Busted Up

Busted Up

United States – 1986

Director – Conrad E. Palmisano

MCA Home Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 33 minutes

If you’ve ever wondered why the hero so often makes a boneheaded deal with the villain, one that contradicts what we’ve been let to expect by the last hour of the movie, then film theorists have an answer for you. Movies are like dreams they say, offering us a vision of the impossible or improbable fantasy. Continuing in this vein, later critics rely on the Freudian psychoanalytical assertion that dreams are a manifestation of subconscious desire.

I suppose that this makes sense considering that the hero’s bargain flies in the face of logic and lived experience (both his and the audiences) which tells us that “might makes right”, that he is good because he wins. Instead, these movies proffer a reflection of that in the claim that right makes might, that the good guy wins because he is good. (Or at least normatively. He should have even if he doesn’t, therein lies “tragedy”, that generic leakage of reality into fantasy that seems intent on capturing our trust.) It’s a rather large leap to expect that devious characters we’ve just been led for the last hour and a half-plus into despising will suddenly be humbled into keeping up their side of the bargain. A roller coaster ride of emotions going from hate to trust in less time than it takes to digest your corn-nuts, but that’s the point. Not only does it make for some compelling tension and storytelling but it also feeds our more modern, more secular (Democratic) desire to believe that for the little guys (us!) whose reality is far too often dictated by the whims of Capitalist might) there really is an inviolable and objective moral justice out there, somewhere.

Such is the fantasy of Earl Bird, an ex-con, single father, amateur boxer who wants to believe, has to believe that adherence to a simple moral code will bring him absolution. Boxing has always been a sport imbued with blue collar mythos, and indeed, for Bird, boxing is just a fucking job, but this particular job just happens to be the foundation of an old neighborhood. When the gym he co-owns with his partner/trainer Angie (Stan Shaw) is threatened with a hostile buyout, Bird agrees to wager the fate of the entire neighborhood on a single fight. Presciently named “The Foundation,” the gym serves as a literal community center for a parade of old-timers and troubled kids, and as a metaphorical anchor in a neighborhood suffering economic decline. And, in case the drama wasn’t tangible enough, in steps Bird’s “ex-old-lady” Simone (Irene Cara,) a failed pop singer doing a low rent Irene Cara act in a strip club and now demanding Bird’s retirement and the foundation of a cozy family life.


And oh what a feeling it is now that the fate of an entire demographic hinges on a single boxing match. The battle between Bird and Tenera (who, thorough unexplained flashbacks we are led to understand killed Bird’s pal in prison) although mined for second act tension and inspiring montages, is only a distraction. The real conflict is between flannel and denim community struggling for survival and (white)wine-swilling, classical music-listening capitalism intent on gentrification and “progress.” Couching this class war in the very contemporary economic depredation of the Reagan dynasty, firmly places it in the fantasy world where issues of great moral import can be decisively resolved through acts of personal heroics. Busted Up’s simpler more subtle narrative calls to mind the extreme jingoism of another 80’s "boxing" movie, 1989’s Robot Jox (Stuart Gordon) in which the Soviet Union and the USA not-so-symbolically pummel each other into spare giant-robot-parts. Humbled by Achilles’ victory and moral constitution Alexader is “saved,” and the Cold War is resolved with a friendly man-hug. If in the course of dissecting the socio-cultural symbolism of a low budget movie, I am ever again accused of reading too much into it, of expecting too much from what is claimed to be “just a movie,” I shall say; “No, this movie is expecting too much of me.”

In 1986 things turned out well for Bird’s demographic, but by the end of the decade writer/producer Damian Lee had apparently lost hope. 1989’s Boxcar Blues (aka Thunderground) found Bird (played again by Coufos) fallen on Hard Times, utterly destitute and riding the rails in the deep south, boxing for booze money. Busted Up could probably be dismissed and forgotten as a cheap, three-sequels too late Rocky knock-off with an unnecessarily jazzy score, or a less priaprismic pre-make of Bloodsport minus the screaming. Despite its grandiose trappings, Busted Up is not a grand-scheme type of movie. There is no glory, no celebrity for Busted Up’s humble, blue-collar protagonist Earl Bird, but for all its humility, the implications are nonetheless universal.

Boxcar Blues

United States - 1989

Director - David Mitchell

VCII Home Entertainment, 1991, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 36 minutes  

The Birds

The Birds

United States - 1963

Director - Alfred Hitchcock

MCA Home Video, 1985, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 59 minutes

Unceremoniously remade by Mexican biologist Rene Cardona Jr. in 1987 under the title Beaks: The Movie, Hitchcock's The Birds was itself based on a short story in which the birds were a metaphor for the sinister specter of communism. That's deep.

