It Came From 1987

“That’s good, because she’s a predator.” – Fight Club

I walked into a bar in 1987.  The bartender said, “Hey, the party is in the back.”

I had started doing these more or less in order by year.  It’s a retrospective, and it has nothing to do with box office – it’s me going through the movies of the year and picking the ones I like.  They are in no order.  One thing about these movies – 1987 seems to be a year when the videocassette was fully in bloom, and many of these movies had a much better life on VCR than they did at the local movie theater.

Again, these are in no particular order, but one thing struck me as I went through the list:  this is the strongest list, by far, of any year I’ve done, with amazing, inventive time.  Only two of the movies on this list are sequels:  Evil Dead II, which was a remake; and House II (which was entirely different than the original House), and both were far more comedy than horror.

Movies were better then.  Much better.

1987 might have been Peak Movie.

Outrageous Fortune:  Yes, Bette Midler is annoying, but so is Shelley Long, and both are hilarious in this movie about actresses who get involved in a spy caper.  This movie marks the movie regeneration of George Carlin, whose career had been sitting in a dumpster until this.

Mannequin:  Kim Cattrall really can’t act.  Andrew McCarthy’s main acting skill was his hair.  It didn’t really matter in this amazingly stupid movie about a mannequin that comes to life only with Andrew McCarthy is alone with it.  That’s it.  Silly.  Stupid.  Cheap to make.  And fun.

If your wife was a one-legged mannequin, could you stand her?

Lethal Weapon:  Shane Black was the writer of this movie (more about him later) and it cost $15 million to make and hauled in $120 million before VHS revenues.  It was the origin of buddy cop movies and was from the time when Gary Busey made money by acting, and not acting strange and before Mel discovered tequila.  Helmets on motorcycles, kids.  Helmets.

Evil Dead II:  It’s not really a sequel, it’s a re-make of Evil Dead.  The horror levels are fairly low, and the special effects are really quite good given the $75 budget they were working with.  To describe this movie?  Lovecraft meets the Three Stooges® and Bruce Campbell with a chainsaw hand.

Raising Arizona:  The cover to this movie sucked, but I had seen nearly everything else in the video store, so I popped down my $2.00 to rent it (Be Kind, Rewind!) and cracked a cold one in front of the TV.  Wow.  I was not expecting that.  The Coen Brothers did a great job making a comedy about kidnapping children through the eyes of a convenience store robber.  By the end of the credits, I was hooked, and the last line made perfect sense.  No studio would take a chance on a movie like this today, because it doesn’t make fun of families.

The Secret of My Success:  A smart kid just pretends to be an executive and makes the company successful instead of doing the mailroom job they hired him for?  Micheal J. Fox was born for this role.  He was witty and quick, and Helen Slater was totes adorbs.  Did the movie change my life?  Yes.  I used this idea to start working at a company without being hired and it resulted in a hostile takeover, but thankfully I got probation and can still own firearms.

I never asked A.I. to put in “East Asians” but I guess it decided that Chicago gangs in the 1930s were ruled by Fu Manchu?

The Untouchables:  David Mamet’s first writing credit from this list, and Brian De Palma?  Amazing work.  The big bad guy was Capone, the good guy was Eliot Ness.  Inexplicably, Sean Connery was tossed in, because he needed something to do because he wasn’t making Highlander.  Historically accurate?  Of course not.  Wrap up the whole, big story in two hours?  Yup, including baseball bat management techniques.

I just asked for ponies.

Predator:  I was driving along on a cool night, when I decided to stop at a drive-in movie theater.  Yeah, those existed once upon a time.  The title of the movie looked sketchy, but Arnie was in it, so, maybe it wouldn’t suck.  OH MY!  It was one of those great times when I was shocked by how utterly perfect the movie was in every respect.  Accurate?  No.  Perfect?  Yes.  From the opening credit to the nuclear explosion, it was a perfect movie.  Shane Black, proving he’s a perfect human, didn’t write it, but played a one of Dutch’s guys.  A perfect movie.

Spaceballs:  A silly movie, but I saw it in 70mm, back when theaters used film.  70mm is probably not necessary for a Mel Brooks comedy, but, hey.

Oh, my, what sort of cannibalistic ritual did the A.I. plan for Kevin?

