"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Summer of 1985 intro + Gotcha!

Technically summer doesn’t start for more than a month. But it’s beginning to feel like summertime – a time to sit back and unwind. The sun has been coming out, people have been wearing shorts, barbecues are probly happening in states that will have new Covid-19 outbreaks in 2-3 weeks, and it could even be argued that the hardcore dance is getting a little bit out of control.

One major thing is missing: the summer movie season. We were expecting to have NO TIME TO DIE, A QUIET PLACE PART II, BLACK WIDOW, WONDER WOMAN 1984, CANDYMAN, TOP GUN: MAVERICK, the GHOSTBUSTERS thing, THE FRENCH DISPATCH, arguably MORBIUS. And F9 would’ve been coming out Friday! Can you believe that? TENET and MULAN are still planned for release in July, but I’m skeptical. It’s up in the air how many theaters will be reopened by then, or especially how many people will feel safe enough to go to them.

It’s not something I ever considered before. Watching a zombie movie or a Godzilla or something, I never thought, “Oh shit, there were probly huge blockbuster movies that had to be postponed because of that!” Come to think of it in OMEGA MAN he had to watch WOODSTOCK, which was about a year old. He didn’t get to see DIRTY HARRY, SHAFT, BILLY JACK or ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES. They probly never came out in that world.

This strange reality of The Year Without a Summer Movie Season has me even more anxious to throw myself into a retrospective series. I think I got as much or more out of my 1989 revisit last year and ’98 the year before that than I did watching new movies in theaters. A good retrospective series feels like a type of time travel to me. There’s definitely a nostalgia, a reconjuring of excitement I may have forgotten from however old I was at the time in question. But also I’m watching more movies than I probly did back then, all in order of when they came out, giving more thought to the context, being able to see that era with the hindsight of history and the perspective of an adult. It’s always fun to discover things I didn’t realize back then, or didn’t experience, or to respond to things differently.

The trouble is I’ve been reviewing movies for 20 years and I’ve done a bunch of these and it’s becoming harder and harder to find territory I haven’t dug up already. It took me a while to settle on a topic to do this time. I looked at the schedules for obvious anniversaries: 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40. Then I looked at years in between, thinking it didn’t have to end in a 5 or a 0, maybe I should just do s random anniversary. I considered choosing a theme instead of a year, but I prefer zeroing in on one time period.

I think some people were expecting me to do 1990, and I came close. There’s one movie from that summer that’s on my official “movies I refer to all the time but have never reviewed” list, and definitely a few I don’t remember anything about that probly aren’t good but that are the kind of thing I love filling in when doing a series like this (BIRD ON A WIRE, for example). But I kept coming back to the fact that to me the most important movies of that summer are DICK TRACY, DIE HARD 2 and DARKMAN, all of which I feel I have good write-ups for already. And I’ve reviewed most of the other action-y ones: CLASS OF 1999, ANOTHER 48 HOURS, THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE, NAVY SEALS, DELTA FORCE 2, plus auteur-y ones like MO’ BETTER BLUES and WILD AT HEART. There wasn’t enough new ground to get excited about.

So I decided 1985 was the best fit. There are a few I might skip because of previous reviews, but the most important ones are fresh to me. It’s a summer dominated by one of the most iconic franchise action movies of our time, one that I somehow have not officially reviewed. It has a major Clint movie. It has a bunch of unusually adventurous studio movies, for good or bad. It has two beloved PG-rated ‘80s classics that I’ve always been a little cynical about the popularity of, that I’ll probly end up liking anyway. Also some pretty distinct comedies, including a contender for my favorite of the decade. And there are a few outright horror classics that I’ve already reviewed, but I’ll revisit at least one of them because I’ve been thinking of it constantly in this time of shelter-in-place.

So this will be a good one. It’ll be fun.

Programming note: I plan to run five reviews this week, and at least one of them will be a ridiculously deep dive, so I may end up needing some extra days between posts next week to catch up (and for you to read them!)

PROLOGUE

In order to get an idea what was in filmatists’ heads while they made the movies of Summer ’85, let’s look at what was released throughout ’84. It was a year of many movies that are still culturally relevant, almost all inextricably linked with that vibe we thinks of as “the eighties.” They include some memorable franchise starters:

POLICE ACADEMY
GHOSTBUSTERS
THE KARATE KID
THE NEVERENDING STORY
REVENGE OF THE NERDS
THE TERMINATOR
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT
MISSING IN ACTION
BEVERLY HILLS COP
And I suppose GREMLINS and C.H.U.D. count.

