Only now does it occur to me... THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN (1982)

Only now does it occur to me... that this seems like something of an appropriate week to reckon with a film like THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN (1982), an early Cannon Film attempt at teenage relevance and an '80s update of director Boaz Davidson's own 1950s-set Israeli coming-of-age film, LEMON POPSICLE (1978).

Half of the film feels predictably culled from the brainless sex-comedy genre, films like PORKY'S, REVENGE OF THE NERDS, or JOYSTICKS––



Needless to say, the '80s rule of pools is in effect––which is to say that if there is a pool present, a character will be pushed into it, flailing, in a zany comic moment

––whereas the second half feels like it could be at home in an artistic coming-of-age picture by the likes of Catherine Breillat, Lasse Hallström, or Maurice Pialat.

The suburbo-angst is tangible

Like FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (which was released in August 1982, two weeks after this film's July premiere), it presents a toxic, often alienating, and generally bewildering teenage wasteland; a minefield of harsh, unavoidable truths about the human condition; a labyrinth of pain and nascent sexuality fired willy-nilly in all directions, like a tommy gun.

Of course, a Cannon sex comedy can't be on the right side of history all the time, so there are several cringe-inducing scenarios, like PORKY'S-style locker room peeping, a dick-measuring contest set to Devo's "Whip It," or a bizarre sequence of group sex with a Latina housewife that plays on the surface as "weird and sort of racist," or very generously, perhaps, as a satire on the absurdity of teen sex comedies of the era? (Probably not.) At least the scene where our horndog protagonists visit a prostitute plays out in a manner that's bleak, melancholy, and broken, like a tableau out of Tennessee Williams or Flannery O'Connor.

Conversely, this could be a scene from BARFLY

As with any '80s film whose major focus is its protagonists attempting to "get laid," there's going to be a poisonous strain of male entitlement running throughout,

And a lot of popped collars

but THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN actually makes an attempt to grapple earnestly with the consequences. It's partly owed to Tel Aviv's own Boaz Davidson (SALSA, GOING BANANAS), who lends the film a peculiar sort of Eurotrash/Euro-arthouse-quality where there can be wild tonal shifts, often within the same scene, of silly Hollywood artifice giving way to Neo-realistic emotion and moral ambiguity.


While FAST TIMES tackles similarly weighty subjects, this is the only '80s film I can think of who dedicates the stretch ordinarily reserved for a makeover or training montage to a sequence where a young woman undergoes an abortion while another boy (who did not impregnate her) scrambles to pawn his belongings to pay for it.



Especially remarkable is that the woman's point-of-view is not only considered in this sequence, but that it's central––the viewer has a real sense of the emotional and physical drain the dark and ethically ambiguous shadows of the adult world have cast on her life and the lives of those around her.


Of course, this happens in a film where a group of guys get pubic lice and the subsequent, incessant scratching is played for yucks. Well, that's Cannon Films for you––for better or worse. Nonetheless, it feels morally superior to a few of the options at an American multiplex in July of 1982. While you could indeed catch BLADE RUNNER or John Carpenter's THE THING, it's perhaps more likely that a boneheaded teenager would go see ZAPPED!, a film where Scott Baio uses telekinesis to rip the clothing off of his female classmates.




[Side note: Probably the first thing the viewer will notice about THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN is the soundtrack, which would cost more than the entire film's budget today. It's shocking how much 1982 radio they manage to cram in here, with hit songs by Journey, The Police, Tommy Tutone, Blondie, U2, Devo, Oingo Boingo, The Cars, The Human League, Blondie, The Waitresses, REO Speedwagon, KC and the Sunshine Band, and Quincy Jones, to name a few.

It's also worth mentioning that TWIN PEAKS' Kimmy Robertson also turns in a delightful comic supporting performance:

She's always been underutilized (do we blame SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL?––technically she played the title character, as "Liza, Cruise Control/Cruise Director"), and hopefully the revived TWIN PEAKS will get her some more work.]