Adventures in Babysitting:  Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first:  I am no longer dating Elisabeth Shue.  She’s much older than I am, and I decided the relationship would never work.  Also, I hope to meet her one day.  The director, Chris Columbus, didn’t have enough to do after discovering Hispaniola, so he decided to take up movies, with some small success in movies you may not have heard of, like this one and Home Alone.

If only the cop was Elvis.

RoboCop:  Cop lives.  Cop gets shot.  GloboLeft ruins a city on purpose to get Power and Profits®.  Cop gets reanimated into a robot.  Cop falls in love.  I’m having a hard time determining if this isn’t a documentary.  Regardless, it stars Peter Weller, who got bored with acting and decided to become a college professor – RoboProf.  Seriously, he’s a professor, and probably the second coolest academic on the planet.

Summer School:  Nothing could make me not love this very stupid movie.  Mark Harmon is a loser teacher who has to teach summer school to a group of loser kids.  There’s a dog.  Harmon falls in love with Kirstie Alley before she became the size of a refrigerator.  Odd note:  I have talked to a person who gave me first person testimony that Kirstie Alley was *at least* a decade older than official sources claim.

More accurate than you might guess.

No Way Out:  Sean Young was really hot in this movie, so hot that the crazy might have been worth it.  Kevin Costner continued his domination of 1987 with this second big movie of 1987.  It was a great movie.  Spoiler alert:  You’d never guess that Will Patton was actually Godzilla®.

House II:  The Second Story:  As I said above, House and House II have zero in common except that both were covered by building codes.  There is nothing at all logical about this movie, and it is about as scary as the Building Code Commission Agenda.  It’s silly.  It’s fun.  It’s nothing that Hollywood would make today.

Amazon Women on the Moon:  Another rental.  I had no idea what I was in for.  As a kid growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, late night television was great because 5^th graders can’t get dates legally because they can’t drive.  This is a very, very underrated movie.  On a $5,000,000 budget, it produced a box of candy cigarettes and some shiny stones as revenue.  Why?  Gosh, manslaughter charges against the director (on another movie) for starters.  Watch the part “Son of the Invisible Man” for amazing chuckles.

Now with 100% more PEZ®.

Real Men:  John Belushi died, so the world left us with Jim.  Jim?  Not so bad in movies like this.  Is it serious?  NO!  It’s a 1980s comedy with John Ritter.

The Princess Bride:  An utter classic in every respect, as long as you can ignore that Rob Reiner and Mandy Patinkin (huge GloboLeftElite) were involved.  It cost $16 million.  Box office was $31 million.  Cultural impact?  Huge.  Much bigger than that amount.  I read the book (got it from those little book order things that they gave out at school) before the movie came out.  We need more giants in film.

“As you wish . . . ” and I wish there was more Elvis.

House of Games:  David Mamet’s second spot on the list.  Mamet is actually (sort of?) on the TradRight now.  Annnnnnyway . . . this movie is about conmen and con games.  I saw this one on HBO® or Skinemax® and was surprised at the tight plotting and especially liked Joe Mantegna’s acting, even if his name is too long and has too many vowels.

Prince of Darkness:  One of John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trio.  This movie involves alternate dimensions and the Ultimate Evil all rolled into one, complete with Susan the radiologist (glasses) and Alice Cooper.  It is a horror movie, so if you don’t like those, it’s a skip.  Carpenter at his best.

Arnold needs to pump some iron . . . looking like a girly man.

The Running Man:  I thought this movie was pretty schlocky when I originally watched it back in the day.  Sure, it was fun.  Then I rewatched it with one of my boys and he said, “Dad, this movie is amazing!  Why don’t they make them like this now?”  Indeed.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles:  John Hughes, Steve Martin, and John Candy make THE Thanksgiving movie.  ‘nuff said.

Overboard:  Kurt Russell as a down-on-his-luck widowed carpenter who convinces amnesiac rich heiress Goldie Hawn that she needs to do the laundry and make the chicken tenders in order to reach mini-golf nirvana.  Amazing.

How good was 1987?  I skipped Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.  Why?  It was a downer.

1987 was filled with riches compared to the corporate, soulless, paint-by-the-numbers stuff we see today.  What movies do you love that I left out?