JFL

Only at Cannon Films could Tobe Hooper get a three-picture deal and, what’s more, funding for a bizarre, big-budget project that combines the style of the classic British sci-fi horror movies Quatermass and the Pit and The Day of the Triffids with spectacular special effects and grandiose sets. Though the result ranked among infamous flops and foreshadowed Cannon Films’ financial demise in the second half of the 1980s, its tremendous charm cannot be denied. For its time, it was actually an utterly unique fanboy project in which Hooper enjoyed paying homage to his favourite old-school movies. Like those earlier works, the foundations of Lifeforce are composed of dialogue passages and talking heads. However, these attributes cause it to fail as a spectacle, so it remains merely a tribute for a knowledgeable audience. The colossal deep-space sequences, the apocalyptic destruction of London and the bizarre premise of a nude space vampiress sucking the life force out of men do not in any way change that.

The Goonies is deservedly considered to be a cult classic among adventure movies and the most illustrious representative of Amblin’s ’80s adventure flicks for kids, which situated spectacular, fantastical adventures in the mundane setting of American suburbs and small towns, and were conceived as rollercoaster rides packed with a full range of emotions, from suspense to fear and horror to rollicking fun.

In the same year when some smartass in Hollywood thought that it would be a great idea to build an action movie around a medal-winning athlete and thus gave rise to the absurd legend of Gymkata, a certain hustler in West Germany took a similar path. The result was the less delirious but otherwise similarly irrational flick Macho Man, which is regarded as a cult obscurity in Germany and whose title tells you everything you need to know. Here we have in front of the camera a bunch of non-actors led by the German lightweight boxing champion and European silver-medallist René Weller and the European karate champion and German kickboxing champion Peter Althof (who later worked as a professional bodyguard). Bea Fiedler rounds out the line-up alongside other less prominent athletes in supporting roles. Though Fiedler is not an athlete, her assets are duly put on display in the opening title montage, where each of the actors shows off their best form, which in the case of this former playmate and actress from a number of erotic comedies means that she simply shows her tits. The characters portrayed by these “actors” are crammed into a straightforward B-movie narrative that can be summed up as follows: There’s a professional boxer who is a great guy and a professional karate master who is a horrible guy. They incidentally prevent a bank robbery together and then happen to fall for the same airhead blonde. Since they’re both overflowing with testosterone, they are initially tense with each other, but then a rich brunette comes to practice karate and they're off. Then there’s a gang of drug dealers whom the two tough guys give a proper ass-kicking. The primitive plot is dolled up with the period attractions of the 1980s, so viewers will get their fill of moustaches, mullets, perms, tight jeans and puffy jackets (on the title character), as well as many other fashionable creations and, of course, the ultimate macho man. All of this in the grimy reality of 1980s Germany and in combination with the most hackneyed clichés of action B-movies. It’s hard to say why the film’s title is in singular when there are two macho men, for both of whom the movie the film is an unconcealed, seriously intended, narcissistic exhibition. Both of them are given equal space for tough-guy antics and showing off their athletic prowess, and women immediately invite them into their beds without any exposition, simply because they’re athletes. Macho Man is one of the amazing pieces of the huge puzzle of the German cinema of the second half of the twentieth century, which indeed offers countless unexpected niches beyond the boundaries of the usual and recognised categories. 7/10

The tremendous worldwide success of the second Mad Max unleashed a flood of mostly second-rate copies that ruled video rental shops in the 1980s. Director and screenwriter George Miller responded with an unexpected move. Instead of appealing directly to viewers craving a repeat of the previous film, he conceived the third instalment in the series as an absolutely different variation on the post-apocalyptic myth. The still largely unappreciated but all the more fascinating Beyond Thunderdome stands out in the context of the whole saga due to its distinctive and inspiring eccentricity, which combines a post-apocalyptic setting with both extinct (western, noir) and popular genres of the time (children’s adventure stories in the style of Amblin). As in the second film, this time Max is a legendary figure in the myths of post-apocalyptic society. As such, he rather becomes a guide to this bizarre new world, where two women stand against each other, carrying on their shoulders the seeds of two new but fundamentally different civilisations. (Annotation for the series marathon at Kino Aero, 2019)