Only now does it occur to me... THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1996)

Only now does it occur to me... that it took––no joke––twenty-five writers and a lyricist in order for the 1996 animated film THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME to improve upon the 1831 Victor Hugo novel of the same name. And how did they improve on said material, beyond lending it the ol' Disney happy ending?

Not pictured: the melancholy mingling of our dead protagonists' ashes.

Well, I'm going to point out one scene in particular, whereupon the French Roma dancer Esmeralda (voiced by Demi Moore) performs for an enthusiastic crowd by twirling acrobatically on a vertical pole (in actuality, a well-placed spear)––




and is subsequently showered by the audience with appreciative gold coins.

This strikes me as a clear––albeit as PG as humanly possible––reference to the 1996 Demi Moore masterpiece STRIPTEASE (which was certainly in the zeitgeist––it was due to be released exactly one week after HUNCHBACK). Driving the point home is that she is performing in part for a corrupt politician––the Archdeacon Claude Frollo––who soon develops a violent, flagellant's fascination with her.

This, naturally, stretches the STRIPTEASE comparison even further, as there's clearly a parallel between Frollo and corrupt Congressman Dilbeck (Burt Reynolds), who, in the latter film, pines for and slobbers over Demi Moore in a quite similar manner.

(In closing, please allow me to take this moment to sing the praises of STRIPTEASE, a trashterpiece that's equal parts Elmore Leonard and Menahem Golan––essentially OVER THE TOP except with striptease instead of arm-wrestling. It also features a performance by Ving Rhames and a tiny monkey sidekick that would be right at home in the Disney movie of your choice.)

Sean Gill's "The Mongrels" in Joyland Magazine

My latest short story, "The Mongrels," a morbid fantasy set in the Midwest, has been published in Joyland Magazine and is available to read online.

Founded in 2008, Joyland Magazine has featured work by Roxane Gay, Zinzi Clemmons, Lydia Millet, Amelia Gray, and Ottessa Moshfegh.

Sean Gill Chosen as a Finalist for The Lascaux Prize in Flash Fiction

The Lascaux Review has just announced that my noirish short story, "Cranberry's Last Dance," has been chosen as one of the finalists of their 2018 Prize in Flash Fiction. It will appear in print in their next volume, The 2019 Lascaux Prize Anthology.

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.

"The Computer Man" in a New Anthology from The Fiction Desk

My latest short story "The Computer Man"––which was chosen as one of the winners of The Fiction Desk's 2017 Flash Fiction Competition––is now available for purchase in print as part of the anthology, And Nothing Remains. The Fiction Desk is an independent publishing house based in England; And Nothing Remains is their twelfth anthology.

Only now does it occur to me... GLITTER (2001)

Only now does it occur to me... that Mariah Carey's much-reviled 2001 film GLITTER contains an obscure reference to the seminal '80s trashterpiece BODY ROCK. This brings me much joy––a joy of the sort that GLITTER mostly deprived this viewer: it's just not as much cheesy fun as it should be.

Technically a period piece set in 1983, the plot revolves around Mariah Carey's character, "Billie," attempting to claw her way to the top of the music industry so she may reign as queen of the pop idols. After one of her concerts, she meets a potential manager (note his shirt patterned with CD-ROMS––er, I mean, '80s gold records) and the following exchange takes place:

He just signed Chilly-D!  That would be Lorenzo Lamas' character from BODY ROCK––a man who is similarly attempting a frantic claw to stardom. Chilly elucidates the triumph of being signed by a record label in one of the finest and most notorious monologues in film history (beginning at 4:07 in the video below):

Truly, who could forget lines like, "All you need is management," "Yo, this cut? Very big in Europe this season," "It's a live ride!," and "Manager says next step––def cut a record!" And in this BODY ROCK homage, GLITTER flirts with the film that it perhaps wanted to be––(or at least the film that I wanted it to be), and then resumes business as usual: as the worst kind of vanity project. In any event, I don't think I've been this proud about spotting an obscure paracinematic reference in a moderately obscure paracinematic movie since they paid a roundabout homage to HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH in CHILD'S PLAY 3.

