Gremlins (1984)

Film: Gremlins (1984)

Stars: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Frances Lee McCain, Corey Feldman, Polly Holliday, Howie Mandel

Director: Joe Dante

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.

Every movie that I've watched this month, as I just mentioned, I am seeing for the first time.  That's probably not true for Gremlins, at least not wholly true.  I know we had a copy of the movie that we taped off of a free HBO weekend when I was a kid, and we had a read-along tape of the movie (or a children's novelization of the movie) that my brother liked growing up...but watching it again, I'm fully convinced that I never actually watched this in full even if I've seen it in parts.  Gremlins is one of two movies (along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, both with the guiding hand of Steven Spielberg, who executive produced this picture) that basically launched the PG-13 rating, as at the time it was either going to be PG (which it was) or R-Rated.  Watching it now, the PG-13 rating uproar doesn't feel as warranted as it did for Temple of Doom, but it is definitely something that would've happened had the rating existed in 1984.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses initially on inventor Randall Peltzer (Axton), visiting a shop in Chinatown where he buys a small creature that eventually is known as Gizmo (Mandel), whom he gifts to his son Billy (Galligan).  Billy is told there are three rules when it comes to taking care of the mogwai: 1) don't get them wet 2) don't let them get a lot of light, especially sunlight which is lethal and 3) never feed them after midnight.  Of course, Billy ends up doing all three before the movie is over, given that he's a well-meaning but sexually-distracted (by his love interest Kate, played by Phoebe Cates, with both Galligan & Cates getting their all-American 1980's heartthrob status on in this movie) young man.  Once Gizmo is wet, he multiples into a much less docile mogwai creatures, the leader of which is Spike, and after they are fed post-midnight, they turn into nasty gremlin creatures who terrorize the town (and kill a few people, including Polly Holliday's ruthless Mrs. Deagle), before they are stopped by the sunlight, save for Gizmo who goes back to his Chinatown owner, but not before a heartfelt goodbye with Billy.

The film is a silly blast.  I know people oftentimes lump this in with Poltergeist, as both are sendups of the Reagan Era with Steven Spielberg's involvement, but I don't quite buy that this has as much political cache as Poltergeist's damning (and extremely well-acted) look at the consumerism of the 1980's, but it's definitely there.  Instead, it's just a wholly original work, with adorable, comical creatures that in many ways are more family-friendly incarnations of what Chucky would be a few years later in Child's Play.  The film feels very much in the vein of the Spielberg/Kathleen Kennedy/Frank Marshall machine that would dominate movies from the early 1980's all the way to the MCU era, and like most of those films, this was a massive hit in 1984.

The movie also has the good sense to not try too hard on the effects.  This isn't a slam (the effects look quite good), but they don't use much CGI (at that point just in its infancy as an option onscreen), and instead they smartly keep the creatures animatronic puppets in the vein of something like Yoda or The Dark Crystal a few years earlier.  Even in their most wicked stage, there's so much personality in the gremlins by not having them be CGI (which at this point would've necessitated they all look the same, rather than giving them each a lot of detail & character work), and I think those added touches give us a lot better ride, even if they might make them mildly less scary (since it feels like they're fighting creepy Muppets in some sequences).

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, The Thing

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

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Film: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Stars: John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Heather Lagenkamp, Amanda Wyss, Nick Corri, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund

Director: Wes Craven

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 are getting toward the end of our month, with just three films left after this, so it's worth noting that while the 1980's were dominated by slasher/horror films, the apparent bonanza of films were based off of 3-4 movie monsters getting endless sequels.  One of these figures, of course, is Freddy Krueger, who is the titular villain in Wes Craven's original horror show, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and our villain today.  The late Craven was one of the grandmasters of horror, making not just Nightmare in the 1980's, but eventually he would revive the slasher genre in the 1990's with the Scream films.  Nightmare is honestly one of the films on this list that I was most scared to visit, at least before I started.  It's genuinely a terrifying concept-a serial killer who can kill you in your sleep, so no one can remain safe forever-but while my fears were allayed (it was scary, but I wasn't petrified throughout it), it's a good movie, one that uses its concept to the fullest effect & it's easy to see why this spawned a cavalcade of sequels.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie initially starts with Tina Gray (Wyss) having a very vivid dream about a burned man in a knit sweater & fedora trying to claw at her, attempting to kill her.  The film is so real, in fact, that she wakes up with her nightgown slashed, assuming she must have torn it in her dream.  The film continues, though, with Tina realizing that all of her friends have also been having dreams about this guy.  We realize that this man is in fact harming people when Tina dies after he kills her in a dream, her blood splattered in all directions, and eventually our protagonist Nancy (Lagenkamp) finds out from her alcoholic mother Marge (Blakley) that this man is named Fred Krueger (Englund), a child murderer who was let off on a technicality...so the parents of the city decided to burn him alive in a form of vigilante justice.  After all of Nancy's friends die, we learn that Freddy is after her mother, and nearly kills her, until Nancy finds a way to stop him, understanding that he is driven by his victim's fear...which works until the last scene, where an idyllic scene turns out to be just a dream, and Marge is lunged at from a window while Nancy is driven away in a locked car.

