Over The Top (1987)

The more I look back, the more it's shaping up that 1987 was the SECOND worst year for movies.

Especially if you consider that the largest amount of releases came out of left field.

Now normally I wouldn't have a problem with that, since a lot of good films come from this segment of the field.  But Over The Top is not your average "out of left field " film.  No: this was the result of a summit meeting between two of the biggest money-making camps of the 1980s.

Sylvester Stallone and Golan/Globus.

And in a bit of irony that would have William Shakespeare smacking his Elizabethan head, this would also lead to one of the worst products ever released by both parties.

Think about that for a second: this was the worst film released by the men responsible for Paradise Alley and Treasure of the Four Crowns, respectively.  Over The Top is worse than these.

It seems that Sly, wanting to be taken as more than the big dumb lug who won his way into peoples' hearts by boxing (Rocky) and fighting wars (Rambo), took it upon himself to expand his repertoire and become a more verbose, thoughtful hero for big, muscular Italians the world over to look up to.  So one of them ended up being 1986's Cobra, where he plays a lone cop who kills hundreds of slimy criminals.  Another film was supposed to have been a remake of Angels With Dirty Faces starring him and Christopher Reeve... unfortunately, the powers-that-be (whoever they are) decided not to have Sly and Supes sully their intellectual property and nixed the project.  I guess they figured it was okay for Robert DeNiro and Sean Penn to sully it up a few years down the road, but whaddyagonnado?

My focus on this review, however, is a film in this mega-franchise that not only was a money-loser, but was also one the absolutely worst -conceived, worst-written, worst-acted and worst-received films ever from these same individuals.

Again, worse than Paradise Alley and Treasure Of The Four Crowns.

And this is coming from someone who absolutely loves Cobra , which actually should have had less going for it than Over The Top!

Not coincidentally, at least Cobra was based on a book ("Fair Game" by Paula Gosling).  This movie?  It's based on Rocky.  The difference this time is that we're set squarely outside of the squared circle of professional boxing and instead deep into the world of professional...arm wrestling.

Arm.  Wrestling.

Yeah.  You know that game you used to play at recess or during study hall when the teacher wasn't looking?  THIS is the organized sports version with big cash prizes and high-level sponsorship and promotion. 

And YOU got a job as a doctor or a lawyer, figuring that was where the big money was?  SUCKER!

Okay, enough of this, let's wrestle with the plot now.  Lincoln Hawk (Sly) is a struggling independent truck driver who's trying to rebuild his life after a divorce from his wife Christina (Susan Blakely). As she lay dying, her final wish is that she reclaims his son Michael (David Mendenhall), who has taken the last name of his grandfather Jason (Robert Loggia), a rich and powerful man who had been instrumental in keeping Lincoln and Christina apart. Lincoln does his best to mend fences but Michael is a stubborn military school-bred brat who doesn't think much of being abandoned for the open lure of the road.

...then he finds out that old dad is also an arm-wrestler and picks up extra money going here, there and everywhere by defeating opponents with his mighty arm.  That doesn't change their relationship much but hey: his dad arm wrestles.  Wow.

Possession of Michael becomes key between Lincoln and Jason with everything coming to a boiling point at the National Arm Wrestling Competition in Las Vegas, promising a big payoff to the winner, just enough for Lincoln to pay his debts, regain full possession of his son and live happily ever after.  Gee, I wonder how things will turn out?

I have no idea what Sly was thinking here; he already wrote and/or starred in some huge successes with the Rocky and Rambo movies and even scored what could be called a major independent hit (meaning not dependent on the name Rocky or Rambo) with 1981's Nighthawks.  He even knew that his persona was silly enough to poke fun at himself with appearances on "The Muppet Show" and his delightfully self-effacing interviews on any given talk show of the day.  However, Sly plays Lincoln Hawk as the second coming of Jesus, returned to Earth as a truck-driving, arm-wrestling sensitive guy who specializes in soft-spoken monologues and bellowing war cries as he brings down his opponents' arms.

Really, Sly - come on: Rocky Balboa, John Rambo, Marion Cobretti and even Deke DaSilva were typical tough guy fodder.  But with Over The Top, you've essayed a man whose only character development trait is turning his ball cap backwards on his head before stepping into the arm wrestling arena.

Did I really just write "arm wrestling arena" in one of my reviews?  Yep, I did.  My God....

I was hoping for a scene where Sly had a crisis of confidence because he lost his hat and couldn't arm wrestle without anything to turn backwards on his head.

We have dramatic impetus enough, though, with the introduction of his son Michael, as played by David Mendenhall, whom the astute will happily remember as Peter from 1983's Space Raiders and the voice for many popular Eighties cartoon series, including that of Daniel Witwicky from the early animated "Transofrmers", both the TV series and 1986 movie.  At least in Space Raiders he had the benefit of acting alongside Vince Edwards and Patsy Pease.

I hate seeing spoiled brats in movies even if they're less bratty by the end due to the shared events in the story.  The only purpose spoiled brats in movies serve is to is to get what's coming to them.  Michael doesn't, of course, but I guess that would have required better acting and an improved script that added a scene behind the woodshed.

As the mom whose only purpose is to lie in bed and look paler with every scene, Susan Blakely actually deserved the honor of being first to pass on this project.  Blakely has been in such worthy films as The Towering Inferno, The Concorde...Airport '79 and the actually-classy 1983 Frances Farmer TV biopic "Will There Really Be A Morning?", which earned her a Golden Globe nomination.  I mean, she's an honest-to-goodness actress with talent and everything.  Here, all her dramatic highlights consist of her literally phoning in her performance; she has the phone to her ear and is speaking with Lincoln or Michael or both while staring off in the distance looking all pale and sickly.  Damn it; Hollywood did the same thing to Faye Dunaway as detective Frank Sinatra's dying wife in 1980's The First Deadly Sin.  So, does Blakely at least get a good, dramatic final death throe just to prove what a fantastic actress she really is?  Nope, she dies off-screen.  Not every movie can be Terms of Endearment, I suppose.  Sorry, Susan.

And then we have Robert Loggia.  Big Bob.  Every movie like this needs a villain, and I guess Loggia fits the bill as one, even though he basically plays the evil stepmother who keeps the princess (his daughter) away from her one true love (the truck driver).   It's not like Loggia doesn't do a good job: he shouts and screams and makes the veins bulge on his neck and his temples just like any role being filled by Robert Loggia would come to be known by.  However, the problem here is Loggia's Cutler character just isn't "Robert Loggia" enough.  He needs more scenes where he's screaming, his veins are bulging, his voice is shaking with rage.  This is like Robert Loggia Lite we're witnessing here and it just isn't enough for a movie named Over The Top.