There were sequels, of course:

FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER
INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM
STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK
CONAN THE DESTROYER
THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN

There were some popular youth and/or music movies:

FOOTLOOSE
SIXTEEN CANDLES
BREAKIN’
BEAT STREET
PURPLE RAIN

And a couple big-swing movies by auteurs that were not well received. On the arthouse side, Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. On the popcorn side, David Lynch’s DUNE.

Comedies were big – GHOSTBUSTERS broke the record for highest grossing comedy of all time, then was overtaken by BEVERLY HILLS COP, then took the record back with a re-release the next year. But BEVERLY HILLS COP maintained the record for highest grossing R-rated movie of all time. According to Wikipedia, adjusted for inflation it’s still the third highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time, behind THE EXORCIST and THE GODFATHER! What the fuck – is that real?

But Sylvester Stallone had a flop with RHINESTONE, which I kind of like but of course those dickwads at the Razzies gave him worst actor. That might’ve had an influence on him wanting to return to more comfortable territory.

Robert Zemeckis had a hit with ROMANCING THE STONE, which gave him some clout to do what he wanted at Universal Pictures.

SPLASH was the first release from Touchstone Films, Disney’s new foray into non-family-specific movies. And Lucas and Spielberg (who, for the first time in five years, didn’t make the highest grossing movie) got dark enough with TEMPLE OF DOOM and GREMLINS that it inspired the PG-13 rating. One of the first with that rating, RED DAWN, proved just as Reagan was being re-elected that there was money to be made in movies about fighting The Commies.

Which brings us to May 3, 1985, and our first movie…

GOTCHA!

The poster really emphasizes that it’s his “first time” and now he’s in danger – careful what you wish for, weergins! Sex = trouble!

GOTCHA! is the story of horny college student Jonathan Moore (Anthony Edwards between THE SURE THING and TOP GUN), who, on a European vacation with his buddy Manolo (Nick Corri – Rod from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET!), falls for Sasha Banicek (Linda Fiorentino, who had only been in VISION QUEST, but was about to do AFTER HOURS), a Czechoslovakian woman he meets in a Paris cafe. She’s amused enough with his terrible attempt to hit on her that she decides to take his virginity and then (judging from the montages) spend several days with him alternating between sex and romantic bicycle rides and shit.

Now all the sudden he’s smitten, so he ditches Manolo and their planned trip to Spain to go with Sasha to West Berlin. And then East Berlin. She says she’s a courier and needs to pick up a package. A very important strudel. And can he hold on to it for a bit? He’s an idiot, but he has a pretty good idea he’s in trouble before he’s having to lie to police and dodge bullets from dangerous agents including a guy named Vlad (Klaus Lowitsch, FIREFOX), who reminded me of Slugworth from WILLY WONKA, and KGB #1 (Gene LeBell).

I’d never seen this one before, but I knew it had something to do with a game where you “assassinate” other players with paintball guns. What surprised me about that is that the game is really only used in a pre-credits montage, and then it comes in a little at the end. I thought it would be about him playing a game that morphs into some genuine cloak and dagger shit. But maybe I was confusing it with a 1982 one called TAG: THE ASSASSINATION GAME. For this one the game isn’t really the main hook.

The tonal shifts are unusual. It starts out broad, in the ‘80s tradition of movies about college dudes who think with their dongs. In the montage of Jonathan playing the paintball thing on campus he’s doing Bugs Bunny tricks like popping out of a covered garbage can or wearing a disguise that includes a wheelchair. He offends a woman (Kari Lizer, PRIVATE SCHOOL, Matlock) by staining her sweater and, when she complains, asking her out. She calls him “without a doubt the biggest asshole I’ve ever seen in my entire life” and flips him off, which freeze frames for the title. And when he and Manolo arrive in Paris there’s a wacky joke about a crazy taxi driver (Bernard Spiegel) driving on fast speed. Then Manolo immediately picks up a random woman by making her think he’s Carlos the Jackal.

If you look up the director, Jeff Kanew, you think “Oh shit, no wonder,” because his previous movie was REVENGE OF THE NERDS. But as it gets into the plot it gets very serious, a spy movie with cat and mouse scenes, suspense, no idea who he can trust. And the pop songs drop out and it’s a genuine thriller score by Bill Conti (is this why he didn’t do ROCKY IV?) Ah ha, nice trick – it lures you in with this silliness, and then pulls the rug out from under you.

