Tag Archives: 1985

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: HOUSE (1985)

Leave a comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Steve Miner

FEATURING: William Katt, George Wendt, , Kay Lenz, Mary Stavin

PLOT: Horror writer Roger Cobb moves into the house left to him by his aunt following her apparent suicide, only to find it infested by malevolent forces that challenge his biggest fears and anxieties.

Still from house (1985)

COMMENTS: Poor Roger is having a pretty rough go of it. His agent is eager for him to churn out the next big hit in his Stephen King-like career, but he’s got an awful case of writer’s block. Whyfor? Well, it might be the collapse of his marriage to a successful TV star, which itself is probably due to the mysterious disappearance of their son. (Roger’s repeated calls to the FBI and the CIA get no results.) And it could be the haunting memories of that time in Vietnam when the muscleman of the platoon saved Roger’s life and lost his own to some extras from a community theater production of Miss Saigon. Plus, his beloved aunt did just hang herself in the upstairs of her beautiful Victorian mansion, the very same place where his son went missing, and her ghost has turned up to say that it’s all the house’s fault. So naturally, Roger decides that very house is the perfect place to get out of his head and finally finish that wartime memoir (which he has titled, with all due vagueness, One Man’s Story). It quickly becomes obvious that this was not the best place for a distraction-free retreat: intrusive neighbors lurk outside , including the guy next door who ignores boundaries and the Scandinavian sexpot down the street who stops by to use the swimming pool unannounced. Meanwhile, the TV always seems to be airing his ex-wife’s show, and the walls are covered with his uncle’s hunting and fishing trophies and his aunt’s disturbing paintings. Honestly, it’s probably a relief when the monsters in the closet and the flying knives show up; at last, the man can focus.

As the description above should indicate, House has more plot than it knows what to do with, and that’s a shame, because when it settles down and focuses on one or two things, the film hits its stride. For example, after confronting a monster performing a grotesque parody of his ex-wife (one of the film’s excellently cartoony creature effects), Roger slips into a slapstick routine as he attempts to hide the beast’s body (and later, various pieces of said body) from the police. A perfectly serviceable piece of dark comedy. But a return trip to that well, in which Roger attempts to pry the monster’s disembodied hand off a toddler’s neck while simultaneously peacocking for the boy’s hot mom, falls terribly, as the wacky loose-hand hijinks don’t mesh with the child’s wretched crying. House is unable to pick a lane, and this is a recurring problem. Should we see Roger as the one sane man in a world gone mad, or as a troubled individual very steadily beginning to crack under the pressure? Are George Wendt and Richard Moll here to show off their sitcom-honed comedic chops, or to play against type? The movie can’t figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time, which means we have a comedy and a horror film trying to occupy the same space, and the emotional wires get seriously crossed. An inherently ludicrous scene, such as a mounted swordfish coming to life like an enormous Big Mouth Billy Bass, is treated as an intense moment of fear and conflict (despite the fact that the thing is, you know, stuck to the wall). Meanwhile, Roger’s PTSD-laden Vietnam flashbacks look like someone saw Sands of Iwo Jima once. (House’s version of ‘Nam isn’t so much shot on the backlot as it is in someone’s backyard.) We never get a true sense of this experience as a lifelong trauma, let alone the source of the film’s Big Bad.

One has to acknowledge that film’s most obvious forebear: House feels like a cheap knockoff of ’s Evil Dead (the irony being that Evil Dead probably cost the same as this film’s catering budget). The truth is that if Miner and Cunningham ever watched Evil Dead, they couldn’t figure out how to replicate the formula. You can feel them getting awfully close to their goal. Director Miner, a veteran of the second and third entries in the Friday the 13th series (producer Sean Cunningham directed the first), wants to tap into the fun of watching people running from their fears, only you’re expected to care about these characters far more than any of the denizens of Camp Crystal Lake. And those monsters are disgusting, but gleefully so. The hideous beast lurking in the bedroom closet, that Lady Gremlin-esque deceiver, even Moll’s hellish soldier back from the dead to avenge his betrayal all go for gross in the most fun way possible. It’s not scary, exactly, but it’s funhouse scary. (Quite frankly, there’s nothing in this film nearly as unsettling as the movie’s own poster.) Plus, casting Wiliam Katt proves a savvy choice; he’s not exactly dripping with personality, but he’s game and never sells out the absurdities with a wink or a shrug, which means scenes like his journey into the dark void that lies just the other side of his bathroom medicine cabinet are surprisingly strong.

