Miserable Retail Slave

Phantoms

by RFP

"You never had anything, so you have nothing to lose!"

Over the Top (1987)

Starring Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone has made a nice healthy living from portraying the underdog. His role as Rocky Balboa made him an instant star and reaffirmed what America always knew about itself: we love the underdog.

It's wired into the nation's DNA. America started life as the anemic little brother of England. Every immigrant that ever passed through Ellis Island had big dreams, but plenty of doubters back in their homeland. 

Pop culture is nothing, but a reflection of the likes and dislikes of society itself. From the Rocky series to Spider-Man to The Karate Kid to Rudy, the underdog has become a popular and important part of entertainment. The underdog makes us cheer for him, makes us smile and feel good when he achieves his dreams, and lets us believe that we can overcome our own obstacles and persevere in the face of adversity.

It was only natural that the man who made a career out of being the underdog tried it again with Over the Top, even though this underdog is a harder sell: a dim-witted trucker who ran out on his family for reasons that remain unclear comes back ten years later at the behest of his dying wife in order to win his son's love through competitive arm wrestling. 

Our tale begins with Lincoln Hawk or Lincoln Hawks (the writing is SO fantastic in this movie that people periodically add an "s" to his last name for no reason whatsoever. There's no consistency to this at all) shows up to pick his son up from a military academy after being absent for 10 years. 

Hawk's ex-wife, Christina, (it's actually implied they're still married, but he's been gone for a decade) is suffering from a heart ailment and is about to undergo an important surgery. Fearful that her son will be left with only his grandfather, the rich and controlling Cutler, she asks Hawk to pick up his son, Michael, so that some father/son bonding can occur during the ensuing road trip.

At a truck stop, Michael gets to see his father's special skills in action when a man called "Smasher" challenges Hawk to a bout of arm wrestling.

It's on.

Hawk marches towards the special arm wrestling table, his game face on. The intensity is so great that seeps right off of the movie screen and out into the viewer. I'm sure that crowds who saw this at the theater in 1987 burst into random arm wrestling challenges, inspired by the pure machismo leaking off the silver screen. 

Hawk sits down, turns his hat backward (Hawk later says that when he turns his hat backwards, it makes him feel like a machine or a truck. Neat.), and goes OVER THE TOP. 

Going "over the top" is Hawk's special arm wrestling finishing move. It's like when you see Hulk Hogan drop a leg. It's all over. When Hawk snakes his hand around and on top of yours, all you can do is stare with wide-eyed fear as your hand slams against the table, causing your biceps to explode and your shoulder to slide out of socket.

Hawk's arch-enemy is in the building, Bull Hurley, a huge tank of man, who is apparently a master of the arm wrestle, but may not have the special OVER THE TOP finishing move that Hawk has learned.

Hawk refuses Bull's challenge, saying that Hawk is yellow (ooooh, sic burn) and they'll meet again at the World Championships in Vegas. Mike is unimpressed and says Hawk is a hustler. Jay-Z approves.

What follows is a heart-warming couple of days as Mike acts like a pompous ass, showing off his high IQ, speaking proper English, and calling his dad a muscle-bound moron. In a show of vehicular stupidity second only to letting a blind Al Pacino drive in Scent of a Woman, Hawk punishes his mouthy son by letting him drive his semi down the road. That'll show him. 

This newly formed father-son bond is put to the test when they end their road-trip at the hospital. Alas, they arrive too late. Christina has already passed and Mike never got to say goodbye. For the next 20 minutes, Mike shows off his best scrunched-up, crying face as he runs off to be with his Grandfather, emotes throughout his mother's funeral, and then cries again when Hawk shows up to reclaim him, but Cutler has him arrested. 

Cutler agrees to drop all charges if Hawk leaves the state and, with Mike's blessing, he runs off to Vegas and the World Arm Wrestling Championships.

I won't spoil the end, but let's just say the underdog Hawk takes on the world champ, Bull, an underwhelming Kenny Loggins song ("Meet Me Halfway") scores Mike's impending grand theft auto charge and his attempts to cheer his dad on, and, like Scott Pilgrim, Hawk earns the power of self respect. It's all very heartwarming.

The Verdict: Obviously, this would have never happened, especially in the '80s, but I almost thought - just for half a second - that Hawk was going to lose to Bull Hurley at the end of the movie. But if you are going to ignite the dying embers of your son's fading love for you through arm wrestling, you had better win. I mean, if Hawk had lost to Bull Hurley, I'm pretty sure that Mike would have given his father the finger, steal another vehicle, and drive his 12 year old ass home. 

The movie is a dopey piece of '80s crowd pleasing slop filled with all the ridiculous, yet gratifying moments that you come to expect from a feature co-written by Stallone. There's always that shaky balance of brilliance mixed with the needlessly cringe inducing rampant stupidity that somehow always seems to make it passed the cutting room floor in mainstream '80s era movies.

I vaguely remember seeing moments of this movie when I was younger, primarily the scene where Hawk bullied his son into challenging a much larger and somewhat older kid to an arm wrestling match. I'm sure as a wide-eyed 8 year old that I probably was enraptured by the whole production. But, as a jaded 29 year old, I was entertained, but in a "I just want to relax, watch a movie, and not have to think about what I'm watching" type of movie.