Terror In the Aisles

Terror In the Aisles

United States - 1984

Director - Andrew J. Kuehn

MCA Home Video, 1985, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 24 minutes

Hosted by Donald Pleasence and  Nancy Allen.

Ring of Steel

Ring of Steel

United States – 1994

Director – David Frost

MCA/Universal Home Video, 1994, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 34 minutes

While competing in a regional fight for a spot on the Olympic fencing team, Alex kills his opponent in a freakish slow-motion accident. As a crimson dollop of gore slides down his foil, one can almost physically feel the yoke of guilt dropping like a widow's veil upon Alex’s frail conscience. His trainer, fearing for his own career refuses to associate with him anymore and Alex, in his poet shirt and buccaneer mullet is cut adrift to drown his sorrows in reasonably priced imported beer. What is a babyfaced former shoo-in for the Olympic fencing team to do when it seems as though no one cares about him and the things he wants? Why not resort to that time honored male tradition of using a woman to make yourself feel better? Just as the six-pack is starting to dull his aching self-pity, Elena appears to forward the plot a little more. She fences too, that is after all how Alex met her, but that’s not what girls are for in dude movies. Instrumental value refers to much more than the frantic thrusting of your bendy wire sword. After physically comforting Alex, she disappears again for the bulk of the film as the hostage and bargaining chip of Joe Don Baker who lurches onto the screen like a sack of microwaved hamburger with teeth.

Y’see, Joe Don is also something of an outcast, you would be too if you were an obese bi-polar gerbil, but he at least is aware of his position in the social hierarchy. Joe Don, who remains nameless throughout the film, runs a skeezy nightclub called the Ring of Steel where yuppies come and twitch to 90’s club music and, if they buy enough coke, go downstairs watch Renaissance Fair nerds fight each other to the death in an old industrial holding tank. With Elena as collateral, Joe Don ostensibly forces Alex to fight, but with all the unused plotholes lying around he doesn’t seem in too much hurry to escape. Actually, he looks like he’s having a pretty good time, as long as he continues to be showered with the affection of the crowd. It isn’t until he has to confront the big bully Jack, Joe Don’s ugly and stupid house champion that Alex get’s squeamish. When the bigger, meaner, uglier nerd comes and stomps all over your paper crown, it’s not so much fun anymore.

Ring of Steel is the quintessential nerdsploitation film. Nerds are an easily exploited demographic, their ostracism often further distorting already blunted social skills, but I understand the sad desperation, the need for recognition and acceptance that breeds a blind optimism in nerds like Alex. “Someday,” his tender heart cries out, “they’ll all realize that fencing is really cool and then, on that glorious day I’ll be a star and everyone will like me.” While most nerd-centric cinema openly mocks, or commiserates with nerds, Ring of Steel is completely oblivious to its own tragic humor. In effect it is narcissistically self unaware, missing of the ironic-forest for the ego-trees. But I’m not complaining, watching mulleted men in tights squabble and fight each other is a chilling, entertaining reminder of public school days when the not-so-reviled kids would attack and denigrate those few outcasts even lower than themselves like wounded dogs fighting for the last tattered scrap of dignity. Stuck between these two demographics, who can blame nerds like Alex (writer/star Robert Chapin) when they seek an escape in fantasy.

Thanks to Action Packed Cinema for the trailer.

Tough and Deadly

Tough and Deadly

United States - 1994

Director - Steve Cohen

MCA/Universal Home Video, 1995, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 32 minutes

If after seeing the 1993 action flick Back In Action starring Roddy Piper and Billy Blanks you thought to yourself, “This movie shouldn’t have a sequel”, you would be among a respectably discerning demographic. But if, after pondering for some time over a highball, you subsequently concluded, “What this movie does need is spiritual continuation, the further development of the Blanks/Piper dynamic, and the expansion of their unique and compelling action universe/milieu”, you would be in a small and daring group of envelope pushers.

Elmo Freech (Piper), a private detective with painfully macho and stylishly-unmatched uber-90’s perma-stubble stumbles across the comatose form of a man who, thanks to an arbitrary flip of Freech’s pocketknife at a wall map will soon be known as John Portland (“One more inch and you would have been called Puget Sound!”). Portland, played by a perpetually sweaty and obscenely fit Billy Blanks is a deep cover CIA agent who has just been beaten, drugged and car-wrecked to the point of amnesia. Together they spend the rest of the movie punching the shit out of people until they are unconscious and then punching them in the face again for extra “actioniness” in a quest to discover for themselves what the audience saw in the first five minutes of the film.

