Fallen Off the Radar

Four dollars is a fine price for resurrection. I’d kind of forgotten about Fallen, the Denzel Washington supernatural thriller/police procedural; it came and went from theatres in 1998, earning a pittance at the box office. I’d caught it at the second run dollar cinema and remember liking it – not enough that it really stuck with me, but enough that I’d planned on checking it out again eventually. Enter HMV and its siren song $4 DVDs.

Wow! Four bucks. I can’t take a round trip on transit, buy a pint of beer or even the rent the movie for that little. Of course, there’s a reason that those discs are priced so cheaply: they’re not big earners, so someone in marketing figures out a price that consumers are willing to pay for films that they don’t feel are worth very much. Fallen is a helluva deal for that price.

If you go to rottentomatoes.com, where the movie is 42% fresh, you’ll find wildly divergent opinions of it. Some reviewers find it boring, some feel that it’s tense; some think Washington is miscast, others claim that he holds a troubled film together; many believe the ending riveting, yet others decry it as cheap. I’m in the category of the-film-is-flawed-but-still-great.

Washington stars as detective John Hobbes, who has sent a serial killer (Elias Koteas in a demonic stand-out performance) to death row. We soon learn that the murderer is actually possessed by a being named Azazel that can jump from body to body, and it’s/he’s out to get the man who caught him. After the killer’s execution, more victims are found killed in his same style, and as Hobbes slowly uncovers the unbelievable truth, his family is threatened by the demon, he’s made to seem guilty of the killer’s crimes and must go on the run, and he must find a way to defeat an entity that can masquerade as anyone. The concept that makes the film so great is that body transferral narrative; Azazel could be Hobbes’ nephew, his partner (played by John Goodman, just before he shot The Big Lebowski), his Captain (Donald Sutherland) or a complete stranger. (The stellar cast is rounded out by James Gandolfini, who also appears as a cop, and Embeth Davidtz, who plays a religious scholar with a personal connection to the demon.)

Writer Nicholas Kazan (son of Hollywood legend Eli Kazan) created a moody mix of noir-ish detective story and biblical thriller that reminds me of Angel Heart. Fallen has also been described as a mix of Se7en and The Exorcist. The pace in which it unfolds does harken back to the films of the ’70s (a plus!) and, I suspect, the very dark ending was probably only allowed because Se7en was a  box office smash a few years prior. Like Se7en, Fallen also has plenty of atmosphere and a heavyweight cast delivering heavyweight performances. Director Gregory Hoblit (Fracture, Hart’s War, Primal Fear) may not have the distinctive style of David Fincher, but he’s no slouch and there are plenty of stand out sequences in Fallen, including the “fast touch” scene, in which Azazel pursues Davidtz’s character by rapidly hopping bodies down a busy sidewalk.

So why was it a flop? I watched the DVD commentary with Hoblit, Kazan and producer Charles Roven, looking for answers, but I found none. (Although there are a few interesting production anecdotes and some solid insight into the creative process, it’s far from revealing.)

Regardless, I think the reasons Se7en made $327 million worldwide and Fallen a mere $25 million (according to boxofficemojo.com) have to do with perception, audience tastes and believability. For starters, it’s tougher to sell an audience on a supernatural angle outside of a horror film. Like I said earlier, Fallen is ballsy in the way it brings two very different genres together. As indicated by some of the Rotten Tomato reviews, however, not everyone was willing to get onboard with the concept. Se7en is a serial killer movie, with no supernatural elements; it isn’t asking you to believe in two different worlds.

And then there’s the star. (Warning: I’m going to try my best to avoid spoilers here but if you haven’t seen the film, you might wanna skip to the last sentence.) Washington is an A-lister and audiences probably didn’t like following his struggle only to find him end up the way he does. Se7en heaps misery on Pitt’s character, but physically he’s unscathed at the end of the film.

