First Blood (1982)

Film: First Blood (1982)

Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy

Director: Ted Kotcheff

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sylvester Stallone: click here to learn more about Mr. Stallone (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last month we talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger, and this month with us approaching Sylvester Stallone, it's important to talk about them in conjunction.  While I could've picked an actual film they made together (the minor 2013 hit Escape Plan probably made the most sense) to frame this, it actually makes more sense in terms of a film from the 1980's when the feud was actually waging.  First Blood and the Rambo franchise really launched Sylvester Stallone away from some of the risks he was taking post-Rocky with films like Paradise Alley, Escape to Victory and Rhinestone (these films scripts might have also helped deter Stallone), but it also made him a quintessential action star of the 1980's.  The other quintessential action star of the 1980's was Schwarzenegger, and younger audiences might now know how intense their rivalry was.

Amongst other things that they did during the roughly 10-year stretch that the two would feud was Stallone marrying Schwarzenegger's ex-girlfriend (Brigitte Nielsen), and they would take a series of jabs at each other in movies like Twins, Tango & Cash, and Last Action Hero.  It's not clear, in retrospect how much of this was the press feeding into things (by all accounts Arnold's relationship with Nielsen was a momentary fling, and all of the jokes in those movies are clearly said as fourth well-breaking jest for the audience to chuckle at), but it's worth noting that Stallone seemed to take it more seriously than Schwarzenegger, purportedly helping to fund the legal fees of a reporter who had called Schwarzenegger's father a Nazi (which he was, though rumors about him committing war crimes or being involved in carrying out the Holocaust have long circulated but never been proven, and are likely untrue), probably the biggest escalation in the feud (and one Stallone initially did behind-the-scenes).

Why am I picking First Blood to be the movie we discuss the Arnold/Sly feud?  Because it probably wouldn't have been possible without First Blood.  Sly Stallone's career was made with Rocky, but while the film piled on successful sequels, most of the other movies that Stallone was making at the time were flops.  All of the movies I listed above didn't succeed, and while Nighthawks turned a profit, it wasn't enough to really notice in the way the Rocky films did.  The one bonafide box office performance during this time he turned in was Staying Alive, which made a fortune...but was only directed by Stallone, and instead it was John Travolta who got the box office credit for it.  Were it not for Rambo, it's arguable that Stallone would've spent the 1980's making movies like Chuck Norris & Charles Bronson did-middling, lucrative but barely registering straight-to-video style pictures that no one would remember.  But he did make First Blood, and it changed the trajectory of his career, making him a theatrical movie star for at least another decade.

(Spoilers Ahead) First Blood is the story of John Rambo (Stallone), a Vietnam war veteran who is basically a drifter, coming into town in a small city in Washington, and being chased out of town for not being "the right sort."  Rambo doesn't take this lying down, and gets into a war of wills with Will Teasle (Dennehy), a sheriff who abuses Rambo, and causes him to have flashbacks to Vietnam.  During the PTSD, he escapes, and essentially sets off a series of attacks that result in the deaths of multiple police officers, initially unintentionally, but eventually very intentionally.  They even bring in Rambo's supervising officer in the army Colonel Sam Trautman (Crenna) to try and deal with Rambo as the showdown escalates, and we see that only one man between Rambo and Teasle will survive...

...except both of them do.  In an interesting scene toward the end involving Stallone, Dennehy, & Crenna, we see Stallone admit that he felt confused by the public rejection of his service after Vietnam.  First Blood is really interesting as a cultural artifact because it represents (at the rise of the Reagan Era) a nail-in-the-coffin of the hippie liberalism that had existed in the late 1960's.  Read any discussion about the treatment of Vietnam veterans returning from the war (that they were spat upon and called "baby killers") and you'll find a host of different anecdotal and academic evidence online, the former insisting that it was relatively common while the latter pointing out that it was rare to the point of providing virtually no persistent evidence in terms of things like video or police records.  That all three of these men come together for Stallone's John Rambo to soliloquize about this treatment becomes a sort of fascinating case study of your political beliefs-conservatives see in John Rambo a fighter, someone who was rejected after he did his service to his country by anti-war protesters, while liberals see a man broken by a war who is still rejected by authority figures (it should not be lost on anyone that the men both terrorizing & supporting Rambo are leaders in a law & order organization, a longtime bastion of conservative reverance).  Stallone's sort of two-dimensional approach to the character, as just a "guy who is living his life" helps tremendously here-it makes you think First Blood is about what you want, and fighting against the other guy, while they see it the same way.  In terms of propaganda, it's honestly really impressive, and adding in the early scenes which have a John Boorman directing Deliverance vibe, it's a much better movie than you'd expect.

But First Blood's complicated politics did not continue in the very successful film sequels that would basically just make Rambo another Terminator (Bruce Willis would have this same issue with the Die Hard movies).  The next three films would all make north of $100M at the box office, and would become Stallone's life-blood as a bankable star along with Rocky.  But unlike Schwarzenegger, Stallone (despite, for my money, being the better actor) didn't have good enough taste in his scripts and cared too much about his paychecks to really win the war against Arnold.  It helped that Schwarzenegger had the good luck to find a proper talent (James Cameron) to make his two best films, but it's more than that-Schwarzenegger had better quality control (he actually said no to sequels when they didn't make sense), and ultimately came out on top.  Even Stallone would later admit (years later, when the two had become friends offscreen) "He wanted to be number one.  Unfortunately he got there."  We'll talk about why Stallone & Schwarzenegger fell off next week. and how both of their careers would change in the 1990's.

Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Film: Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Sandahl Bergman, Ben Davidson, Mako, Max von Sydow

Director: John Milius

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Arnold Schwarzenegger: click here to learn more about Mr. Schwarzenegger (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was a different kind of movie star not because he came with an accent (so did Greta Garbo & Marlene Dietrich) nor because he was a muscle-bound figure (as we talked about a few months ago, Bruce Lee was totally jacked and a huge star both here and abroad).  Schwarzenegger's phenomenal success in large part stemmed from coming at the right time.  In the post-Jaws/Star Wars era, blockbusters were a regular thing, and something happened where we had the effects budget to regularly churn out big, sometimes gaudy action films (which would become Schwarzenegger's bread-and-butter), but also because home video became really important.  If you look at the early successes of Arnold's career (Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator), the films themselves were not massive successes.  Conan was a hit, sure, but its domestic box office was dwarfed by films like An Officer and a Gentleman, Porky's, and even a prestige drama like The Verdict.  The Terminator was the same situation-modest hit, but it was outgrossed by now forgotten films like Tightrope and Breakin'.

Why have you heard of these films as a result?  It's because Schwarzenegger became a star on home video.  Conan the Barbarian was one of four action flicks that Dino de Laurentiis made with Schwarzenegger in the 1980's, and the biggest calling card of these movies was that they would sell better than their theatrical grosses would indicate in the burgeoning home video market.  Conan would, by some estimates, nearly quadruple its initial gross through home video rentals & sales, and The Terminator would do similarly well.  Both films would eventually also have additional success through repeated showings on cable television.  As we'll talk more and more about Arnold over the remainder of the month, you're going to note that this is a pattern-Schwarzenegger was a huge star, but not always through traditional domestic box office like his predecessors, instead relying upon growing international markets & home video sales to ensure that he was always profitable and worth the exorbitant salaries he demanded from the studios...even on films that didn't click with American audiences.

(Spoilers Ahead) Which brings us to the movie, the first narrative film we're talking about with Arnold after last week's documentary.  The film follows Conan (Schwarzenegger), whose parents are murdered when he is a child by cult leader Thulsa Doom (Jones).  Afterward, he is taken into slavery, and forced to work at a mill that turns him into a glistening, muscle-bound gladiator (aka the Arnold we all know and love), and through his time as a gladiator gains his freedom.  This leads him on an adventure, one where he treks across the land to gain his revenge on Thulsa Doom, eventually finding him and beheading him in a dramatic fashion...that allowed for him to come back in a sequel (Arnold always likes to keep his options open for a sequel).

You may note that the intro is way longer than my description of the film, and that's because Conan is practically a silent movie it uses so little traditional dialogue, particularly from Arnold himself.  I can't find an exact account of this, but Schwarzenegger himself has roughly 24 lines in the movie, most of which are reserved for a scene where he beats up & steals from an effeminate priest who is clearly hitting on him (he does not have a line in the first 24 minutes nor the last 25 minutes of the picture).  This isn't unusual for some of Schwarzenegger's early films (I believe he has even less spoken dialogue in The Terminator) and given his limited ability as an actor even when he was actually talking, this may have been for the best.  But it also feels almost silly as it goes, and when he's paired with real performers (like a scene about halfway through the film when he's opposite acting god Max von Sydow), it reads as comically uneven.

But this is kind of the appeal of Dino de Laurentiis's movies (he was the film's producer).  De Laurentiis was capable of greatness (he made some of Fellini's best pictures), but by 1982 de Laurentiis was largely best-known for making profitable schlock.  With Schwarzenegger, he found a goldmine, and they would make four movies together.  The two would have a complicated relationship.  De Laurentiis would get rich off of these movies and Schwarzenegger would become a proper movie star by the end of their partnership (something he likely would've struggled to do in mainstream movies had they not gone down this path...it's easy to see him being more Chuck Norris than Sly Stallone without De Laurentiis's help), but the last two pictures they made together (Raw Deal and in particular Red Sonja) left such bad blood that Schwarzenegger vowed to never work with him again, which meant that the third chapter in the Conan movies never happened.

Which in its way is a pity, because I quite enjoy the camp value & silliness of de Laurentiis films in this era.  Arnold can't act, this is written with an overwrought pen, and it makes all of the actually talented actors in the movies feel like they're in some weird type of kabuki theater...but it's still very watchable.  There's something there...there's a reason this movie became a hit at home, because it's equal parts funny and entertaining, even if it's objectively not good.

