Popcorn Kernels: Funny Girls

In which we dole out mini-reviews to two female-led comedies, released 30 years apart. Let’s see how things have changed, shall we?

Valley Girl

Year: 1983

Director: Martha Coolidge

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Deborah Foreman, Elizabeth Daily

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A girl from the Valley falls for an LA dude with a bitchin’ bod, but her friends think he’s, like, totally grody. Will she choose him or get back with her old beau, Tommy?

I feel like such a traitor to the cause. Like, every cause. As a staunch feminist and an 80’s movie advocate, I’m always delighted when I find out that a classic high school movie was actually directed by a woman. But Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemeont High failed to wow me, and now Martha Coolidge’s Valley Girl has suffered a similar fate. Obviously, this has everything to do with the state of second-tier 80’s teen flicks and not women in the director’s chair, but I can’t help feeling like a heretic.

At least with Valley Girl, I can see why it became such a zeitgeisty hit, and it’s not just Phoebe Cates misplacing her bikini top. Simultaneously canonizing a parade of 80’s megahits, including Modern English’s evergreen “Melt with You” and calling into existence an entire lexicon of slang like an omnipotent pop culture deity, Valley Girl struck teen culture during a pivotal transition period. As a cultural artifact, it’s pristine, but as an actual piece of film narrative, it’s a major bummer.

Copping the classical “forbidden love” story arc so hard that our couple literally makes out in front of a movie theater marquee advertising Romeo and Juliet, Valley Girl assumes that the drama is baked in automatically and doesn’t actually bother to create its own meaningful conflict. It’s hard to care about a relationship that has lasted the course of a montage, but it’s even harder to believe that Julie’s decision is challenging in any way, because Tommy is such a collar-popping Cobra Kai asshole that it’s literally impossible to imagine that anyone would even give him the time of day without smacking that smug grin off his greasy face.

Plus, Nicolas Cage is obscenely attractive at 19 years old. He might be giving a performance bizarrely reminiscent of David Schwimmer, but he’s got the goods, and that’s something I never thought I’d say about the star of the National Treasure franchise. This extremely superficial narrative (which expends a lot of energy trying to emphasize how “different” this white dude from 20 miles away is) can’t even pick up on that, which is immensely frustrating.

The film’s emphasis on vérité conversational scenes that meander through halfheartedly improvised dialogue while straining to grab guerilla snatches of downtown LA betray its low budget, as does its lack of proper nighttime lighting. Far be it from me to punish a movie for being cheap, but it doesn’t cost money to punch up the script a little more. A whole lot of nothing happens in Valley Girl, and it takes forever to do it. 

I admire its veracity as an on-the-ground examination of the totally arbitrary class warfare of teen culture, but Deborah Foreman is a deeply uninteresting lead (her second biggest credit is the forgotten 1986 slasher April Fool’s Day, in which she’s also the least interesting presence), the story is lazy, and just like Ridgemont High, the film is packed with side characters and subplots that we spend an arbitrary amount of time with before they vanish. At least we’ll always have Nic Cage’s eyebrows.

Rating: 5/10

I Give It a Year

Year: 2013

Director: Dan Mazer

Cast: Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall, Anna Faris

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A newlywed couple struggles to make it through their first year of marriage, both presented with temptations in the form of romantic partners far better suited for them.

I Give it a Year is a curious beast. A small British alterna-rom-com nestled in the underbrush of the Netflix catalogue, you’d think you know exactly what you’re getting. And that’s what you get: A Spartan narrative with few twists and turns, a half-cynical but still heteronormative-monogamous takedown of love and marriage, and a revolving door of broad comedy stock characters. So why did I find it so f**king delightful?

Well, ingredient number one is Rose Byrne, a vastly underrated comedy actress who I would follow to the ends of the Earth. Hell, I would watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop in Space if she was in it. She has an uncanny ability to take an extremely sour character, sharpen her to a deadly steel point of hilarity, and swoop in with her natural charisma to tie you down and force you to care for her anyway. She handles all the film’s copious negativity with charm and grace, keeping the tone light and airy.

