FLASH GORDON
I can’t think of any film that more fits the definition of a guilty pleasure than 1980’s “Flash Gordon.” It’s just an awful movie, but how come I enjoy every minute of it? There’s no waiting for the cheese. Queen’s theme song tells you all you need to know. (“Flash! Ahhhhh – He’ll save every one of us!”) Sam Jones, who seems to have graduated from the Ed Wood School of acting, plays Flash. His main character trait is that he has the word FLASH printed on his t-shirt. The great Max Von Sydow is Ming the Merciless, whose ring seems to have an orgasmatron function. This is used on one of the two hot babes that run around the universe in their underwear. One’s good and ones evil, but it really doesn’t matter because there are hawk people flying around!I also love that Topol plays the mad scientist who helps Flash. Of course, he was Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” and he hasn’t changed much, so at times it seems like Fiddler in Space. Have I mentioned the bad special effects? How about Timothy Dalton in a Robin Hood costume? Or the aliens with bright blue blood? This is the rare case in which a movie that was meant to be so bad its good actually succeeds. When it doesn’t work, you get something like “Mars Attacks." BTW my other favorite sci-fi guilty pleasures are Dreamscape, Enemy Mine, Meteor, and the Omega Man.
ORCA
The charm of “Orca”(1977) is that, despite the fact that they are making an inane killer whale movie, the filmmakers seem to honestly think that they were making “Citizen Kane.” The plot is simple. Fisherman’s crew accidentally kills whale’s wife and child. Whale seeks revenge. The acting and the tone are so deadly serious that it comes off very funny.Richard Harris is the crusty fisherman who spends the whole movie shouting, “I’m gonna kill that fish if it’s the last think I do!” Charlotte Rampling is his marine biologist love interest and spends the whole movie explaining to Harris that whales are mammals, not fish. I spent the whole movie rooting for the whale.My favorite scene is after Orca destroys the town and eats Bo Derek’s leg (Bonus!) He starts doing celebratory flips out of the water as the town burns. Throughout, you get to see just how pissed off the whale is by about two dozen close ups of his eye. To get an idea of how bizarre this movie really is, I will need to describe the ending (Spoiler ahead.) Orca has lured Harris and co. out to sea for a grudge match. After dispatching most of the crew via iceberg, only Harris and Rampling are left, though adrift on ice. A night of romance, punctuated by the love theme from “Orca”, ends with Harris and the whale going mano e fin. Jaws it ain’t, but I’ll take Orca over Free Willy any day.
ROCKY III
Its difficult to keep in mind what a wonderful film the original Rocky was for a number of reasons. First are the varying levels of atrociousness of its four sequels. Then we have Sylvester Stalone’s subsequent career averaging about 2 decent movies a decade. Finally are the hundreds of mind numbing rip offs of the “lovable loser comes from behind to win the big prize” theme. Probably the nadir of this movement was Stalone’s own Rocky goes arm wresting fiasco, Over the Top.The Rocky sequels range from redundant (Rocky II) to ridiculous (Rocky IV) to just plain wrong (Rocky V). Only Rocky III retains affection from me. Not that it a great movie like the original or doesn’t rip off its themes. Its just that Rocky III has two things going for it that the others don’t: “Eye of the Tiger” and Mr. T.“Eye of the Tiger” is simply one of the great one hit wonders ever. I realize they actually did have a couple more tunes that got airplay, but frankly, I can’t remember them. (At some point Survivor began to merge with Mr. Mister.) Normally using an “inspirational” song to illustrate the struggle of our hero coming up from behind is an invitation to cheese, but somehow they found the perfect song to transcend the cliché. If I’m ever running a marathon (unlikely) and I need a song to take me to the finish line, I’d choose “Eye of the Tiger in a second.” Then we have Mr. T. Those of you who did not see Rocky III on its original run may not realize that Mr. T was not always an eighties nostalgia joke (he now seems to occupy the same place in our culture as Pac man.) For one year in one movie, Mr. T actually reflected the intensity and menace of a truly great villain. His Clubber Lang was a palpable threat to Rocky in a way that Carl Weathers never was. I’m not saying he would have been appropriate for the realistic tone of the original, but in the heightened world of the sequels, when Mr. T. says “pain” I believe him.Unfortunately, Mr. T. soon traded menace for mass acceptance. By the time he appeared on Different Strokes, none would fear him again. He could have been Lee Marvin, but he ended up a Cabbage Patch Kid. Even Mohawks have lost their menace. I remember the one guy at my Jr. High with a Mohawk always have plenty of room when he wanted to pass. The other day I saw that the guitarist for one of those mall chick pop bands had one. I guess you just can’t freak people out like you used to.
