“Don’t move – or I pull the trigger on my love gun.”

Looking back at the Future.

Back in 1984, when Tom Selleck was kinda a leading man and Gene Simmons was kinda an actor, they made a movie called RUNAWAY. Kinda.

It is The Future, and “robots” are aiding every facet of humanity, from drones with cameras in them (you don’t say!) to Artificial Intelligence nanny robots (that look like a boxy R2-D2). When a robot runs amok, you call in the Runaway Squad, headed by Jack Ramsey (Selleck). He knows how to flip a switch to turn them OFF apparently. His new partner is Thompson (striking blond cutie Cynthia Rhodes), who turns him ON.

They discover one of the runaways was actually programmed to kill a particular person. So – not a runaway – but murder. The man behind this new “chip” technology is Dr. Luther (Simmons, loaning himself out from KISS, and being derelict in supplying his partner Paul Stanley with decent songs for their Animalize album).

Catering to the synergy of movies about technology and A.I. (ELECTRIC DREAMS, 2010: ODYSSEY TWO, THE TERMINATOR), RUNAWAY does its best to predict and portray future tech, but its release date is so far in the past (1984), that it has dated worse than Aquanet.

Great thriller novelist and adequate director, Michael Crichton said he wanted it that way, citing the “primitive” tech of the machines being the catalyst that necessitates the Runaway Squad, hence driving the plot of the movie. Ramsey doesn’t trust the machines, and would much rather a human touch than cold steel. (“Don’t use the machine! Let a person do it!”) The mostly-outdated machines (drones, bomb robots, and RC toy cars) are mixed in with vastly-superior A.I. (police sketch artist robots, nanny robots, smart bullets), so the verisimilitude of the future society seems skewed, because we’re viewing all the tech – good, bad and outdated – through the lens of retrospect.

Luther’s girl is played by Slim Kirstie Alley, the police chief is G.W. Bailey (reprising his role as Lt. Harris from POLICE ACADEMY), and Stan Shaw is Marvin the token black cop.

All the cast takes it seriously enough, but Selleck (on down time between seasons of MAGNUM, where he plays a cop in that TV series) can’t seem to conjure enough gravitas to make us forget he’s a cop in that TV series. Simmons does a surprisingly sturdy job as the sinister villain, his inborn contempt for humanity fueling his character’s motivation to kill people with robot spiders. Reason? Uh, maybe they didn’t buy his last album?… If we doubt his ethos, we are reminded seriously by Slim Kirstie Alley: “Luther – he’s evil, I’m telling you!” Dialogue gold.

For once, there’s a sensually-tending-the-wound scene where the GUY is tending the GIRL instead of the other way round, and of course, the two leads become closer through this shared adversity. Just one trope among many in this cops and robbers chase movie transplanted to what Crichton envisions as “future times”: Ramsey’s a single dad (so can fall in love with his lady partner), has a fear of heights (that he conquers in the final act); he saves his female partner himself (even though there are more qualified personnel around), his son keeps pulling for him to marry his partner so he can have a mom again…

The funniest part is when Luther lies dead, eyes open, face expressionless, and Ramsey feels his neck for a pulse. Suddenly – that classic jump-scare where the villain comes back to life, as Gene-not-Luther hisses at Ramsey in that bat-demon expression – then falls back dead, expressionless again. Paul and Bruce and Mark and Eric must’ve laughed like loonies, as they watched the video and ate popcorn in the apartment that they all share like The Beatles.

RUNAWAY, for all its ambition, could not compete with the more authentic “future tech” in 2010: ODYSSEY TWO or THE TERMINATOR, both of which crushed it at the box office. We should have suspected something amiss when the opening sequence showed tiny tractor crop robots going offline and destroying corn stalks one at a time. It was almost exciting. The purely-eighties soundtrack (by Jerry Goldsmith – his first using only synths) painfully drops the movie smack in the mid-80s, never to break free and run away.

END

Adventure on Steroids (i.e. too musclebound to move).

CONAN THE DESTROYER slowly follows Conan the Barbarian (Arnold Schwarzenegger, still learning how to speak with his mouth), empowered by Queen Taramis (Sarah Douglas) to accompany a virgin princess (Olivia d’Abo, too spinner-sexy for words, which is probably why Arnold can’t speak) and her bodyguard (Wilt Chamberlain, still learning how to act) on a slow quest to retrieve a magic crystal and a magic horn. Slowly.

In this sequel to 1982’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN, Conan and his slow thief buddy Malak (Tracey Walter, who is supposedly the comic relief, even though we’re laughing at EVERYONE) slowly gather up their useless wizard pal (Mako) along the way, and are joined by a fierce warrior who has the most testosterone in the group, Grace Jones. In her scanty leather bindings, she is a horrific sight, and after casting my gaze a moment too long upon her explosive ugliness, I almost swore off women, until I remembered she was a man.

Lots of side-boob, thigh-high skirt slits and lady-groin makes this action-adventure epic worth watching if you are a thirteen-year-old schoolboy. Lots of thrumming man-muscles sensually soaked in strawberry body-oil make it worth watching if you are a 20-something bodybuilder. Lots of lackluster directing and laughable editing make it worth watching if you are in college studying filmic mistakes. And lots of horrendous acting and baby sword fighting make it worth watching if you are in the mood for a riotous comedy.

Conan fights monsters slowly, armed guards, even slower, and when he gets drunk, moans about Valeria (whose groin-slits he infiltrated in the last movie).

Richard Fleischer (TORA TORA TORA, SOYLENT GREEN) directs this sludge trying to find a slope to run downhill. He is a great director, but of another age. Truly, this movie and its sequel, RED SONJA, were both directed toward the end of his illustrious career. He somehow could not find a groove in this slit-skirt sword-muscle hokey-mask wizard-titty extravaganza.

Most of the “action sequences” involve people standing around or walking through strange places with their swords drawn and concerned looks on their faces; sometimes the action sequences would involve stone doors rising or lowering slowly; the special effects are ludicrous, with lots of sparks to distract from the cheapness, and the swordfights are choreographed by Craig from the third grade. Magic plays a big part in the quest, so – fuck everyone. Why bother with a plot? Anything can and does happen. By the time Conan is double-crossed and avoiding getting skewered by a guy wearing a rhino suit, it’s time to get drunk and moan about Valeria’s groin-slits.

END

When the most horrible apparition you see is your remake…

Starts off Solid, Ends up Ectoplasm….