Now, you can pull an outrageous supernatural twist, and you can have a protagonist who is not what he seems (think The Sixth Sense) but it’s a very tricky game trying to set up the twist without either giving it away ahead of time or making it feel implausible. Fallen resolves its plot in a way that feels cheap and doesn’t give its hero a heroic climax (The Rolling Stones “Sympathy for the Devil” played at the very end is inappropriately used to put a tongue-in-cheek spin on something that’s been very serious and heavy up until then – it’s like, “Hey, we know this has been a bit of a downer, but screw it – let’s rock!”). I also feel that Hobbes is smarter than his actions at the end of the movie, but I could get past all these things because of all the other pluses in the film.

At least I could certainly buy into it enough for $4. You should too; Fallen deserves a second life.

 

-Dave Alexander

Father, Guns and the Most Popular Film in Quebec

If you visit almost any DVD retailer in Canada right now, you’ll see that the number one seller is the latest Star Trek film – except for in one province, in which the best selling movie is one you’ve only heard of if you’re from there. I spent this past weekend in Quebec City, where I visited the popular Archambault movie/music/video game/book seller, and the top seller on its DVD wall was a movie called De père en flic (a.k.a. Father and Guns). Ring a bell? It stars veteran actor Michel Côté and comedian Louis-José Houde. Right now you’re thinking either, “What? And who and who?” or “Of course I know this, you silly Anglo!” as you shake a cheese-and-gravy-covered French fry at your computer screen.

Father and Guns is the latest example of the gulf between French-Canadian culture and English-Canadian culture, the difference that sees French Canada supporting its film industry – hell, loving its homegrown cinema – and the average English Canadian running screaming from its homegrown cinema, as if just watching Paul Gross could give one swine flu (I’m 99 percent sure this can’t happen).

Trying to get your head around the success of French-Canadian cinema versus the failure of English-Canadian cinema – and I’m generalizing here; the 2006 drama Away From Her is a stunning exception, for example – can be trying to find your way through a cultural briar patch. (As The Dude says, “You know, a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-yous.”) However, since I started dating a Quebecois girl and have been exposed to more Quebec cinema, I’ve come to better understand a few things about these differences, which are illustrated nicely by Father and Guns.

For starters – and again, I’m making generalizations here, so bear with me – compared to English-Canadian culture, French-Canadian culture knows what it is. From traditional food, to music, to film to, um, Bonhomme, there’s an encompassing distinctness you don’t find in Canada outside of Quebec. Spend some time in Quebec City or Montreal and this becomes apparent.

Naturally, this is reflected in its cinema. Instead of making self-conscious movies about its identity (One Week is a recent example), there are more Quebecois films that are steeped in its identity (of course, having a more distinct language doesn’t hurt) without having to be so friggin’ neurotic about it.

Father and Guns is a buddy/cop movie in which the main characters are an at-odds father and son, both cops, who go on a father/son relationship-building nature retreat together as a pretext to glean information from a lawyer (also having a troubled relationship with his son) of a biker gang that has kidnapped an undercover officer. The two men must overcome their differences and work together to succeed; it’s a very Hollywood-type plot, so no surprise that it’s already been picked up for a Hollywood remake. Director/co-writer Émile Gaudreault also made the 1994 film Louis 19, le roi des ondes (Louis the 19th, King of the Airwaves), which was remade in Hollywood as Edtv, and here he brings a very universal concept to the screen.

He’s also got star power. Because there are bigger homegrown stars in Quebec and they can help build audiences for films, films can actually be profitable. Côté is a very popular veteran of Quebecois cinema (he’s starred in Cruising Bar, In the Belly of the Dragon and C.R.A.Z.Y.) and comedian Houde is one of the province’s top stand-ups. And because there’s a language barrier, those stars are more likely to remain in Quebec instead of going to Hollywood like so many a famous English-Canadian actor who doesn’t make Canadian films. Côté actually had the time to become star within his market.

Father and Guns is genuinely funny, particularly when it puts its leads through the father/son team-building exercises, such as mud wrestling and therapy. That said, it definitely isn’t going to gather the acclaim of something like The Barbarian Invasions, as Gaudrealt’s film is a very populist, Hollywood-style product with plot and action sequences that are fairly by-the-numbers (not to mention that eye-roller of a title). But on the flipside, it’s exciting to see Canadians that excited about a Canadian film. And it does retain a distinct Quebec flavour in the form of cultural, geographical and social references. It’s just not obsessing about those things, or denying them altogether.