BAD 

Hey, don't forget to check back on Friday. Christmas Eve. The Quest to Purify My Pop Culture Soul - "Bad Santa". Get a laugh before dealing with the fam.

by RFP

When Vin Diesel's family-friendly Disney comedy, The Pacifier, came out a few years ago, I told people that it was his Kindergarten Cop. 

No matter how many asses are kicked, no matter how many bullets are fired, and no matter how much havoc is wrecked, action heroes invariably try to diversify their audiences by starring in tame PG movies that even Grandma would enjoy.

Usually these movies involve the heavily muscled, testosterone-dripping tough guy being forced into numerous emasculating situations until the macho man shows a heretofore undiscovered sensitive side. Along the way there are the usual "haha, hilarious" standard family comedy jokes of cute kids saying the darndest things, bodily functions (involving farts, burps, vomit), and random slapstick comedy (such as nut shots or blunt force trauma to the head).

The Rock (or Dwayne Johnson, if you prefer, which I don't) has done it recently with The Gameplan, Race to Witch Mountain, and The Tooth Fairy. Stallone did it during his lost period in between Rambo and Rocky revivals with Oscar and Stop! or my Mom Will Shoot. 

But no one did it more memorably than Arnold Schwartzenegger. He did Twins in 1988 (it's funny because he's huge, and Danny DeVito is tiny. HAHA), Kindergarten Cop (it's funny because he's huge and kids are tiny. HAHA), Junior in 1994 (it's funny because men can't get pregnant. HAHA), and Jingle All the Way (it's funny because he really wants to buy that Turbo Man action figure for his son. HAHA).

The Last Action Hero is an odd comedy/action/satire that seems like the perfect transition film from Terminator 2 to the comedies I just mentioned above. According to wikipedia, Schwartzenegger chose this film over The Tooth Fairy, the same flick that was rewritten for The Rock 16 years later. 

Schwartzenegger plays action star, Jack Slater, a tough as nails, do what it takes police officer who fires off one liners such as "you want to be a farmer. Here's a couple of acres" before kicking a thug in the nuts.

Danny Madigan (played by Austin O' Brien) is a young boy whose escape from real life is watching Slater's films at a theater ran by an elderly theater owner.

After a completely random break in at his house, Danny goes to the theater against his mother's wishes to see a sneak preview of Jack Slater IV. The old man gives Danny an allegedly magic ticket that was a gift from Houdini.

While Danny watches the movie, the ticket glows and he's sucked into the action, instantly reminding me of the Captain N: The Game Master cartoon from my youth.

The movie world that Slater inhabits seems to parody all of the various stereotypes found in a typical buddy cop action/comedy. Some these stereotypes are:

Slater is a horrible driver, crashing into things, driving recklessly, fishtailing for no reason.

He gets the job done, but causes excessive property damage in the process. As a result of this, Slater's boss is perpetually screaming, out of his mind with grief because of all the rules Slater breaks to get the job done.

Gun shot wounds or other injuries that would be considered serious or fatal are labeled as "flesh wounds" as seen in the closing moments of the movie.

One of the highlights of the film takes place while Danny is stuck inside the movie "Jack Slater IV" and he is trying to convince Slater that they are in a movie and Danny is from the "real world", Danny tells Slater that he is actually the actor, Arnold Schwartzenegger, and takes Slater to the local Blockbuster to prove it. But, instead of Arnold on the poster for Terminator 2 inside the Blockbuster, it's Sylvester Stallone. Exasperated, Danny points out the fact that every one in this world has phone numbers starting in "555" and all the women are way too hot. The future Governator responds to this by shrugging and saying, "we're in California".

While there are a few clever ideas in The Last Action Hero, unfortunately, they come few and far between. The main villain of the film, Mr. Benedict, has a glass eye, which he periodically switches out in order to show off his long line of designer eyeballs. 

One of the main wtf moments in the movie comes when Slater takers Danny to his police station. The entire scene is an excuse to show some gratuitous cameos from Robert Patrick as T-1000 and Sharon Stone as Catherine Trammel, her character from Basic Instinct.  The station scene also introduces us to Whiskers, an animated detective cat voiced by Danny DeVito who looks like Skat Cat from that Paul Abdul music video and plays an important role in saving Jack and Danny later in the movie.

Why would a cartoon cat be in the world of an action movie? It makes no sense at all.  But at least Arnold had enough sense to avoid dressing up in a leotard for The Tooth Fairy like the Rock did. Then again, he did star in Junior. So maybe I shouldn't give him any credit at all.

If you have suffered through The Last Action Hero, your achievement is below.

by RFP

'Howard the Duck'

The first nudity that I ever remember seeing in any medium was in Howard the Duck.

My parents were fairly hip twentysomethings in the '80s. They listened to hair metal and subscribed to premium cable channels like HBO and Cinemax. It wasn't uncommon to find all day marathons of MTV playing in the living room on the weekends. They bought a VCR and rented new movies on a weekly basis, but, rather cruelly, only let me rent Nintendo games on special occasions. 