That’s not to say the rest of the cast don’t pull their weight. I mean, Anna Faris is in this movie. Her character is probably the most flat on paper, but she grabs her nebbish role by the horns to craft a lived-in character with more dimensions than scenes. And in the wings are the male leads; Rafe Spall to play cavalry with dunderheaded charm and physical comedy, and Simon Baker to project handsomeness and overconfidence all over the place like a fire hose.

Surround this cast with a battalion of British character actors, and you’ve got yourself an unforgettable movie. I Give it a Year is simple, sleek, unadorned, and pretty hilarious. It’s no classical masterpiece of the form, but it’s a ridiculously fun time that I would recommend to anybody who fancies themselves edgy and cynical, but is still a soggy romantic at heart.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 961

Fright Flashback: Bear Sequels

Welcome back to Fright Flashback, where every week until the end of summer we will visit an older horror film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to an upcoming new release. This week we are anticipating Ted 2, a followup to the largely un-unpleasant talking bear movie with Seth MacFarlane. In celebration, we'll be revisiting Grizzly II: The Concert, the fabled sequel to the 70's classic Grizzly, which might not technically exist.

Year: 1983

Director: André Szöts

Cast: Steve Inwood, Deborah Raffin, John Rhys-Davies

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Grizzly II: The Concert (AKA any combination of Predator, Concert, or Grizzly) just might be the strangest film I've ever had the sick pleasure of unearthing. As if being a B-horror picture about an out-of-control grizzly mama attacking a national park which is hosting a massive New Wave concert wasn't enough, the film had to go ahead and never get finished. The executive producer disappeared with the funds before the animatronic bear effects could be worked out and thus Grizzly II (which according to the impossibly vague nature of legend, was either filmed in 1983, 1985, or 1987) entered the apocryphal netherworld which holds an unfair amount of irresistible magnetism over the horror fandom.

It might have totally been forgotten had a dodgy workprint of the film not resurfaced in 2007. It's a mostly finished cut of the film that uses an entire Michael Jackson album as temp music, includes a good half dozen full musical performances (several of which are performed by the mildly notorious British one hit wonder girl group Toto Coelo - performing every song but their one hit wonder), features *$&%ing Laura Dern, Charlie Sheen, and George Clooney as horny campers, and only contains about three shots of an actual bear. 

Oh, and the final scene collapses into a complicated mash of half-cut dailies, in which people repeat actions three times in a row, the director audibly shouts "Cut!," and a bear hunter is impaled on a spike, comes back to life, then runs around a bit before getting impaled on the spike again. Naturally, the pop culturally-concentrated, utterly bonkers Grizzly II: The Concert is the perfect candidate for hardcore cult adoration.

For those with a sick interest in following this whole mess, the entire workprint is available online here.

For those who don't find short short/neon fanny pack-clad rock stars to be enticing, feel free to skip the film and follow me directly into the fray.

The plot, insofar as Grizzly II has one (and in fact it - startlingly - has several) goes as follows. A poacher kills the cub of a vicious grizzly bear who goes on a rampage in a national park some 40 miles from the site of a massive "rock" concert headed by Charlie (Dick Anthony Williams), sponsored by money grubbing park owner Eileene Draygon (Louise Fletcher), whose name sounds like she belongs better in a Game of Thrones episode, and defended by Nick Hollister (Steve Inwood), the security manager and perpetrator of the world's most intense Grizzly Adams beard.

Nick's daughter Chrissie (Deborah Foreman of April Fool's Day) is also on hand to fall in love with a "ruggedly" handsome "rock" star and generally be of no use to the plot. She doesn't even get eaten. She just kind of vanishes three-quarters of the way through the film. 

Nick becomes obsessed with defending the concert from the rampaging bear for obvious reasons, but Draygon refuses to let him ruin the show (and her chance to obtain status and political influence - she has invited the local senator), so she forces him to deal with it on his own. He enlists the help of Samantha Owens (Deborah Raffin), the park's director of bear management, which is apparently a thing, and Bouchard (John Rhys-Davies AKA freaking Sallah from Indiana Jones and Gimli from Lord of the Rings, what the hell), a French-Canadian lunatic who dresses and talks like a Native American because he hates bears because one of them killed his family. Or something.