The movie doesn't always make sense.  The adults are, even for a horror movie, mind-numbingly stupid, to the point where Blakley (who gave a performance for the ages in Nashville) has been mercilessly mocked for this work at midnight movie screenings ever since.  I get that Gen X was a very different time, but come on-a police officer hears a young girl screaming from a window and doesn't even care?  It feels far-fetched, and the ending also feels a bit silly, as there's no indication until Nancy's last moments with him that Freddy is fueled by fear, but instead seems just like a byproduct of revenge.

But taking aside the silliness of the plot, the film works.  Freddy is genuinely terrifying, and as played by Englund, largely unknowable while still eliciting frights, which is how the best slasher villains come to life.  The sound, visual effects, & makeup work are iconic-at one point one of the characters has a bed violently erupt in blood, and while it's not exactly high-tech in the year of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it's very effective work.  Plus, Englund's look cannot be denied-there's a reason that Freddy is still a Halloween costume mainstay nearly 40 years later.  The film also introduced the world to Johnny Depp in his film debut (I'm not getting into it-let's just say it's undeniable he's been a pretty big movie star so I can't mention his debut without saying something).  Depp got the part thanks to his buddy Nicolas Cage helping him get the audition, but you don't see the future marquee star much here.  He's hot (the men in this film are far more sexualized than the women which is a nice change of pace, the most pressing example being Depp in a crop-top jersey that surely was noticed by every closeted gay teenager watching this film behind cupped hands), but nothing particularly special here like what fellow superstar Jamie Lee Curtis would clearly demonstrated in Halloween.

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, Poltergeist

This is Spinal Tap (1984)

Film: This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Stars: Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, Fran Drescher
Director: Rob Reiner
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I have not had the best luck when it comes to revisiting classic comedies of the 1980's in the past decade.  Movies like Animal House or Airplane!, movies that are considered the gold standard for the genre, are totally lost on me.  This is a little bit because comedies generally rely upon being of-the-moment.  Few films can function as well in every decade like, say, Some Like It Hot or Young Frankenstein, forever timeless.  However, that's also a sign of a movie that didn't age well, which a movie should-film is something that should resonate across generations even if it was made for only one, which is something I'm going to hold against This is Spinal Tap, a movie that has developed an absolute cult following that I found, well, dull.

(Spoilers Ahead) For those unfamiliar, the movie is a rock mockumentary, meant to parody films like  The Last Waltz (about The Band) or Don't Look Back (about Bob Dylan), which had been popular in the 1960's & 70's, but in this case it's about a mediocre singing group who enjoyed a couple of minor hits in other genres, but whose transition to heavy metal has not been greeted with a grand fanfare.  Their shows are increasingly in limited venues, and the crowds are getting smaller.  The band (McKean, Guest, & Shearer make up Spinal Tap) has quite a bit of infighting, including McKean's David falling for a Yoko Ono-type figure, and there's a recurring gag about how the drummers in the band all die in mysterious circumstances.  However, in the end the band reunites after one of their songs becomes a major hit in Japan (which is an inside joke in the rock industry about how certain bands enjoy pockets of success in select regions of the world).

Spinal Tap is thankfully brief, but I left unimpressed.  Its reputation might be because the film would end up inspiring a whole host of filmmakers in the years that followed, including lead actor Christopher Guest, who would make his own series of mockumentary films that would enjoy a devoted fanbase.  In many ways this is the modern template for such films-movies that take the documentary form and fictionalize it, which would at the very least make this style of movie groundbreaking.

But it's not very good.  The jokes and motifs in the movie are dated & not that funny.  Like most 1980's films, there's a strong dose of sexism intermingled with the humor, to the point where you kind of want to check in on the marginalized women in the film to see if any of them would like to be portrayed as something other than a "harpy" or someone-to-have-sex-with.  If it's satire, it's hard to find a way to connect with it as someone who was born after it came out (and therefore didn't grow up with it at all), and if I'm going to try & disregard my generation, I can't disregard the misogyny.  The film is intriguing, and it's impossible not to see the pop culture it inspired, but I found it a bore.