GHOSTBUSTERS has a lot going for it – an original story (by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, about three paranormal investigators in New York opening a business as ghost exterminators), lovable characters, great comedic performances (notably from Bill Murray), and two excellent opening acts that are alternately humorous, intriguing, chilling and action-packed. Unfortunately, in the third act, the filmmakers sacrifice the strong story to bombast and, ironically, go out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Just because Sony and director Paul Feig royally screwed the 2016 reboot, doesn’t mean this Ivan Reitman-directed original becomes something greater than the slightly above-average movie it always was. It is undoubtedly popular, contributing to filmic vernacular (with its iconic process shots and ghostbusting scenes), and lending many quotes to the culture (“He slimed me,” “So… she’s a dog,” “I ain’t ‘fraid o’ no ghosts!” “Don’t cross the streams!”), but the weak third act is insubstantial as ectoplasm.

Dan Aykroyd is Ray Stanz, the pragmatic mechanic, loquacious in the ways of paranormal phenomena; Harold Ramis is Egon Spengler, the professorial leader, calm, didactic, reassuring; Bill Murray is Peter Venkman, who, though surrounded by provable psychic phenomena, retains a skeptic’s demeanor, more concerned with using his status as paranormal investigator to get laid. Murray brings a new approach to the funny-man/straight-man dynamic: Aykroyd and Ramis are clearly meant to be the straight men to his clown, yet Murray’s deadpan insouciance makes him seem like a straight man as well (we’ve heard it before in CADDYSHACK, STRIPES, and of course, SNL), as he delivers hilarious content without indicating. A very British tactic. (No wonder it’s so good…)

And Ernie Hudson is Winston, token black guy.

After being kicked out of their university for not producing any results in their psychic studies, Ray, Egon and Venkman rent an old firestation, recondition an ambulance (that would become as iconic as the Batmobile as it wails through the city), and are hired as “Ghostbusters” to capture wayward spirits around New York, entrapping them in “ecto-containment” units.

Now that’s the kind of demon I could get behind…

Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver, hot off ALIEN and THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY) is a client who employs the Ghostbusters to rid her of the demons haunting her apartment. Venkman (Murray) is all over her like white on ghosts. I’ve always felt Weaver was a little miscast as the love interest to Murray’s sleazy pick-up artist. Earlier, we saw Venkman try to pick up a young blonde under the pretense of psychic testing. There is no reason to believe he doesn’t view Dana as just another conquest; matter of fact, he scams his way into her apartment with an obvious fake spook-tester gadget and tries to bed her right there with pick up lines. The thing is: every guy in the audience wishes for Venkman’s level of devil-may-care when coming onto chicks. And though Venkman’s approach is hilarious, the filmmakers have already established him as a pussy hound, so we know his propositioning is insincere. Which makes the film’s conclusion very strange indeed: Dana and Venkman share a full-mouth kiss as if they’re an item. Why? They were never “running from danger together”; even before their first date, she was possessed by a demon dog; their one interaction was kicking him out of her apartment. I digress…

Speaking of bad relationships, this was the period in history when Dan Aykroyd had just made off with Paul Stanley’s girl! On the KISS album Creatures Of The Night (Oct 1982), Stanley wrote the beseeching I Still Love You for his then-girlfriend, actress Donna Dixon (BOSOM BUDDIES), as he discovered she was growing distant while he was on tour. Then on Lick It Up (Sep 1983), Stanley’s bitter paean A Million To One was also for Dixon, after he had lost her. Unbelievably, to THIS guy. I digress even more…

Rick Moranis is whining comedy gold as Dana’s infatuated neighbor Louis, who would also be possessed by a demon dog. Annie Potts is the Ghostbusters’ nasal secretary. (She is almost set up as a love interest for Egon, but the opportunity keeps passing. It’s just another watery element to this film regarded as a classic for various reasons other than good filmmaking.)

William Atherton is perfect as the slimy EPA rep trying to investigate the Ghostbusters’ facility for noxious and hazardous waste chemicals – hey, he’s the environmental guy! Back when that meant being a stiff-suited prick. Nowadays, he’d be the star! He shuts down the Ghostbusters’ containment facility and inadvertently looses thousands of ghosts into New York, to the ominous strains of Magic (by Mick Smiley).

The soundtrack is by the magnificent Elmer Bernstein (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, 1960), and the source music is modern and hip (by 1984 standards, of course), from The Thompson Twins to The Trammps and Laura Branigan, with a title song from Ray Parker Jr., stolen from Huey Lewis and the News, that you can’t get out of your head.

(Parker’s song Ghostbusters, was released in May 1984, long after Lewis’s I Want A New Drug, Jan 1984. Lewis sued Parker and they settled out of court. In 2001, Parker sued Huey Lewis for speaking publicly about the fact that Ray Parker Jr. stole his song. Apparently there was a clause that prohibited Lewis from speaking about the case. The gall of plagiarists! Here’s the clincher – both songs: insipid!)

The ghost effects are process shots, cartooning and stop-motion. The food-gorging, pudgy ghost “Slimer” was styled after their recently-departed friend, John Belushi, who was reportedly scheduled to work on GHOSTBUSTERS. Now that would have propelled the movie into a higher astral plane.

Now onto that third act, where everything falls apart. There just doesn’t seem to be any urgency in what should be climactic scenes: the Ghostbusters arrive at the haunted building where a threatening entity named Gozer is about to end all creation, and the first thing that happens is – the ground shakes and they fall into a pit. Silence. They climb out, to crowd cheers. Uh, okay… (Was that meant to be Gozer shaking the Earth? Don’t know, don’t care.) Then they climb 22 flights of stairs to Dana’s apartment. Slowly. Is this the way you build tension to a grand confrontation, Reitman?

Before Gozer’s vanilla cameo, there’s even a missed gag. When they arrive at Dana’s apartment, they see an ominous flight of stairs. After painfully ascending 22 flights, you’d think there’d be some sort of callback here, as Ray asks, “Where do these stairs go?” And Venkman simply replies: “They go up.” Talk about dropping the ball!

Two devil-dogs possess Dana and Louis (and they call themselves the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper, and have possessed dog-sex on the rooftop); during the climax, both Dana and Louis turn back into the devil-dogs… Wait, you were devil-dogs in the first place. Was there any reason to possess the two people if you were going to turn back into exactly the same things you were before?

“You’re MY marshmallows NOW!”

And then there’s ineffectual Gozer. The master of destruction that the devil dogs were heralding. A spinner chick with red eyes, dressed like David Bowie as Major Tom, and I swear, she looks like one of my past girlfriends. And this master of death apparently possesses ZERO POWER to kill people. What else can we deduce from her supposedly lethal attack? She asks Ray if he is a god. He replies “No,” to which she retorts, “Then die!” and shoots lasers from her hands at the Ghostbusters. This achieves nothing except pushing them to the edge of the roof. Gozer just proclaimed she was going to kill them and she couldn’t do any better than “pushing” beams? That were not even strong enough to push them off the building? Then she disappears and tells them their first thought will be the manner of their destruction. Oh, so you couldn’t do the job yourself, and now you’re putting it on THEM to destroy themselves? What if they were mentally strong enough not to think of anything?