But how could you hate a cuddly face like this?

Grizzly II is bad. Obviously. But it's bad in such a strange way that it's rendered totally distinct. Sure, it's got your usual B-movie crap like a giant puppet bear paw smacking dudes around, the forest cycling between day and night about every one and a half scenes, and the usual bad dialogue and terrible acting (especially from Rhys-Davies, who really should know better). But there's also an ineffable, almost whimsical quality to the bulk of the film's badness.

Grizzly II is a film in which a group of poachers can't figure out their character names and end up calling each other "Drew" for a whole scene.

Grizzly II is a film in which the Bear POV shots depict the bear breathing (like Darth Vader, inexplicably) and roaring simultaneously.

Grizzly II is a film in which the bear hunter Bouchard is introduced in two consecutive scenes, each of which contradicts the other.

Grizzly II is a film which sees fit to have said bear hunter sing a full, improvised song which ends in him hoarsely grunting the words "HA! HA! HA!"

Grizzly II is a film in which, during an ongoing performance by the rock star (whose name I never could quite make out), cuts to that very same rock star lifting a barbell backstage and screaming, then cuts back to him still singing the song.

It's pure crap, but it's about as inimitably enjoyable as pure crap can be. It's not quite as engaging as the bad-good movies that I truly love, like The Room or the Friday the 13th sequels, and it's not a movie you should watch under any circumstances. But if someone is holding a gun to your head, it's entirely possible to have a good time sitting through this.

Also, George Clooney and Laura Dern get busy in a sleeping bag, so there's that.

Everything that isn't admirably atrocious in Grizzly II is equally inexplicable, whether it's the Rasta wanderer known only as Dealer, a broken lamp causing a forest fire politely in the background, or Bouchard's introduction, in which he lifts a tree across a road for no reason. And everything that isn't that is so egregiously 80's that it might as well have come from an entirely different universe from our own.

Characters quietly do calisthenics to "Beat It," discuss their peanut diets, parade about in checkered bleached hair, and perform entire musical numbers in glittering suits of armor. It's almost like a teen culture documentary with some bits about bears attached.

Only bearly.

The genuine best thing about Grizzly II is that its surprisingly committed to attempting something truly significant in its character moments. These are spread infinitely thinly among the poorly shot, underlit bear attacks and the full blown, cheesy musical numbers that are wanly displayed with no affectation at all, but they are patently present. Every single thematic thread shrivels and dies an unceremonious death, of course, but in the process, it introduces ideas about preserving the environment, human nature, and learning that we have influence over others that might lead them down a negative path if we're not careful.

It's trying, and that's commendable enough. And, honestly, if that final scene ever made it into an actual useable form, there could be a truly exciting action setpiece buried in there, as rampant fireworks explode over a bear battle full of bloody impalements and crashing construction equipment.

At the end of the day Grizzly II: The Concert is still a woefully terrible movie. But during the course of its 97 minutes (which should really be cut down to 80, but I think we're beyond minor considerations like that at this point), it's a magnetically strange curiosity and an extremely special example of the lost apocrypha of film history.

TL;DR: Grizzly II: The Concert is a beautiful, terrible, wild ride through the back channels of 80's cinema.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1335

Census Bloodbath: Pranks For The Memories

Year: 1986

Director: Fred Walton

Cast: Deborah Foreman, Amy Steel, Clayton Rohner

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Sad April Fool's Day! 

Just kidding! Happy April Fool's Day!

That's about all the pranking energy I have in me at this point, I'm afraid. As a kid, I was the best in the business, but I'm retired now. Luckily for us, today's slasher feature has us covered for all of our practical joking needs. April Fool's Day, released by Paramount in 1986, is a film birthed from a congregation of slasher royalty.