Since they were on a first name basis with the owner of the local video store, I was subjected to a wide and varied amount of horrible '80s trash. For whatever reason, Howard the Duck was their film of choice one night. Usually, I was ushered out of the room or forced to cover my eyes whenever the slightest hint of sexual content was forthcoming.

However, the nudity in Howard the Duck happened so suddenly and was so bizarre that my parents had no time to respond. 

In the beginning of the film, Howard is sitting back, trying to enjoy his Playduck magazine (haha, clever, right?) when he's inexplicably ripped through his apartment and into space. One of the rooms he crashes through is his neighbor's bathroom, complete with a female duck, duck boobies exposed, sitting in the bathtub.

Why such a disturbing image of a duck-shaped puppet with breasts was ever committed to film is secondary to the question of why my first exposures to naked breasts were in movies and were very, very odd. (For the record, the second time I saw boobs in a movie was in Total Recall at a friend's birthday party in fourth grade. It was that alien chick with three breasts. Weird).

Since we're pondering the important, yet unanswerable questions, let's consider why George Lucas, who had a hand in creating two of the most iconic film franchises in Hollywood history (Star Wars and Indiana Jones), decided bringing Howard the Duck to the big screen was a great way to pad his otherwise impressive resume. 

I don't know the man, but I would think my theory is spot-on: George Lucas loves midgets. He loves the little people. Anyone who could safely represent the Lollipop Guild is alright in George's eyes.

After all, Lucas was so enamored with the Empire-conquering Ewoks, that he developed two made for TV movies based on them. The only thing that could fill the little person void in his soul after the production of those Ewok adventures was clearly a midget in a duck costume. 

So thanks to George Lucas, Marvel Comics' beer swilling, cigar chomping talking duck was adapted into a major motion picture before the X-Men, Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, and, oh yeah, Spider-Man.

After being dragged through space by this ray of light, Howard lands on Earth, more specifically Cleveland, home of the Drew Carey Show, the Browns, and Lebron Jam....oh, wait. Nevermind.

Even more specifically, Howard lands near a rock and roll bar where he soon has to defend Beverly (Lea Thompson), lead singer of girl group "Cherrybomb" (they're more The Go-Gos and less The Spice Girls), from a couple of over eager fans. These two prove to be no match for Howard's Quack Fu (it's like Shaq Fu, only deadlier). In gratitude, Beverly lets the homeless Howard spend the night in her apartment.

Fresh off her role in Back to the Future, one the most popular films of the '80s, Lea Thompson spends most of the first half of the movie making cute faces in response to Howard's shenanigans. The last half the movie is spent with Thompson making more cute faces, but also yelling "Howard!" every fifteen seconds as she's taken hostage by Ferris Bueller's principal.

I also have a theory as to why Lea Thompson would be slumming it in a movie such as this. While she was never a huge star, you would have to think that her Hollywood clout had grown a little from appearing in Back to the Future. The reason that Thompson appears in Howard the Duck? She's a pervert.

In Back to the Future she plays Marty McFly's mother. When Marty appears in the past, she tries to seduce her future son. Incest material. Yes!

In Howard the Duck, the relationship between Beverly and Howard is full of sexual tension. At one point she jokingly flirts with Howard, getting him all hot and bothered. Despite the fact that she finds a teeny tiny condom in his wallet (he's not a magnum man), Beverly still appears to want to jump his hollow bones. The sad thing is that such an act would be tame compared to what you can find on the internet these days. Beastiality material. Yes!

The rest of the movie concerns a convoluted explanation as to how Howard got to Earth (a scientist used this ray thing and it accidentally dragged him here), demonic possession (in trying to send Howard back home, they bring something else back- The Dark Overlord of the Universe) and wacky misadventures with Phil, a dorky scientist played by Tim Robbins.

A brawl in a restaurant leads to Howard getting attacked by the diner's patrons, who want to chop his head off, cook him, and eat him. Yuck. There's food all around you guys and you want to eat a talking duck? Gross. 

Meanwhile, a possessed Dr Jenning (Jeffery Jones aka Bueller's principal) fires off one liner after liner and kidnaps Beverly in order to use her body for one his buddies to possess.

Naturally, it's up to Howard to save the day. SPOILER: He saves the day.

The movie ends on a truly '80s note. Cherrybomb has become a huge success, managed by Howard, based on the strength of their hit single, "Howard the Duck". Naturally, Howard comes out and wails on the guitar as the masses go wild. Beverly and Howard embrace and share a long, loving (creepy?) glance. The End. What a fun ride. (Sarcasm implied)

According to wikipedia, that ever reliable source of info, the Howard the Duck theme song was co-written by George Clinton, yet it's not as funky as I would like it to be. Lea Thompson allegedly sang all the vocals in the movie, too. It's only fitting I end a masterpiece of a column about a cinematic masterpiece with a musical masterpiece.

By the way, if you suffered through Howard the Duck at some point, your achievement badge is below.

In two weeks, more crappy movies with The Last Action Hero