Luckily for Gozer, Ray inadvertently thinks of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, who appears as a gigantic 10-storey monster. Gozer’s disembodied voice proclaims “The Traveler has arrived!” blah blah – is anyone paying attention to the broad with the non-lethal lasers anymore, who disappears at the first sign of lasers being shot at her? Egon proclaims they should “cross the streams” to send Gozer back to her dimension, which involves shooting off while touching tips; in bath houses and in prison, they call that “sword fighting.”

Firstly, Gozer is nowhere to be seen, and they’re shooting at her porta-potty at the top of the stairs, while Stay Puft catches on fire and melts. It’s not a very powerful hero-versus-villain climax. Secondly, they seemed to do fine NOT crossing the streams with every other ghost. Why the sudden boolshitus rationalization for this one? Thirdly, after they defeat Gozer, everyone’s celebrating like the world is saved… but what about those thousands of ghosts released into the city? (Slimer even flies at the camera as the last stinger before the credits.) And then there’s that kiss between Dana and Venkman, worthy of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley…

They slimed me.

END

Godzilla Vs. Gillette For Men.

The Rubber Side of Vengeance.

Reboot, Japanese style. THE RETURN OF GODZILLA is the 16th film in the Godzilla franchise, the first of the Heisei series, and the original Japanese film that brings Godzilla back to the big screen.

I know what you’re thinking, and I’ll clear it up right now: THE RETURN OF GODZILLA is not to be confused with GODZILLA 1985, the American edit of the same movie, i.e. Reboot, American style. Just as GOJIRA (1954) suffered an American edit to distribute it worldwide, ending up as the inferior duckbucket GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (1956), so too THE RETURN OF GODZILLA suffered the same fate at the hands of American studios and was turned into the more popularly known duckbucket GODZILLA 1985.

But like the original and its U.S. edit, they are two very different movies, so both are reviewed here separately for the same cucumber purposes.

A “monster created by Man” rises from the sea, irradiated, we are told, by nuclear weapons (cough-Hiroshima!). A scientist identifies the creature as the same species of monster that terrorized Japan in 1954, called – Godzilla. (This film will only make reference to the original 1954 film, and ignores the rest of the Showa series of films.) A terrifying 240 foot, dinosaurian, reptilian, fire-breathing guy in a rubber suit. Godzilla seeks out nuclear sources for his energy, attacking Japan’s nuclear power plants and leaving wild destruction in his wake, not through any malice, but simply by being so gargantuan that he necessarily knocks down buildings and bridges in his single-minded search for nuclear food.

Writers Hideichi Nagahara and Tomoyuki Tanaka, and director Koji Hashimoto (assistant director on four previous Godz films) consciously steer away from the Showa series that devolved the tragic, irradiated monster to a cartoonish dope battling giant monsters to save mankind. Toho Company now taking their well-known property very seriously, with good production values, generally good acting (we’ll get to that hiccup), and an overall darker tone that regards Godzilla as unwittingly dangerous to mankind again.

RETURN is not so much about the monster itself (even though it is framed in a similar manner as the original, from its opening scene of a boat being destroyed, to its final scene of Godzilla sinking beneath the waves – here, waves of lava); it is about the consequences of trying to stop the monster in the same way it was birthed – using nuclear weapons. In this respect, it can be said that this movie takes the conundrum of GOJIRA ten steps further into reality – by following the debates between three nuclear superpowers (USA, Russia and Japan), with Japan having final say on whether to employ nuclear weapons because it’s in their house.

Now when I say “reality” that’s a commentary on the script. Not the acting. The Japanese actors in the war room are fine, but the filmmakers settled on cheap when they cast the Russian actors, and scraped the bottom of the barrel when casting the Americans.

Another commendable feature of this film is the use of language, allowing each country to speak their own language, using subtitles. Although we still get lost in translation with certain Japanese phrases that have no Western headrush equivalent – like the futuristic warplane they use to attack Godzilla – the “Super X.” One of the suits asks, “The Super X?!” My question exactly.

Echoing the opening of the original, a Japanese boat, the Yahata Maru, experiences a volcanic fate in stormy waters. Dramatic explosions, that familiar roar – half-elephant, half-hawk. A lone reporter sailor (Ken Tanaka) comes upon the boat, finds the crew dead, all the liquid sucked out of them; one man alive (Yasuko Sawaguchi). Another very intriguing thriller opening to a Godzilla film, tempered by the bulbous sea-louse puppet that attacks Ken, that looks like THE GREEN SLIME.

The sailor reports, “It was like an island that rose up out of the seas. Flames came out of its mouth…” (So it was either Roseanne Barr, or –?) And no one believes the reporter’s story of the “big monster” – except Dr. Hayashida (Yôsuke Natsuki), who is shown pictures from the original GODZILLA movie to identify the creature. (“Hey, isn’t this from that movie GOJIRA?”)

Hayashida surmises a volcanic eruption interrupted Godz’ slumber, adding that the sea-louse was such a large puppet because it fed off Godzilla’s irradiated hide and became irradiated itself.

The government stultifies the reporter’s story, to avoid stock market crashes and nerds dating runway models… Until a Russian nuclear submarine (commanded by a Soviet who looks like Ron Burgundy) is destroyed. To avoid an international incident, Japan ‘fesses up that Godzilla did it, not some American Republican chickenhawk.

In the Japanese war room, the bad American actor and the mediocre Soviet actor both want to use nukes on Godzilla, while the Japanese Prime Minister vetoes it. (The bigger story here is that the Soviets and USA actually agree on something!) The Japanese assess the damage of such a nuke, the fallout, the economy, someone mentions it would be half the size of Hiroshima– (oh, snap! Someone mentioned it!) To its credit, the movie explores all sides of the debate. To its discredit, that American guy speaking English is a worse actor than any Japanese actor in the bad Godzilla movies.

Remember this was 1984, when Reagan made nukes all the rage, this film only reflecting the tenor of these fearful times. The PM chastises, “Imagine if Godzilla appeared in your major cities – would you use nukes?”

Besides the opening roar, Godzilla is not seen, only reported. Exactly as in the original. 36 minutes in, at a nuclear plant, a long pan up of the scarred rubber body – to the new headpiece, big eyes, pointy teeth, a little goofy, a lot angry. Growl. Step forward, giant foot on cars. Elephant-hawk roar.

GODZILLA!

Loving shots of the beast moving through modern day Tokyo, meticulously designed buildings, traffic and lighted billboards at his feet. There are better “cartooning” methods to visualize Godz’ atomic breath. His spikes light up gloriously before he blows blue fire. Like the original, he picks up a train, which obligingly stops right at his feet for easy handling.

Cue the Super X, which looks like a little flat-topped pyramid, or an electric shaver, and has its own theme music (by Reijiro Koroku). It actually uses strategy to knock Godzilla down for the count!