OVP: Purple Rain (1984)

Film: Purple Rain (1984)
Stars: Prince, Apollonia Kotero, Morris Day, Olga Karlatos, Clarence Williams III
Director: Albert Magnoli
Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Original Song Score*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

A couple of confessions.  First off, as a lifelong Minnesotan (with a one-year sabbatical in New York), there is a small amount of shame in the fact that I have never seen Purple Rain.  I always felt that I should rectify this in a big way (maybe see a showing of it at Paisley Park or something), but last night in my monthly "Secret Movie Night" tradition, I randomly was assigned this particular picture so I guess seeing this movie less than 2 miles from Lake Minnetonka wasn't the worst way to finally catch Prince's magnum opus (and it was certainly thrilling to see the ways the city I've worked in for 11 years has changed since the 1980's).  Secondly, I am not a fan of cult movies.  This is a concept that largely escapes me-I don't go to midnight showings mostly because I don't stay up that late (I'm 34, and need sleep), but also because most cult or midnight movies are bad, and I don't understand the appeal of reveling in bad movies.  There are exceptions (Clue and Scott Pilgrim are both comic masterpieces, instantly quotable and insanely watchable), but by-and-large the sorts of films that appeal to the cult movie crowd I don't understand at all.  Purple Rain is one of these such movies, and since I was being forced to watch it through the Secret Movie night (and it got another OVP movie off of the list if nothing else), I wanted to underline this fact before you start getting irate at me for "not getting the movie"-I get it, I just don't like it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows the Kid (Prince), an aspiring young talent who appears nightly at the iconic First Avenue (in this regard I am a proper Minnesotan-I have definitely seen a show at First Avenue) and his romance with another aspiring young singer named Apollonia (Kotera), who is beautiful but isn't able to get her foot in the door of Minneapolis's club scene.  The Kid is stubborn, not seeing the value in the rest of his band's songwriting skills, and isn't as popular as some of the other First Avenue acts, particularly Morris (Day), who wants to take the Kid down and make Apollonia his own discovery/romance.  The film frequently segways into the Kid's violent home life, where his father (Williams) regularly beats his mother (Karlatos), an act that the Kid repeats in his relationship with Apollonia.  Eventually Apollonia does create a band with Morris, and nearly takes away the Kid's act at First Avenue until he realizes the error-of-his-ways, uses his bandmate's song, and performs "Purple Rain" to an adoring crowd.

The film is, and I don't want to underscore this, really bad.  The acting is appalling.  Prince can get away with some of the cheesy and coy line readings because he's a legendarily shy rock god (the "purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka" line actually worked for me, for the record, somewhat out of Minnesota pride but also because Prince is strange enough to be a character who would actually say this sentence), but the rest of the cast doesn't have such luck.  Kotera deserved her Razzie nomination for her work here, as her line readings are stiff and the kind of thing that an audience will break out laughing to even when it's not intended to be funny; Day and Williams aren't much better on this front.  The movie's politics have aged so heinously that one has to assume they weren't particularly appropriate even in the 1980's.  The Kid's mirroring of his father's abusive behavior to Apollonia and then having her forgive him in the end (without him even truly apologizing) is an appallingly sexist message to send to the audience, and I honestly thought about getting up and leaving the theater it was so gross the way the movie linked violence and sex in such a way.  The fact that the movie is a cult film sort of underlines why this is a portion of filmic culture I have never been able to get behind.

The movie's one redeeming factor is the concert scenes featuring Prince performing some of his best-loved music.  Here, the movie delivers which is why it's not getting one-star even if the "movie" portions of the film totally deserve it.  Prince, a vibrant live performer, is electric when he eventually gets to do the title song, in a way that I saw several people in the movie theater audience starting to randomly wave their hands in the air.  Each scene with Prince on the stage at First Avenue is magic-a treat for audiences and sweeps you up in what made him such a powerful presence in the music scene.  The film deserved its Razzie nominations, but the Oscar was probably worthwhile too-it's hard to imagine another musical from the 1980's that had such iconic hits.  But they're buried in a movie that is dated, stiff, and needlessly violent, and shouldn't be celebrated in any fashion, even ironically.