I like that both French and English Canada makes some very odd little anti-Hollywood films (Last Night, for example, is one of my absolute favourites). I prefer that over our watered down wannabe Hollywood films (think anything that tries to pass itself off as American on a small fraction of a Hollywood budget – such as the pathetic Ryan Reynolds heist movie Foolproof). I definitely prefer it over our obvious culture-building projects, such as Men With Brooms, which cram Can-con down your throat with the wide end of a hockey stick.

Those inclusive cultural, geographical and social differences that have helped Quebec form a rather thriving cinema can’t be translated to English-Canadian films, but there are still some lessons to be learned. Namely that people like Hollywood-style films – the form has gelled after over a century – and they don’t like having their culture dictated to them. Father and Guns has a very Hollywood sensibility to it but also casually integrates cultural touchstones into its plot (for example, Quebec biker gangs have long been a headline-grabbing problem in the province) and dialogue (Quebecois slang is very much present).

Or, rather, I should say it naturally integrates these things, because it is more natural. Quebec City turned 400 last year, so the culture has had a lot of time to gel, so maybe it’s more a matter of time. Regardless, where I see a lot of English Canadian films wonder, “Who are we, what are we doing here?” I see a lot of Quebecois films say, “This is us, and here’s where we’re going.” Certainly, one of those attitudes is more attractive than the other to the average Canadian, non?

 

-Dave Alexander

A Serious Letter to my DVD Shelf

Dear DVD Shelf,

 

I know it’s been awhile since we spent some serious time together, and I just want to say, I’m sorry. When I changed apartments, I know it felt like we were turning over a new leaf, getting a fresh start at better organization, but, ultimately, I realize that I let you down.

For starters, I know you’re probably not happy about sharing space with my CDs, but they need a home too, and it's important to show some respect – after all they were around years before you arrived on the scene. I don’t even want to remind you of all the VHS tapes I got rid of; let’s just sleeping analogue dogs lie, shall we?

But I digress. I want to say I’m sorry for not properly organizing you, like I promised I would after I moved. I want to let you know that it was never my intention to let the genres get so mixed together. Your large horror section has become impure, I know. I don’t know how Superbad wound up next to Suspiria, but I can assure that it wasn’t some misguided attempt at alphabetization. And yes, I don’t recall how Body Snatchers and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake ended up sharing a corner with Neil Young Heart of Gold, The Incredible Hulk and that DVD of The Flock that some company sent me but we both know I’ll never watch.

I also realize there was a time when stand-up comedy had its own spot, but that era of order has passed; now the Sonny Chiba Collection, The Day the Earth Stood Still (hey, at least it’s the original, right?) and Tales From the Gimli Hospital have been forced into the same neighbourhood as The Pee-Wee Herman Show, A George Carlin disc and that Just for Laughs screener. And I’ll come right out and say that I’m well aware that my Aqua Teen Hunger Force seasons are not an appropriate way to separate the comedy and sci-fi films. But cut me some slack for Beastmaster being nestled beside Stuart Gordon’s Dolls and The Hammer Horror Set that I forgot to return to a co-worker – it may technically be fantasy, but it’s got monsters, after all. And it was directed by Don Coscarelli, my main who did Phantasm. Speaking of which, I’ve got his episode of Masters of Horror, "Incident on and Off a Mountain Road," tucked into the movie section. However, even though it’s an episode of a T.V. series, it is its own movie, even if it is only and hour long. Alas, quite frankly, I don’t even know where it belongs. There are grey areas in every relationship, dammit!

And please don’t be resentful that I’ve started stacking movies horizontally on that bottom shelf that has the extra clearance, but rejoice that my collection is growing as DVD prices drop. Even if I don’t watch the Denzel Washington movie Fallen for a while, how can you fault me for spending a mere $4.00 on it – new! Hell, I couldn’t rent it for that much. Ditto for the $3.00 Eliza Kazan noir Panic in the Streets. I also don’t feel it’s fair to moan and groan about Dracula: The Legacy Collection set I snagged for an insane $8.83 (before tax); it’s the best deal of the year. No, seriously, don’t groan under the weight of the discs, shelf – you came from Ikea, after all.