Then along comes a non-sequitur subplot of the Russian sub launching a nuclear warhead accidentally, with the Americans having to counterstrike. Explained with the latest in computer graphics – which now looks like a game of Pac Man – causing a DR STRANGELOVE/ FAIL-SAFE effect in the war room.

When the warheads explode in the atmosphere, the radioactive lightning they cause wakes up Godzilla! D’oh! He proceeds to make toast of the Super X and drops a skyscraper on it! Hilarious seeing this guy’s suit bend as he puts his weight into pushing over a building.

Someone said, “It’s best to leave Godzilla to the military.” He obviously hasn’t seen the last 30 years of Godzilla movies…

The scientist and the reporter discern that Godzilla is affected by the Earth’s magnetism in the same way as migrating birds, so create a device to lure him to the mouth of a volcano, which they detonate to erupt and swallow him. The scientist doesn’t want to kill Godz, “30 years ago, they regarded it with awe” calling it a “legendary beast” and “a warning” (whatever that means).

The sailor’s sister (Shin Takuma) tends to Reporter’s injured arm – the sensual “tending the wound” scene that always leads to – well, in a Godzilla movie that means generous hugging.

THE RETURN OF GODZILLA borrows from numerous movies for its conclusion, not least trying to recreate the empathy of the original film. The PM weeps as Godzilla falls into the volcano. But I’m wondering why the PM feels anything toward this force of nature that destroyed his capital city. Did he once tend Godzilla’s wounds?…

END

KISS 1984: Puffy boners and puffy bones.

Selling better, sounding worse…

ISS’s 12th studio album was a platinum seller, with some very metal songs, but was not very appealing or enjoyable. A lot of it had to do with bees.

Animalize continued the rise and rise of KISS in their non-makeup era; through all their adversity with not solidifying a lineup, not selling out arenas, and not finding a decent pair of trousers for Gene, each of their successive albums during the 80s kept selling better than their previous ones.

When the Hair Metal Shredder Scene exploded, KISS once again morphed to stay abreast of the curve, hiring their speediest Gonzalez yet on frenetic fretboard – Mark St. John, to replace the uncooperative Vinnie Vincent. An unfortunate debilitating bone disease would make this St. John’s first and last KISS record. Enter Bob’s brah Bruce…

Eric Carr dutifully pounds away on his double-kicks, wrenching KISS from the 70’s retro bargain bin and easily propelling them into the glitz-porn 80s. (One of the most underrated, most talented people ever in KISS, Eric went forever unnoticed because he did his job so well that there was nothing remarkable to complain about.) Animalize would feature more double-kick per square inch than any five KISS albums combined.

Paul Stanley would assume the mantle of KISS’s leader during this period. While he contributed five of the album’s nine songs, and played producer and manager as well, Gene Simmons (Stanley’s brother-in-arms co-founder) was going rogue, becoming Mr. Side Project, starting a record company, managing other bands (such as Black ‘n Blue, which featured a young, woman-hipped guitarist named Tommy Thayer, who will feature in the KISS saga two decades hence!), producing comics, and generally making a Hollywood assface of himself (“Right now I’d like to become a good film actor…”), even cutting his hair for movie roles (RUNAWAY, NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE), necessitating the use of a very obvious wig onstage (rather than the subtle ones he and Stanley would use a few years hence). And providing miserly, half-completed songs for Stanley to fix. Like Criss, like Frehley, like Vincent, Gene himself was nearly ousted from KISS – by Paul Stanley!

KISS Touring Lineup 1984: St. John fiddled while Kulick burned.

I’ve Had Enough (Into The Fire). The opener is one of the album’s best crunchers, and we are immediately accosted by angry bees. But Mark St. John’s soloing is acceptable during the intro sequence because he’s using a descending semi-quaver pattern not unlike Jon Lord’s rundown passage in Highway Star. Our ears can still latch onto something understandable. It is during the main solo that St. John pokes at the beehive with a pointed stick. Carr’s double-kick drives like a semi-trailer with no brakes as Stanley’s power tenor razes the roof.

Heaven’s On Fire. The first single, and one of the best KISS anthems since I Love It Loud, featuring Mark St. John in his only video appearance with KISS. Gappy guitar figure (reminiscent of Calling Dr. Love), powerful drums and sleazy lyrics, with the band adopting a cohesive fur-and-leather visage.

The song is in G minor, and the chorus takes the melody line up to the high C. Stanley’s range is higher than this, yet there’s something wacky going on at live shows during this chorus: Stanley never sings the chorus, very obviously moving away from the mic and letting other members take over; we can then hear two distinct voices – Simmons on the low octave and Carr somewhere in the middle – yet there is someone that sounds like Stanley singing the high octave! Offstage singers? Backing tracks? We know that certain guitar positions work better for heavier riffs and more authentically-screamed vocals but if you absolutely cannot reproduce this vocal live, compose the song in a lower key! What’s the matter with E minor?!

Burn Bitch Burn. Yeah, everyone loves the lyric, “…wanna put my log in your fireplace” (gifted Gene impersonator Craig Gass even uses this lyric to poke fun at Gene at his Comedy Central Roast in 2008), but it just seems like Gene got sick of writing words to fill the meter of the vapid verses and choruses.

Get All You Can Take. In this mid-tempo heavy rocker, Paul writes, “You gotta get all you can take / Stop waiting, wastin’ time / What fuckin’ difference does it make?…” Hilarious. Mark St. John shoots off some non sequitur spiraling arpeggios for the sake of showing us how fast he can move his fingers.

When Stanley clarifies the significance of the album title by saying, “We’re getting too technological. Animalize is a return to nature; to being animals,” I’m sure he didn’t mean those animals to be bees…

Lonely Is The Hunter. Simmons tries to recreate the savage sting of his Not For The Innocent (from Lick It Up). But the 7/4 time signature isn’t helping this mid-tempo mediocrity. The mid-section is a watery copy of the powerful mid-section of Only You (The Elder). Bruce Kulick guests on lead guitar on this song and While The City Sleeps.

Side 2 of Animalize is throwaway. Two Stanley songs and two Simmons songs that are mildly interesting and nothing special, with St. John getting lost looking for a way out of the labyrinth of notes he calls his lead solos. Except for the single, no fan would be requesting any of these deep cuts at the future KISS Conventions or KISS Kruises. While The City Sleeps, my ass! More like While We Sleep Through Side 2…

Thrills In The Night is the single on Side 2, the now-perfunctory mid-tempo ballad from Stanley. Note that by the time KISS filmed a video for this song, Bruce Kulick (St. John’s backup) was used in the video instead of St. John. In some mid-80’s interview, Simmons once joked about having to tolerate at least one of Paul’s “pussy songs” on each album. Ha! He should talk about pussy songs! When was the last time you heard your songs on Unmasked, Gene?

st. john’s baptism into the fire

Mark St. John: KISS for a day.