The Thing (1982)

Film: The Thing (1982)

Stars: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, TK Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Donald Moffat

Director: John Carradine

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

We do a film noir month every year for this blog in June, and I have a few things that I make sure to do every year, certain stars or directors that I basically require myself to go further into their filmographies as they are pioneers of the film noir genre (and have so many movies).  When you talk about horror films from the 1970's through the 1990's, few names command more respect and more intrigue than John Carpenter.  The horror master had already been part of the independent film scene for over a decade when he made Halloween on a shoestring budget in 1978, but it became a defining film in the genre (we watched it last year, link below for a review), and for the next several decades he would make unique, specific films, sometimes critically-lambasted (and then later rescued), one of which, The Thing, I watched for this blogathon for the first time this year.  I've already a made a note that if we continue this time frame for horror movies next season, we'll definitely have another Carpenter picture as there's a lot more to explore.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place entirely on the continent of Antarctica.  The film starts with a group of American scientists who see a sled dog headed toward their station, and get into a shooting match with a nearby group of Norwegian scientists, and only the dog survives.  They kennel the dog with their dogs, but it turns out the dog isn't a dog at all...but some sort of alien life form that has been frozen for centuries in the ice of Antarctica.  It kills all of the dogs, but there's a problem-we learn pretty quickly that it can assimilate into anything, including the other men on the compound.  This causes mass pandemonium.  Initially, the group are run by Garry (Moffat), but pretty quickly MacReady (Russell) takes over, and starts to quarantine different figures that are suspected of being infected like Blair (Brimley), the biologist in the compound.  This sets up a rivalry with Childs (David), the mechanic for the station.  One by one, the people start to die, their bodies taken over by the Thing, until it's just MacReady and Childs at the end, their station blown up and as a result, they will die in the cold...unless one of them is the Thing.

The ending of the Thing, I found out after the movie, has long been the subject of debate and scrutiny, and before we get into discussing it, I am decidedly on the team of people who think it totally makes the picture (which until then was a solid, if occasionally gross, claustrophobic horror movie...the end of the world happening at the end of the world is a solid idea for this genre).  The ending implies initially that Childs & MacReady are prepared to die in this cold, knowing that's the only way they can prove to the other one that they are not the Thing.  They save humanity through their own doom, because trust is no longer possible.  It's a bleak ending, but it's also compounded by the fact that it's not the only answer.  Either Childs or MacReady could be the Thing, no longer concerned by the figure in front of them, since they know they'll die, and once they die, they will go ahead and destroy the world.  The Thing is one of the few horror films, thanks to its middling box office, that never got a sequel, so the brilliance of this ending never gets confirmed, and Carpenter wisely has never revealed what he thinks happened in the end.

This all adds up to a movie that deserved a better audience, because despite tepid critics at the time, it's great.  Russell, David, & Brimley are all really terrific in their parts, leaning into the stereotypes of these characters with just a hint of malice that I found added layers to the tone of the picture.  Carpenter knows how to use the "you're all trapped" aspect of the film in a really smart way by shooting a number of scenes outdoors-we get to see characters attempting to go to cars or other buildings...but they know in the end there's no way to get away from the Thing.  And of course, the makeup & special effects for this film are on another level.  No, they aren't getting into the hyper-realism that the landmark Ridley Scott film Blade Runner was achieving that same year, but they didn't need to-you understand pretty quickly when a man is having his chest cavity ripped apart and is eating another man's arm with his split rib cage that this is terrifying even without it being anatomically perfect.  All-in-all, another great take from Carpenter coming off of Halloween.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist

1990's-Present: The Blair Witch Project, Scream

Querelle (1982)

Film: Querelle (1982)

Stars: Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau, Laurent Malet, Hanno Poschi, Gunther Kaufmann

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Franco Nero: click here to learn more about Mr. Nero (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Franco Nero spent much of the 1970's working in-and-out of Hollywood, never quite fitting in as a big screen performer in the United States after the successes of Django and Camelot.  He did make some Hollywood movies, including Force 10 from Navarone (with a young Harrison Ford) and the 20th Century Fox comedy-mystery The Man With Bogart's Face, where he played opposite Michelle Phillips (of The Mamas and the Papas).  But by-and-large most of his work was in Italian thrillers & westerns none of which had the international cache of Django.  This didn't mean that Nero didn't get adventurous with his filmography.  He was a muse for a number of different important directors, including Luis Bunuel, Claude Chabrol, and today's director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  Fassbinder is one of those names that most cinephiles, particularly queer cinephiles, are aware of but that the general public is completely oblivious to.  Even his most famous films (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant) are probably only known to you if you say the word Criterion with a sense of awe.  Nero joined Fassbinder for the latter's final film Querelle before a drug overdose took his life at the age of just 37.

(Spoilers Ahead) Querelle is an odd movie, and there's no way around that, and one that definitely has a plot, but it's so inconsequential to most of the scenes that it feels like a bit of a waste of time to summarize it.  Suffice it to say there are two brothers, Querelle (Davis) and Robert (Poschl) who meet when Querelle's boat (he's in the navy) is docked near where Robert's bar Feria is.  Robert is having an affair with a woman named Lysiane (Moreau), whose husband Nono (Kaufmann) is a crime lord in the city.  The catch is, in order to profit off of the crime, Nono gets to have sex with you if you lose a game of dice to him, which Querelle does on purpose so that he can experience sex with a man.  The film progresses with Querelle, a criminal (he's a murderer), trying to fight both getting caught and also fighting his yearning to have more sex with men.  All of this happens with Querelle's commanding officer Lieutenant Seblon (Nero) becoming increasingly sexually obsessed with Querelle, whom he wants to have to himself, and in the end he does-they end up on the ship, with Querelle resigned to a life as Seblon's love slave (though we don't see them have sex onscreen, it's heavily implied that's what happens after the credit role, both of them finally accepting their lust for one another).