Only now does it occur to me... LINK (1986)

Only now does it occur to me... okay, a few things. LINK is a "killer ape" movie (it was pitched as "JAWS with apes") in the vein of MONKEY SHINES and Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue." It is also a Cannon Film––however, they only distributed it: i.e., Menaham Golan and Yoram Globus are not listed in the credits. The director is the accomplished Richard Franklin (PSYCHO II, CLOAK & DAGGER, PATRICK, ROAD GAMES), a suspense-driven Australian auteur who probably ranks second only to Brian De Palma among Hitchcock disciples. The stars are Terence Stamp––who plays a wild-eyed anthropology professor with an eccentric fashion sense and Rod Stewart's hair––

and Elisabeth Shue, who plays his student/housekeeper/ape nanny.

And that's all there is to it. The end.

...

Okay, that's a lie. I didn't tell you the entire truth: LINK is a strange little chamber piece and a "killer ape butler" movie. The Germans had the good sense to call this thing LINK: DER BUTLER, cause that ape butler thing isn't something you want to keep under wraps.

It's kind of like EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE meets THE REMAINS OF THE DAY. Except it's a horror movie.

I say, after you, old chap


About a chain-smoking orangutan butler who first made his name as "The Master of Fire" in an infamous carnival show.

So allow me to amend that: LINK is a movie about a "pyromaniac killer-ape butler."

There are also some killer dogs thrown in for good measure, but that's not very important.

As to the film itself, it's fair. It starts strong, but loses steam quickly. It's packed with interesting ideas and camera angles and setpieces, but it never quite delivers on its premise. Franklin does acquit himself admirably: there are inventive edits, theatrical sets,

and tour de force sequences of diegetic and non-diegetic sound (the first diegetic sound we hear is The Kinks' "Ape Man" coming from a car radio, soon it bleeds into "Hot Voodoo"––Dietrich's ape musical number from BLONDE VENUS––coming from a television as an ape stalks its feline prey).

There's inspired wide-angle cinematography by Mike Molloy (DP on THE HIT and SHOCK TREATMENT; camera operator on BARRY LYNDON and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE),

 
and overall, Franklin possesses a pure filmmaking joie de vivre that you don't often see outside of Richard Rush, Sam Raimi, or Ken Russell. There's also so much ape POV that at times I thought I was watching a Lucio Fulci film.

This angle does not bode well for the cat

It's extremely atmospheric and makes excellent use of the Scottish countryside, occasionally to great 'melancholy horror' effect, though I would not categorize the entire film as such.

In any event, this movie is about a pyromaniac killer-ape butler, not the Scottish countryside. As it progresses, our friend Link the Butler begins to lose his mind after falling in love (?) with Elizabeth Shue. The most chilling moments in the movie are when he's creepin' on her in the bath and elsewhere.


Look at that face. This pervy performance by "Locke the Orangutan" might be the best in the entire film. In fact, you'd better look outside your own door, right now, just to make sure some indifferent orangutan isn't out there, staring you down. To quote Werner Herzog, "the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder." Damn.

Also, I must make a special note about the soundtrack, by the legendary Jerry Goldsmith (ALIEN, GREMLINS, PLANET OF THE APES, PATTON, FIRST BLOOD, TOTAL RECALL), which is an insane carnival of circus-y madness, a reverb-heavy '80s nutball score that must be heard to be believed. Seriously, listen to the first minute and a half of this amazing nonsense. It's like if Paganini did the soundtrack to GHOULIES II. Or maybe if Kurt Weill did the score to Bertolt Brecht's CONGO. I don't know, man. But I also think I secretly like it?