Only now does it occur to me... BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (1990)

Only now does it occur to me... that Robert Zemeckis, in his infinite wisdom, decided to include an oddly specific homage to the comedy BLIND DATE (1987) in his BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (1990).  Since the average movie viewer today is more likely to have seen the concluding chapter of the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy than Blake Edwards' BLIND DATE, a film best described "as if Scorsese's AFTER HOURS slipped on a banana peel while Bruce Willis played a slide whistle," allow me to explain.

Early on in BACK TO THE FUTURE III, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), having traveled to 1885, is attempting to blend in at the local saloon

when Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) comes to harass him in a Biff-inspired scene which should seem quite familiar to fans of the series.

 After giving his name as "Clint Eastwood," Marty innocently refers to Buford as "Mad Dog," which induces his fury.

Commanding him to dance, Buford shoots at Marty's feet... and Marty proceeds to do the "moonwalk."







He then shouts "Whooo!" in the manner of Michael Jackson and kicks a full spittoon onto Mad Dog.


This leads to a chase sequence. End scene.


In BLIND DATE, Bruce Willis' character has been set up on the titular blind date with Kim Basinger,

which triggers a series of unlucky and harrowing events (he's fired from his job, has his car destroyed, and begins suffering a full psychotic break, for instance). Basinger is also being stalked by her ex, John Larroquette, who carelessly menaces and nearly kills Willis with his car. Later on, a worse-for-wear Willis encounters his new nemesis Larroquette and begins brawling with him.


 When Willis lays his hands on a mugger's gun,

he holds Larroquette at gunpoint and insists that he dance.

 When the dance is not to Willis' liking, he insists he moonwalk.


Larroquette proceeds to moonwalk. However, it was a insincere request, as Willis soon announces, "I hate that shit!" and begins firing at his feet.

Shortly thereafter, Willis is arrested, leading to the iconic "BLIND DATE mugshot" sequence.

And end scene.

Okay. So. There's little doubt that these scenes of comedic violence are interconnected, and the connection is so specific that I have to imagine Zemeckis intended for his scene to be an homage to BLIND DATE. Or, perhaps, he saw BLIND DATE, and though he tried to forget it––a feat many BLIND DATE viewers have attempted––he felt some ineffable connection between the moonwalk and being held at gunpoint and inserted it into his film via sheer BLIND DATE-osmosis. I wonder if this is something they discussed when Zemeckis directed Bruce Willis in DEATH BECOMES HER. Or if this led to the John Larroquette cameo in the Zemeckis-produced TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT.

Also, if we want to get really "out there," note that the poster/cover art for BLIND DATE bears an eerie similarity to 1988's ACTION JACKSON––a film that co-starred Thomas F. Wilson, a.k.a. "Biff/Buford Tannen" from the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy.

Only one thing seems clear: truly, all roads lead back to BLIND DATE, whether we like it or not.

Only now does it occur to me... FIREFOX (1982)

Only now does it occur to me.... that Clint Eastwood basically outsourced the villains of his Cold War caper FIREFOX to the Lucas/Spielberg industrial complex.

The Russian villains you see before you are: Kenneth Colley (Ken Russell veteran and "Admiral Piett" from THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK),

Ronald Lacey ("Toht" from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK),

and Wolf Kahler ("Sgt. Gobler" from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK):

To balance things out, we have John Ratzenberger (CHEERS, "Major Derlin" from THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK), essentially reprising his role from EMPIRE (Rebel on an ice planet) as an American soldier fighting the Evil Empire from the North Pole.

Because I have to tip my hat to the outliers, another of the Russian villains is Klaus Löwitsch, a legitimately Great Actor who may bear some resemblance to Corbin Bernsen, but is in fact one of the most talented players to come out of the New German Cinema and a veteran of no less than five Rainer Werner Fassbinder films. It's probably not too much of a stretch for you to understand that he is completely wasted here.

Apologies, Mr. Löwitsch.

The film itself was a box office smash at the time, but today it plays like a second-tier, phoned in cold war thriller, á la Eastwood's own THE EIGER SANCTION or Peckinpah's THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND. Author Howard Hughes (AIM FOR THE HEART: THE FILMS OF CLINT EASTWOOD) probably sums it up best with, "Less a 'Firefox', it's more of a damp squib, or at best a smoldering turkey."

The opening is kind of a proto-COMMANDO, with shirtless Eastwood as a veteran in pastoral environs trying to enjoy his retirement when he's pulled out to do "one last job." In this case, the Last Job is stealing a top-secret Soviet fighter plane.

I guess there's an understated sci-fi aspect to the film with a "mind-control helmet" that pilots the Soviet plane via telepathy, but that's not even important, so you don't have to worry about it.

Also, for a Cold War actioner, there's not a lot of action. In fact, the entire plot could likely be reduced to about three scenes––therefore, I'm not sure why it runs 2 hours and 15 minutes. Ah, well.