1941
There’s no doubt that Steven Spielberg’s 1941 is a bad movie. Based on the questionable premise of a lost Japanese sub attacking Los Angeles in the days following Pearl Harbor, the action quickly deteriorates into incoherent comic set pieces. When I first saw it on TV in the early eighties, I had no use for the film and was shocked that Spielberg, John Belushi, and Dan Aykroyd would be involved in such a mess.Seeing it again last weekend, I now see what they were going for and have built up a bit of affection for it. It seems to me that Spielberg sought to combine the black humor anti-war esthetic of Dr. Strangelove with the anarchic late ’70’s comedy epitomized by National Lampoon’s Animal House. This seems an impossible mix and, as great a director as he is, Steven Spielberg cannot make a John Landis movie. Still, there’s some funny stuff in 1941. I enjoyed the bits with Slim Pickens as a prisoner in the Japanese sub using toilet humor in his efforts to escape. There’s also a sly tribute to Jaws. Some have argued that blowing up stuff and destroying property are not funny. That’s true about 90% of the time in this film, but that means there’s 10% of good laughs left to be found in all this chaos. Landis himself may have been taking notes as he was planning to destroy Chicago in The Blues Brothers. There’s quite a cast assembled here. In addition to Belushi, Aykroyd, and Pickens; we have John Candy, Robert Stack, Tim Matheson (basically as Otter), Ned Beatty, Lenny & Squiggy, Joe Flaherty, Treat Williams, Nancy Allen, Warren Oates, Christopher Lee, and Toshiro Mifune.Dignity is the last word you would expect to read in a review of 1941, but the screen presence of two giants is enough to keep the experience from being a total waste. The first is John Belushi who was one of the only comic actors that can be funny by just being there. He has little to do, but every moment he was on screen, he had my complete attention. Picture Bluto as a bomber pilot. What a treat seeing Toshiro Mifune as the Japanese sub captain. Those of you fortunate enough to have seen the great films of Akira Kurosawa (The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, ect.) know that Mifume stars in most of his classics. For those unfamiliar, he is Japan’s John Wayne, with similar stature and mystic. He plays his role straight and brings just about the only depth to any character in the film. Loved the scene where he throws Christopher Lee’s Nazi overboard 1941 is bad, but never boring. Of Spielberg’s stinkers, I’ll take it over Always and Hook any day. FYI, its also better than Pearl Harbor.
TOMMY
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to include TOMMY in the guilty pleasures category because I really do think it’s a great movie, however, considering that one of it’s highlights features Ann Margret seductively rolling around in a room full of baked beans that had just spewed from the TV set, it seems more at home here.TOMMY (1975), director Ken Russell’s take on The Who’s brilliant 1969 rock opera, literally defines the concept of over-the-top filmmaking. The entire movie is wall-to-wall songs and music with no dialogue at all. The plot revolves around the growth of little Tommy, who has become deaf, dumb, and blind, due to the trauma of seeing his mother’s lover kill his (assumed already dead) father. We follow his parent’s search for a cure to his becoming a pinball champion to his being declared a new messiah. Ken Russell specializes in bizarre and surrealistic visuals (also on display in Listzomania, Altered States, Crimes of Passion, and Gothic.) Some highlights here include Tina Turner’s Acid Queen turning Roger Daltrey’s Tommy into a snake-infested skeleton, Eric Clapton leading a congregation of Marilyn Monroe worshipers, and Elton John in gigantic boots as the Pinball Wizard. To say that Ann Margret approaches the role of Tommy’s mother with gusto would be an understatement. She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar and, image be damned, attacks her role with absolute unapologetic melodrama. She rolls around, wearing a white evening gown, in baked beans! Oliver Reed is damn cool as well in an out of tune kind of way.Despite all the insanity around it, the highlight of TOMMY remains Pete Townshend’s amazing music. The soundtrack doesn’t stand up the Who’s 1969 album (Too many synthesizers / Jack Nicholson singing.) Of course the minute after I finished my first viewing of the film I went out and bought the original album (I was 14) and became a lifelong Who fan. It also opened my mind to more experimental and non-conventional films.