Even wrestler Terry Funk - who was one of the absolute highlights of Paradise Alley as far as I'm concerned - is about as muted as Loggia, if not moreso.  In Alley, playing the dumb brutish pug Frankie The Thumper with a heavy verbal dosage of Damon Runyon's colorful thugs, every one of Funk's scenes was a highlight and well worth watching for the delight Funk seemed to take in playing such a great part.  Here, as bodyguard Ruker, all he does is wear a suit and get punched by Sly in a scene.  Nothing else.  Maybe there was a sense of being upstaged feared by someone?  Gotta wonder....

As a matter of fact, the only one who really brings any sense of "over-the-top" acting to this piece is the secondary villain - Bob 'Bull' Hurley, played by Rick Zumwalt, who was himself a professional arm wrestler...

(what, did you think I was making that stuff up about professional arm wrestling?  Google it, I dare ya...)

...anyway, Zumwalt gives his all: eyes bulging, voice roaring, bald head sweating and coming very close to ripping off a few peoples' arms a few times.  Now why couldn't HE have been the star of Over The Top?

I'll tell you why: because this was Sly's (and Golan/Globus') movie and, for better or worse, Sly was going to headline it and see it through to the bitter end.  Sure, he'd come up against huge, hulking foes with wild hair, pointy beards, arms bigger than your legs and voices you could hear bellow in the next county, but overcoming huge obstacles was his specialty.  He did it all before..he'd do it again.

As director, Menahem Golan himself channeled a lot of Sly's directing flair in this movie.  Lots of fast-moving camera sweeps, flashing lights, sweaty close-ups of men in battle, loving setups of our main man mouthing dialogue from scribes Gary Conway, David Engleback, Sly himself (SURPRISE!!) and veteran writer Stirling Silliphant, whom you may remember as the man who made a bet with Harold P. Warren about getting a movie made...and we all saw how well THAT turned out.

(Sylvester Stallone as Torgo.  Hmmm...)

But in the end, this movie cost $25 million to make.  Yeah, count 'em: twenty-five million bucks, all for a movie about guys arm wrestling.  Unfortunately the big arm wrestling contingent didn't come out in full force (must have had to have washed their ball caps or something) and Over The Top earned back a little over $16 million.  Ouch.  Not even a Giorgio Moroder soundtrack featuring Sammy Hagar,  Asia, Eddie Money, Frank Stallone (natch) and Kenny Loggins could help earn any more than this back to help Sly and company turn their epic into anything less than a mis-step of gargantuan proportions.

Okay, wait a minute; what in the hell is Kenny Loggins doing contributing a song to A MOVIE ABOUT ARM WRESTLING?  I can understand a golf comedy, a Navy recruitment film, that's all well and good... but this is A MOVIE ABOUT ARM WRESTLING.  Did we really need a chart-topping song about meeting people emotionally at a middle ground in A MOVIE ABOUT ARM WRESTLING?  I'd think not but hey; I'm not Kenny Loggins.

After professional arm wrestling failed to catch the world on fire like professional wrestling or even professional tiddly-winks, it seems Stallone and Golan-Globus parted company, none of their other collective works moving on any further than the planning stages thereafter.  Oh yeah, he'd go on to do more Rambos and Rockys and a few Oscars and Lock Ups and Cliffhangers and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoots after this.  But as far as trying to create new sports rages, Sly laid low on that front.

However, not as low as Over The Top eventually plumbed.  Then again, what can you expect from a movie where the toughest guys in the room can't use their thumbs?

The Evil That Men Do (1984)

There is nothing more sad or more irritating than witnessing a fall from greatness: that is, a toppling from the pillar of perfection that is so common with our celluloid heroes.

So many of the good guys we associate with filmic good times have three things in common - they never miss their target, they always defeat the bad guys and they won't appear in just any dog-eared run-of-the-mill piece of junk that could have just as easily been contracted out to the studio's second-or-third string Andy Sidaris beefcake model-looking also-rans.

(now there's a run-on sentence.)

Anyway, John Wayne is a good example of such a hero. So is Clint Eastwood. So is Chuck Norris. So is Gary Cooper. And so, for a while at least, was Charles Bronson.

Like many of our previously mentioned examples, Bronson started out small in bit parts, worked up to war pictures, did the prerequisite Westerns and had a breakthrough role that cemented his career. Wayne's was Stagecoach. Eastwood's was The Good The Bad And The Ugly. Norris' was Breaker! Breaker!. Cooper's was The Virginian. And Bronson, well...his was that classic every red-blooded, knowledgeable movie fan knows and loves - Death Wish.

For it was in this film that Bronson essayed the character that became synonymous with his name: the vigilante. Righter of wrongs. Protector of the downtrodden. World-weary defeater of evil. Guns, knives, speeding cars, he used them all to terrorize any murderer, mugger, rapist or other such despoiler of good. ...okay, maybe guns more than anything else.

Then it happened as it does to any other such actor: Bronson became - brace yourself - typecast. Yes, Virginia: he became typecast as the same vigilante character (in theory) as he did from 1974 on. Oh sure, he was in some far more impressive films before like The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven and Once Upon A Time in the West and made a departure every so often in films like From Noon To Three. But he also was in a bunch of carbon copies of his previous Death Wish success. In fact, he was in 10 To Midnight, Murphy's Law, Assassination, Messenger of Death, Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects and four more Death Wish sequels.

And whereas Wayne, Eastwood, et al rose above such typecasting and even used it to their advantage career-wise, Bronson appeared so bound, so downtrodden and predisposed to his fate that he wearily trudged through the same old thing over and over again without a glimmer of hope, nuance or difference from movie to movie.

Just slap him on a poster holding a gun, the rest of the movie wrote itself.

We can't completely blame Bronson for this gradual downhill slide, however. The biggest perps in Case #272: The Murder of Charles Bronson's Career can be traced directly to two men: Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.

Yes, you know them. Golan-Globus. The studio that released 90% of all movies in the Eighties. They killed more careers than Cecil B. DeMille. And they sure did a number on Bronson, releasing practically every movie with his name on it from 1980 through 1989.

You want to know the only reason they DIDN'T release The Evil That Men Do? Because they couldn't afford to. Yep, so they got in talks with Tri-Star Pictures, who agreed to pick up the tab and take over the reins for the thing and get it out into theaters. What nice guys. Really. Thing is, you can't tell that this wasn't a Golan-Globus production from the looks of it.

No matter that this was based on a book (by R. Lance Hill). No matter it featured some otherwise dependable actors, whom I'll get to humiliating in due time. No matter it was directed by a man who was once THE action director others would look to for quality product. And certainly no matter that one of the producers was Jill Ireland...and yes, that's our star's wife! This movie wouldn't have cut it as a Stallone / Schwarzenegger team-up written by Shane Black and directed by John McTiernan.

I'll get into all the reasons this movie stinks, but first things first.