Mrs. Soffel (1984)

Film: Mrs. Soffel (1984)
Stars: Diane Keaton, Mel Gibson, Matthew Modine, Edward Herrmann
Director: Gillian Armstrong
Oscar History: While it wasn't nominated, Keaton landed a Globe nod for Best Actress in a Drama, so you know it was pretty close.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's hard to remember now (really, really hard), but at one point everyone in America loved Mel Gibson.  Like really and truly loved Mel Gibson, and it wasn't always because he was a major action star whose children always seemed to be getting kidnapped and the government was out to get him while he mooned the British.  No, it was because Mel Gibson was perhaps the prettiest man in the world circa 1984, and was a devastatingly romantic leading man.  The plot and progression of a film like Mrs. Soffel, of which I've always been curious because it was during that period where Diane Keaton was doing almost entirely straight dramas and yet only once got an Oscar nomination while dominating at the Golden Globes post-Reds.  I came away with perhaps a realization as to why they didn't like Keaton at the time, but also as to why it was so disappointing when Mel Gibson turned around and we all realized he was a bigot.

(Spoilers Ahead) For those unfamiliar, Diane Keaton plays Kate Soffel, the wife of a Pittsburgh prison warden who has in his jail two wildly celebrated outlaw brothers who have become cause celebre for the women of the town, all of whom seem to be in love with them after seeing their pictures in the paper.  Kate has been very ill for months (perhaps postpartum depression or some bout of mental illness, it's never quite clear what is the problem), but decides to start to read biblical verses to the two men and then slowly falls in love with the older brother Ed (Gibson) and plans a prison break for both brothers where she escapes with them, running out on her husband and four children.  The law catches up with the three of them, with Kate nearly dying in a shootout that takes the lives of Ed and Jack (Modine), and eventually she loses pretty much everything that she once held dear as her warden husband and children turn their backs on Mrs. Soffel when she heads to prison.

The film is dour and dark, and Keaton is oddly out-of-place in my opinion as the aging Mrs. Soffel.  We get some of the casting here, and I wish director Gillian Armstrong had played a little bit more on the way that self-esteem played into this (Keaton is a striking woman, but is less conventionally attractive than Gibson, and that's a part of the dialogue here as it's never completely clear if Ed is using her as a means-to-an-end or if he's actually in love with her until very late in the film), but that doesn't rear its head frequently enough in the movie.  Keaton is a fine dramatic actress, as witnessed by her powerful Louise in Reds, but here I feel like she tries too hard to simply present a dour-and-introverted face without enough outburst of feeling.  It's odd to see Keaton in this sort of environment, quite frankly, in the same way it's bizarre to be reminded of what Meryl Streep was like before Devil Wears Prada made her so much more wink-y in her dramatic work, but I do wish we'd seen some sort of relaxation in the performance, particularly earlier on in the film when she had the upper-hand on Ed.

Gibson is, I'm sorry to admit if you're a hater and I feel like I am at this point, quite good.  He's not a great actor but he's an insanely charming movie star and someone that is intense and expressive, which is what this role calls for; you get the sense that you too would leave your upper-class life and children behind just for a chance to see what he's like when you get rid of the prison bars, and it's hard to blame Diane Keaton (she should have pleaded temporary hormonal insanity-any judge that saw a photo of him would allow it).  Again, here it seems like a female director helped in a way that a male director would have sort of glossed over the situation, as Armstrong makes a point of showing that it was lust, and not just moral fervor or romantic adoration, that got Kate to free Ed.  This, plus the weird sexual power dynamic makes the film more than just a dismissible curiosity, even though the picture feels a bit drab and dusty thirty some years after its release.

There are my thoughts-how about yours?  Anyone a fan of Mrs. Soffel?  What are your thoughts on a pre-drunk driving Mel Gibson?  How about a straight-dramatic Diane Keaton?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

OVP: Swing Shift (1984)