I can’t think of any film that more fits the definition of a guilty pleasure than 1980’s “Flash Gordon.” It’s just an awful movie, but how come I enjoy every minute of it? There’s no waiting for the cheese. Queen’s theme song tells you all you need to know. (“Flash! Ahhhhh – He’ll save every one of us!”) Sam Jones, who seems to have graduated from the Ed Wood School of acting, plays Flash. His main character trait is that he has the word FLASH printed on his t-shirt. The great Max Von Sydow is Ming the Merciless, whose ring seems to have an orgasmatron function. This is used on one of the two hot babes that run around the universe in their underwear. One’s good and ones evil, but it really doesn’t matter because there are hawk people flying around!I also love that Topol plays the mad scientist who helps Flash. Of course, he was Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” and he hasn’t changed much, so at times it seems like Fiddler in Space. Have I mentioned the bad special effects? How about Timothy Dalton in a Robin Hood costume? Or the aliens with bright blue blood? This is the rare case in which a movie that was meant to be so bad its good actually succeeds. When it doesn’t work, you get something like “Mars Attacks." BTW my other favorite sci-fi guilty pleasures are Dreamscape, Enemy Mine, Meteor, and the Omega Man.
ORCA
The charm of “Orca”(1977) is that, despite the fact that they are making an inane killer whale movie, the filmmakers seem to honestly think that they were making “Citizen Kane.” The plot is simple. Fisherman’s crew accidentally kills whale’s wife and child. Whale seeks revenge. The acting and the tone are so deadly serious that it comes off very funny.Richard Harris is the crusty fisherman who spends the whole movie shouting, “I’m gonna kill that fish if it’s the last think I do!” Charlotte Rampling is his marine biologist love interest and spends the whole movie explaining to Harris that whales are mammals, not fish. I spent the whole movie rooting for the whale.My favorite scene is after Orca destroys the town and eats Bo Derek’s leg (Bonus!) He starts doing celebratory flips out of the water as the town burns. Throughout, you get to see just how pissed off the whale is by about two dozen close ups of his eye. To get an idea of how bizarre this movie really is, I will need to describe the ending (Spoiler ahead.) Orca has lured Harris and co. out to sea for a grudge match. After dispatching most of the crew via iceberg, only Harris and Rampling are left, though adrift on ice. A night of romance, punctuated by the love theme from “Orca”, ends with Harris and the whale going mano e fin. Jaws it ain’t, but I’ll take Orca over Free Willy any day.
ROCKY III
Its difficult to keep in mind what a wonderful film the original Rocky was for a number of reasons. First are the varying levels of atrociousness of its four sequels. Then we have Sylvester Stalone’s subsequent career averaging about 2 decent movies a decade. Finally are the hundreds of mind numbing rip offs of the “lovable loser comes from behind to win the big prize” theme. Probably the nadir of this movement was Stalone’s own Rocky goes arm wresting fiasco, Over the Top.The Rocky sequels range from redundant (Rocky II) to ridiculous (Rocky IV) to just plain wrong (Rocky V). Only Rocky III retains affection from me. Not that it a great movie like the original or doesn’t rip off its themes. Its just that Rocky III has two things going for it that the others don’t: “Eye of the Tiger” and Mr. T.“Eye of the Tiger” is simply one of the great one hit wonders ever. I realize they actually did have a couple more tunes that got airplay, but frankly, I can’t remember them. (At some point Survivor began to merge with Mr. Mister.) Normally using an “inspirational” song to illustrate the struggle of our hero coming up from behind is an invitation to cheese, but somehow they found the perfect song to transcend the cliché. If I’m ever running a marathon (unlikely) and I need a song to take me to the finish line, I’d choose “Eye of the Tiger in a second.” Then we have Mr. T. Those of you who did not see Rocky III on its original run may not realize that Mr. T was not always an eighties nostalgia joke (he now seems to occupy the same place in our culture as Pac man.) For one year in one movie, Mr. T actually reflected the intensity and menace of a truly great villain. His Clubber Lang was a palpable threat to Rocky in a way that Carl Weathers never was. I’m not saying he would have been appropriate for the realistic tone of the original, but in the heightened world of the sequels, when Mr. T. says “pain” I believe him.Unfortunately, Mr. T. soon traded menace for mass acceptance. By the time he appeared on Different Strokes, none would fear him again. He could have been Lee Marvin, but he ended up a Cabbage Patch Kid. Even Mohawks have lost their menace. I remember the one guy at my Jr. High with a Mohawk always have plenty of room when he wanted to pass. The other day I saw that the guitarist for one of those mall chick pop bands had one. I guess you just can’t freak people out like you used to.