Boom, goes the plot: Holland (Bronson) is a retired killer-for-hire who is informed that an old friend of his was killed trying to assassinate doctor Clement Moloch (Joseph Maher). Molloch works clandestinely for many governments who want insurgents dealt with by any means of torture. After initial hesitation, Holland accepts the task and goes undercover in Guatemala as a family man, accompanied by Rhiana (Theresa Saldana), the wife of his murdered friend, and her daughter. Noticing Moloch is heavily protected, Holland systematically eliminates his protective circle until all that is left is his intended target...with much fire hose-hanging, electrocuting and testicle crushing along the way.

Not only is this a pretty distasteful and grimy piece of tripe, but the fact that anyone thought this was a worthy film for Charles Bronson to star in only speaks to dollar signs rather than acting opportunities. In fact, the most explosive part of this film is from a car bomb early on.

This was directed by J. Lee Thompson, a formidable talent who actually lensed such worthwhile actioners as The Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear. He was no slouch in these, but remember that he was also the man responsible for directing John Goldfarb Please Come Home!, The Greek Tycoon and Happy Birthday To Me. There's every indication that this was a project taken just to pass the time until something good came along. Unfortunately, Thompson's later career would consist of other teamings with Bronson before the camera - at least nine altogether - and most of them were as dreary and predictable as this.

Writers David Lee Henry and John Crowther seem to be familiar with assembling clichés, surrounding them with stereotypes and wrapping it all up in bad taste as they demonstrate here - in spite of the fact that one of them wrote Road House and the other wrote that lesser-known kung-fu classic Kill and Kill Again. Thing is, you can only adapt so much before you realize that it all looks like the same spoiled piece of fish, only wrapped in a different piece of newspaper.

You saw names in the plot rundown such as Maher, who was far more effective in comic roles and lighter fare such as Sister Act, Funny Farm and...alright, I'll say it...and Under the Rainbow. He was far better in those than here as a passive-aggressive expert in torture.

Theresa Saldana had good, impressive roles in I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Raging Bull and, after a deranged "fan" attacked her with a knife in the early Eighties, she bravely struggled through and rehabilitated herself back - but as a harried, distraught widow, she doesn't really get much of an opportunity to act as she does sit around, act scared or repulsed and at least gets to slap Bronson around once. Other than that, nothing much.

Raymond St, Jacques plays a bodyguard, too. Raymond St. Jacques. Raymond "Black Like Me, The Pawnbroker, Cotton Comes To Harlem, The Comedians, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover , The Green Berets" St. Jacques. Here, a bi-sexual bodyguard who gets a knife in the throat after five minutes of screen time. Greeeeeaaaat.

And José Ferrer as a...yes, José Ferrer is in a Charles Bronson Death Wish copy. That is the saddest sentence I've ever written in my life. Let's move on....

Then there's the fact that we also have various actors like René Enriquez, John Glover, Antoinette Bower and Joe Seneca who do little to nothing but whom we all know are capable of better (even Bower, despite being in films like this, Time Walker and Prom Night).

This all leads us back to the fact that Charles Bronson is in this movie, acting as lethargic and disinterested as he ever has. What some mistook for cool and calm in his later movies actually looks more like boredom and ennui at having to yet again play Paul Kersey - albeit under a different name, in a different script and with different situations...but worse writing and direction all the way around, every go-around.

What was with The Evil That Men Do? Why did Bronson agree to be in it? Was it a contract deal? Did he break a mirror? What?

I think the easiest explanation as to why Bronson was in this movie was that this kind of movie is the only one that anyone thought he was worth casting in. He's Charles Bronson, we can't cast him in a rom-com or a family drama - no one would ever believe it. Give Joe Public his dose of Bronson shootin' stuff up and that's all he needs. Character and nuance are for wusses: killin' and blowin' stuff up - THAT'S what I'm talkin' about.

And the sad thing is that this explanation probably isn't too far off from Tri-Star's reasoning as to picking this up with Bronson at the lead. Keep the movie-going public happy, give them what they want, what they expect and give it to them as often as possible, and you can just forego any scripting. For as sad and cynical as this is, it is only compounded by the fact that this $4.6 million flick earned back over $13 million because of the fact that it did, indeed, star Charles Bronson.

This is the same thing that they did with Burt Reynolds and Sylvester Stallone and Steven Seagal: cast them in the same movies repeatedly without any change at all so that they earn money until people are sick of them and then discard them for the next Flavor of the Month. It's a sad, unseemly yet inevitable happenstance for any actor who wants to go anywhere with what they do. The producers, if they're bound and determined to misread public demand and recast you as the same guy in different movies...well, you're pretty much screwed.

Of course, being recast as the same kind of character in different movies seems to work for a lot of actors. Just look at Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell. But it usually works best if there's a little self-awareness mixed in with their script. Does it make sense that self-awareness has little to nothing to do with The Evil That Men Do? Yes, as a matter fact it does.

When Charles Bronson died in 2003, many people ran down their own personal lists of films he was most famous and/or beloved for. Every one of those lists, as you can well imagine, contained Death Wish.

Very few of those lists contained The Evil That Men Do. But as far as that goes, very few of those lists mentioned the fact that part of being a legend is being in films that no one else would touch, even if they WERE Clint Eastwood or Chuck Norris.

Bolero (1984)

I don't know about you, but I didn't go watch 10 (1979) to catch glimpses of Dudley Moore.

And I certainly didn't see Tarzan the Ape Man (1981) to see how much O'Keeffe they could put in that movie (MILES O'Keeffe, by the way).

Bo Derek was the only reason either one of those movies made any money (okay, maybe 10 had Blake Edwards going for it, too), because not only was she strikingly beautiful in both, she showed a good amount of skin and was an understandable object of desire.

Acting? Forget it; if you go into a Bo Derek movie to see her act, you're missing the whole point. Bo Derek doesn't act, she just...is.

Husband John Derek got the point. An actor from the old days and films like The Ten Commandments and many swashbuckling epics, not to mention the past husband of such lovelies as Linda Evans and Ursula Andress, he had an eye for beauty, that's for sure. Which also explains why he got such prime directing gigs as the aforementioned Tarzan and our subject for today, Bolero.

He had a direct line on the lead actress. So to speak.

What John was trying to do here, you see, was set up wifey Bo as the next Emmanuelle - another lithe chanteuse who found herself in many sexy, softcore, situations. So he not only directed but concocted a script where, in the 1920s, newly graduated college student Lida MacGillivery (Bo) moons her professors then sets off on a whirlwind world tour with her faithful chauffeur (George Kennedy, of all people) and best pal Catalina (Ana Obregón) to discover the ultimate sexual encounter.

In her (s)exploits Lida encounters a milk-and-honey obsessed sheik (Greg Bensen) and a nice-guy Spanish bullfighter (Andrea Occhipinti) who do their level best to help Lida lose that cumbersome virginity hanging about her neck like some metaphysical albatross.

There's the plot, and really the only setup you need if you want to see Bo Derek strip off her clothes and act all beguiling and come-hither-y. Which she does.

