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After a somewhat silly initial plot Child’s Play makes sure to shake off any traces of being just a silly comedy by offering plenty of thrilling suspense, action and all those little things the nightmares are made of. The co-operation between the director and the dolls’ animators is flawless, making Chucky feel like an actual, demented character on the screen.

Child’s Play and Chucky became, and still remain, synonymous to 80s horror milestones – and deservedly so as the movie hands down fulfils its premise: An animated doll has never managed to be more scary.

80’s-o-meter: 95%

Total: 92%

#629 The Couch Trip (1988)

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The Couch Trip is much like many other Dan Aykroyd movies of the time where he plays a somewhat eccentric, obnoxious character that everyone in the movie seems to love for some inexplicable reason. The real star of the show is once again Charles Grodin who portrays his Beverly Hill shrink on the verge of a mental breakdown in a hilarious fashion.

All in all The Couch Trip ends up much too trite and trivial experience that is forgotten as soon as it finishes: I watched the movie yesterday and had to watch the last 15 minutes of the movie again today to remember how it actually ended.

80s-o-meter: 90%

Total: 63%