Now, before you criticize me for not getting around to letting go of that extra copy of Re-Animator or starting a western section, I’d like to remind you that, at the very least, I’ve always kept the Criterion Collection discs together in a nice, little segregated community. Among them La Haine, The Third Man, Days of Heaven, Onibaba, all those Wes Anderson films – surely that makes up for some of the disorganization. At the very least it makes up for the shame of having to bear the free copy of House of 1000 Corpses I’ve hung onto for no good reason. It does, doesn’t it?

I said it was free…

All I can do at this point is promise to thin you out and organize you by genre when I get time over the holidays. Although that growing stack of unwatched movies suggests I may just have other priorities. Besides, things could be worse. At least I’ve never knowingly forced you to hold a Bruckheimer movie, and that’s gotta count for something.

In closing, old friend, I want you to know that, although I could fit more of them on you, I have no intention in the immediate future of replacing your collection – I mean our collection – with Blu-Rays.

Please forgive my messiness, and thank you DVD shelf, for being so accommodating. Literally.

 

Yours truly,

 

-Dave Alexander

The ABCs of 2012

 

A is for Asphalt

If you took a drink every time we see asphalt cracking – roads, parking lots, runways – you need a liver transplant before the third act of the film.

 

B is for Better Off Dead

John Cusack stars in 2012 as failed writer/failed family man Jackson Curtis, but in my mind he’ll always be Lane Meyer in Better Off Dead – one of the great comedies of the ‘80s. In that film he’s trying to outrun wacky Asian drag racers who learned to speak English by watching Howard Cosell, a bully during a ski race and a BMX-riding paperboy who’s mercilessly trying to collect “two dollars!” In 2012, he’s trying to outrun fireballs, earthquakes and tidal waves. Congratulations, John, you’ve made it.

 

C is for Chiwetel Ejiofor

This fantastic British actor co-stars as righteous geologist Adrian Helmsley, who’s in charge of plotting the timeline for humanity’s secret survival plan in the face of the inevitable 2012 apocalypse. His character is expectedly broad and cliché, of course (this is a mega-budget Roland Emmerich film!), so for a better example of his skills, check out Dirty Pretty Things, Serenity, Inside Man and Children of Men.

  

D is for Do You Know How to Pronounce “Chiwetel Ejiofor?”

Because I sure don’t.

 

E is for Exhilarating End Times

Make no mistake, 2012 is a bad film, but that’s not the point. Like Emmerich’s Independence Day and the Day After Tomorrow, the reason to see this is because it’s big screen Destruction Porn. No one else has come close to depicting this magnitude and detail of so much wanton chaos. It’s mind blowing to watch entire cities explode, crumble and fall into crevasses.

 

F is for “Final Countdown”

If ever a movie needed Europe’s “Final Countdown” on the soundtrack, this is it. Talk about a missed opportunity. “Doot-doo-doo doot-doo-doo-doo-doo… .”

 

G is for Gasp

Audience members at the preview screening for 2012 were literally gasping at some of the visuals, such as an erupting volcano and falling office buildings, which always bring back memories of 9/11 footage. Later they were laughing at some of the awful dialogue.

 

H is for Harrelson

Woody Harrelson plays a hippie conspiracy theorist who broadcasts a show about the impending apocalypse from the radio station in his Winnebago. Make your own jokes…

 

I is for International Space Station

If the world powers knew ahead of time that the world was going to end, how does the crew of the International Space Station fit into all this? Would you bring them home to enjoy the last couple years of Earth as we know it, or would you leave them up there so they’d survive – but then they’ll never get back! At least they’d get an awesome view of the destruction. Did the government tell them to pack extra tooth brushes?