I am about to turn the shower over onto "cold" now, as I describe the many many shortcomings of Bolero. A naked Bo Derek, you see, was all that Bolero had going for it.

John Derek may have been many things in his life, but "director" was not one of those things. For him, "softcore" meant "soft focus" and several scenes here are so blurry, over-exposed, or have sunlight glinting into the lenses at the worst times that you can't see any of the good stuff (ifyouknowwhatimeanandithinkyoudo). And John also had this habit of cutting away from an important scene to get reactions of animals, other characters, crowd scenes, plants, a rock in the road, you name it, that it's almost like he'd seen this done in other movies but then took such an idea out of context for what he was doing without good reason to. Bo's face gets many loving close-ups, but he owed it to her.

After all, he had to show her his dailies each night. So to speak.

Bo's plight is one for the history books. Being cast as a horny college student may or may not have been a stretch but it's not characterization that's a problem here. She hits her marks, says her lines, looks alluring and, when called to, disrobes on cue. She even rides a horse naked at one point, not only bareback but bare! That must have been one happy horse, but anyway....

Bo Derek's performance can be boiled down to the fact that she employs "wide-eyed innocence" (for lack of a better word). Meaning? She keeps her baby blues open as wide as she possibly can during every scene she's in, whether casually talking about sex over coffee, kneeling waist-level to a belly dancer, breathlessly telling her lover to do everything to her, whatever.

You almost expect, halfway through, to get a close-up and find Bo wearing those same eye-opening clamps used on Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. Which would explain a lot about Bo's performance, that's for sure.

The rest of the cast looks like they could have benefited from a little bit of the old ultra-violence however. George Kennedy seems to be either the most bored, most embarrassed or the most drunk ever in his career as a chauffeur whose job it is to drive his employer hither and yon to her next sexual encounter. This is a man who was in Cool Hand Luke! Thunderbolt and Lightfoot! Every Airport movie ever made! All three Naked Guns! ...and yes, Death Ship and Chattanooga Choo Choo, so maybe this wasn't as much a step back as a step sideways.

Ana Obregón, better known in her native Spain, had a much longer career in her homeland, in spite of being in films like the Sean Connery drama Cuba (1979) and the 3D extravaganza, Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983). Maybe it's a case of charisma not traveling well overseas. Or something. Yet when your character is simply around to chew her thumbnail and listen to Bo talk about sex, maybe your character isn't all that important. You think? No wonder Ana's been more of a local girl as of late.

I think many of you regulars here may only recognize Andrea Occhipinti from the fact that he was featured in two Lucio Fulci films (Conquest and The New York Ripper) than as a romantic lead. Word is he was brought in when the original actor got a cold sore and Bo thought it too "yucky". That's Hollywood for ya. And for as dull and boring as he acts, at least he's enthusiastic at the prospect of getting intimate with our leading lady.

Speaking of which, Bo gets only a couple of such scenes, and both are with Andrea - which looks kind of weird in print, but anyway.... These are the scenes that most of you male sexist pigs out there are going to pay any attention at all to Bolero for. And, for better or worse, both Bo and Andrea give their all (or at least their simulated all). Even if hubby John chooses inappropriate music for the background (by Elmer Bernstein...son Peter Bernstein got regulated to scoring the remainder) or bad lighting. At one point she even lets drool drip off of her tongue and into her lover's ear. Why? Guess John thought it felt sexy when she did it to him so he wrote it in.

The worst thing about Bolero is that it's like watching someone else's home movies when they didn't know how to use the camera. Every moment in Bolero gives you the feeling of an art student who had a cute girlfriend and wanted to make the greatest film ever...but oh, watch my girl do this great Kama Sutra move...whoo!!

Come on, the innocent among you may be saying. Is this really as bad as you're making it sound? It's got Bo Derek getting naked. How bad can it be?

Bad enough to win six Razzie Awards plus earn another Razzie nomination for Worst Picture of the Eighties. Bad enough to guarantee that Bo would never again get a starring role in a film as highly-publicized as this one. Bad enough to make certain that the last movie John Derek would direct was another Bo-themed flick even worse than this one called Ghosts Can't Do It.

And THAT one starred Anthony Quinn!

You thought George Kennedy had it bad!

I see I'm this far in the review and failed to mention who executive-produced this beauty. Ready? Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Surprised? Didn't think you would be.

In the end, though it was lucky enough to earn back its $7 million budget and little else, Bolero didn't do anything for any body. Not even softcore sex hounds. The only ones who got any satisfaction out of this hazy ordeal were John and Bo Derek. Heck, they were a couple of crazy kids in love who made a movie.

At least it was a project on which each of them would be able to stay on top of the situation.

So to speak.

1985 was the WORST Year for Movies - Part Eight

Now, where was I?

Oh, yeah...

I HATE 1985!!!!!!!!

Clear enough?

It should be by now, fercryinoutloud....

We have plenty more to get through, so let's get to 'em, out of as much order as possible.


CREATURE

You know, the world just can't have enough Alien ripoffs. Especially when they feature Klaus Kinski as an unstable scientist...holy cow, is it me or was this guy typecast out the wazoo? And even in a movie like this you expect a few surprises, but no: ill-fated pre-credit expedition, later manned mission, alien is introduced, mission members get slaughtered, alien chases survivors, alien gets destroyed, surviving members go home. Sorry to spoil it for you...actually, no I'm not. You don't need to see this one.


THE MEAN SEASON

Remember when Kurt Russell was trying to break out of his Disney mold by being the bad boy hero in films like Escape from New York and The Thing? Here, he regresses as a bland news reporter who gets phone calls from a serial killer before he kills. This is based on a book which almost certainly must have been better. And as his girlfriend, Mariel Hemingway plays her second uninteresting role in the same year. Boring, bland and stiff - not a good combination.




BARBARIAN QUEEN

Aside from a cool poster and a definite Conan the Barbarian vibe, there was already Red Sonja to prove that no one was interested in this genre anymore. Did they need to just load this one full of babes with breechcloths and swords? Well, of course; how else can you expect it to play on Skinemax? I've never heard of anyone in this cast and neither have you - unless you just happen to go to the same aerobics classes they hired these actresses from.

[EDIT] ...in fact, the only fame Barbarian Queen has is the fate of one of its stars, Lana Clarkson. Thanks to TheAnswerMVP2001 for the heads-up.


MUGSY'S GIRLS

Ruth Gordon was in this. So was Laura Branigan. It was about college-age lady wrestlers. Now you know the plot.









RAPPIN'

Golan-Globus was into everything in the Eighties. They already had two break-dancing movies in 1984; why not one movie about rapping in 1985? Mario Van Peebles had to have the work, I guess, but in a movie about the mean streets and the guys and gals who rap in them? You can't make a career out of a Golan-Globus movie, even if your name IS Van Peebles. Thank God he had "Sonny Spoon" to fall back on.