A contractual record release and tour loomed, so KISS, rather than take their time scouring the land (or at least the Sunset Strip) for a guitarist who was the best fit for the group, desperately signed Southern California boy Mark Norton, who would become Mark St. John. Whereas Vinnie Vincent at least had some affinity with KISS’s style, even if he was a knucklehead, Mark St. John had nothing in common with KISS musically. We could immediately hear how his playing drove them in a direction even worse than disco. The word “shredder” is used here in its derogatory sense. Simmons has said in subsequent interviews that trying to control St. John’s angry bees was exhausting.

And then – one day Stanley gets a call from St. John, “My hand’s all swollen. I can’t play!…” St. John would fall victim to an arthritic disease called Reiter’s Syndrome, where the bones of his hands swelled up and made it impossible for him to tour his angry bees. Though St. John’s ousting from KISS was sad due to his unfortunate health circumstances, it was serendipitous, as it allowed the band to look stage left and see the guy who suited their style much better – Bob Kulick’s shaggier brother Bruce, who was hired to be in the wings and take St. John’s place on lead guitar whenever St. John couldn’t play. Kulick would end up playing practically the whole 1984 tour. Until one night Stanley said to him, “Don’t cut your hair…”

Kulick’s one-tour stint would end up lasting 12 years and 7 albums.

Bruce Kulick’s take on the company line is a little different. (see video at 4:00) And we are inclined to believe his version because a) he was there, and b) he is still on great terms with Gene and Paul, so has no reason to contradict their story outright. However, he does raise the point that St. John’s condition cleared up after KISS returned from a six-week stint in Europe with Kulick playing all the dates and with St. John on the sidelines. The way he tells it, it was then up to Gene and Paul to decide who suited the band better – rather than a decision based on health. They chose Bruce.

If KISS were Def Leppard, maybe they could have afforded to wait for St. John to recover, like decent human beings, before going on tour – but KISS are, and always were, a machine contractually beholden to moving forward on greased steel wheels. And what the tour showed them was that Kulick suited their style more closely than the bee-keeping of Mark St. John.

St. John’s involvement with the rock and roll giants benefitted him in some small way though, as he had come from unknown bands, and was now able to hook up with world-class musicians in his next endeavors. (The company line about being ousted for his swelled hand would remain, as it would look better on his resumé than being fired for not suiting the band’s style.) He formed White Tiger with David Donato (ex-Black Sabbath), and also unleashed his angry bees on a gig with David Hasselhoff that no one in their right minds should ever mention again.

Mark St. John died from a brain hemorrhage in 2007, aged 51.

St, John’s brief stint with KISS began the joke about the KISS Revolving-Door-Guitarist position; he was the third lead guitarist to leave KISS in two years. We couldn’t blame him for his hand, we didn’t hear him in White Tiger, we couldn’t help him on his deathbed, and we will never forgive him for Hasselhoff.

END

Rock and Roll Fable Disable.

Everything you know is fake. Everything you believe is wrong.

STREETS OF FIRE taught me this. In one crushing swoop, everything I believed about the movie’s finale song, Dan Hartman’s I Can Dream About You, was shattered. Allow me to digress…

The movie itself is an unsuccessful stab at cult musical-actioner, with comicbook visuals set in an idealized version of 1950’s America. Touting itself as a “rock and roll fable” (embarrassing!), a biker gang headed by Willem Dafoe kidnaps rock and roll chick Diane Lane, whose ex-boyfriend (Michael Pare) and a tomboy (Amy Madigan) toughly carve through the bikers to get her back. Like one of the songs that salubrious Diane Lane lip-syncs, the movie goes Nowhere Fast.

I didn’t see STREETS OF FIRE during its release in Australia 1984, but was bombarded with Dan Hartman’s single from the movie, I Can Dream About You, and its attendant video. Dan Hartman onstage was inspiring; he was a crystalline vocalist, he was an awesome dancer, he was a catchy songwriter – and he was black.

Twenty years later, I would discover Dan Hartman isn’t black. Everything I knew was fake. Everything I believed was wrong.

This is the video that everyone who watched music programs in Australia was sold:

For 1984, it was smoooove. In 2011, it hasn’t dated. It was nostalgic back then and it’s nostalgic now. A great piece of work, singing, dancing, songwriting, production, direction.

We took it for granted the singer was “Dan Hartman” and this was a band much like The Four Tops or The Drifters. The music programs (like “Molly Meldrum’s Countdown” or “Sounds”) that featured this video never told us otherwise. These guys were cake, and “Dan Hartman” had an unstoppable moonwalk…

20 YEARS LATER:

I actually view STREETS OF FIRE in full for the first time – and I “know” movies now, I “know” actors, I “know” rock and roll, and I “know” that media is rarely truth.

And I was stunned to see “Dan Hartman’s” band, The Sorels, in STREETS OF FIRE. Oh, I knew this was where that song came from, but now I somehow “know” the names of “Hartman’s” vocal group – even though I’ve never followed “Hartman’s” career. Because they’re all ACTORS! And 20 years ago, they were just outa the gate and had done hardly anything on film, but now I’ve seen them in supporting roles throughout my film-viewing life: I “know” Mykelti Williamson (FORREST GUMP), I “know” Grand L. Bush (DIE HARD), I “know” Robert Townsend (METEOR MAN); and the man who was “Dan Hartman” to me for two decades is Stoney Jackson (ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD) doing a sensational lip-sync.

My chest felt weak. Everything I know is fake. Everything I believe is wrong.

Back in ’84, there was no internet, no instantaneous information retrieval; all we had were TV music programs, music magazines and gossipy friends, all of which had incomplete and slanted views on music.

Then there is the OTHER “fakery” about this song: In the MOVIE itself (not the video clip) the vocal is performed by Winston Ford!

Maybe I’m nitpicking – anyone involved in the entertainment industry knows that every single song in every single movie goes through the same melodrama for various reasons, political, musical, contractual, etc. – but what bugs me is that I feel like I’m one of those guys who wakes up and realizes his whole identity is a CIA construct or that he is suddenly a super spy with no wife and kids; a toppling of values, a questioning of motivations – a “What the–?” moment of grand proportions: You mean to tell me that for TWENTY YEARS I’ve lived under the falsehood that Stoney Jackson was Dan Hartman?; that when I was 19, I was inspired to be “in a band” by a FAKE BAND? that this song that kept me going, that helped me to understand song construction, with the best moonwalking this side of Michael Jackson – was all CHARADE? (Ha ha! Charade you are!)