Tough and Deadly attempts to load a tasteless and mindlessly violent bash-fest with enough shitty, witless one-liners delivered by the eerily youthful Piper, and enough flying high-kicks delivered by the chiseled-yet-childlike Blanks to dull our minds beyond the point of realizing that this flick isn’t about a goddamned thing. Unfortunately, lacking the finesse and grace one would expect from either of these gentleman actors Tough and Deadly fails to deliver a sufficient volume of either wit or wailing to achieve its goal.

Ski School

Ski School

United States - 1990

Director - Damian Lee

MCA Home Video, 1990, VHS

Run Time -1 hour, 30 minutes

Spooky Midnight VHS Assault #1: Dirty Tennis

Dirty Tennis

United States - 1989

Director - George Bloom III

MCA Home Video, 189, VHS

Run Time - 33 minutes

Dirty Tennis was written by and stars Dick Van Patten of 8 Is Enough. If you've ever wanted to know what a hairy middle aged New Yorker doing a bad Benny Hill impression while dipped in Vaseline looks like, here it is. I have nothing more to say.
This movie will be shown during the Awful Hour, tomorrow night before the Kung Fu Grindhouse 5th Anniversary Opener. If you live in Seattle, I pity you.

 Bwaaaahhhhhh! Drink Tea, be greasy!

Mr. T's Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool

 

Mr. T’s Be Somebody… Or Be Somebody’s Fool
United States - 1984
Director – Jeff Margolis
MCA Home Video, 1984, VHS
Run Time – 1 hour

It’s hard to say something positive about this movie without sounding like I’m trying to be retro and ironic. I have a hard time separating the history of the Reagan years from its consumer products. Hence I am more than just a little suspicious of anything retro 80’s. Mr. T’s Be Somebody Or Be Somebody’s Fool may be one of the few exceptions to my 80’s complex, though now that I’ve said so I’m sure I’ve screwed that up too. Except for memories of my everyday life, my cultural memory of the 80’s is dominated by Mr. T. He was on The A Team, had his own cartoon, was in movies, had toys, cassette tapes, breakfast cereal, the list goes on.



As one of the original generation of kid’s motivational video-tapes it’s easy to look back with incredulity on this genre. They seem almost crude, but they were the first of their kind, experiments. Child psychology is more sophisticated now, and those of us doing the ridiculing are all grown up and we like to pretend that we’re no longer impressionable. But watch Be Somebody, and you know for sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt that even though it’s scripted, Mr. T was fucking sincere when he made this movie (and the separately available companion book, LP and cassette.) And you still watch with rapt attention because after all these years you can’t dilute the potency of the T. Unlike Charles Barkley who 9 years later would claim that he “wasn’t a role model,” Mr. T knew he was, wanted to be, and took the job seriously. (and yes, made some money at it.)


With the help of musical arrangements by Ice-T and special appearances by New Edition (w/Bobby Brown) and Valerie Landsburg (Fame and Thank God It’s Friday) T admonishes kids to exercise, avoid corporate apparel schemes, control their anger, rap about who they are and above all be themselves. The undeniable purity of message climaxing in a phenomenal solo piece about respecting ones mother, performed by T and backed up by the moms of three kids in the film. The kids themselves include a number of future stars including members of The Dimples, among them Stacy Ferguson.

It’s true, Mr. T cannot escape his bubble in time, ensconced as he is within the dichotomous optimism of 80’s urbania, but through a series of well-timed costume changes in Be Somebody, he still effectively delivers his message a quarter century later.
Be Somebody boils that message into one potent essence. T is not pandering, the delivery here is deadpan and absolutely serious. On the surface Mr. T is larger than life; absurd but undeniably genuine. That is the whole point, and that is why it works. T is simultaneously the front-man and the hype-man, dropping knowledge and working the crowd. He is a beast, a huge man of simple enthusiasm, dedication and most of all honesty. His willingness to try and make a difference while wearing tiny camouflage tennis shorts is ample proof.

 

I scanned the three images above from the companion book advertised in this flyer that came with my video. Watch the whole video on YouTube in 6 parts.

This review first appeared in issue 8 of Paracinema Magazine, Dec. 2009.

Tragedy Strikes: Metalstorm

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn
United States - 1983
Director - Charles Band
MCA Home Video, 1983, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 24 min.


Normally this would not be a problem, I have repaired many broken and damaged VHS tapes. Sadly in this case the magnetic part of the tape itself was flaking off of the plastic part in brittle fragments of sorrow all over my fingers as I gingerly removed it from the VCR. (you can see this in the top right of the photo)
Suffice to say I have still not seen this movie. I do however appreciate the double reinforcement of the "kindness clause" on the cassette.