A CHORUS LINE

I know: this is based on an award-winning Broadway play, has lots of great music and blahblahblah...but this is still one of the most UNmusical musicals I've ever seen. Not even Michael Douglas can save it - but at least he doesn't try to sing in it, so there's a plus. Everyone else is just going through the motions in something that has no soul, no heart and no rhythm. It does have Audrey Landers in spandex, though.





LUST IN THE DUST

I don't get it. Paul Bartel directed this. Divine and Tab Hunter starred together again as they did in John Waters' Polyester. Lainie Kazan and Cesar Romero were featured players. It was a comedy. A western comedy. About a treasure with the map tattooed on some ladies' butts - including Divine's. Oh. Wait...I get it now. Yeah, it belongs here. Never mind.






DEF-CON 4

A post-apocalyptic action exploitation film can be fun but not this one. Look at the poster: you'd expect big effects, some spacecraft, maybe. Even some of these guys in suits like in the poster. But forget it - this is more like Mad Max without the cool cars, explosive action, creative direction and Mel Gibson. I don't even think the writer knew what was going on here; I sure didn't.






SILVER BULLET

Another Stephen King movie based on a novella. That describes about 90% of all Stephen King movies. But what about ones with handicapped kids (Corey Haim!!!) in rocket-powered wheelchairs modified by their shiftless uncles (Gary Busey!!!) who live in picturesque rural towns populated with colorful folk who, among their number, is a murderous werewolf? That's enough to make any movie stand out, but only if it were better written, better acted and not so cornball and stupid. The Shining and Carrie are great examples of King books-to-movies. Silver Bullet sits firmly on the opposite end of the scale.


HEAD OFFICE

Another missed opportunity. How can this be a more-missed opportunity than Lust in the Dust? Because it's a comedy about corporate America and the higher-level shenanigans that go on from boardroom to bedroom and it stars Danny DeVito, Rick Moranis, Jane Seymour and the ever-funny Judge Reinhold. Yes, Judge Reinhold - who was terrific in Beverly Hills Cop and even shined in a hurtful flick like Pandemonium (which I'll get to eventually). Judge never gets one opportunity to shine like he usually does, since it's all this movie can do to make a joke or a funny scene stick. And when you put Don King and Father Guido Sarducci in the same movie and not make it funny, you've got problems. Head Office has LOTS of problems.

You know, as hard as it is to believe, and for as long as I've been keeping this series going, I really only have one more installment to go before watching 1985 crumble to pieces and dissolve into its base materials to provide fertile soil to grow more productive years like 1986 and 1988. All part of nature - bad gives way to good.

For my last installment, we'll see Emilio Estevez finally get his big 1985 moment, an art film that gives a bad name to Christopher Lambert and the absolute worst sequel ever conceived of in the history of modern man...and no, it has nothing to do with Pauly Shore. This time.

Dope out.

- TGWD

Invasion USA (1985)

This is my review for the Chuck Norris Ate My Blog blogathon. Enjoy.

What is this? ANOTHER 1985 movie review? I better scramble into my panic room quick....

Just hold on, dear reader. I'm sure that many of you already know my seething, boiling hatred for just about everything to do with 1985. That's what one of my favorite series on here is about, after all!

But just so we're clear, it's not as if all of 1985 was a black, polluted wasteland of gruel, vomit and the shuddering corpses of the dying littering a post-apocalyptic landscape of desolation and despair.

...98% of it, maybe, but not all.

In spite of the fact that there was music from one-hit wonder groups like Ready For The World and Autograph, TV introducing then taking away "Misfits of Science" and "Sesame Street" introducing then KEEPING Elmo (!!), Phil Silvers dying and - in a cruel happenstance - Ashley Tisdale being born, there was a bright spot....

Chuck Norris.

Just saying his name makes a bad day better, gives you a feeling of relief.

Try it: Chuck Norris.

Ahh....

Anyway, Chuck was featured in three pretty darned good movies this year: Missing In Action 2: The Beginning (a sequel, yes, but a sequel to a Chuck Norris movie, so regular rules don't apply), Code of Silence (a movie way too good to be reviewed here) and, our subject for today, Invasion USA - a movie that was so sharp and hard and to-the-point that Russia has yet to dare invade our shores.

They may have WMD, but we have CN.

As it goes: Russia is hot to invade our shores by way of Florida, so they smuggle cocaine into Cuba by use of illegal immigrant boats and fund their invasion thus, which is headed by Rostov, a soldier so vile and vicious that he had to be played by Richard Lynch. And before you know it, the Russkies are subverting American culture by blowing up picturesque neighborhoods, shopping malls, south American block parties, school buses and other wholesome institutions.

Those Reds never figured, however, on the intervention of one Hunter (Chuck), an ex member of "The Agency" (What Agency? Don't ask.) who single-handedly takes out whole armies of Russkie soldiers and would-be saboteurs with his shoulder-mounted uzis, a rocket launcher, his fists and feet, and his truck. He works alone, of course, and all the better, since no partner would be able to keep up with him - besides which they'd end up getting killed before long anyway.

Rostov has a long-standing hate-hate relationship with Hunter, since he'd foiled one of Rostov's assassination attempts long ago and threatened that the next time he saw him, it would be "time to die". Hmm...nice tough-guy line. So what does Rostov do to make sure his destruction of America will succeed? Leads a platoon of rocket-launching Russkies into the Florida Everglades to rocket-launcher Hunter into oblivion. They get his shack real good, but naturally miss their intended target. This just makes Hunter more mad than he usually looked, and he is then off after everyone who dares tread his country and blow 'em up real good.

This was directed by Joseph Zito, whom many well-read individuals will recognize as a director of such classics as 1981 mad slasher sleeper The Prowler, almost definite later-on review topic Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and, coincidentally, 1984 Chuck masterpiece Missing in Action. As a watermark of Zito's movies, whenever something isn't getting bled to death or shredded, it gets blown up.

With Invasion USA, all three happen.

Writer James Bruner, a past master of Chuck Norris scripts, wrote along with Chuck himself and his little brother Aaron, all of whom infused the goings-on with about as much testosterone overload as possible without dressing everybody in loincloths and having them ride T-Rexes into battle. But an added benefit of having people write the script that are so familiar with the inner-workings of our boy is that the dialogue is so instantly quotable.

Who wouldn't love to get away with looking a jerk in the face and calmly grunting, "I'll hit you with so many rights you'll be begging for a left"?

...in Chuck's case, though, he could back it up.

And does he ever in Invasion USA: so many bad guys get punched, kicked, stabbed, threatened, thrown, shot, blown up, dropped down and disposed of that this is like a PSA for Anti-Communism:

Hey, if you embrace Communism, we're gonna tell Chuck Norris on you. Don't be a Communist. Thank you.