To damn it with faint praise, House is… fine. It’s not especially scary, but it does have moments of surprise or amusing disgust. It’s not particularly funny, although there are chuckles here and there. It doesn’t make all that much sense, yet I can see how remaking it as a six-part Netflix series could give the story’s many ideas the space to take shape and resolve. As it stands, House is a pleasant diversion. But that’s one man’s story.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The film may in fact offer at least a few more laughs than actual scares, but it is certainly one of the weirder examples of a horror comedy hybrid simply by dint of the fact that it utilizes PTSD (whether caused by war experiences or the disappearance of a child) for some of its humor.” – Jeffrey Kauffman, Blu-ray.com (Blu-ray)

(This movie was nominated for review by Matt. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

House (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

House (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]
  •  
Check Price
Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: STATIC (1985)

Leave a comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Mark Romanek

FEATURING: Keith Gordon, Amanda Plummer, Bob Gunton, Lily Knight

PLOT: A quiet young man in a small Western town believes he has invented a machine with life-changing potential, if only he could find someone else who could see it operate successfully.

Still from Static (1985)

COMMENTS: Throughout the summer of 2001, buzz was building over a mysterious new invention codenamed “Ginger.” Mastermind Dean Kamen had impeccable credentials as an innovator, and his creation was being touted by some of the biggest names in business, but Kamen held details of the project in such secrecy that supposition and rumor ruled the day. A hoverboard, some speculated, or some other anti-gravity device. Or some suggested it was some new hydrogen-fueled form of transportation. The mystery and the hype fueled each other in an escalating cycle, so perhaps disappointment was inevitable when the true nature of Ginger was revealed: the Segway.

Ernie Blick (Gordon) is also an inventor with a secret, but despite lacking any of Kamen’s advantages, everyone feels his widely discussed invention is certainly real and likely to be a big success. In a way, he has none of the narcissistic personality issues we often associate with creators: he’s unassuming and unfailingly nice, good-natured despite the recent loss of both parents, deferential to others, outwardly humble, and unflappable even when being laid off from his job at the town crucifix factory. (It’s hard to imagine a more perfect locale for a film featured on this website than a crucifix assembly line.) He’d be just another one of those quiet guys in a loudly quirky town were it not for the amazing thing he claims to have invented.

Commencing spoilers: what Ernie has invented is a TV that relays images of heaven. Ernie knows this has the potential to change the world; he imagines Q&As with excited reporters that bandy about talk of Nobel Prizes. Ah, but here’s the rub: no one else can see the live reports from the great beyond. They get the same thing we do: the titular snow and hiss. Reaction is poor, Ernie is understandably crushed, and we’re left to wonder why anyone thought such an invention might be in his skillset.

Up to this point, Static has been a rather charming accumulation of surprises and quirks. Ernie’s possible girlfriend Julia (Plummer, in an uncharacteristically straightlaced role) is a disillusioned rock keyboardist—just because. Ernie’s cousin Frank (Gunton, charming in his gracelessness) is a doomsday prepper and a hostile street evangelist—just because. (He’s also terrible at small talk. Upon meeting Julia, he wishes her well by saying, “I hope your death is painless.”) Everyone’s a little offbeat like this, and it’s okay because that’s just the kind of town it is. But once the heavenly cable box is revealed and no one can see what Ernie sees, we’re confronted with the question of what it all means, and that’s when things go careening wildly off the rails.

Static is right on the edge of asking some interesting questions about the nature of faith versus proof, about the role of artists and creators in society, about tolerance for ideas outside the mainstream. But instead, the movie lurches into a scenario wherein Ernie takes a busload of senior citizens hostage in order to generate publicity for his invention. Admittedly, Ernie is just as affable a kidnapper as he is a diner customer, and the standoff has the humor and light satire we might expect from a British sitcom. But it ends just as terribly as you could expect, with bullets fired, everyone dead, and not a single lesson learned. It’s a bold choice, sure, but a cheap and cynical one.

Director Romanek has reportedly disowned the film as juvenalia, which seems unfair. The movie looks good and is well acted. It just has absolutely no idea what it wants to say, and therefore ends up saying nothing. Static serves as an interesting collection of “wouldn’t it be cool” notions, but ask yourself what happens during the time between when Plummer comes rolling into town and when she heads back out. It may look like there’s a lot going on, but cut through the snow and the noise and all you really get is a fancy scooter.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s always tempting to find a strange cult film all the more alluring if it’s hard to get to see it in the first place… Static serves up a near-surreal helping of small-town America just before Lynch himself had got to Blue Velvet, let alone Twin Peaks.” – Andy Murray, We Are Cult

(This movie was nominated for review by Wormhead. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: DR. OTTO AND THE RIDDLE OF THE GLOOM BEAM (1985)

1 Comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: John R. Cherry III

FEATURING: Jim Varney, Myke Mueller, Jackie Welch, Daniel Butler, Esther Huston

PLOT: The nefarious Dr. Otto Von Schnick-ick-ick develops an energy beam to achieve world domination, but more importantly to get revenge upon his archenemy Lance Sterling; after a demonstration of his weapon, he releases an riddle-encoded poem, which Sterling must solve to avert catastrophe.