 

J is for Jerks

In a film with characters this broad you can tell within seconds of meeting them if they’re jerks or not. “That guy’s a rich plastic surgeon who wears glasses and owns a sports car – what a jerk!” “That portly Russian billionaire has a trophy girlfriend and a small dog – what a jerk!” “Look at that portly, glasses-wearing, rich scientist who wants to let our heroes die in order to save a hundred thousand other people – what a jerk!”

 

K is for Kismet

If you’re branded a jerk in this kind of film, you’ll be a) humiliated by someone you wronged and they’ll give you the finger to rub it in, b) be humbled by the heroes when your tough but logical decision is proven wrong by the power of the human spirit, C) be redeemed just enough that your inevitable death has a bit of weight to it.

 

L is for Last Night

For a hilarious and truly original End of the World film, check out Don McKellar’s Last Night, a low-budget Canadian movie from the ‘90s that doesn’t need computer animation to be profound. It’s kind of an anti-Roland Emmerich film, and a must-see.

 

M is for Morgan Freeman

When Morgan Freeman isn’t available to play your wise, self-sacrificing, everyman American President, who ya gonna call? That’s right, Danny Glover.

 

N is for Nuclear

Not weaponry, but family. One of the reasons this type of film has such mass appeal is that no matter how much destruction happens, you can count on the movie ending with a dad, mom, brother and sister smiling in the sunlight. (Emmerich even threw in a dog for good measure.) And yes, they’re all white people.

 

O is for Outrun

In case you were wondering, there is nothing a limousine can’t outrun, and here’s proof.

 

P is for Pickle

Woody Harrelson’s character loves pickles. So much that he’s always eating them and has entire fridge full of them. That’s called a character quirk and it’s supposed to make him more endearing. Actually, it’s just try-hard and annoying.

 

Q is for Questioning…

…the science of 2012. Don’t do it, just enjoy the ride.

 

R is for Righteous Platitudes

In an effort to excuse all the gleeful mindful destruction by forcing some meaning into the story, Roland Emmerich apocalypse movies contain noxious levels of characters spouting righteous platitudes about the good of humanity in the face of annihilation. There’s plenty of that in 2012 and it’s the worst part of the film.

 

S is for Status

One of the more interesting elements of 2012 is the very logical plot thread that sees the secret survival of humanity plan requiring massive amounts of private funding, leading to the world’s ultra-rich buying themselves tickets to salvation. The film grapples with this moral dilemma a bit, but in the end money talks and the status quo remains intact. The moral of the film? Who has the most wins.

 

T is for Tagline

“We Were Warned” is written across the movie poster, suggesting that this is going to have more of a connection to the Mayan calendar, which predicts that 2012 marks the end of the world. It’s only mentioned in the film, which is fine, because who cares about getting to the bottom of how the Mayans knew this info when there’s not gonna be anyone around to care about it.

 

U is for Unprecedented

The special effects in 2012 are unprecedented. I mentioned it earlier, but really, the level of digital destruction brought to the screen, and how real it all looks is chilling. And pretty thrilling.

 

V is for Vegas

Some of the most spectacular footage has Sin City being swallowed by the Earth. What happens in Vegas really does stay in Vegas after all…

 

W is for Wide-Eyed

As much as I like John Cusack, I think the main reason he was cast here is his ability to react to devastation with dumbfounded, wide-eyed shock – time after time after time after time. Watch his face in this reaction shot-only version of the limo footage and you’ll see what I mean. The end is particularly shocking.

 

X is for Xanadu

[WARNING MAJOR SPOILER]

At the end of 2012 the saved plot a course for their new Xanadu, Africa, which due to the shifting of the Earth’s poles and crust and whatnot was spared the great flood. Basically, arkloads of rich white people are headed to settle in Africa. Yup, that’ll end well…

 

Y is for Year 2012

If they Mayans are right, I’ve really got to get all those unopened Criterion Collection DVDs watched before it’s too late!

  

Z is for Ziggy

Not even perpetually bummed out cartoon character Ziggy has ever had a day this bad. But if he did, I imagine it would start with him opening up a notice in the mail that his property insurance has expired, all while a tsunami wave is roaring towards his house in the background. Poor guy...