The thing is, the bad guys don't really stand a chance, and about 99.5% of anyone who watches a Chuck Norris movie already knows that going in. All the bad guys are, honestly, are targets being set up in an arcade, ready to be taken down.

Even Lynch, a veteran actor who has actually been in some decent movies like The Gene Hackman classic Scarecrow, Roy Scheider cop drama The Seven-Ups and William Peter Blatty mind-trip The Ninth Configuration, didn't have any casting agents look at him as creatively as they used to and ended up playing a bad guy in more films than anything else. Fortunately for Invasion USA, his Russian accent is as authentic as his cold, steely demeanor...even if every person watching knows in their heart of hearts that he doesn't stand a chance.

A word about the only female who dares anything resembling equal screen-time with the two male leads. Melissa Prophet got her start in Telly Savalas' directorial debut Beyond Reason and garnered small parts in b-movie movies like this (as well as Time Walker, which makes perfect sense), and here plays a photographer for a...well, they never really say if she's working for a magazine or newspaper or that she's a freelance or what. She's just a shutterbug, I guess. But she always manages to show up at the right time to take pictures of the violent goings-on. And she's pretty grumpy about the whole thing, too. Even when Chuck saves her life at one point, she doesn't seem very appreciative - even going so far as to yell at Chuck and throw a trash can lid at him. That's gratitude for you...maybe it's a feminism thing?

In the end, however, who watches a Chuck Norris movie for the acting? Especially a Golan-Globus production such as this, whose main purpose in existing is to make money. Which it did. Buckets. A $10 million budget brought back a lot more, thanks to the legions of fans that our boy has. Do they care whether or not he's taken any acting classes? Nope, not as long as he keeps the world safe for democracy.

So it is without hesitation or second-guessing that I submit to you, dear reader, the fact that Invasion USA is one of the - if not THE - best of 1985.

And if you can hear that coming from me, then you should listen.

1985 was the WORST Year for Movies - Part Five

Yeah, that's right.

You just look at these bad boys here and you think about what a wonderful, beautiful year 1985 was, full of hope and promise and love...

AND NEW COKE.

The absolute worst, most horrid, disgusting thing anyone could put in their mouth that wasn't dipped fresh from a sewer - at least that we were made aware of.

And what year did this come out again...? Hmm? Take a guess? Anyone?

I think I made my point: in a year that gave the world a drink product that caused rioting in the streets and a mass exodus from a popular brand due to sheer seething hatred, it only makes sense that these double terrors represent the bile that rises every time anyone think of the year 1985.

And just like New Coke, many motion picture products were released in 1985 that made the viewer retch, convulse, vomit, hallucinate and require a series of painful abdominal shots to recover from. Well, okay...maybe not the shots, but you know what I mean.

So let's revisit this sad period in man's development and find out just why most almanacs jump from 1984 to 1986.

In no random order, let the screaming start:

WARNING SIGN

Another one I'd almost completely forgotten about. It's a Three Mile Island/China Syndrome allegory, I think. This time involving a science facility and accidental contamination. Sam Waterston, G.W. Bailey (fresh from Rustler's Rhapsody) and Yaphet Kotto do their thing, whatever their thing was. I kind of remember zombies, or mutant scientists. I think. But this was a drama, so I doubt these zombies/mutants were the cool kind, anyway....



THE NAKED FACE

Roger Moore not only went out with a fizzle as James Bond in A View to A Kill, but also played a thoroughly UN-James Bond character as a psychiatrist accused of murder. Based on a Sidney Sheldon book (Sidney, of course, not having the best track record for movies) and also featuring Rod Steiger and Elliott Gould (who weren't exactly in their respective primes in the Eighties), nothing really works in terms of acting, story or Bryan Forbes' direction. Forbes also directed the 1975 Stepford Wives...maybe that accounts for the robotic pace herein?



HELLHOLE

Sleazy killings by Ray Sharkey. Amnesiac doe-eyed flitting about by Judy Landers. Chemical lobotomies in a psychiatric hospital/asylum manned by Marjoe Gortner and Mary Woronov. Fun? Not for a second. And all darkly and cheaply directed by Pierre De Moro, whose biggest claim to fame was directing...the kiddie film Savannah Smiles. Yeah; go look it up. Quite a swing, huh?








FAST FORWARD

A cast of no one you've ever heard of stars in ANOTHER dance movie about kids who want to make it big at a dance contest. Heard of it? That and about 4 million others like it, I'll bet. But how many of the others were directed by Sidney Poitier? Hmm? That's right: Mr. Tibbs stepped behind the camera for this one. And while Poitier is best-remembered as lenser for Uptown Saturday Night, A Piece of the Action and Stir Crazy, after this one, his last directing gig was Bill Cosby's Ghost Dad. So much for respectability....



AVENGING ANGEL

Oh yes, a sequel to a film that was no great shakes itself. 1984's Angel was a grindhouse sleaze masterpiece about a high school honor student who moonlights as a hooker. This sequel, while more of the same, somehow seems even worse. When you find yourself missing Dick Shawn playing a drag queen, there was something missed in the story re-telling department.






SWEET DREAMS

Beverly D'Angelo did a remarkably sympathetic job playing Patsy Cline in 1980's Coal Miner's Daughter. Unfortunately, she was unavailable for Sweet Dreams, and Jessica Lange had to fill in. Without reading for the part prior, apparently. But the worst offense is a choppy, uneven story in which Ed Harris doesn't even make an impression. And when it comes to lip-synching, give me Beverly D'Angelo any old day.






KING SOLOMON'S MINES

Poor old Richard Chamberlain. He was the king of TV miniseries (as evidenced by "Shogun") but movie success was far more elusive (check out any of his Irwin Allen disaster flick acting turns). The worst part is, though, in a Golan-Globus ripoff of - SHOCK! - Raiders of the Lost Ark, Chamberlain, Sharon Stone and Herbert Lom ham it up in the most irritating way possible, but there's a difference between parody and overplaying it. A difference unlearned by anyone involved with King Solomon's Mines.




TUFF TURF

An existential teen angst/comedy/violent actioner. That's different. For James Spader, this was probably one of those things that kind of sounded like a John Hughes slice of teen life, minus the urgency. This feels more like a throwback to the stupid Fifties teen dramas, only in color and with worse acting. Robert Downey Jr's efforts as a wild-and-crazy pal are the only good parts, but then he's the best part of ANY movie.





CAT'S EYE

Stephen King could do no wrong...except for Cat's Eye, which was another one of those "Twilight Zone" features with different King-concocted stories connected by a tenuous-at-best thread, this time around centering around a cat. James Woods, Robert Hayes, Drew Barrymore and Kenneth McMillan try but this is more suited for "Tales from the Darkside", not King. Talk about a paycheck opportunity.






