by ·Comments Off on Conan the Barbarian (1982, John Milius)

On Oscars night I thought we should watch something that never* won an award, and so, Conan.

Painted-up horseback killers arrive and destroy young Conan’s town, kill his dad first, then James Earl Jones (with beautiful long hair and named Salsa Doom) beheads Conan’s mom and takes all the town’s kids to be millwheel slaves. Our kid grows into Arnold whilst pushing the millwheel, then gets thrown into gladiator battle where he caves in the other guy’s head, leading to a montage of him killing a lot of guys and “realizing his sense of worth,” haha. After the one-on-one fights in Universal Soldier 6, the chaotic action mishmash of this was bound to disappoint. Impressed, his slavemasters send him to fighting school but some redbeard randomly frees him then he immediately finds a kickass Earth God sword.

The Empty Man, Earth God:

Arnold doesn’t know how to socialize properly, so he has sex with a sorceress while she’s in the middle of reciting his prophecy, then hurls her into the fireplace. He meets Gerry Lopez (thief, archer, and surfer in Milius’s Big Wednesday) and they run around Spain to the lovely adventure music of Basil Poledouris (later a Verhoeven accomplice). Soon after he punches a camel, they meet a cute lady thief (Sandahl Bergman of Hell Comes to Frogtown) and together rob a snake-cult tower and behead the snake god within.

King Max von Sydow congratulates them and sends them on a mission to unkidnap his daughter from the snake cult. Conan ditches the others and runs the rescue mission solo for some reason, asking directions from some hippies, and meeting wizard Mako (The Bird People in China) who lends him a camel, which he learns should be ridden, not punched. Arriving in snaketown, Arnold seduces some guy to steal his cult robes, but he’s not very sneaky and Salsa Doom’s men crucify him on the tree of woe. Really shouldn’t have come alone.

His buddies arrive belatedly and Mako kwaidans him back to life. They sneak in and massacre the palace guards, getting green soup everywhere, while Salsa Doom transforms into a snake and crawls off. The cute girl thief dies of snake wounds before Arnold can find a fireplace to hurl her into. Arnold heals up and goes back to slash his way through more guys, with help from buddies Gerry and Mako and the ghost of his dead girlfriend, beheads Salsa Jones and all the cultists go home. Ends slowly, with a sequel setup, but instead of Conan the Destroyer (a Richard Fleischer/Jack Cardiff joint, shorter, with Grace Jones) I think I’m supposed to watch the Lucio Fulci ripoff Conquest.

*This lost Saturn awards to Star Trek II, Tron, E.T., The Dark Crystal, and Poltergeist, a pretty good lot, but in 2001 it won a DVD commentary award. I listened to a couple minutes of commentary around the camel-punching scene, and nah, I would’ve gone with Charlie’s Angels.

Guess this was technically a rewatch since I remember catching it on cable at Brad’s house in 1983… now that it’s fresh in my mind, bring on the new Mandico version. Milius had recently cowritten Apocalypse Now and 1941, I guess he was into warfare in every era. Producer Dino de Laurentiis also made Halloween III and Amityville II this year, and Edward Pressman and Oliver Stone had just made The Hand.

by ·Comments Off on The Right Stuff (1983, Philip Kaufman)

Watched because I thought this might illuminate Ferrari, but it would’ve paired better with Oppenheimer – long entertaining stories about historical situations where Americans lived in makeshift communities in the desert trying to achieve great feats. It’s a bunch of tough guys and their suffering wives until Harry Shearer and Jeff Goldblum show up as a comic team – the addition of humor and absurdity helps immensely. Good work by Jordan Belson on the space visuals.

I wonder if this winning best picture led directly to Top Gun:

Oppenheimer needed them:

by ·Comments Off on Dex Romweber double-feature (1987-2006, Tony Gayton)

Athens GA Inside/Out (1987)

“Mike Mills can smell ants.” A portrait of a scene and the bands within, the Decline of Western Civilization template in a more chill environment. Pylon was broken up at the time of filming, but were still nice enough to do an interview. Ends with the title “Save the Morton Theater.” They must have saved it – I saw Of Montreal there more than 15 years later.

–
Two Headed Cow (2006)

After his cameos in Inside/Out, a full Dex doc, full of good stories and quotes. “I’ve found it very hard to join this society on a normal level ever since I became an adult … I became some weird alienated folk artist without even intending to.” Exene (another Decline connection) calls his music “hardcore americana.” Looser than the other movies, more downtime, hanging out on tour. Dex gives the Duo Jets history himself, no alt narrator, and explains why they dissolved (his bandmate disagrees). After the split, archive footage of “who can I count on if I can’t count on you” (harsh), and Dex says he entered a “semi-psychotic spiritual odyssey.” Half the movie is Tony’s own archive – this was his attempted follow-up to Inside/Out, abandoned and then finished 16 years later. Nice tricks: a duet between Dex’s older and younger self, a time-lapse of a full solo show with snippets of each song. Sara’s not in the movie, she replaced Crash on drums in the Dex Duo the year after this came out. I’ve been listening to all their records… RIP…

by ·Comments Off on The Decline of Western Civilization (1981, Penelope Spheeris)

Great rock doc, maybe the absolute ideal. Songs play all the way through, with good live sound. The movie conveys the experience of a high-energy club show, and she asks direct interview questions behind the scenes. They filmed in 1979 and ’80 and this came out summer 1981… where’d the bands end up?