If all of that sounds, well, like the plot of a gay porn...that's basically what Querelle is.  The movie is really hard to grade (I might rewatch this at some point when I investigate more of Fassbinder's work, as I feel like I'd like it better with some context, though writing down my feelings I understand I was a bigger fan than I expected), because if you go by the mechanics of it, it's kind of awful on the surface.  The dialogue is dreadful.  It honestly reads like the first five minutes of a porn, refreshing each scene, with 70% of the dialogue being some spin on "I really want to fuck you."  Having screen legend Jeanne Moreau, one of the most beautiful women in the history of the movies, basically playing a horny harlot that no one wants because every man in this universe is gay, is so strange & doesn't have enough campy payoff (she's essentially the "right in front of my salad" girl, and if you get that reference...you're the ideal audience for this movie).

But it comes together really well, and eventually you get into what Fassbinder is going for.  The sets and costumes look incredible.  Everything feels like it was somehow lensed on an MGM backlot that was designed by Tom of Finland.  I'm not sure if Davis can act (I've never seen Midnight Express), but he's perfectly-cast here as an object of unspeakable lust, and the monologues about how much he likes bottoming are so nonchalant and bold, I've never seen something like this in a movie.  The film doesn't shy away from jaw-dropping topics, or being totally shocking in a way that wouldn't fly without some underlined notice in modern cinema.  Hanno Poschl, who plays Querelle's brother, also plays a gay man named Gil whom Querelle falls in love with...the thing is, they're virtually identical onscreen (there's little done to hide that they're played by the same actor), strongly implying that Querelle wants to have sex with his brother, though they never actually say it out loud.  Another scene has a twink basically being treated as if he was his sister, so that the man who is clearly obsessed with the blonde, younger man can justify how insanely horny he is for him.  This is not the sort of film you'd expect in 1982, even in an era where movies like Making Love and Cruising were allowing mainstream actors like Kate Jackson & Al Pacino to appear in queer-themed studio films.

Nero is good as the lieutenant.  True to the plot, there's not a lot of explanation why Querelle hasn't already succumbed to the dashing-if-lascivious Seblon, incredibly handsome in his naval uniform, but Nero plays him well.  Other actors might've mandated that their characters go through the same "objections" about their homosexuality that Querelle gets, but Nero plays the character as horny, and well aware of his gay attraction to the beautiful naval officers under his employ.  When he eventually lands Querelle, I was a little worried that the plot wouldn't allow them to be together (unlike some of his other sexual encounters, Querelle doesn't bottom for Seblon onscreen), but Nero plays the character well enough to let you know that yes, he's looking out for Querelle, whom he clearly is in love with...but the first 90 minutes of the movie where he spent grabbing his crotch at Brad Davis' plunging neckline are not forgotten in the way he can't stop staring at him.  Fassbinder was not shy about sex, and the viewer is very much aware that by the film's end, Seblon's explicit fantasies will become a reality.

OVP: Poltergeist (1982)

Film: Poltergeist (1982)

Stars: Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Beatrice Straight, Dominique Dunne, Heather O'Rourke, Zelda Rubinstein

Director: Tobe Hooper

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Original Score, Sound Effects Editing, & Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

I didn't realize this until I just started writing this article, but we have already visited director Tobe Hooper this month, with the 1974 slasher film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the movie (spoiler alert) I liked the least of the 15 films we are profiling.  In proof of how the decade started to see horror as a genuinely profitable, even mainstream, way to make money again after the 1950's & 60's had relegated this genre to largely B-film or independent status, by 1982 Hooper went from working on a shoestring, no-name budget to working on a major Hollywood film.  Poltergeist was made by MGM, had a proper $10 million budget, and was produced by Steven Spielberg, who in 1982 was already one of the biggest names in movies, and indeed was making one of the biggest films of all-time that year in ET: The Extra-Terrestrial.  Poltergeist paid off-it was a huge hit (albeit, not as big as ET) and the two share some similarities in the way that they look at the suburban dream, with the outsider force in ET being a sweet, benevolent alien...while in Poltergeist, it's something far more sinister.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about the Freeling family, who live in a cookie cutter neighborhood where husband Steve (Nelson) is a real estate developer while wife Diane (Williams) raises their three children, the youngest of which is five-year-old Carol Anne (O'Rourke).  Carol Anne converses with the television late at night when programming is done & it's just static (this used to be a thing for younger people out there that are unaware, where they would play the national anthem at the end of the day & then the feed on the major networks would all cut out).  After a giant earthquake, Carol Anne proclaims "they're here" (the film's most iconic line), and suddenly ghost-like phenomena starts to happen all throughout the house, with the tree coming alive and furniture moving on its own.  Eventually it becomes too much when the TV sucks Carol Anne into it, and so they hire parapsychologist Martha Lesh (Straight), who then brings on Tangina Barrons (Rubinstein), a spiritual medium, both of whom try, eventually somewhat successfully to get Carol Anne back (success) and rid the house of "the Beast" (unsuccessful).  In a final showdown, they realize that the housing complex was built on the graves of an ancient Indian burial ground, and this is the ghosts coming back for revenge.  The house implodes in the end, and the family is forced in the final scenes to flee to a Holiday Inn, where Steve comically removes the TV from their room as a last second sight gag to end the picture.