Will The Real Dan Hartman Please Stand Up?… and stop dancing…

Watching Dan Hartman actually performing I Can Dream About You in his own video is one of the greatest examples of how optics matter so much. I won’t summarily dismiss Caucasian Hartman as a talentless git because I really never knew him (only after his death in 1994 from AIDS did the public discover he was gay) – but he couldn’t dance to save his faux-Hasselhoff helmet. He should be eternally thankful at how those Actors did his song visual swingin’ justice! I’ll assume Hartman was not thinking about moonwalking when he wrote the lyric, “moving sidewalk, I don’t see under my feet,” but it’s also obvious he never comprehended how his song could translate to dancing at all – watching his whitey bartender in the video doing that Daryl Hall whiteboy pony-step stomp, we realize why they Milli-Vanilli-ed some black guys to do the dancing FOR him…

The Sorels performing I Can Dream About You could have been a powerful end to a crappy movie, but director-writer Walter Hill diluted the STREETS OF FIRE climax with Diane Lane (albeit very young and sexy) taking the stage once more and lip-synching to Jim Steinman’s Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young, looking like she should be 300 lbs and named Meat Loaf.

Maybe 20 years from now, I’ll find out she IS.

END

Wax On, Whacks Off.

A bean stem moves to a new school in Los Angeles and proceeds to take regular beatings from the school bullies for sniffing around the head bully’s ex-girl. He takes karate lessons from that guy from HAPPY DAYS – karate not for philosophy or exercise or discipline but to beat up the bullies. Two wrongs make a right, kids. And here come de orchestra swell…

THE KARATE KID is yet another retelling of ROCKY. With a hero not so much Italian Stallion as Italian Ferret.

Bean stem is Daniel (Ralph Macchio, who can’t stop looking like Cha Chi), his Japanese karate mentor is Mr. Miyagi (Noriyuki “Pat” Morita aka Arnold from HAPPY DAYS). Daniel’s puppy love is Ali (lovely girl-next-door Elisabeth Shue, attired in sensual schoolgirl outfits most of the time (yum!), and displaying her penchant for pining after losers, which would lead directly to her hooker-falling-for-alcoholic Nic Cage in LEAVING LAS VEGAS, 1995).

Macchio shows us that he is almost as bad an actor as the extras and B-cast, and I can imagine Catholic priests lining up in droves to touch that smooth girl-face of his. Clint Eastwood has been known to complain that his son Kyle should’ve gotten the Karate Kid role over “that pussy Ralph Macchio,” but I disagree. Kyle Eastwood could never have pulled off the effeminate dorkmeisterism of Macchio – and for that, Clint should be eternally thankful.

Tae Kwon Poff

So Miyagi sets “Daniel-san” on a regimen of painting his fence (“up a-down, up a-down”) cleaning his cars (“wax on, right hand – wax off, left hand”), painting his house (“left a-right, left a-right”) and sanding his deck (“sand a-left, sand a-right”).When Miyagi eventually demonstrates to Daniel the practicality of all that waxing on and painting left and sanding right, we realize how amazing his training methods are – if Daniel were ever attacked by a Handyman. Or an opponent willing to hold all his punches in mid-air and wait for Daniel to block them. It makes no difference anyway, since Miyagi’s demonstration attack-punches do not actually extend to Daniel’s body, stopping about a foot in front of him. Because karate is all about honor – all you have to do is find an opponent honorable enough not to actually hit you.

The school bullies are led by Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and all happen to be blond, Aryan jocks who study karate at the extremist Cobra Dojo (run by Martin Kove), whose peaceful slogan is STRIKE FIRST. STRIKE HARD. NO MERCY. You know, just like modern-day evangelical Christians.

Directed by John G. Avildsen (no coincidence he also directed ROCKY), with a soundtrack that is arguably the worst disco music of 1984, including You’re The Best by Joe Esposito), THE KARATE KID has been called “the sweetest surprise of 1984.” It’s a surprise all right: that people still believe the maddening fallacy that karate will help you in actual street situations. This very fallacy is proven by the movie itself: in the climactic karate competition showdown, the Cobra Dojo cheat – one of them is instructed to break Daniel’s leg, which he does quite easily – but if karate was such an effective defensive tool, shouldn’t Daniel have been able to block that actual strike?

The bully that broke Daniel’s leg is disqualified (apparently, if you really prove that karate has any dangerous utility, they penalize you for it) and Daniel then has to perform his last fight against Johnny Lawrence on the broken leg (which raises all sorts of health and safety questions about the Karate Organization running this show).

And Daniel adopts the now infamous crane posture and kicks the bully in the face, winning the competition. Which raises another question: When Daniel actually kicks Johnny – why isn’t he also disqualified for making lethal contact? We’d probably find out if the orchestra swell wasn’t so loud and embarrassing.

But let us not forget the lesson of the film: the key to good karate is carpentry.

END

Hendrix’s Purple Phoenix Writ Large.

The soul of Hendrix – and then some. And then some more. Dearly beloved, I give you: Prince Rogers Nelson, passion bleeding every note, saturating every choreographed gesture, purple feather boa and avant garde guitar, high on the genius of esoteric creation…

PURPLE RAIN, at the time of its release, was Prince’s THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME, cementing him as one of THE great musical artists of the Twentieth Century. Like Zappa. Like Rundgren. Unfortunately – unlike the magnificent songs that stand to this day – the actual film story has dated to the level of BREAKDANCE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO.

If only Prince could have couched his groundbreaking songs in something more durable. PURPLE RAIN has become a bemusing dichotomy – a dull, clichéd, formulaic storyline sprinkled liberally with the most innovative pop songs of its time.

Set in a Minneapolis thrumming with the vibrant dance club scene that would define its niche in the mid-1980s, PURPLE RAIN is the story of The Kid (Prince) trying to “make it” in a scene where his original music is ridiculed. Brawling parents at home don’t help his brooding demeanor. All he has is his music and soon, a chick, Apollonia (Apollonia Kotero), whom band leader and competitor Morris Day (of The Time) keeps sniffing around like a dapper dog in heat.

Ironically, the real life Prince was hugely, if not solely, responsible for Minneapolis becoming the colorful groove capital it would become.

Purple Salad

Of course, with his big bike and even bigger hair, The Kid beats all the odds with his stunning musical prowess and is accepted unto the dance scene’s corseted bosom. No real stylistic change from his opening to his final tracks, so we can only assume that the crowds either lost all discernment or suddenly found discernment.The only people who exhibit any acting backbone are Clarence Thomas III (as The Kid’s father), Morris Day and, surprisingly, Prince himself. Everyone else slots neatly into that formulaic storyline like the formulaic pieces they are.

Over the course of the movie, we hear the entire Purple Rain album (you know you have it back there in the cobwebs on vinyl!) as either soundtrack or staged performance. The frenetic Let’s Get Crazy is the opener; The Beautiful Ones shows off Prince’s screaming timbre; Computer Blue features some great melodic guitarwork; When Doves Cry was the big single; and the diabolical Darling Nikki was the self-pleasuring, sado-masochistic clincher that spawned the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center – those censoring, anti-Constitutional harpy senators’ wives led by Tipper Gore, Al’s wife). The title track is a surprisingly emotional finale.