-Dave Alexander

Waxwork, You Make Me Melt

Normally, a trip to the Ontario Science Centre wouldn’t remind me of Jumbo Video, but this weekend it did, and for a very good reason. This weekend, I saw the latest Body Worlds exhibit, called The Story of the Heart. In case you’re been living in a steamer trunk in someone’s attic for the past decade Body Worlds is the travelling exhibit comprised of actual dead bodies (and body parts) of humans (and some animals) that have been plastinated in order to preserve them. Created by Gunther von Hagens, they’re part science, part art and part magnet for our morbid curiosity. They also reminded me of the 1988 movie Waxwork, which I bought (used) from the local Jumbo Video when I was a kid and watched over and over again. (Even more than my used copies of Above the Law and Robo Cop 3!)

It’s been years since I’d seen the film, but a few weeks ago I scored the DVD of Waxwork and the sequel Waxwork II: Lost in Time, for four bucks no less – for that price I decided to suck it up and the buy the crummy no frills pan-and-scan version that Artisan put out. Curse them, but it’s the only North American DVD version available.

The film stars Zach Galligan, who most know from his starring role in Gremlins, and… well, not much else. (I don’t what the heck happened to him, but by 1994 for he was headlining Cyborg 3: The Recycler.) Here, he plays Mark, a spoiled rich, clean cut Republican-type, which is pretty bizarre hero choice for a horror movie. The movie starts out like a bad John Hughes film, with Mark and his friends hanging out at school and trading “clever” dialogue. We learn that he’s hung up on China, a stuck-up prima donna who’s more interested in a guy on the football team and– ah, who cares, it’s all filler until a bunch of the kids go to wax museum. Then the fun starts.

The waxwork is actually in the middle of the suburbs, which may be subtext but is probably more a case of the location people finding a creepy mansion that happened to have a lawn and white picket fence. In any case, they acknowledge the absurdity of it in the film and it’s a nice comedic touch in movie with a Tales From the Crypt spirit to it. David Jennings, who you might recognize from movies such as the Omen, Time Bandits and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, plays the creepy curator. Along with his midget butler and tall, gangly butler, he ushers the kids into the exhibit space, which houses dozens of roped off displays based on horror movies, from the classics, such as Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy, to more contemporary ones, such as The Little Shop of Horrors, Night of the Living Dead and, oddly, Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive.

When one of the kids steps over the rope, he’s transported inside the world of the display, and give a period makeover. He enters a cabin in the woods, where a man – played by John Rhys-Davis – turns into a werewolf. The kid dies and, back in the real world, becomes part of the exhibit. There’s a back story involving a cop who investigates, a connection to Mark’s dead grandfather and a wheelchair-bound former acquaintance of his grandfather’s, played by British character actor Patrick Macnee (The Avengers TV show), and some horror movie mumbo jumbo informs us that once the waxworks gets eighteen victims (six plus six plus six = evil!) the statues will come to life and – again, blah, blah, blah, let’s get back to the monsters.

Writer/director Anthony Hickox dreamed up an ideal concept for a budding horror fan such as myself: a bunch of mini-monster movies (occurring every time someone gets sucked into a display), ending with a huge battle with all the monsters (OK, and some aliens and The Marquis de Sade). It’s that more-creature-bang-for-your-buck philosophy that drove the Universal monsters team-ups of the ‘40s and the Godzilla-versus-a-buttload-of-giant-monsters movies. (The Waxwork creatures come courtesy Bob Keen: Alien, Hellraiser, Candyman.)

Plus, there was some titillation with the de Sade stuff, and – even better – gore aplenty. Heads get crushed and ripped off, gross zombies attack and, the pièce de résistance: the white room sequence. It takes place in an all white room in which there’s a guy strapped to a table who has a chunk of his leg stripped of the meat. A vampire tears another chunk off and eats eat, then three females vamps in white gown arrive and are promptly staked, spraying blood all over the walls. One is even impaled on champagne bottles, sending sprays of bubbly everywhere. These were the gnarliest things I’d ever seen in a movie up to that point.