PORKY'S REVENGE

A sequel? That's bad enough, but two years down the road? For a teen comedy? When the leads ARE NOT TEENS ANYMORE? Did humanity learn nothing from Porky's II: The Next Day? There isn't even the same level of raunch here - this is more like a Bowery Boys movie with more skin...and a lot fewer laughs. Oh yeah, and Porky (Chuck Mitchell) does come back, but big whoopty-doodly deal: Alex Karras didn't. Go freakin' figure.




This is getting more painful the further along this particular series goes, isn't it? But dredging up old hurts usually is painful. At least I'm not asking you to watch them again. Count your lucky stars.

Next time, we'll discover Tom Hanks' dirty little secret, dig up the worst Police Academy ripoff you've never heard of and find out just how many directors it takes to make one lousy movie.

Dope out.

- TGWD

1985 was the WORST Year for Movies - Part Two

Oh god, a sequel; I hate sequels.

But this is one sequel with a purpose; it is to educate you, who has only memories of the good of 1985 - such as Lifeforce (a fantastic film which I own), Return of the Living Dead (also own it, also love it) and Silverado (Best. Western. Of. The. Eighties.) - that it wasn't all sunshine and gumdrops, incense and peppermints, sweetness and doilies.

There was bad in this year. In fact, there was more bad than good when it came to movies. The bad was so bad, in fact, that it made the good all but forgotten, with maybe a glimmer of notice and the thought, "Oh; did that come out in 1985?"

Yet you would think such with good reason. After all, this was The Year of the Ox. And many movies in 1985 were as graceful, as beautiful and as fragrant as said bovine.

As with my last post in this series, I shall now prove once again how awful and horrible and soul-crushing 1985 was by giving you another selection of movies that not only came out this year, but were also so bad that they gave the Lumiere Brothers a bad name (in fact, after watching some of these, if you had a time machine you would have went back to their year and beaten the crap out of them for this...and I would have joined you).

So here we go with more pristine selections of garbage from a garbage year. Again, in no particular order:

MY SCIENCE PROJECT

This looks like something that was written in 20 minutes or less on the back of a restaurant place mat. In fact, it was probably made only to show a couple of nice special effects and a part for Dennis Hopper on his way back up the Hollywood ladder. Oh, and as a showpiece for Fisher Stevens, who is not funny. Instead, his character's just like this movie: annoying and stupid.







BABY: SECRET OF THE LOST LEGEND

This won't be the only Disney film on the list, but it's certainly the blandest one. A story about newly-discovered dinosaurs and a baby brontosaurus should be more fun. But this isn't 1993, so instead it's dumb, slow, plodding and has racial stereotypes, violence, Patrick MacGoohan and Sean Young shoehorned into it. Perfect Disney fare; William Katt should have stayed in his red tights. And yes, all of that going on and Baby is still boring. THAT takes talent.




ENEMY MINE

Allegorical science fiction? Pass. Especially one that plays so fast and loose with basic sci-fi rules. An oxygen-rich planetoid? Check. Available food? Check. Mismatched lifeforms (human Dennis Quaid vs. reptilian Lou Gossett Jr.)? Check. "Why can't we all get along" storyline? Double check. At least David Lynch's Dune had different planets to play on....







DEATH WISH III

It's no secret Charles Bronson hated this series passionately. After Death Wish II, he no doubt wanted rid of Paul Kersey altogether. But Golan/Globus doesn't settle for "no"...so III came to be and was more (or less, in this case) of the same that is so Hollywoodized and glossed over that the 1974 original was long forgotten. No grit, no message, no point.







PERFECT

Why, exactly, was this story begging to be made? I wouldn't have cared if this was a documentary on the same subject, but John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis playing beautiful people in a music video world with manufactured crises just doesn't cut it. A great ad for aerobics, but not a good movie.







MOVING VIOLATIONS

Stupid doesn't begin to explain this. And what's with the casting - it's full of RELATIVES of big stars! Bill Murray's brother? Meg Tilly's sister? Stacy Keach's brother? And in a comedy about driving school rejects? And a featured role for Clara Peller! Where's the beef - what's the point?! This was all kinds of 15-minutes-of-fame squandered away.







BREWSTER'S MILLIONS

Another step down the ladder for Richard Pryor. A comedy legend reduced to a part that is so clearly not meant for Richard Pryor that it's embarrassing to watch. When John Candy can't help a movie about someone spending millions of dollars, your movie is in big trouble. And if you're Walter Hill, you should have pulled an Alan Smithee.







REVOLUTION

Al Pacino must have hated the early Eighties. He was a sexually-confused cop in Cruising, a whiny writer in Author! Author! and a common American looking to get his boat back from the British Army during the titular American battle here. Hugh Hudson went from Chariots of Fire to Greystoke to this in a couple of years and Annie Lennox from the Eighties pop group Eurythmics has a novelty part in the proceedings as well. A two hour-plus footnote to nothing.




COMPROMISING POSITIONS

I honestly didn't even remember this movie until I looked it up. Raul Julia, Susan Sarandon and Edward Herrmann fail to perk up a depressingly dull comedy about a murdered dentist and the pictures he has of beautiful patients caught in...well...you know. I don't even remember who directed this, and I refuse to look it up. But I'm sure it isn't way up there on the ol' résumé. Hey, Tim Robbins: if Susan ever gives you a hard time about Erik the Viking, throw this right back at her.




THE BLACK CAULDRON

Disney has a lot of long-forgotten live-action movies (I refer you back to the aforementioned Baby for one such), but a long-forgotten cartoon?? This tale of magic and creatures won't make anyone forget The Sword in the Stone (or Bedknobs and Broomsticks for that matter) but the forgettable characters, cookie-cutter storyline from a million other mystical medieval quest balderdasheries and a remarkably unmemorable villain sink this one.




Owowowowowow...those hurt to even think about.

Next time, we'll discuss why Helen Slater and Pat Benatar aren't on speaking terms, whatever happened to Jennifer Beals and just what the heck was the deal with Lori Singer?

Dope out.

-TGWD

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

Let me start out this particular review with a particularly whiny question:

What in the hell did they do to my Superman?

Growing up, I read quite a few comic books featuring this grandest of DC standbys.

I even remember suffering through the televised musical "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman!".

And in 1978, I actually DID believe a man could fly.

That man was Christopher Reeve, and he brought the Man Of Steel to very believable life. Even in the wake of Star Wars, here was a movie that could make us concentrate on heroics that were right here on our home planet.

In short, it was good.

Then a couple of years later came the inevitable Superman II, which was even better, in my own humble-yet-informed opinion, as it featured even more familiar characters from the comics (namely General Zod and his minions).

In short again, it was great.

And then came Superman III. Smaller story, yes. More slapstick-y than the first two, yes. Cheaper special effects, yes. But it was forgivable. Yes, I even forgave the for-laffs casting of Richard Pryor in full-out goofball mode. It was entertaining and Reeve was still believable - kind of like James Bond is, even when he rides around in a gondola/hovercraft on the sidewalks of Venice.