Today Yuen Wo-Ping is celebrated as the highly respected genius behind the graceful choreography of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix, and Donnie Yen as the embodiment of the poised master Ip Man. But both have a wacky side, which is on full display in the ultra-cheesy gem Mismatched Couples. This rollicking, crude mix of silly romantic comedy, shallow humour, exceedingly absurd breakdancing and every possible 1980s fashion and kung-fu excess recalls Yuen’s comedic roots. With the pair of films Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978) and Drunken Master (1978), he established a revolutionary mix of kung-fu slapstick and launched Jackie Chan’s stellar career as the clown of martial arts. Together with his brothers under the Yuen Clan banner, he was present at the inception of the Miracle Fighters series of fantastically bonkers kung-fu farces at the beginning of the 1980s. Mismatched Couples was Yuen’s penultimate comedy project before he made the jump to serious and tough action movies like Tiger Cage. In Mismatched Couples, he takes full advantage of the talent and flexibility of his then new discovery, Donnie Yen, and also gets involved in the action himself in front of the camera as the central comedic character. The way in which he and his brother Brandy Yuen, who handled the choreography, combine breakdancing with kung-fu moves, insipid gags and physical expressiveness is equal parts tremendously goofy and seriously brilliant. The whole film mixes awkwardness, kitsch and affect with remarkable inventiveness and grandiosely flawless choreography. The disjointed breakdance moves make it even more apparent that Yuen bases his comedies on turning human actors into action figures capable of performing exceedingly surreal feats, while also preserving their realistic physical dimension, thanks to which every such feat is simultaneously amusing and amazing. In the notional battle of breakdancing movies, the silly Breakin’: Electric Boogaloo (1984) has a clear advantage in terms of campy wardrobe and settings, but Mismatched Couples comes out ahead with its fantastically absurd moves, obnoxious humour and all manner of physical escapades, such as a tennis match on BMX bikes.

Whereas some of the celebrated children’s movies that have become cult classics, such as The Peanut Butter Solution, now exhibit certain dramatic stumbles and it is necessary to squint one’s eyes to bring their loosely structured narratives into focus, Return to Oz is a perfect film that has not aged at all and is still able to draw in and captivate even adult viewers. In terms of craftsmanship, it is a refined work with flawless mechanical effects and an enchanting atmosphere that combines awe-inspiring fantasy with unsettling elements to create multiple meanings. This is due in part to the perfect Fairuza Balk, whose distinctive performance gives Dorothy a liveliness that transitions seamlessly between immediacy, timidity and childlike determination. In addition to that, the film is a phenomenal work in the context of the Wizard of Oz “franchise”, as it flawlessly bridges the gap between L. Frank Baum’s original vision and the bastardised canon established by the uncritically accepted canonical film adaptation from 1939. On the one hand, the narrative of Return to Oz is related to that of the old film, but instead of vaudevillian playfulness, it brings the world of Oz back to the darker and more unsettling form that Baum constructed in his books (which was preserved in the 1982 Japanese-American animated adaptation), while also brilliantly combining motifs from the second and third instalments of Baum’s book series into one distinct narrative. However, the screenplay does not literally follow on from the classic film, or more precisely, its primary meaning, where Dorothy adopts the conservative view that home is the best place to be. On the contrary, it is based on a subversive reading in which the trip to Oz is interpreted as a manifestation of the protagonist’s nature, which she must hide from those around her. Therefore, at the beginning of this sequel, Dorothy’s aunt takes her to a doctor to rid her of her fixations. When Dorothy gets back to the world of Oz after the anxiety-inducing introduction in the mental hospital, it’s not an escapist return to a colourful realm, as the Emerald City is in ruins and her friends have been turned to stone. The premise brings back to the world of Oz the danger that the creators of the old saccharine musical eliminated from Baum’s book. At the same time, it also opens up the central motif of Return to Oz, which is that Dorothy has to fight for her imagination and defend it against the selfish people around her – though not directly and actively, but simply by not letting herself be intimidated and by facing the obstacles and dangers with which she is confronted (which again corresponds to Baum’s books). In accordance with that, all of the characters that she meets, whether they join her as her guides or stand in opposition to her, are characterised by grotesque ambiguity and the individual peripeteias are rather bizarrely fantastical in the sense that they have their own logic and defy the usual ways of thinking about the real world (see the role of the hen, the form of Princess Mombi and the revived Gump). In every respect, Return to Oz is a brilliant work that ranks alongside the best children’s films, such as The NeverEnding Story and Hook, which do not approach the theme of childhood and imagination in a superficially naïve way. In its time, however, Return to Oz unfortunately ran up against the stubborn obtuseness of both viewers and publicists, who associate The Wizard of Oz only with the film and not the book and demanded another lobotomising musical. In contrast to that, Return to Oz is a flawless contribution to the trend of eighties children’s films that brilliantly combined adventure entertainment with darker tones and ambiguous motives, which was characteristic not only of the ambitious Amblin, but also of many other companies, including Disney, which, after all, funded Murch’s vision.