Prince sells the movie. His aura is unassailable. Purple Rain‘s liner notes declare, “Produced, Arranged, Composed & Performed by Prince & The Revolution.” It is all him; everything is on the line. If this movie failed, Prince would have gone down with the purple ship.

In 1984, me and my art college buddy/drummer-in-my-band cut classes to go see this movie. We learned more art in that electric purpleland than any that could be taught by old men who’d forgotten how to be renegades back when Hendrix was flying his purple boa.

END

The Search for Plot.

The rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated.

It was a fantastic climax, bringing tears to the eyes of Terrans and Vulcans alike, as Spock (Leonard Nimoy) bad his final farewell through perspex, busting his Live Long and Prosper sign while face to face with his lifelong friend whom he could not touch, radiation eating at his body and mind; as Kirk (William Shatner) pulled some of the best overacting of his Starfleet career while shooting Spock’s coffin at the heart of the Genesis Planet… The conclusion to STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN was a tear-jerking scorcher… But now we find out it needn’t have been so overwrought…

You see, in this sequel, STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK, we see that just before his death in TREK II, Spock had mind-melded his essence, his “katra,” into Dr. “Bones” McCoy (DeForest Kelley) with what could have been construed a sexual harassment touch and a single word: “Remember!”

Would it have been too much to ask of the dying Vulcan to MENTION THAT FACT to Kirk, who thought he was gone forever and therefore shot his corpse at the Genesis Planet, instead of keeping his body and rushing him to Vulcan General Hospital?

Enticed back into the fold by being offered the director’s chair, Leonard Nimoy helms a story by Harve Bennett (and Gene Roddenberry, who once again whined about everything, with Paramount saying “yes” to his face and then ignoring his suggestions), that picks up where TREK II left off…

Back on Earth, Kirk is confronted by Spock’s father, Sarek (Mark Lenard), seeking Spock’s katra in the lifelong friend whom we believe Spock would have left it in. Tragically, it is not there. But Bones starts acting weirdly Spocky – and everyone realizes Spock’s body must be retrieved from Genesis, to download it with Bones.

Bones-as-Spock tries to hire a black market ship to Genesis, in a cantina sequence that reeks of cheap masks and flimsy plastic sets, with an alien who talks in backward-syntax like Yoda, no less. What could have been just a lousy STAR WARS ripoff (which it is) is saved by the comedic wiles of DeForest Kelley. Of all the TREK cast, he is truly funny; we laugh at Shatner because he can’t help himself, we laugh at Spock for his dryness, but we laugh at Bones because his timing and attitude really delivers a gag; he’s a natural. Goddamit, Jim! He’s a comedian, not a doctor!

Bones is arrested. Kirk, Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Sulu (George Takei) pull a wild west rescue, steal the Enterprise with Scotty (James Doohan) and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), and head for Genesis.

Another example of TREK’s inherent disregard for science: when the all-new Excelsior starship pursues Enterprise, Scotty’s removal of a spark plug or some-such McGuffin from the Excelsior, causes her to – now listen carefully – stall with a clunking noise and grind to a stop in the vacuum of space! Where’s Isaac Asimov when we need to ignore his advice?

Meanwhile, on the science vessel orbiting Genesis, Vulcan Saavik (now Robin Curtis, warp-factor-two hotter than Kirstie Alley) and Kirk’s son, David (Merritt Butrick, warp-factor-three feyer than Khan Noonien Singh), discover some terraforming element of Genesis has affected Spock’s man-corpse and rejuvenated it as a boy, who is aging in years by the minute. (I dare any Trekker to explain it “scientifically.”) Actually, the script makes no sense at all. But we’ll continue anyway, just like the filmmakers.

Poffy busy searching for Spock…

As Kirk’s Enterprise wings its warp way to Genesis, so does a Bird of Prey – a Klingon warship of ferocious design, helmed by Captain Kruge (Christopher Lloyd, chewing plastic scenery like Juicy Fruit), the Klingons seeking the Genesis Device. Don’t know how they plan to use it for ultimate domination, but it should be great for growing a nice terrarium on their Bird of Prey patio.

Spock continues his growth at an alarming rate, so he goes through his seven-year jones for pointy-eared pussy every few minutes. Saavik does a sensually-charged fingerdance with the teenaged Spock, which should outrage a few puritanical thumpers – if they had the wherewithal to apprehend sensuality rather than blatant humping as more conducive to causing social disharmony.

the search for spock: ends before it begins…

The technical prowess of STAR TREK III is once again light years ahead of its predecessors, and Nimoy proves himself a good director. But the story is given away from the outset. Let’s face it, after TREK II’s cliffhanger, viewers are supposedly on edge for The Return of Spock. But knowing Nimoy is pouting there behind the camera kinda gives the game away, dunnit? And Saavik finding young Spock early in the piece seals the deal that our pointy-eared playmate will soon come out and play with us again. So… what now?…

Let’s kill something.

In this TREK, two more Grand Deaths – that of the Enterprise and Kirk’s son: one poignant, one very, very fey. Kirk dupes Kruge’s Klingon Krew onto the Enterprise, then self-destructs it, as he and his man-crew beam down to Genesis’s surface to watch the fireball which used to be their party bus flame into the atmosphere – a heart-wrenching moment for fanboys, almost as bad as the cancellation of the Scott Bakula line of action figures.

David’s death is a little funnier: in a callous gesture, Kruge orders a henchman to kill either young Spock, Saavik or David, “Kill one of the prisoners. I don’t care which,” which prompts David to jump their would-be Klingon assassin, only to get knifed by the Klingon. (Must’ve gotten that weak fighter gene from his mother’s side…) For “tampering in god’s domain” (trying to create life with Genesis) David was punished with death – at least, that’s what the filmmakers say to tenuously connect the neck-sweater-wearing David with the brooding genius of Victor Frankenstein) – but I think they just didn’t want David’s feyness tampering with the masculine domain of the Kirk legacy.

Helloo!… Hellooo!… Hellooooooo!….

The dramatic climax may have looked good in its day – Kirk fisticuffs Kruge on the unstable Genesis Planet as it quakes – but now looks like two middle-aged hammies throwing movie punches on a cardboard set stolen from 1965’s LOST IN SPACE.

Then it’s all aboard the Bird of Prey to Vulcan, where Bones is thrown on the op table and mystically mind-melded back into Spock, Teen Spock very conveniently having grown to the age of Leonard Nimoy.

And revived Spock, disoriented, asks of Kirk, “Why did you do this?” Kirk replies, “Because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.”