Still from Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam (1985)

COMMENTS: TV commercials are an unlikely source for successful entertainment on a broader scale, but it does happen every now and then. C. W. McCall went from being a fictional character hawking bread to a chart-topping recording artist. Several notable advertising jingles have made the jump into pop success. Ted Lasso was fronting for NBC long before he was the darling of Apple TV+. Even the GEICO cavemen got their own sitcom for a hot minute. Our capitalist society is always on the lookout for a chance to turn a little thing into a very big thing, but you can’t necessarily plan for it. After all, Tony the Tiger never got his own movie. Yet.

So imagine the dumb luck of the advertising agency of Carden & Cherry to stumble upon smashing success in the mid-80s in the person of an annoyingly ingratiating yokel by the name of Ernest P. Worrell. As personified by rubber-faced comedian Jim Varney, Ernest shilled for a multitude of products across the country, from to car dealers to drugstores to electronics retailers, all while casting aside boundaries and turning every product spiel into an in-your-face assault on his hapless neighbor Vern. (Where I grew up, he was the pitchman for a burgers-and-ice cream chain called Braum’s. It was pretty tasty, back in the day.) The regional strategy was a brilliant piece of marketing savvy because it allowed the agency to farm out the same intellectual property to multiple clients. But that same strategy made it impossible to transform Ernest into a national commercial icon. He just had too many corporate ties in different parts of the country. But Varney’s appeal was not to be contained.

That last thing I said is the key to understanding the bizarre focus of Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam: Varney’s appeal. The Carden & Cherry braintrust looked at the Shakespearean-trained actor’s ability to develop a passel of characters and his knack for rapid memorization and impromptu invention and evidently concluded that Varney was the golden goose. Ernest can keep selling products, but point the camera at Varney and let him do his thing, they thought, and you’ve got a cinematic comic persona to put Robin Williams to shame. 

The result is a truly curious product. You can be sure that Dr. Otto is our star; his name’s right there in the title. That being the case, he’s a genuinely grotesque figure, with his greasy complexion, Teutonic accent, and an active hand grafted atop his skull. He wears a costume that suggests neo-Borg and employs a coterie of dim-bulb henchbeauties whom he’s always too distracted to sexually harass. His sinister plot focuses quite heavily on bringing the financial system to its Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: DR. OTTO AND THE RIDDLE OF THE GLOOM BEAM (1985) →

Apocryphally Weird

34*. THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION (1985)

4 Comments

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Michael Rubbo

FEATURING: Mathew Mackay, Siluck Saysanasy, Alison Podbrey, Michael Hogan, Michel Maillot

PLOT: After suffering a terrible fright while exploring a derelict house, young Michael’s hair falls out, leaving him completely bald; possible salvation arrives in the form of a strange cure proffered by a pair of ghosts, which involves smearing a bizarre concoction atop his head. When an impatient Michael adds too much peanut butter to the recipe, his hair commences to grow wildly out of control. Not only does Michael have a new set of challenges associated with his uncontrollable coif, but he becomes the target of a dubious art teacher who covets the boy’s locks for the manufacture of magical paintbrushes. 

Still from The Peanut Butter Solution (1985)

BACKGROUND: 

  • Quebecois producer Rock Demers made his mark in the world of youth-oriented cinema with 1970’s The Christmas Martian, which was made to take advantage of Canadian tax breaks.  
  • The Peanut Butter Solution was the second of a planned dozen kids’ movies by Demers’ Les Production La Fete studio under the banner “Tales For All.” The success of the series earned the studio the moniker “Disney of the North.” 
  • The soundtrack includes two songs performed by future music titan Celine Dion. She was seventeen at the time, and these were her first English-language recordings.
  • The script began as a bedtime story director/co-writer Rubbo would tell his 6-year-old son.
  • Co-writer Vojtech Jasný, best known as director of The Cassandra Cat (1963), was a veteran of the .

INDELIBLE IMAGE: There are many memorable shots of Michael’s ever-growing hair, but probably the most lasting is the contraption he is forced to devise to prevent the hyperactive follicles from killing him in his sleep, resulting in a ‘do that resembles one of St. Basil’s onion domes. 

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Way too much hair down there; paintbrush sweatshop

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: What doesn’t? The film starts out with an unusual premise, surrounds it with a cast of characters who act in ways that bear no relationship to the way humans behave, and then sends the story in random directions that only magnify the craziness. You’ve heard the hype; the buzz is justified. It’s exactly as strange as you think it will be, and then some.