Poltergeist is a superb indictment of the Reagan Era.  While in ET, the government is trying to destroy a sweet, lovable alien, in Poltergeist, it is more conspicuous consumption that is tearing apart a stereotypical American family.  The Freelings are living the American dream-wealthy, suburban, sprawling house...they are the "typical white upper-middle class family" that the Reagan Era preached toward as the "ideal."  But lurking literally underneath this facade is the people who sacrificed to build this world, and they are ignoring their sacrifice, as well as the sacrifices of the people that these wealthy people squeezed for profit to get to where they are.  It's a great script, and honestly a really excellent movie-one of my favorites we got to this month.

Part of that is the women in the film.  Rubinstein is the most famous character in this film (give or take O'Rourke's young Carol Anne), with her characterization of Tangina initially meant to feel like comic relief, and then played totally straight, to perfect effect.  Rubinstein would have a surprisingly long history in horror films after this, never getting a lot of mainstream success after Poltergeist, but when you think of an actor in this movie, you think of her.  However, everyone's solid here.  JoBeth Williams is fabulous as a mother trying to understand what's happening to her family, but is also oddly excited to be a part of the solution rather than just the "window dressing wife" (think of the glee she gets when she starts to understand the paranormal activity in the house before anyone else-it's solid underscoring of her character's boredom).  Williams is an Oscar nominee (for Best Live Action Short), but despite being a regular player in film & TV in the 1980's, is virtually forgotten as an actress today & so it's fun to see what she was capable of in her prime.  Rounding out the solid cast is Oscar Winner Beatrice Straight, who I think plays her character as a con-woman who is slightly over-her-head, but excited on some level to have the chance to see if she can actually handle these spirits after basically pretending to for her career.

The film received three Oscar nominations, all of which it lost to ET.  The best of the bunch might be the Sound Editing, with the film's soundscape within the TV world, and the "cleaning" of the house late in the film being a cacophony of static & whirling that allows you to still hear the actors' dialogue without abandoning the overwhelming noise.  The visual effects are also impressive, including the "how did they do that?" scene with floating items all around one of the bedrooms, and the early use of computer-generated images that this film employed.  The score I was less thrilled with, to be honest.  It's not that Jerry Goldsmith's music it's bad (it's not, it's Jerry Goldsmith, come on now), but it's too much.  It overpowers the movie, especially the first half of the film & kind of feels like it's overcompensating to bring you into this world.  It's not like you don't remember it (it's iconic), but it has a Philip Glass effect where it becomes the only thing you notice.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Mummy's Ghost, The Uninvited, House of Dracula, She-Wolf of London, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Revenge of the Creature, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Village of the Damned, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead, The Wicker Man, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, The Amityville Horror, When a Stranger Calls, Friday the 13th, The Evil Dead

OVP: The Verdict (1982)

Film: The Verdict (1982)
Stars: Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, James Mason, Milo O'Shea
Director: Sidney Lumet
Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Paul Newman, Supporting Actor-James Mason, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

If you look hard enough, the guy in the tan suit & striped tie in the top right
next to the woman with the perm is a very famous future movie star-
do you know who it is?

Few film genres were destroyed more resoundingly by television than the courtroom drama.  In fact, I'm still kind of stunned when a movie like Just Mercy shows up in theaters as it feels like a western or musical randomly getting a retread.  Television almost completely took over the genre, with everything from Perry Mason to Law & Order to NCIS picking up the pieces of a legal drama.  Films of this genre almost always feel worn or tired at this point, as a result, and when I recently caught a classic in the genre, The Verdict, it was a struggle to get by this genre bias, even as it was apparent that this was a quality film.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Frank Galvin (Newman), a largely disgraced attorney who was once accused of jury tampering, in the twilight of his career.  He's an alcoholic ambulance chaser, someone who barely makes rent, and is given a bone when he is sent a medical malpractice case by his friend Mickey (Warden) that seems certain to settle out of court (read: an easy payday).  Frank, though, wants to take the case to court, and refuses the out-of-court settlement (to the chagrin of the victims' relatives), and has to go toe-to-toe with the hospital's legal defense team, headed by Ed Concannon (Mason), a cutthroat lawyer.  The case then follows as Concannon's team goes to great lengths (scaring off witnesses and hiring a woman, Laura, played by Rampling, to seduce Frank & feed him information).  In the end, though, a nurse that had been on-duty confesses that the hospital had put the patient under anesthesia even though she had recently eaten, thus causing her current medical predicament.  Frank wins the case, and is left wondering whether or not his relationship with Laura is worth saving.

The Verdict gains its reputation not necessarily from the uniqueness of its plot, but the quality in which it's executed.  This is, in fact, considerably better than you'd expect from even the best Law & Order episodes because it explores the soul of some of these characters.  Newman is fantastic in the lead role as Frank.  This was during the period where everyone was sort of wondering if Newman, a decades-long Hollywood favorite, would ever get to win his competitive Oscar (spoiler alert: he would, four years later, but this year he'd be bested by Ben Kingsley), and it's easy to see why such scuttle continued with a performance this solid.  Newman's work here is grounded in not making the alcoholism Frank's totality, but part of his life.  He's a high-functioning alcoholic-he's had a dwindling career, but he's still kept his career.  Newman makes that a side effect of his life, just sitting there on the outskirts, creeping in when he needs it not to the most.  It's great acting from a champion performer.