But I’m not buying it. You mean after all that turmoil in the last movie to illustrate what sacrifice meant, you’ve just gone through the same amount of turmoil to prove the opposite? What if Chekov or Uhura had died on the Genesis Planet? Think Kirk would have wasted the fuel to go back? There would have been ten irate fan letters and the series would have greenlit production on STAR TREK IV with one less above-the-line paycheck to worry about. But we can understand this flip-flop when we apply Michael Corleone’s credo in THE GODFATHER to the interests of the franchise: “It’s just business.” Spock spells “business” for the franchise. Nimoy did, after all, pen that 1995 book, I Am Spock.

Because the needs of the many (the fans) outweigh the needs of the few (one fed up actor).

END

Rise of the Machine (i.e. Arnold).

The Poffynator

Arnold Schwarzenegger as a killing machine with no emotions, big guns belching, outlandish feats of body strength, delivering his lines in a sinister, robotic monotone – hang on, that could be any of his movies. But this movie made him what he is today. What, the Governor of California?…

When THE TERMINATOR was released in 1984, Schwarzenegger was already a superstar – seven Mr. Olympia titles, five-time Mr. Universe, with the CONAN franchise under his belt – this movie made him a million-dollar megastar, a household name, an archetype for stunted elocution.

In this James Cameron actioner, Schwarzenegger is the eponymous Terminator, a cyborg from the future (2029), sent back in time by the machines to 1984 Los Angeles, to “terminate” Sarah Connor (big-haired, man-faced Linda Hamilton), who will be the mother of John Connor, the man who would lead the human resistance against the machines when they have taken over society in 2029.

The humans of the future have also sent someone back through time – Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) – to stop the Terminator, save Sarah Connor, and find a decent pair of pants.

Excellent concept. One major flaw. No, not that Sarah Connor lives in the painful New Wave 1980s with her brainless, bighair girlfriend, not that the Terminator has no eyebrows, not even that lame Brad Fiedel soundtrack that sounds like Oingo without the Boingo. The flaw is in the time-paradox (as usual, with most, if not all, time-travel stories) created simply by sending the Terminator back through time in the first place. Yet writer-director Cameron artfully dodges any explanation of it by keeping the action brain-dead high.

You see, if the Terminator succeeds in killing Sarah, she will not birth the leader of the revolution, therefore the Terminator would have no reason to come back and kill her. Ergo, Terminator ceases to exist in 1984. On the other hand, if the Terminator fails to kill Sarah, it must mean the Terminator itself was terminated (for nothing else could make it fail). Either way, the Terminator ceases to exist. Good thing he’s just a killing machine with no emotions, i.e. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And how effective was John Connor’s resistance anyway? From Reese’s apocalyptic flashbacks, human extermination seems to be going quite well for the machines, with Reese and his pals living like rats in sewers. But it seems the machines were really trembling in their little metal panties, feeling threatened enough to go to all the trouble of inventing time travel to send someone back to kill Connor’s mother. That’s a whole lotta scared!

And has anyone stopped to consider that in 2029, they have Time Machines?! – that actually work!! So why didn’t humans send someone back even further in time to pull the plug on the machines taking over in the first place? These anomalies are explained feverishly by Reese to policemen Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen. But nobody’s buying it. Especially not the fey police psychiatrist who looks like he took time off from molesting children to question Reese.

Reese came through the time portal naked – as did the Terminator. The Terminator wrenches his clothes from a group of punks (watch for Bill Paxton as the blue-haired punk), and Reese steals his pants from a bum. They both must stink like a Japanese fish market!

Terminator and Reese both track Sarah Connor to an embarrassing dance club called Tech Noir, spewing the lamest disco possible to represent – ironically – its hipness, the female vocals seemingly stuck on the lyric, “You’ve got me burnin’!,” pony-stepping whitebread patrons looking like honky refugees from a Pat Benatar video.

After the shooting starts, Reese utters one of Terminator-dom’s magic lines to Sarah, “Come with me if you want to live!”

This is also the movie where Schwarzenegger coins, “I’ll be back!” In this perfect role for someone with no command of the English language, of his seventeen lines of dialogue, these three words would become Arnold’s catchcry forever. And, though uttered with the most ominous portent, they have also become the most funn-nnee.

And he does come back – again and again, in mighty action sequences where he is gunned down, run over, exploded, yet relentlessly recovering and pursuing Sarah, unstoppable, Reese forever warding off the attacks. Reese tells Sarah: “…it doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear” (he’s right – seen PUMPING IRON?) “It absolutely will not stop until you are dead.”

This bludgeoning simplicity makes THE TERMINATOR the chase-movie classic it is. To add even more to its pedigree, Harlan Ellison (god of literary fantasists) sued Cameron for plagiarizing ideas from his OUTER LIMITS episodes “Soldier” and “Demon with a Glass Hand.” Later editions of the movie would feature credits acknowledging Ellison’s work.

While they hide out in a roach motel, Reese puts his future-moves on Sarah, calling her a Legend and strong and brave and anything else guaranteed to moisten her man-jeans. And a pick-up line almost as good as the HIGHLANDER‘s move of stabbing himself to bed Roxanne Hart: Reese gravel-whispers, “I’ve memorized every line on your face. I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you. I always have.” Cue porn music, nakedness, future sperm… and Linda Hamilton getting her banana teats out for The ’80s Love Scene, while looking like a man who’s having a hard time turning a socket wrench. The thought surely must have crossed Reese’s mind as he saw them bananas, “Boy, Legends are easy. Keeping it hard with this man-face is hard.”

And then Cameron makes an excellent character move – something which no one would dream of making in later Arnold movies after his star had risen to major box-office draw – he terminates Arnold! The flesh is seared off the Terminator in the last act and we see only the steel machine-man endoskeleton (created by legendary Stan Winston) pursue Sarah. This plot development, though robbing Arnold of screentime, drove home the Terminator’s relentlessness; how it would literally stop at nothing, not even its flesh coming off, to complete its deadly mission. These are some of the most terrifying sequences of this modern technological horror tale, clinical, un-human; as Reese’s warnings come to metal stop-motion fruition: “…It can’t be bargained with, can’t be reasoned with…”

The dicey closeups of Arnold’s prosthetic head nearly land this movie in the B-Movie crap heap, though – but we forgive Cameron and Winston; best anyone could do pre-CGI, without selling their soul to George Lucas.

And has anyone considered that the Terminator’s mission may have actually been the touchstone that set off the war between the machines and humans? Like incarcerating people at Guantanamo – if they weren’t terrorists before, well… If humans were not suspicious and hateful of machines before, you can bet your TiVo they are now!

Though the Terminator failed in its mission – leaving the future of mankind in the hands of a big-haired, man-faced eighties chick – with the box office grosses nearly hitting the movie’s filming budget on its opening weekend, we can be sure of at least one thing:

He’ll be back.

END