Except no, then every once in a while there will be a big, broad joke. One that I actually found kind of funny is when he’s trying to get a visa and there’s some kind of bureaucratic reason he has to go get a different kind of visa at a different window, and it’s the same woman at the second window but she makes him ask his questions again as if she’s a different person. You don’t get jokes like that in THE PARALLAX VIEW.

Another wacky bit is when he sees some heavily made up punks getting into their art van, tells them a Russian is trying to kill him and convinces them to give him a ride, but they’re going through a checkpoint so all the sudden he has a punk hair do and face paint. (Which promptly disappears in the next scene.)

A problem I had with this one was that I immediately hated Jonathan, was happy that Sasha was clearly lying to him and setting him up, and was disappointed in her for starting to actually like him. The woman who told him off at school (apparently named Muffy, which I think means she’s supposed to be dumb) was absolutely correct. I guess he’s supposed to be relatable because although he’s so fucking cool because he’s good at paintball and does a cool jump over the side of the stairs he seems incapable of achieving his greatest dream of having a girl react positively to his attempted journey into her pants.

I’m no expert but the problem may be that he doesn’t generally talk to women except to ask them on dates or tell them they’re beautiful. In the rare cases where he has a conversation he says asinine things. When she asks him if he’s a “weergin” he says oh no, of course not, when you’ve been with thirty, forty women you lose track of the number. Jesus christ, Jonathan.

Anyway, long story short, he comes back to the states without Sasha but with a roll of film that he figures out has “spy stuff” on it, and he can’t figure out what to do. He tries to tell his parents (Alex Rocco [THE GODFATHER, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN, THE STUNT MAN, THE COUNTRY BEARS] and Marla Adams [SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS]) but they ask if he’s on drugs or if he “knocked up” the girl he called and told them he met.

A part that seemed serious but made me laugh is when he thinks he’s being followed and goes to the payphone to call the FBI (if it explained how he knew the number I missed it) and he says, “Yeah, I’d like to report a following.”

You know, a following. There’s a following in progress. Get here quick!

He starts having another following, from the CIA, and he doesn’t trust them so he makes a ridiculous plan that finally ties together his pretend shooting skills and some veterinary tranquilizer darts established in the opening scenes. But also it depends on the pretty racist cliche that Manolo can use his Latino Powers to call “the homeboys” who, much like the truck drivers in THE WIZARD, are willing and able to show up out of nowhere to surround the CIA officers and pull guns on them. Which causes the CIA to just back down. And that’s the end of that. No negative repercussions.

In the end it seems like Jonathan and Sasha are in love, but there’s a final scene where he hits on Muffy again and she quite justifiably tells him to fuck off, so he shoots her in the ass with a tranquilizer dart. It ends on a freeze frame of the dart in her ass. So, no rape in this one, but REVENGE OF THE NERDS fans still get their comical assault of a woman to punish her for turning down the hero’s advances. Ha ha, she didn’t want to go on a date with a guy she hates so he drugged her to make her lose consciousness. Classic prank. (And apparently it became the center of the advertising campaign in Germany, judging from this poster I found!)

Here’s something weird. Jonathan’s parents are rich – most of their scenes are sitting by their giant swimming pool – and they have a housekeeper named Rosario (Irene Olga López). I immediately recognized her as the actress who plays Pilar, the housekeeper of Arthur Digby Sellers, writer of Branded (the bulk of the series) in THE BIG LEBOWSKI, because she acts like the exact same character. And there’s another scene where Manolo comes home to a trashed apartment, and when Jonathan tries to explain that someone tore it apart looking for the film, Manolo looks at the Van Halen poster hanging crooked from one tack and says, “Russians did this?” It reminds me of “So he thinks the carpet-pissers did this?”

All I’m saying is, the Coen Brothers definitely love GOTCHA!

Director Kanew also works as an editor – in fact, he cut 1980’s best picture winner, ORDINARY PEOPLE. And went on to direct EDDIE MACON’S RUN, TOUGH GUYS, TROOP BEVERLY HILLS and V.I. WARSHAWSKI. His 21st century films include a 2003 holocaust drama called BABIY YAR and the 2011 Will Sasso movie THE LEGEND OF AWESOMEST MAXIMUS.

I can’t say I’m a fan of GOTCHA!. The best I can say for it is that Fiorentino is great, and already shows shades of the out-of-your-league-woman-who-doesn’t-give-a-fuck power that became her trademark in THE LAST SEDUCTION. She gets to do an accent, and has more screen time than in (the much better movie) AFTER HOURS. And Edwards is good too, despite his character. Three years later he’d have a much better dork-who-falls-hard-for-a-woman-he-meets-right-before-getting-into-grave-danger movie, MIRACLE MILE.

