Only now does it occur to me... as a filmgoer who had somehow seen every single one of Adrian Lyne's features (from FLASHDANCE to UNFAITHFUL, from FATAL ATTRACTION to FOXES, from JACOB'S LADDER to INDECENT PROPOSAL), that in not having seen 9 1/2 WEEKS until now, I completely missed the beautiful (?) homage to 9 1/2 WEEKS in one of my favorite scenes in TROLL 2 (1990).
To contextualize: the following sublime scene occurs near the end of Claudio Fragasso's TROLL 2,
(This video has been age-restricted for some unknown reason––if you click on it, skip to 1:44)
wherein witch/goblin queen Creedence Leonore Gielgud (Deborah Reed) approaches an RV containing errant teen Brent (David McConnell). She appears on his TV, "sexy-dance-walk-stumbling" to a rootin'-tootin' MIDI track while clutching an ear of corn. This lures him outside (where in one of the best diegetic sound reveals in film history, the mix reveals the music as actively "playing" outside the RV), prompting him to let her in. She suggests they "heat... it... up" and they proceed to simultaneously gnaw at the ear of corn, which––when confronted with so much raw sexual energy––begins exploding into popcorn, which is heaved in handfuls upon the pair by bored production assistants.
Obviously, you can understand why this scene rules, with or without context. But it turns out––according to me, anyway––that Claudio Fragasso was paying a specific homage to 9 1/2 WEEKS. In one particular scene, Kim Basinger––who is embroiled in a steamy, weird, gross love affair with a Wall Street wackjob––is performing a striptease for said wackjob (naturally, Mickey Rourke).
She does some wacky dancing through some blinds, set to Joe Cocker's cover of Randy Newman's "You Can Leave Your Hat On"
which has inexplicably become some kind of striptease anthem despite possessing all the raw sex appeal of an old mattress stained with hotdog water, or a guy attending night school in a mesh shirt. This song was fired from its job as a roadie for George Thorogood. This song eats mothballs, recreationally. It washes its hair with dish soap. It probably owns a black market human skeleton. This song's girlfriend broke up with it because it wouldn't stop singing "Splish Splash I Was Takin' a Bath" every time it showered. This song eats Chef Boyardee cold, straight out of the can.
Anyway, so Kim continues dancing as Mickey Rourke keeps doing his creepy "aw, shucks" bashful serial killer smile...
uh, got hungry, did you, Mickey? What's that he's shoving into his mouth?
Popcorn.
And then it clicks––that TROLL 2 MIDI track is the fuckin karaoke track of "You Can Leave Your Hat On!" (The key is slightly different but probably not enough to avoid litigation if somebody actually cared.) And there's popcorn in this scene. Claudio Fragasso probably thought he needed a sexy scene in his goblin movie, and because he's a noted Italotrash plagiarist, he likely watched noted "sexy movie" 9 1/2 WEEKS and thought he'd take all the proper ingredients one needs for a sexy scene and simply reassemble them: gyrating body, Joe Cocker track, popcorn––let's call it a day!
For all of these years, I had been enjoying TROLL 2's inexplicable fusion of rootin'-tootin' MIDI music, corn, and sexy lurching movements without realizing that it was an homage to Adrian Lyne. Beautifully done all around, folks.