Even though Rambo: First Blood Part II, with its mission to rescue America’s self-confidence after the debacle of the Vietnam War, seems rather ridiculous from today’s perspective, it has two strengths that cannot be denied. The first of these is the outrageously honest craftsmanship of the action sequences. Though the film’s anti-choreography and concept of guerrilla spec-ops combat come across as quite laughable, all of these drawbacks are offset by the precise topography of the action, the dynamic editing and, mainly, the superb camerawork, which ceaselessly emphasises the real physical dimension of every shot (the composition with the view to the protagonist from inside the helicopter cabin with the landscape in motion in the second plane behind the glass was definitely copied by Tom Cruise’s team in Mission: Impossible – Fallout). The film’s other strength is its indisputable status as a pop-culture phenomenon, which is based on rare, inimitable harmonisation of the work’s ethos with the audience’s mood at the time. Though critics on both sides of the Iron Curtain slammed the film, it set box-office records in the West (both in the US and in Europe) and it enjoyed even greater success in cultural terms in the Eastern Bloc through illegal underground distribution, though of course without the financial gains. The bellowing hulk with a strip of cloth tied around his head, armed with a bow and explosive arrows, and killing cartoonishly depicted commies became the embodiment of the ideal of America at the height of the Cold War. Rambo wasn’t Superman or any other particular hero with specific traits and virtues, but like the Berlin Wall, the film concentrated within itself the mood of the decaying Soviet system and a society that had grown tired of the stalemate and the status quo. Whereas in America the film soothed the ego of conservatives and licked their wounds after losing a war, in both Western and Eastern Europe it represented an energising fantastical pressure valve for a frustrated society. Rambo: First Blood Part II became both an icon of and a synonym for its era and it remains embedded in society’s memory even in the new millennium. But everything written here refers solely to this particular film. Because of that and despite all of Stallone’s misguided attempts, none of the sequels can build on that legacy with all of its meanings, nor can they repeat its box-office success.

If you really want, you can see a grandiose Godot-esque absurdist joke in this film, but it is more appropriate to admit that Star Worms II is simply a very ordinary mess with no hint of anything that would place the film beyond the definition of moving pictures (thought that is successfully called into question in the case of a number of scenes). After sitting through a few minutes of this work, it will come as no surprise that its maker, Lin Sten, never shot anything else, but at the same time it is obvious that Troma’s marketing department was paid handsomely. The film is taken beyond the realm of classic VHS trickery by the knitting together of such a magnificent trailer from this shit and the cutting out of such an attractive cover that some poor wretches actually rented it at video-rental shops. In fact, it’s possible to think of the trailer as the main work, which has lasting value, not only as mandatory study material in the field of marketing, while the scrum of shots crammed together into a feature-length film takes on a role of secondary interest at the level of a behind-the-scenes or blooper reel.

No one can preach about non-conformity and cool rebellion against a rotten system as convincingly and intoxicatingly as the rotten system of conformist Hollywood studios. In some respects, The Legend of Billie Jean is generally likable and progressive – particularly as a flick for teenage girls that isn’t afraid to include talk of menstruation and thematise harassment by sleazy older guys. It is not entirely appropriate to criticise the film for its lack of cohesiveness, as the filmmakers clearly wanted to evoke certain feelings rather than build a standard narrative. This approach enabled them to step back from causality and logic at key moments and build, for example, an impressive music-video sequence illustrating the title character’s growing legend. On the other hand, the naïveté of this and other sequences in the second plan reveals the film’s dubious core. It preaches queerness only within the boundaries of decency and traditional gender norms and roles. Instead of fully attacking more fundamental and systemic problems, such as harassment and the roles predetermined for girls in society at the time, it focuses attention on the banal details and the captivating charm of Helen Slater with her cool tomboy haircut.

Unburdened by the childhood experience and thus the trauma and nightmares that evidently afflicted anyone who saw the film as a child, I find The Peanut Butter Solution to be a bizarrely amorphous film. On the one hand, it is fascinating with its completely unmoored narrative, which, with its boisterous chain of fantasy motifs, resembles a free stream of consciousness, or rather it could be said that it is governed by childish logic instead of adult rationality. However, the narrative is dramaturgically constrained and the result is rather inconsistent and mushy. This is partly due to the fact that The Peanut Butter Solution is not constructed according to a standard narrative in the style of Hollywood, but rather has more in common with Hong Kong films, in which the narrative also leaves the starting line, goes in completely new directions that do not develop the main motif at all and then returns in the climax to wrap up everything that had been alluded to earlier. Here, the subject of confronting one’s fears thus veers into escapades involving hair loss, a disgusting recipe, hair growing inexorably fast, and a magic-brush factory staffed by children kidnapped by a maniac posing as an art teacher. On multiple levels, The Peanut Butter Solution essentially expresses adults’ fear of exuberant imagination, which it also conveys to viewers. In addition to the described peripeteias and the character of the teacher who tries to suppress the children’s imaginations, this corresponds to the film’s central storyline about terror that is so intense that it causes hair loss, but which, as it turns out in the end, is only the work of a vivid imagination.