But that’s okay, there will be plenty of other movies this summer, including two better ones released on this same Friday.

Special thanks to @saintevenlive on Twitter for letting me know this was available from Comcast on-demand. I was going to have to skip it because it’s not available streaming and I’m not venturing as far as the video store at this time.

Cultural references:

Jonathan’s professor (David Wohl, the dean from REVENGE OF THE NERDS) says “Go ahead, make my day” before shooting a tiger with a tranquilizer dart. SUDDEN IMPACT came out about a year and a half before GOTCHA!, so that was actually fairly current.

There’s a misquote of the “stinking badges” line from THE TREASURE OF TE SIERRA MADRE. That was less current.

Jonathan keeps reading The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, which I guess must be the inspiration for their France to Spain plan.

When he tells the punk band that he’s from L.A. they sing “I Love L.A.,” ask him if he knows Bo Derek or Joan Collins, and say they watch Dallas every week. “That J.R. is one bad dude!”

As I mentioned, there’s a Van Halen poster.

Cultural impact:

According to Wikipedia, it “later spawned a game for the Nintendo Entertainment System for use with the Zapper light gun called Gotcha! The Sport! (1987). A line of toys based on the game and film was also released.” I was skeptical as to whether they were really related until I saw a Universal Studios copyright on the game. But the only connection is that there’s a paintball game, and they’re wearing camouflage like they’re on a course. There are some punk rockers, but you shoot at them, they don’t give you a ride.

As far as the toy line, there’s no Sasha Banicek talking doll, just paint guns.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2020 at 10:57 am and is filed under Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Thriller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

32 Responses to “Summer of 1985 intro + Gotcha!”

  1. A personal favorite. Linda Fiorentino was without question the hottest actress of 1985 with GOTCHA!, VISION QUEST, and AFTER HOURS all in theaters that year. I just picked up the Intrada soundtrack release, which just came out a month or so ago.

  2. Love these serieses Vern!!! Both the year ones, the themed ones and the franchised ones. All gives a fresh coat of paint to things.

    Pound for pound, 84 through about 89 are fantastic years for movies. The action movies were great, the kids movies were in full swing, the fantasy/sci-fi movies were mind blowing and the raunchy comedies were at their peek. The “trash” from this period outshines their more prestigious brethern in fact. Except for very specific cases, I don’t remember which of my favorites came out in the summer and which were spread throughout the rest of the year, but these years were a delight for very entertaining movies.

    My family got a VCR is 85, and therefore a lot of our rentals were from 84/85/86 in that very early period. I always wondered if my being totally enamoured with this time period had something to do with that. But, as the years truck on, I have become very aware I am not the only one who thinks this, as this period is a major cultural touchstone. Might be EVERYONE has their nostaligia set by that first VCR though!

    I am honestly not sure if I saw GOTCHA! I thought I did, but this review doesn’t quite ring a bell. Oh well.

  3. “… [I]t could even be argued that the hardcore dance is getting a little bit out of control.”

    I feel dumb, but I have to admit that I don’t know what that means. Like moshing?

  4. I basically grew up on this type of low-impact, semi-comedic action thriller, in which a former teen heartthrob tries his hand at big-boy leading mandom by being put through the paces of a “Oh no, the Mob/KGB thinks I witnessed a murder/have the microfiche so I’d better get into a car chase and romance a beautiful woman who’s much more streetwise than me!” plot. To this day, it’s one of my favorite story formats: Everyman gets in over his head against impossible but not necessarily over-the-top odds and learns how to fight back. I could watch shit like this all day. This one isn’t one of my favorites (T.A.G. is my preferred dartgun-based comedic thriller, but it is a different kind of movie entirely), but in that vein I would recommend a little 1991 sleeper called RUN, in which Patrick Dempsey, fresh off of teen fare like CAN’T BUY ME LOVE, accidentally kills a podunk crimelord’s asshole son and spends the rest of the movie getting chased around some anonymous Rust Belt hellhole and trying to convince Kelly Preston to stop running away from him. It’s just about the platonic ideal of the type of movie I’m talking about. I miss the days when ruthless henchmen could just be doughy middleaged guys in cheap suits. It felt relatable, like the kind of predicament you or I might actually be able to survive if we got lucky. You don’t get that when the hero of a movie is up against an unending squad of MMA-fighting Ukrainian mercenaries in full tactical gear. Pretty sure you and I would be pretty fucked in that scenario.