The film won three other nominations other than its Best Picture/Actor credentials, and all of them are well-earned.  Lumet's direction is succinct, rarely giving us a shot that isn't carefully-framed, while the script is brilliant, filled with strong speeches from Newman & Mason, as well as almost no scenes that are out-of-place (I'm shocked the editing wasn't nominated).  The relationship between Newman and Rampling doesn't quite gel properly, though to no fault of either actor (I don't know if I'd have nominated Rampling or not for this-I'd need to explore the year more-and she's one of my favorite performers, but there's something off in their chemistry, him too fire and her too ice).  James Mason was correctly cited for the film, and unlike Newman, would never win an Academy Award; he would die less than two years after the release of The Verdict.  This is a proper epitaph to the actor, though, with his distinctive voice ringing not just alongside a truly villainous character, but one who is a reminder of the audience's culpability in assuming authority is usually looking out for its best interests.  The Verdict succeeds because it finds a way to not just show an underdog tale, but why underdog tales are important in the first place.

OVP: Best Friends (1982)

Film: Best Friends (1982)
Stars: Goldie Hawn, Burt Reynolds, Ron Silver, Jessica Tandy, Barnard Hughes, Audra Lindley, Keenan Wynn
Director: Norman Jewison
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"How Do You Keep the Music Playing?")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Admittedly I should probably be getting political today, again (and am on my Twitter page, so follow me if you don't), but my lovely travel plans for the weekend got cancelled and I'm bummed from that, so instead I am spending the weekend cleaning out my DVR in preparation for the 31 Days of Oscar that is about to bestow itself upon us all as a radiant sign of hope (my DVR, TCM, and I have a bit of a war every year over how many movies I can fit on it, and I always lose in not getting as many as I want, but I'm at least giving myself a running chance right now).  Therefore in the next week (and likely over the next month or so), in addition to politics, Oscar articles, and modern movie reviews, expect to see some pretty eclectic films come forward that have been cited by the Academy but may not be as headliner as they once were.  We'll start that list with 1982's Best Friends, starring Goldie Hawn and Burt Reynolds.

(Spoilers Ahead) It's always something I have to acclimate to when I'm revisiting movies from a previous era who were the "movie stars" of the time that didn't necessarily gain immortal status, which is always that way with Reynolds in particular, but it's worth recalling Burt Reynolds at this time was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood (career misfires, then Evening Shade, then Boogie Nights, then more career misfires, would soon follow), as was Hawn, who had enough of a role in my childhood that I don't have to remind myself of her screen presence (she's one of my favorites).  The film shows them as Paula and Richard, two successful screenwriters, friends and lovers, who decide on a whim that it's time they get married.  The film then shows them as they move into a more domestic role while meeting their parents, considerably more eccentric than they are used to in their work-powered Los Angeles existence.

The film is one of those love stories that has aged and dated badly.  The idea of marriage "changing everything" is a bit more alien now when romantic couples regularly live together without getting married, and the idea of going from a career woman to a "wife" is a bit prosaic (you can be both!), but there are cute moments in the film.  The parents (Tandy, Hughes, Lindley, and Wynn) are all caricatures of human beings, but they get some fun lines in (particularly a bawdy Tandy, miles away from what she would soon bring to Miss Daisy), and Hawn and Reynolds are both incredibly watchable movie stars.  It all feels, though, like we're expecting too little from their characters-are they so sheltered that they can't put up with the insanity of their spouse's family for a week?  I think expecting patience out of two grown adults, particularly considering that the in-laws are by-and-large quite kind (if indeed pushy) shows a plot point that I'm missing-were we expected to think that people had less patience in 1982?  Couple that with a late scene that, while at the time probably wasn't nearly as heinous as it is now, but wouldn't fly in a movie in 2017 (Reynolds smashes open a window and pushes Hawn's head through the opening so she can "get some air," a violent scene that wouldn't be fitting today in a scene where they're about to reconcile), made me not like the movie, even if I did in fact enjoy it more in the middle than the script was giving me options to do.

The movie received a sole nomination for Best Song, one of many creations from Alan & Marilyn Bergman to be such cited, and it's actually quite lovely.  James Ingram, a solid good luck charm in the 1980's and 1990's for Oscar, performs the song with Patti Austin, and it's a lovely 80's power ballad, better than you'd remember even if a bit overly sappy.  The song features throughout as a melancholy love theme, only properly playing over the end credits but also appear in snippets throughout.  It's not a bad nomination, for the record, though I doubt when we get down to it in the OVP that Oscar made the wrong call going with An Officer and a Gentleman.  We shall see then, though.

Those are my thoughts on this romantic comedy from 1982-how about you?  Anyone have a fond memory of this, and if not, share your favorite film moments of Reynolds or Hawn?  And also, which of James Ingram's many soundtrack-sourced love ballads is your favorite?  Share below!

OVP: Blade Runner (1982)

Film: Blade Runner (1982)
Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Darryl Hannah, Edward James Olmos
Director: Ridley Scott
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Art Direction and Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Approaching a classic film is always a challenge.  Approaching a classic film that also doubles as a cult film, a picture so frequently referenced that it approaches you knowing nearly the entire film by the time you actually see it is something else entirely.  I actually dreaded in some ways finally encountering Blade Runner, a science fiction epic (arguably my favorite genre outside of detective noir, which this film also borrows from heavily), as I knew that I was either going to love it or find it lacking in so many ways, hoping that the film would give me its best but preparing for the worst.  My eventual opinion somehow landed in-between, a combination of both duly impressed but also wanting more after so much promise.