Friday the 13th producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. pulled together some of the biggest names in the business for April Fool's Day, including Nightmare on Elm Street composer Charles Bernstein, Fade to Black/The Funhouse/Friday the 13th 4, 5, & 6/Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo/Everything You've Ever Loved casting director Fern Champion, When A Stranger Calls director Fred Walton, and Friday the 13th Part 2 Final Girl Amy Steel. It's kind of like the Avengers for the slasher set, if you will.

Only they do battle with terrible 80's hairstyles instead of world-eating aliens.

April Fool's Day tells the story of one Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman of 1988's Destroyer), a tragically rich young woman who hosts an April Fool's/birthday/spring break getaway weekend for her college friends at her secluded island mansion. After a prank unintentionally leads to a gory ferry accident, the constable and the ferry captain head to the mainland, leaving the unfortunate kids all alone for the weekend. Of course a mysterious someone begins picking them all off, but let's Meet the Meat before they're seasoned and sliced, shall we?

The group in April Fool's Day is considerably large, but each of the kiddos has a distinct, multi-faceted personality that renders them unique and compelling. The one thing this diverse group has in common is that none of them seem to like Muffy all that much. 

There's Nikki (Deborah Goodrich), the clever, promiscuous sexpot with a Mad Magazine sense of humor; Chaz (Clayton Rohner of I, Madman), Nikki's boyfriend, the kinda cute, really horny film major who doesn't take anything seriously; Arch (Thomas F. Wilson aka freaking Biff Tannen from Back to the Future), Chaz's bestest buddy, and one of those straight dudes who spends an improbable amount of time pretending he wants to bang his friend; Hal (Jay Baker), a kinda dorky Southern gold digger who fears for his own inheritance; Skip (Griffin O'Neal), Muffy's jovial stoner cousin; Nan (Leah Pinsent), a bookish, prudish, bubbly girl who packs a separate suitcase for her homework; Kit (Amy Steel), who, thanks to her androgynous name and veteran performer is without a doubt our Final Girl despite her only character trait being that she's a tad irritable; and Rob (Ken Olandt), Kit's boyfriend who feels like he isn't worthy because he goes to a state school. 

He's wrong. He's not worthy because of his terrible mullet.

Their interactions are underscored with a truly intriguing element of class anxiety. Most of the guests are sheltered and privileged in their own right, but many are envious of Muffy "On a Clear Day You Can See the Kennedys" St. John's considerable means, and Rob feels inadequate because of his lower socioeconomic status. It is perhaps too much to ask for a late-period slasher to explore this topic in a full, satisfying manner, let alone worm its way into a decent thesis, but April Fool's Day uses this unconsummated motif as a bedrock for incredibly solid characterizations.

The yuppie movement having come into full swing by the mid-80's, these obnoxious but lovable characters plant the film firmly in a historical context, far more than the typical slasher ephemera of feathered hair and neon legwarmers. Compounded with one character's expression of nuclear fears, and another's shamefully hidden abortion, April Fool's Day becomes a half-decent social piece on the futility and anxiety of the upper and middle class in the materialistic 1980's.

It's a good thing, too, because as an out-and-out slasher film, April Fool's Day isn't exactly a peach. The dialogue and filmmaking are solid, and there's some decent atmosphere, but the Thought Police MPAA crackdown on slashers in the latter half of the decade stunts the film considerably. The one sex scene is about as un-exploitative as Nancy Drew's dream journal, and the gore is light, to say the least.

When your climactic gore reveal could be fixed up with some Tampax and a teaspoon of Alka-Seltzer, it might not be ready for prime time.

BUT! The tone is jovial and the atmosphere is decently spooky, in the best evocation of the spirit of April Fool's. While the kiddos have fun with dribble glasses and gimp masks, Bernstein's remarkably held-back synth music keeps the creep factor up for scenes that have actual, genuine tension from time to time. Though the kills may be muffled, the preceding moments can be deliciously tense and one sequence in a well actually manages to dredge up a goosebump or two.