Again in short, it was...okay.

But something happened in the four-year lapse between III and our subject for today.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

Not only was it a completely different story, it was from a completely different studio. Whereas the first three Superman movies came from the foundries of Warner Bros., Superman IV was produced by none other than Cannon Pictures' own Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.

Yes, that Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Over the Top. Breakin'. All those Chuck Norris movies. Not exactly Alexander and Ilya Salkind, are they?

You see, at the time they won the rights to produce the next installment of this venerable series, Cannon Pictures underwent a severe liability in their financial department, forcing their hand in one particular area. Whereas this film originally had a $36 million budget (not an unreasonable amount for a film like this), Cannon had to cut it in more than half ($17 million - quite an unreasonable amount for a movie like this). Of course, Golan and Globus were past masters at bringing in movies for cheap and at a profit. And with a title of such guaranteed name recognition, how could they screw it up?

The answer to this, dear reader, is a combination of reasons.

First is the basic story: due to a suggestion from a school child, Superman vows to rid the world of all nuclear weapons and force the world to end all wars and declare peace with one another.

Maybe it's just me but doesn't this conflict with one of the main things that Supes was taught as he sailed through space from his destroyed home planet: do not interfere with the development of mankind? Aren't wars and weapons development of nations as a whole part of that development? Sure, he's supposed to protect man and truth, justice and the American way and all that old school stuff, but isn't restricting man's growth and not allowing him as a race to learn from his own mistakes one of those counter-productive things that he wasn't supposed to do? That's what Supes gets for letting kids form his opinions....

...And it's also what Chris Reeve got for letting himself, of all people, co-author the script. He, along with writers Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal weaved what would become a tapestry of mediocrity involving nuclear power, disarmament, corporate takeovers, annoying nephews and revisiting themes that worked once before but crashed and burned on re-approach.

Back to the script - Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman!!) is busted out of prison while he's on work detail (in what looks like the absolute cheapest, most under-thought prison escape scene ever committed to film) by his dorky nephew Lenny (Jon Cryer), Once out, Luthor steals a hair from Superman's head (long story) and, to make a killing in nuclear weaponry in more ways than one, creates Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow, in his first and last appearance in movies or in the general public in toto), a super-villain who gives The Man Of Steel the fight of his life.

However, that isn't the whole story, because Supes' alter ego Clark Kent is also having a tough time of it, what with his beloved Daily Bugle being bought out by multi-millionaire David Warfield (Sam Wanamaker) and his daughter Lacey (Mariel Hemingway), with the intention of taking the Bugle in a "new direction". Always dangerous words to use in business.

Maybe this would have worked. Maybe. With a bigger budget, better script and more competent direction,. After all, the past installments had such directing royalty as Richard Donner and Richard Lester, who had some pretty darn good films in their legacy. But with IV, all Golan and Globus could get for their money was Sidney J. Furie, a name most bad-movie fans soak up with a knowing nod, some of his directorial titles being such unspeakable travesties as Doctor Blood's Coffin, Devil Doll, Gable and Lombard, The Entity, Purple Hearts, the first, second and fourth Iron Eagle flicks, and a few installments of the Pamela Anderson TV show "V.I.P." - Hey, I know we all have our off-days, but Gable and Lombard??? Come on....

Christopher Reeve, since 1978, was most famous for his essaying of the Man of Steel. Perhaps even tragically so, if comparison to Kirk Alyn and George Reeves is any indication. No matter what the situation, he always made the role his own and made you believe that he could, in fact, fly. Even in real life, you figured Chris Reeve leaving for work, arms outstretched and flying from his home to the movie studio...in a single bound, no less. He did his best here in IV, but it was almost as if he knew what a nasty dip the series had taken and decided, like any good captain, he would go down with the ship. Say what you will about the movie, at least Reeve gave it his all.

...even if he did co-write the story. How could you, Chris?

You may remember the original film featured a fantastic cast, first and foremost of them being Gene Hackman, who hammed it up royally as Lex Luthor, masterminding a plan to not only rule the world (of real estate, at least) but also to destroy Superman in the process. Well, Hackman returns here and even though he is the best part of this movie, he is still not displayed at his most advantageous herein. This is a man who has won awards, people - BIG awards. IMPORTANT awards. And there's something kind of distracted about him here in IV, like he's thinking of something else altogether unconnected with the film he's in. Maybe ways to do away with his agent?

Just like Richard Pryor didn't have any reason to be in a Superman movie, neither does Jon Cryer. Lex Luthor's nephew? And he isn't even an evil nephew - just a geeky one, dressed like a '50s leftover and speaking in "valley girl" argot with many a 'whoa' thrown in here and there. You know, even in 1987 Cryer should have given up playing teenagers without John Hughes anywhere in attendance. In the same year, he was in Hiding Out, as a stockbroker who for one reason or other must take refuge in a nearby high school as a teenager - the only difference is that was supposed to be the joke. A Superman movie isn't supposed to be a joke. At least not unintentionally.

Not to worry, though; there are familiar faces in this installment besides Hackman; Jackie Cooper and Marc McClure return as Perry White and Jimmy Olsen, respectively. Not to mention wearily, judging from their performances. And then there's Margot Kidder as Lois Lane. Margot must be an extremely good sport, having wanted out of the Supes flicks after II and darned near almost getting away with it in III. But just when she thought she was out...Golan and Globus pull her back in. Maybe this is where a lot of their budget went to: getting the series regulars back into the pool - because it sure didn't go into the effects.

Many scenes of Superman flying, done in harnesses as they were, weren't even edited that well, since it looks as if he's put on a little weight in the thighs during his flying scenes. Many other scenes either defy the laws of physics, the idea of humans being in (and breathing in) outer space or that real life doesn't have blue-screen outlines. To quote Mike Nelson from "Mystery Science Theater 3000", the effects herein must have been headed by Industrial Lights and Morons.

This is a very bad, very sad movie to watch and the only one of the Superman movies to LOSE money. Yes, even with a minuscule budget and more cost-cutting corners taken than there were corners to cut. In the end there was no Supes fan die-hard enough to sit though this tragic mess without screaming at any and everyone who would listen not to make the mistake they made by watching it.

And I do love Superman. I do; he was the superhero I grew up watching, knowing, understanding, appreciating and respecting above all others. Even more than Spider-Man, who was more human and had far more foibles. Supes was infallible. Perfect. Stood up for the weak. Destroyed the evil of the world.

In fact the only thing Superman couldn't overcome was THIS MOVIE.

Take heed: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is kryptonite for the Supes fan's soul. Put it in a lead box and bury it.

Shame on you, Golan and Globus; you are a two-headed Lex Luthor - an amalgam of the whole League of Super-Villains. May you both be pelted with jars of Superman Peanut Butter the rest of your days.

No wonder Mark Pillow quit show business.