The Bags broke up before the movie’s release. Alice’s recent solo records are good, her bandmates migrated to Gun Club.

Ron Reyes was a short-lived Black Flag member, their second singer, and by mid-1981 the band was testing out Rollins, their fourth.

Ron:

Circle Jerks are still together, kind of, and their members have been in Redd Kross, Bad Religion, Off!, and Black Flag.

Catholic Discipline was short-lived – their keyboardist became El Vez.

The Germs singer died at the end of 1980 – one band member would later form a group called Celebrity Skin, and another would join Nirvana.

Darby:

Lee Ving of Fear was in the movie Flashdance, and every few years all his band members quit over “his right wing beliefs and his lack of empathy” and he hires new band members.

X would stay together forever, more or less.

by ·Comments Off on The Untouchables (1987, Brian De Palma)

Ness/Costner, a true believer, says “let’s do some good” before busting up a joint he falsely heard is importing liquor, then the others make fun of him for the action-movie quip. He puts a team together in honest cop Sean Connery, sharpshooter Andy Garcia, and accountant Charles Stone (future director of Air Bud) to go after Al “De Niro” Capone for tax evasion since they can’t get him for anything else, and do-gooder Ness learns that he can’t stay clean when everyone else plays dirty.

Towards the end of this movie I wrote that it’s “THE 1987 movie” – not the best or most popular, but it’s the movie, and I wondered if I could find the movie for every other year – but the next morning I wasn’t sure what I meant by that.

It is hilarious that Connery won a supporting oscar for his Highlander II-ass performance instead of… I dunno, John Goodman in Raising Arizona, or The Cowboy in Innerspace, or Alice Cooper in Prince of Darkness, or That 70’s Dad in RoboCop.

De Palma makes a theme of child endangerment leading up to his stairway setpiece:

by ·Comments Off on Amazon Women on the Moon (1987, Joe Dante, John Landis, et al)

I’d had this confused with Kentucky Fried Movie all along. It’s not so bad, a sketch comedy anthology. Came out September 1987, so that must have been around when my family took the Universal Studios tour – I remember this was being advertised but I wasn’t old enough to see it.

Sketches:
– Arsenio gets attacked by everything in his apartment, finally falling to his death out the window
– fake Penthouse video

– Murray’s remote sucks him into the TV, wife Selma keeps changing the channel
– Michelle Pfeiffer had a baby, Idiot Doctor Griffin Dunne lost it
– fake hair loss ad
– titular fake 1955 moon landing movie
– BB King fake ad about black men born without soul
– Rosanna Arquette runs a credit and ID check on blind date Steve Guttenberg
– Henry Silva hosts “Bullshit or Not”, investigating if the Loch Ness Monster was Jack the Ripper
– Bruce McCulloch-esque Archie Hahn is watching TV when the movie critics start reviewing him

– titular moon landing movie pt 2
– fake ad for edible silly putty
– Bruce gets roasted at his funeral by an all-star comedian slate, his wife is the closing act
– David Alan Grier is the black guy without soul, part 2
– video pirates discover booty of gold vhs tapes (including The Other Side of the Wind)

– Ed Begley Jr. is Son of Invisible Man, not actually invisible, his assistant Trent doing damage control
– Amazon Women pt 3
– ad: John Ingle hosting an out-of-business sale for a national art museum
– ad: Henry Silva pt 2: sinking of the titanic
– ad for a novel about a sexy white house first lady
– meek teen Matt Adler buying condoms for hotgirl Kelly Preston, pharmacist is his family friend
– Amazon women pt 4, cutting back to the movie having missed important plot developments, a good joke reused in Grindhouse
– Dave McFly gets custom tape from video store of hotgirl sherrie making love to him, her husband frankie comes home waving a gun around, kills her and himself, McFly is arrested
– Grier has no soul pt. 3: okay we get it
– credits
– 1950s teen scare film: Iowan Carrie Fisher goes to NYC, passed around by talent scout, gets married, goes to Dr. Paul Bartel because she caught a social disease
– closes with an ad for the Universal Studios tour, coming back around.

by ·Comments Off on Almanac of Fall (1984, Béla Tarr)

Jake Cole’s review is the one to read.
Also covered in Rosenbaum’s Placing Movies but I don’t have my copy handy.

Main dude in The Turin Horse plays the son Janos.
Mustache guy Tibor gets arrested at the end for pawning mom’s jewelry.

The camera goes up in the ceiling…

and under the floor.

by ·Comments Off on A Better Tomorrow III (1989, Tsui Hark)

Prequel about the formation of the supercool badass who is MARK. Chow Yun-fat is an ordinary civilian until he meets Anita Mui in Saigon and she teaches him to shoot – but why’d they name her Kit when that’s Leslie Cheung’s character name in part one?

Mark tries to do straight business deals in a corrupt, turbulent country with his cousin Mun (Tony 2), keeps getting rescued by Anita. The plan is to close Mark’s uncle’s shop and move him to Hong Kong, but customs fucks up their shit so bad that the uncle (Sek Kin of Enter the Dragon) has a heart attack. Anita saves them yet again and they make it to HK halfway through the movie, but Mark and Mun both love the girl, so they return to Vietnam at the same time her long-lost mentor/bf Ho appears. A circle of vendettas ensues, everyone killing everyone else. You can sing “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” to the theme song. The fun music montages are the bad-80s aspect of an otherwise cool movie, Tsui taking over the series while John Woo renamed his own Vietnam-set pseudo-prequel Bullet in the Head.