Original trailer for The Peanut Butter Solution

COMMENTS: I don’t remember how many years ago it was that my Continue reading 34*. THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION (1985) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE COCA-COLA KID (1985)

Leave a comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Dušan Makavejev

FEATURING: Eric Roberts, Greta Scacchi, Bill Kerr, Chris Haywood, Rebecca Smart

PLOT: A Coca-Cola executive travels to Australia to find out why the signature product has failed to penetrate one remote outpost in the country; Along the way, he crosses swords with an unexpectedly fierce competitor, adapts to down-under culture shock, and tries to cope with his distractingly quirky secretary.

Still from The Coca-Cola Kid (1985)

COMMENTS: Eric Roberts was young once. I mean, so were we all, but the lies we tell ourselves about the aging process are revealed more starkly in the cinema. So here he is: young, blond, rosy-cheeked, oozing alright-alright charm and boasting a Georgia accent you can spread on toast. So even though his mononymous character Becker is an ex-Marine who is called upon to be the face of all-consuming American capitalism, exploiting local culture and obliterating competitiveness for the benefit of a rapacious corporation, the thought that kept coming back to me was, “My goodness, who knew Eric Roberts was pretty?”

The gorgeousness of Eric Roberts is undoubtedly a strategy. If Satan is, as some contend, actually a ravishing beauty who lures the weak and unsuspecting, then the Coca-Cola Company is clearly cast here in the role of Satan, parlaying their sweet acidity, bold red branding scheme, and co-option of Santa Claus into world dominance. So it’s tempting at the outset to expect an Outback-themed take on Local Hero, in which our protagonist is confronted by an idyllic way of life that is literally foreign to his make-a-buck existence.

But The Coca-Cola Kid really isn’t into Becker, or even Coke, as avatars of our consumer culture. Far from embodying the worst traits of the faceless money monster, Becker is confused and aimless. He goes through the motions of using the latest marketing techniques to bring down his competitors, but his heart really isn’t in it. He barely seems to be into anything: he doesn’t particularly enjoy his own product any further than its saleable qualities, his approach to the alien landscape in which he has landed is purely functional, and his proto-manic pixie secretary Terri only manages to irritate him until she finally lures him into bed. (Even Becker’s sexuality is uncommitted; he seems equally baffled by Terri’s entreaties and by a series of aggressive same-sex come-ons at a party.) Aside from Terri’s grammar-school-aged daughter, the only person Becker seems to understand at all is his opponent.

Cue Becker’s foe: T. George McDowell, the biggest fish in a very small pond and a man with an oversized sense of his ability to compete with an industry juggernaut. He has steadfastly resisted Coke’s incursion into the region in favor of his own line of sodas, and it emerges that the whole enterprise is borne out of an “if you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em” brand of revenge for the loss of his wife, a Mississippi-born Coke ad model whom he married and lost over his obsessions. (“She never understood the ice,” he reminisces.) Far from being a wide-eyed innocent from the sticks, McDowell fancies himself a global tycoon and Coke’s equal. It leads to an inevitable showdown between a man who thinks he has all the power and a man who knows he does.

The result is ultimately tragic. McDowell is utterly out of his league. There’s no competing with a behemoth, and the contrast is best dramatized in their marketing strategies. A trio of homely cheerleaders can’t hold a candle to pop of half-a-dozen Coke-bearing Santas, and McDowell’s homespun musical ditty is blown out of the room by the absolute banger of a jingle that Tim Finn has concocted.

But all the while, there’s this strange effort to graft a love story onto the film, and while everyone is slowly being crushed by capitalism’s iron boot, it’s in the romance where Dušan Makavejev seems to be trying the hardest to be Dušan Makavejev. The mix of rapacious capitalism and cheeky eroticism feels a little like he was trying to make a more audience-friendly version of his own Sweet Movie. (A genuinely well-crafted sex scene on a feather bed is a first cousin to the earlier film’s romp in sugar.) But he doesn’t seem any more focused than his characters. It’s a mark of how clueless Becker is that the stunningly sexy Greta Scacchi has to work so hard to get his attention, but it’s also curious how haphazard and clumsy Terri’s advances are. She holds a deep (and plotty) secret, but its revelation ultimately doesn’t have much impact on the choices characters must make. It’s just sort of there.

The Coca-Cola Kid has a very Australian soul, exuding a powerful “don’t worry, mate” vibe. Perhaps that’s the weirdest thing about it: in the face of themes like conquering capitalism, cultural homogeneity, and the overwhelming nature of love, the approach it settles on is, “Relax and go with it.” Maybe it’s a sensible approach, but it robs the film of immediacy and power. It just doesn’t feel like the real thing.

Fun City Editions released The Coca-Cola Kid to Blu-ray for the first time in June 2022.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Clearly made as a more commercial effort and with a recognizable ‘name actor’ in the lead role, it lacks a lot of the weirdness that made some of his earlier work as compelling as it is, yet still remains a really entertaining and clever picture that’s worth checking out. Makavejev’s tendencies to point out the absurd and to work strange, offbeat humor into his work still shines through…” Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop! (Blu-ray)