    I’m looking forward to the rest of this exploration of 1985, one of the three or four very finest years the 80s had to offer.

  5. Ancient Romans – I don’t actually know what it means, which is why I make dumb jokes about it. It comes from the first verse of this song:

    https://youtu.be/Kr0tTbTbmVA

  6. Thanks. I feel better about not getting it. Now I just feel sad about “I’m not venturing as far as the video store at this time.”

    I hope everybody here is doing okay.

  7. I was going to bemoan the lack of Robocop 2 in the 1990 mentions, but then I remembered all of the “ink” youve given that franchise in other pieces.

    The game was kind of a big deal for a little while back in the day, but T.A.G. pretty much stole any excitement there would have been for this movie, and people caught on pretty quickly that it wasn’t reeeally about the game.

    It seems like Anthony Edwards was EVERYWHERE for like 20 years, then just decided to take it easy after ER.

  8. If you want more paintball action films (Credit to Paintball Gone Wrong list from Comeuppance Reviews):
    Born Killer (1990), Class Of 1999 2: The Substitute (1994), Hostile Intent (1997) and The Zero Boys (1986)

  9. I believe His Royal Freshness was just referencing how most rap songs at the time had a very hard beat and rhyme style but “Summertime” didn’t. Rap had gotten very hardcore by that point, so when rappers did occasionally make a mellow song, it was common for them to drop a few lines at the beginning apologizing for it in order to assure listeners that they hadn’t gone soft. LL pioneered this with “I Need Love” and Will himself did it at least once before in “Time To Chill.”

  10. I missed Masterblaster (1987), which should not be missed.

  11. Hell yeah, a new Vern series!

    Never saw the movie, but I know the title, because it was constantly on TV, which of course leads to the question why I never saw it, since I actually like the 80s spy/action comedy subgenre. (See also: JUMPIN’ JACK FLASH)

    That poster though…

    (The blurb on it says: “Jonathan loves, girls, games and fiddling with weapons. And he is about to get this.”)

  12. Wow, I did not expect this review to end with a description of the NES game and toy line. I would not have guessed those things existed.

    I am so excited for this series. It does kind of feel like summer.

  13. Ancient Romans

    May 18th, 2020 at 2:14 pm

    Thanks, Mr. M.

  14. I was ten back in 1985 (nobody do the math). Looking through the list of movies that received wide release in the summer of 1985, a few title pop out at me. I don’t know if any of them merit another look, but I seem to recall enjoying them (I still enjoy a couple of them):

    CREATURE – Directed by William Malone (FEARDOTCOM), starring Klaus Kinski (TIMESTALKERS)
    MY SCIENCE PROJECT – Directed by Jonathan R. Beutel (THEODORE REX), starring John Stockwell (KICKBOXER: VENGEANCE)
    PRAY FOR DEATH – Directed by Gordon Hessler (RAGE OF HONOR), starring Sho Kosugi (NINJA III: THE DOMINATION)
    BETTER OFF DEAD – Directed by Savage Steve Holland (ONE CRAZY SUMMER), starring John Cusack (ONE CRAZY SUMMER)

  15. But what about song that grooves and moves. Romance?

  16. Midwest Captain Feeney

    May 18th, 2020 at 6:16 pm

    Seeing the start to the summer series brought a huge smile that’s been missing during these dark times. Thank you! These pieces have become my favorite.

  17. Never liked GOTCHA that much. Loved Fiorentino from that moment on, but the movie was just too…dumb. And I usually dig these kind of stories. Klaus Löwitsch was cool, as usual.
    TARGET, from the same year, is one of my favourites i the genre. But I guess Gene Hackman, Matt Dillon and Arthur Penn is in a different class than Anthony Edwards, Jsu Garcia and Jeff Kanew.

  18. Falconman, Better off Dead is one of my favorite comedies of all time.

  19. New series looks great. Can’t wait to read more.

  20. How did Fiorentino get blacklisted? Was she that hard to work with?

  21. I don’t think we will ever know for sure if Fiorentino was “blacklisted” or not. I remember that a few directors didn’t have many nice things to say about her, on the other hand she also said that she decided to retire, when they gave her role in MIB 2 to the talking pug.

    Also RE: Klaus Löwitsch, that guy was quiet the popular actor here in Germany. And the theme music for his P.I. show PETER STROHM scared the shit out of me as a kid.