It's also perhaps worth mentioning that the 'thrilling' dogfight is simplistic enough so as to prep us for the eventual Atari game tie-in; and despite using a superior "Reverse Blue-Screen" technology, it still looks inferior to the Battle of Hoth in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Out of the 39 completed films Clint Eastwood has directed, I have now seen 37 of them (for the curious, my only gaps are HEREAFTER and THE 15:17 TO PARIS). Only THE EIGER SANCTION, SULLY, and INVICTUS are as boring as this one. I prefer BREEZY, for godssakes. BREEZY.

Film Review: MOONRAKER (1979, Lewis Gilbert)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 126 minutes.
Tag-line: "From the most exotic locations on Earth, MOONRAKER will take you out of this world!"
Notable Cast or Crew: Roger Moore (THE QUEST, LIVE AND LET DIE), Michael Lonsdale (MUNICH, THE NAME OF THE ROSE), Lois Chiles (THE WAY WE WERE, BROADCAST NEWS), Richard Kiel (EEGAH, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME), Corinne Clery (YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE, THE STORY OF O), Bernard Lee (DR. NO, THE THIRD MAN), Geoffrey Keen (THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY), Desmond Llewelyn (THUNDERBALL, GOLDENEYE), and Lois Maxwell (LOLITA, GOLDFINGER).
Best One-liner:  "Take a giant step back for mankind."

 A few James Bond films (like, say, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE or SKYFALL) attempt a stern and serious atmosphere, a kind of no-nonsense-thriller vibe striving for a degree of class that's slightly more "John le Carré" than "Ian Fleming."  MOONRAKER is not one of these films.

It shares more in common with the delightfully insane DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER or the funhouse loopiness of THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN than your typical higher-tier Bond film.  And that is why I love it.
So, without further ado– my six favorite head-scratching, spit-take worthy moments in MOONRAKER: they're what make life worth living.

#6.  Bond hurls a henchman through a priceless clock-tower window, whereupon the unfortunate lackey plummets to his doom...

 and completely penetrates a grand piano

 
 in a live-action Looney Tunes tableau that achieves near-Joe Dante levels of comic grotesqueness.

 Go ahead, James.  Care to lay the cherry atop this sundae of slapstick savagery?  I know you've got something good up your sleeve.

There you go!  A-plus!


#5.  Spielberg ouroboros.
In addition to having a returning character named "Jaws," MOONRAKER uses the famous, five-note theme from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND as the electronic combination to a door in a high-security area.  Little did the makers of MOONRAKER know that Spielberg would soon begin his own James Bond-ian series (INDIANA JONES) which would eventually include in its third installment a Venice speedboat chase sequence, just like in MOONRAKER!  The mind reels.


#4.  Lasers, Lasers, Lasers!
 
I mean, the movie is called MOONRAKER.  Obviously, you wouldn't rake the moon with anything less than a laser.  What else are you supposed to use... a rake?  

Now here are some pictures of an undercover MI6 agent dressed as a monk zapping the hell out of a goopy dummy, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK-melting-Nazis-style:

Carry on, then.

#3.  Roger Moore as Clint Eastwood.

Set to the raucous strains of Elmer Bernstein's MAGNIFICENT SEVEN soundtrack, Moore makes an entrance while dressed in a near-facsimile Man With No Name costume.  This feels like a gag better suited for THE PIRATE MOVIE or a NATIONAL LAMPOON'S flick, but I'm more than okay with it.


#2.  Jaws' Love Interest.

Fan-favorite, metal-mouthed behemoth Jaws (Richard Kiel) returns from THE SPY WHO LOVED ME with appropriate grandeur and succeeds in stealing a second James Bond movie away from James Bond himself.  In a mind-blowing setpiece scored by the love theme from Tchaikovsky's ROMEO AND JULIET, Jaws is swept up off his feet by the Heidi-esque "Dolly," a super-strong woman with pigtails.  I'm going to stop you right there, tell you to lower your arched eyebrow, and ask you to just go with it.

This culminates in a crowd-pleasing plot-line of Jaws becoming something of a good guy, which leads to Jaws tossin' Mr. Bond a hearty outer space thumbs-up

and celebrating his new life choices by gnawing the cork off of a bottle of champagne and enjoying it with his lady friend.

Clearly, I wish that Jaws could be in every James Bond movie.  Alas.

#1.  I have to give the number one spot to the moment that inspired an actual, non-theoretical spit-take:

James Bond blasts his motorized gondola out of the Venetian canals and onto a main thoroughfare, rapidly inflating a bottom panel that transforms the vessel into a hovercraft.

He then gallivants about the streets of Venice, wearing a "I say, what are you looking at, good sir?" expression upon his smug face.

 
 This prompts a pigeon to do a show-stopping double-take, achieved through a forward-reverse-forward motion effect.
 
This is one of the ballsiest, most wonderfully inane gags to appear in any movie, James Bond or otherwise.  Its sheer lameness is such that it goes through the rabbit hole and back again, trampling your logic centers until you have no choice but to admit its brilliance. 

Four stars.

–Sean Gill