(Spoilers Ahead) For many of you the spoiler alert isn't necessary, but for the rest of you let me at least indulge for a second.  The film follows Deckard (Ford) in 2019 (the future is always disappointing when you compare it to what actually ends up happening isn't it...though if Trump gets elected maybe the apocalypse is in fact upon us).  Deckard is charged with "retiring" (killing) four different replicants (essentially advanced artificial intelligence creations) who have escaped and are now on Earth illegally, essentially hoping to have their lives extended.  Along the way, he falls in love with a replicant named Rachael (Young), who helps him retire one of the replicants that is trying to kill him.  Slowly-but-steadily the four replicants are killed by Deckard, who knows they only have a night or so to live without having some sort of technology that will extend their lives.  He ends with Roy Batty (Hauer), the leader of the robots, in a strange act actually save him, just to watch him die as his life expires.

The film combines a lot of elements of noir, and it's close enough to something that Stanley Kubrick would dream up that the film never lacks in terms of direction or suspense.  While it's clear that Hauer's Roy Batty will be the final remaining character, each of the different robots has their own personas and especially with Pris (Hannah) she's such a strong fighter that you half expect her to lay out Harrison Ford or at least run away from the contest.  The movie is spectacularly good at world-building-there's little confusion over the rules of this filmic world and everything feels authentic.  It's kind of staggering the film never had a sequel, and quite frankly a movie like this couldn't be made today without one on the docket (actually, a movie this original couldn't be made today, period, unless Christopher Nolan had stumbled across the Philip K. Dick novel and developed a penchant for it), but it gains so much by never answering some of the critical questions at the end of the picture.  The film exists unto itself, and with such distinctive characters and sets, it's easy to see why this became a cult movie classic.

My problem with the film is that the story, while complicated, never really gives us enough character to go with it.  Yes, the actors and sets are distinctive, but we never really get to know the robots enough to know what their motives are, and why they exist the way they do.  This wouldn't be a problem for the audience, except that Deckard is clearly assumed to be a robot himself, one who doesn't know it yet but is likely going to have a shut-down period in the near future.  The film is littered with hints of this, particularly the newest version of Ridley Scott's picture (this is a film with MANY different iterations).  By not exploring this a little bit more fully, we don't get to see the ways that Ford's Deckard ticks in comparison to those androids he's hunting down.  I'm fine with ambiguity in the ending (and man did Inception copy from that finale), but if you're going to leave a question that open-ended, you need to give us more from the characters (save perhaps Roy Batty) than just a truly awesome Halloween costume idea.

Those are my thoughts on this particular picture, which received two well-earned Oscar nominations (seriously-these were the exact categories this film deserved to be nominated in), but as this is a widely-celebrated cult classic I'd love to get inside of your head.  I plan on eventually seeing the film again, and while I engaged mostly at a surface-level, what a surface level to engage in-overall it's definitely a film that I'd recommend, even if I don't think I'll ever love it the way that other people did.

OVP: My Favorite Year (1982)

Film: My Favorite Year (1982)
Stars: Peter O'Toole, Mark Linn-Baker, Jessica Harper, Joseph Bologna, Bill Macy, Lainie Kazan
Director: Richard Benjamin
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actor-Peter O'Toole)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Classical Hollywood is a land of dreams, and frequently illusions.  In the 1980's and ever since, we have seen the Golden Age of Hollywood, land of a thousand movie stars, torn apart.  Bing Crosby and Joan Crawford were hardly as noble as their onscreen characters.  Rock Hudson was hardly going to end up with Doris Day.  Perhaps the first of these onscreen stars to watch their career wildly torn asunder was Errol Flynn, a swashbuckling movie star of the 1930's and 40's who watched his celebrity torn apart by salacious sex scandals and an endless stream of booze.  Flynn's demise is seen on full-display in My Favorite Year, a 1982 film most noted for its sole Oscar nomination in Best Actor.  My Favorite Year never actually mentions Flynn, of course, but he's apparent in every single scene-you can clearly tell which star Peter O'Toole is trying to encapsulate.  It's a fun, meta trick in an otherwise dull and dated comedy, and almost worth the price of admission.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film tells the tale of Allan Swann (O'Toole) a slightly washed-up former matinee idol who is trying to stage a comeback of sorts on television.  He's guesting on a show clearly mirroring Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows (the film is executive produced by Mel Brooks, who is the inspiration for Mark Linn-Baker's Benjy Stone), but doesn't seem to have enough ground in reality anymore to actually perform, as he's constantly on a bender or ending up in bed with a random woman.

The film is always at its best whenever O'Toole is onscreen, which isn't as often as you'd think considering its star billing.  Mark Linn-Baker is actually the main character (in today's Oscars, someone might have considered O'Toole for the supporting category, even though this is a Miranda Priestley style situation and he belongs in lead), but he doesn't have enough of a presence to really sell his character, frequently trying to be both Mel Brooks and Woody Allen at once, but never having the charisma to be either.