1941
There’s no doubt that Steven Spielberg’s 1941 is a bad movie. Based on the questionable premise of a lost Japanese sub attacking Los Angeles in the days following Pearl Harbor, the action quickly deteriorates into incoherent comic set pieces. When I first saw it on TV in the early eighties, I had no use for the film and was shocked that Spielberg, John Belushi, and Dan Aykroyd would be involved in such a mess.Seeing it again last weekend, I now see what they were going for and have built up a bit of affection for it. It seems to me that Spielberg sought to combine the black humor anti-war esthetic of Dr. Strangelove with the anarchic late ’70’s comedy epitomized by National Lampoon’s Animal House. This seems an impossible mix and, as great a director as he is, Steven Spielberg cannot make a John Landis movie. Still, there’s some funny stuff in 1941. I enjoyed the bits with Slim Pickens as a prisoner in the Japanese sub using toilet humor in his efforts to escape. There’s also a sly tribute to Jaws. Some have argued that blowing up stuff and destroying property are not funny. That’s true about 90% of the time in this film, but that means there’s 10% of good laughs left to be found in all this chaos. Landis himself may have been taking notes as he was planning to destroy Chicago in The Blues Brothers. There’s quite a cast assembled here. In addition to Belushi, Aykroyd, and Pickens; we have John Candy, Robert Stack, Tim Matheson (basically as Otter), Ned Beatty, Lenny & Squiggy, Joe Flaherty, Treat Williams, Nancy Allen, Warren Oates, Christopher Lee, and Toshiro Mifune.Dignity is the last word you would expect to read in a review of 1941, but the screen presence of two giants is enough to keep the experience from being a total waste. The first is John Belushi who was one of the only comic actors that can be funny by just being there. He has little to do, but every moment he was on screen, he had my complete attention. Picture Bluto as a bomber pilot. What a treat seeing Toshiro Mifune as the Japanese sub captain. Those of you fortunate enough to have seen the great films of Akira Kurosawa (The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, ect.) know that Mifume stars in most of his classics. For those unfamiliar, he is Japan’s John Wayne, with similar stature and mystic. He plays his role straight and brings just about the only depth to any character in the film. Loved the scene where he throws Christopher Lee’s Nazi overboard 1941 is bad, but never boring. Of Spielberg’s stinkers, I’ll take it over Always and Hook any day. FYI, its also better than Pearl Harbor.
TOMMY
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to include TOMMY in the guilty pleasures category because I really do think it’s a great movie, however, considering that one of it’s highlights features Ann Margret seductively rolling around in a room full of baked beans that had just spewed from the TV set, it seems more at home here.TOMMY (1975), director Ken Russell’s take on The Who’s brilliant 1969 rock opera, literally defines the concept of over-the-top filmmaking. The entire movie is wall-to-wall songs and music with no dialogue at all. The plot revolves around the growth of little Tommy, who has become deaf, dumb, and blind, due to the trauma of seeing his mother’s lover kill his (assumed already dead) father. We follow his parent’s search for a cure to his becoming a pinball champion to his being declared a new messiah. Ken Russell specializes in bizarre and surrealistic visuals (also on display in Listzomania, Altered States, Crimes of Passion, and Gothic.) Some highlights here include Tina Turner’s Acid Queen turning Roger Daltrey’s Tommy into a snake-infested skeleton, Eric Clapton leading a congregation of Marilyn Monroe worshipers, and Elton John in gigantic boots as the Pinball Wizard. To say that Ann Margret approaches the role of Tommy’s mother with gusto would be an understatement. She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar and, image be damned, attacks her role with absolute unapologetic melodrama. She rolls around, wearing a white evening gown, in baked beans! Oliver Reed is damn cool as well in an out of tune kind of way.Despite all the insanity around it, the highlight of TOMMY remains Pete Townshend’s amazing music. The soundtrack doesn’t stand up the Who’s 1969 album (Too many synthesizers / Jack Nicholson singing.) Of course the minute after I finished my first viewing of the film I went out and bought the original album (I was 14) and became a lifelong Who fan. It also opened my mind to more experimental and non-conventional films.
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