Watching Waxwork again gave me the same thrills as my second-hand Jumbo Video copy. Even if the duds, hair and speech are all hopelessly dated, the concept is still solid and the pre-CGI effects are classic. And, in one sequence, the cop digs into one of the wax figures with a knife and retrieves a chunk of flesh which looks an awful like a fragment of one of the Body Worlds corpses. I wonder if there was a Jumbo Video in Gunther von Hagens’ neighbourhood…

 

-Dave Alexander

Meeting Women The Hardbodies Way

I’m convinced that there’s more 1980s packed into the 88 minutes of Hardbodies than there was in that entire decade.  The first three minutes alone presents an exceptional, if embarrassing, smorgasbord of ‘80s movie cliches. As the synth-heavy pop-rock soundtrack kicks in, the camera ogles a bevy of bleach-blonde bikini babes rubbing themselves with suntan oil (sunblock? Pshaw!); a curvy neon pink font announces the cast; we’re treated to a montage girls frolicking, guys eyeing them up with cartoonish lust, sunglasses with big, bright frames and strings holding them on, a ghettoblaster and roller skating. All the while the theme song – as so many ‘80s movie tunes do – repeats the title while encouraging us to party: “The boys all cheer for hardbodies.” It’s enough to make you wanna choke Cory Feldman with a legwarmer.

Then, seconds after the three minute mark, we’re treated to the first of many pairs of bare breasts – mostly natural, as in ’84 the fakes in movies were still mostly relegated to porn. And, although it’s horribly misogynistic, there’s a certainly honesty to those ‘80s movies that cut right to the chase. According to the IMDb, Hardbodies was originally produced for Playboy television but then made it into theatres, so go figure that the plot has a young beach bum teaching three middle-aged men on vacation at a beach house, how to score with women (a classic '80 comedy plot if I ever heard one)

In fact, Hardbodies taught me all kinds of invaluable info about how to, y’know, get chicks.

At least in the 1980s.

In sex comedies…

First off, lie to them. Scotty Palmer, our beach bum protagonist, borrows one of the older guy’s convertibles to trick girls into thinking it’s his. Later, he pretends to trip and fall in from of a roller skater, and upon finding out she’s a model, he says he knows a bunch of modeling agents who are going to be at his party. And if that doesn’t work, Scotty also taught me that you can always just find a band comprised of girls and pose as an agent so they’ll hire you. So many options.

I also learned that it’s perfectly acceptable to grab the ass of a woman that you don’t know, in public, because she’ll either laugh it off or become interested in you. But if that doesn’t work give out ice cream cones with party invites on ‘em, write a message on a pizza and deliver it to a group of girls at a food court table, or hide inside a garbage can and hand out party invites to women who try to use the receptacle for what it was meant for. Really, what female can resist a man who smells like French fry boxes?

Finally – and this is a big one – if you throw a party, make sure there are as many situations as possible that you can use to get laid. You can splash wine on the ladies’ clothes and convince them to get naked (at the very least you’ll see boobs, as, according to this film, the bra was invented sometime after the mid-‘80s). You can also pretend to be a fashion photographer and start taking pictures until they automatically pose together with their tops off. Or you can even just sit naked with a crown on and orchestrate a contest where they line up to guess the size of your penis.

Of course, if the neon lights, bottles of Budweiser, balloon and various forms of assault don’t work, you can bring out the big guns and the show the ladies your fully automated water bed. Use the 1950s car dashboard controls to play sexy music, activate the laser lights and disco ball, engage the wave machine or start the fog machine. (I swear, swear, swear I didn’t make any of that up.)

OK, so now that you’ve learned all of the mysteries of women from Hardbodies, just remember a few other tips from the film to get you on your ‘80s way. If a bunch of bullies are after you, be sure to push one of ‘em into a row of parked motorbikes, causing a hilarious domino effect. If someone challenges you to a fight, tuck your sleeveless shirt into your tight jeans remind them that you know karate. And, it goes without saying, if you’re enjoying music, be sure to spin around once and clap your hands while dancing.

So there you have it – may all your parties have hotubs and may the girls be as topless as the jeeps.

[To see Hardbodies, get your greasy hands on Anchor Bay's re-release, here.]

-Dave Alexander