I loved the way that O'Toole is so vicious in the way he takes down the pampered life of movie stars.  He shows how he's essentially constantly being admired, with people throwing themselves at him with little idea of what sort of a scoundrel he is offscreen, and how he needs his assistants and chauffeur to essentially do everything for him-all he is required to do is stand in front of a camera and be admired. O'Toole gets all of the great lines ("I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star!") and the casting director for this film gets great credit for having a rascal of a character played by a rascal of an actor.  Someone with less magnitude than Peter O'Toole, a great actor but an equally great cinema star would have been crushed under the weight of overacting.  With O'Toole, we give him multiple benefits of the doubt when he's charming-we want to be part of his world just like everyone wants to be part of Allan Swann's.  It's a great little trick, and though O'Toole is not helped by the saccharine ending (did we really need the deadbeat dad story, or quite frankly anything involving Benjy's home life with the always lovable but in this case totally unnecessary Lainie Kazan?), he's still quite good.

The film could have used more of this movie star panache, as even though it's essentially about television, TV had stars too, but it's hard to see them here.  I loved the one "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" homage to classic Hollywood (the woman that O'Toole dances with at the restaurant is 30's leading lady and future Oscar nominee Gloria Stuart), but it would have been better if we'd seen more of them. A little more name-dropping and more of Allan as movie star would have given the film a shot in the arm when it felt long (and it's only ninety minutes).

Those are my thoughts-what about yours?  Has anyone seen My Favorite Year, and if so, what did you think?  Where does Peter O'Toole rank in your 1982 Best Actor lineup (when you have Ben Kingsley, Paul Newman, Jack Lemmon, and Dustin Hoffman as your competitors, you know it's going to be a tough competition)?  And did anyone else notice the Gloria Stuart cameo?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: TRON (1982)

Film: Tron (1982)
Stars: Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, Barnard Hughes, Dan Shor
Director: Steven Lisberger
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Costume and Sound Mixing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

There has to be a bit of a curve when judging special effects-laden films of the past.  Not every film can have the timeless panache of Star Wars or the inexplicably ageless effects of Jurassic Park; it's impossible to expect each film to equal that level of foresight in what will still be utilized in the future.  However, even if you discount the archaic, video game-inspired digital work on display in this cult classic, much-lampooned Steven Lisberger film, you cannot excuse the expositional dialogue and the rudimentary, two-dimensional acting on display.

(Spoilers ahead) The film tells the tale of a hacker named Kevin Flynn (Bridges) who is trying to recover proof that he created a series of successful video games, which the increasingly out-of-control Dillinger (Warner) has stolen credit for, and is now guarding through the Master Control Program.  Flynn enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend (a love triangle that remains largely uncommented upon throughout the film, despite her having the "winner's kiss" with both of them at some point during the film).  Together, the three of them attempt to hack into the Master Control Program, only to have Flynn find himself in the actual world of the computer programs.

The film shows Flynn, still played by Bridges, encounter different computer programs (all taking on human form), and having to fight them in a gladiator style form of combat.  Once he eventually escapes from his masters (with two other fighters, including Tron, played by Boxleitner in a doppelganger moment that is mimicked multiple times throughout the film), he sets out to destroy the Master Control Program, and eventually succeeds, saving the day, kissing the girl, and going back to the real world with successful credit for his work.

The film is at its best whenever it focuses on the charming, affable Bridges.  Bridges, 32 when this was made but looking eight years younger, plays like an effortlessly beautiful, less ornery Harrison Ford when he wanted to be, and despite never taking off in the matinee style that Ford did (though really, few actors in film history took off like Ford did during this time period), his charm and confidence oozes across the screen, particularly since the rest of his cast members seem to constantly be forgetting their lines (the time delays may have had to do with the visual effects holding them up in the computer world, but the issue also lies in the real-life scenes, so there's really no excuse).  The rest of the cast is so bad you have trouble believing that this wasn't a highly-stylized student film and not a major-budget film funded by Disney.

The script is also grossly dated.  It's already at a hindrance with the focus on soon to be obsolete technologies, but add to that a series of "I'm doing this" sort of dialogue and a plot that seems to have been written directly from the brainstorming session of the writing room without actually killing any ideas(what was with the random allusions to the Pentagon and the Kremlin if for no other reason that it's the Cold War-this plot doesn't go anywhere outside that scene?), and you have a clunker.

The film received a pair of Oscar nominations, and almost certainly would have scored a third had its Visual Effects been eligible (oddly enough, they were deemed ineligible for using CGI, which would become a mainstay of that category in years to come).  The Costume design is a give-and-take, as the costumes would go on to be relatively iconic, but they're also all variations on the same suit, and so it's hard to give them a trophy for just one look.  The other nomination, Sound Mixing, seems like one of those cursory nominations they throw at a film that's special effects laden, but again, there's little to crow about in the Sound design, and comparing it to films like Star Wars and Indiana Jones which became part of the filmic landscape during the same era makes Tron fall short.

But what are your thoughts?  I'm about to head into the sequel (both are OVP films, and so I figured they'd make a good double feature even if I'm not exactly thrilled about the prospect of the second one based on my initial reaction to the first).  Are you a Tron fanatic, or do you not get the many (many) allusions Seth MacFarlane has made to this film over the years?  And do you agree that it likely would have been nominated had it been eligible for the Visual Effects Oscar?