    Peter Strohm Intro and Ending 1989

    Peter Strohm Klaus Löwitsch Intro Mandy Winter He´s a man

  22. I miss a coupla movies from the 1984 filmscape: REPO MAN and THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION. And sure, I’d happily accept that for all their influence on 1985 they can easily be ignored, but (a) I still love them, and (b) a key theme of movies of this period was making sci-fi funny, as I suspect at least one of those beloved 80s PG classics will demonstrate.

    I’ve not seen GOTCHA!, but with GYMKATA out the same day, you have to think May ’85 was a great time for male grooming at the movies.

    Talking of which – and I was gonna add this to the Lockdown Potpourri – I finished Justified. Now I am wondering if we’ll get a review of STICK (released the week before GOTCHA!) and I shouldn’t just wait for that.

  23. REPO MAN and BUCKAROO BONZAI are right up there with BLADE RUNNER in terms of my guilty displeasures. They are all packed with genius but I’ve never found a way to remain engaged with them for the duration.

  24. I hope and trust you don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about that Mr. Majestyk.

    I can understand people not liking REPO MAN, even if I am not of that camp, but with BUCKAROO BANZAI I always feel that all you have to do is grab hold of one of Lithgow’s coats and enjoy the ride. That said, I’ve certainly watched (made watch) both of them with people who’ve turned around at the end and said, “Why do you like that stupid movie?”, or words to that effect.

  25. This is a case of thinking of the good riposte moments after posting, but I’ll post anyway.

    I suppose it’s inevitable that Mr. Majestyk would take issue with a film that famously coined Melon Farmer as an expletive.

  26. CJ, Strohm himself was even scarier. He was always sweaty and looked like he was choking on his own shirt collar.

  27. It seems like Anthony Edwards was EVERYWHERE for like 20 years, then just decided to take it easy after ER.

    DO NOT ask me why I remember this, but after the first three seasons or so, all the ER actors were up for a contract renegotiation. The show was a gigantic hit (good luck going to a Supercuts in the mid ’90s and not walking out with a ‘Clooney’), and of course the cast wanted a shit-ton of money. NBC was actually about to sack the fucking lot of them until the public freaked the fuck out.

    So, I’m sure those big-ass NBC paydays helped inform Edwards’ decision to kick back. He’s a guy that gets a lifetime pass from me because of Miracle Mile. You go Anthony…

  28. lots of interesting movies that summer! I just re-watched Back to the Future, I know everyone always comments on how good Michael J Fox is in it, to me its just amazing how great he is in that role. Didn’t realize Teen Wolf was released less than 2 months after Back to the Future!

    Also pretty cool that Brewsters Millions and Fletch were released like a week apart!

  29. Funny, REPO MAN is way easier for me to enjoy than BUCKAROO BANZAI. Admittedly, it’s closer to my own sensibilities and I’ve only seen the latter film once. But I also understand not liking RM. I showed it to my brother once, and he responded with, “It’s trying pretty hard to be a cult film.” And I wouldn’t say that’s untrue.

    GOTCHA! is one of those movies I had taped off TV as a kid. I have no memory of it playing in theatres, and don’t know why I recorded it, and it certainly wasn’t amazing, but it was okay. So I probably watched it six times.

  30. God bless you, Vern. I feel the same way about retrospectives and 1985 is a perfectly valid choice. There was a sort of excitement for summer movies that now feels like each week there’s just an obligatory tentpole, not to mention it’s year round, not seasonal. We’ll see if losing movies for a whole summer changes that. Maybe that’ll be a silver lining.

    1990 is an interesting transitional year but maybe one day you will finally review Days of Thunder or Young Guns II.

  31. Borg9: I’m not, like, deeply ashamed or anything, but I would prefer to find a way to get down with all those movies. I respect what they’re going for but there’s something about how they go for it that pushes me out.

  32. So excited Vern is doing this summer, for one movie and one movie only. I’ll probably be quite on his review of BACK TO THE FUTURE in a similar way pegsman was for THE WILD BUNCH.

    Linda Fiorentino had a part in the FBI case that ultimately saw John McTiernan’s time in jail. Don’t know all the details but that might have been one reason she was blacklisted.

    jojo: I vaguely remember that ER kerfuffle (or kERfuffle, if I were a tabloid writer) in the entertainment news. Edwards gets the lifetime pass for me for ZODIAC. That was some left field casting, since he’d already been off the show for awhile by the time the movie came out. Fincher cast him because they were friends, and spoke very highly of his character.

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