And wait! There's more! The cast is packed with actors who had more than just a simulacrum of a career, so the performances are across the board pretty decent. The only weak links are the flaky Deborah Foreman as Muffy "It's OK, It's Perrier" St. John, who for the life of her can't figure out just what to do with her damn hands, flapping them wildly around her face like rabid bats, and (unfortunately) Amy Steel, who is brought down by a dull character and reduced to a kind of drowsy irritation for too many of her line readings. 

Kit only becomes interesting in a historical context when she comes on to Rob, providing the actress her second consecutive non-virginal Final Girl character. I don't know what it is about Ms. Steel, but directors love to film her jumping dudes' bones, and this scene is certainly more sultry than her chaste pre-coital scene with Paul in Friday the 13th. Despite her lackluster performance, this scene is more than enough to launch her into the Final Girl pantheon for defying stereotypes. Go Kit! Feminism!

On another note, the film is also quite well-shot, with picturesque scenery and nighttime lighting that manages to avoid drowning the frame in darkness. You'd think that slasher filmmakers would pick up a book or two on night cinematography when they prepare to shoot a film almost entirely after sunset. But you would be severely overestimating how much the people behind the camera cared about these things. Most of the time, I count myself lucky if I don't see a boom mike in frame, but here the cinematography is skilled and professional and I can't respect that enough.

Also whoever picked out that outfit deserves an Oscar.

Alright, here's where things get SPOILERific. If you care about the ending to a 30-year-old B-slasher, skip ahead to the image of the homoerotic frat bros.

As you might have been able to guess, the ending of April Fool's Day reveals that the Agatha Christie-esque body count antics are all one big prank. Muffy is performing a dry run for a murder mystery getaway weekend she plans to sell to the public, in which her evil twin Buffy escapes from an asylum and mows down the guests. Her friends are her unfortunate first victims. 

This ending is a sprightly reversal on slasher expectations from a team intimately familiar with the formula, but it also prevents the film from being a classic example of the form. For obvious reasons, all the deaths are kept offscreen, reducing the impact of the kills and irritating the horehounds in the audience. The film is clever enough to spring back from this deficiency, but it causes the third act to drag something fierce before the Final Girl sequence kicks in.

Speaking of the finale, the film's premise also prevents the Final Girl from fighting back against the killer. It wouldn't exactly be a classic prank if Kit stabbed Muffy in her smug face, so she is reduced to panicked running that is rendered interesting by some inspired set design, but doesn't have the dynamism of her chainsaw tussle with the truly dangerous Jason Voorhees. The final reveal is chilling thanks to some subtle, jarring sound design, but in the end its clever reversal is not quite worth the losses it inflicts on the film as a whole.

Welcome back, my love.

All in all, April Fool's Day isn't a film that I would recommend to a casual horror fan, but for those willing to explore its coy depths, it's a rewarding character slasher with a well-honed sense of fun. It won't change your perspective on the genre or anything, but it's a more than acceptable romp through the social climate of 1986 with some puckish mayhem thrown in for good measure.

Killer: [Buffy St. John (Deborah Foreman) but actually nobody]

Final Girl: Kit (Amy Steel)

Best Kill: Chaz is castrated while wearing a gimp mask, so that's fun.

Sign of the Times: As much as I love Chaz's baggy jacket/V-neck/patterned pajama pants combo, I'm pretty sure it's a capitol offense to wear it in today's fashion climate.

Scariest Moment: Arch is hung from a tree above a lunging snake.

Weirdest Moment: In an attempt to nail the classic Spring-Loaded Cat scare, April Fools Day launches a forlorn feline directly down onto poor Skip from the stratosphere.

Champion Dialogue: "Your fly's open and your Hostess Twinkie is hangin' out."

Body Count: 8 [But actually 0]

1. Skip is killed offscreen.
2. Arch is decapitated. 
3. Nan has her throat slit.
4. Chaz is castrated.
5. Nikki is stabbed to death.
6. Hal is hung.
7. Muffy is decapitated.
8. [Muffy has her throat slit.] 

TL;DR: April Fool's Day is a demure slasher, but makes up for it with great characters and a fairly suspenseful twist on the genre.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1650