Film: Swing Shift (1984)
Stars: Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Christine Lahti, Ed Harris, Fred Ward, Holly Hunter
Director: Jonathan Demme
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Christine Lahti)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Watching older films always has a bit of a catch, especially in terms of where we're at with progressive politics.  I suspect twenty years from now, in fact, we'll watch films ranging from Legally Blonde to August Osage County (not sure why those were the first two that came to my mind-just go with it) and wonder about specific angles of the film and their portrayals of what is considered politically correct or important at the time.  Swing Shift presented this problem, but in a way I hadn't really anticipated.  As the cinema gets older, and in the 1980's it was pushing ninety in terms of age, it starts to revisit eras where the cinema was already an option.  Indeed, we frequently find allusions to that era in Swing Shift, mentally picturing actresses like Rosalind Russell or Susan Hayward taking on the roles that here are played by Goldie Hawn and Christine Lahti.  The chief problem with the film, which has a host of them, is that even in the 1980's the politics of the movie, and the way they present them, feel regressive.  The film has too many directions it gets pulled, and you can tell that there were troubles behind-the-scenes of the picture as the end product doesn't really know what it wants to be.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film famously hosted a major fight between director Jonathan Demme, then just starting out in his Hollywood career, and Goldie Hawn, who was one of the biggest stars on the planet when Swing Shift was hitting theaters.  The film tells the story of Kay (Hawn), a woman in a happy if a bit stifled marriage to Jack (Harris), who sits around waiting for her man to come home each day and occasionally passes judgment on her provocatively-dressed neighbor Hazel (Lahti) who moonlights as a nightclub singer.  The film takes a turn when World War II breaks out, and Jack is sent to the South Pacific, and much to his chagrin, Kay takes up as a factory worker to fill the gap left by the men going to war.  She slowly befriends Hazel and falls in love with a musician named Lucky whose heart condition keeps him from fighting in the war.  The film ends with Kay going back to Jack, Hazel ending up sleeping with Lucky and then randomly marrying the guy who first promoted her as a singer, and Lucky returning to the road, all the time watching all of the women lose their jobs so that the men coming home could have them back.

The film's tonal problems are what deserve its harshest retribution, in my opinion, as the politics of the 1980's are less familiar to me (though not so much that I don't have some comments on the way that women are portrayed here).  The film cannot decide for the life of itself whether or not it is a comedy or a drama, and that was a direct result of Hawn (who wanted it to be a comedy) fighting it out with Demme (who wanted a more dramatic picture).  The film, from scene-to-scene, underwrites certain elements of the film and you cannot tell whether or not the movie is going to be light-hearted or especially what drives the main character of Kay.  The film gets bonus points for being unpredictable, but that's more due to bad plotting than anything else.  We never really get any insight into Kay, whom Hawn plays entirely surface-level, and whether or not she's upset about losing her job or whether she really wanted Jack back or just settled with him because Lucky left and it was easier this way.  The ending, with Kay and Hazel making up also feels cloying and ridiculous, partially because we never understand why Kay and Lucky, who don't really care for each other, slept with each other in the first place. In the TCM introduction to this film (I want to be Ben Mankiewicz-how do I get that job?) he says that Hawn, after Demme got fired, had the film re-edited, and you wonder if part of Lahti's performance got cut in the dust-up which explains some of her character's more erratic decisions.

After all, it's Lahti who got the praise here.  Despite Hawn being the star, Lahti managed to turn this into a major career move, and in fact won the film's only Oscar nomination.  At first I didn't really get the nomination, as after all this was just Christine Lahti and she has always had incredible onscreen presence (part of me wonders if the nomination was simply a way to tell casting directors "hire her!"), but as the film goes on Lahti makes the most out of a thankless comic side role.  She finds depths in Hazel that no one else is really pining for (watch the way that she has to continually abandon her dreams, and the way she doesn't really know what happiness is-that's not really in the script, but Lahti makes sure you notice it), and she steals literally every scene she's in in the movie.  Lahti would have benefited from a better screenwriter (I wonder if she'd have won the Oscar if we'd received Demme's original vantage of the script), but she's way better than the movie and (in my opinion) one of those rare random Oscar nominations of the 1980's that actually deserved inclusion.

Before I go I would be remiss if I didn't come back to the feminist argument here, as it's interesting to watch this film or a movie like A League of Their Own and wonder how tragic it was that America decided it didn't have room for women in the workplace and the athletic field decades earlier than the Women's Liberation movement of the 1970's (think of what we might have accomplished!).  We get little sense from either Demme or Hawn over the unfairness of the women, who now have more experience in the factory, getting fired just so their husbands can go back to work, or the complicated political ramifications of such a decision (since their husbands were forced to go to war and give up their jobs due to a draft and national pressure).  That would have made an interesting picture, but Hawn and Lahti let on little other than the occasional complaint from a random coworker that they shouldn't have to be fired to give their job to a man.  As a result, the film feels decidedly anti-feminist which is the exact opposite of what it was going toward.

All-in-all, I left this film thoroughly disappointed, save for the excellent work being done by Christine Lahti, and also with a newfound (ahem) appreciation for Ed Harris in a naval uniform.  If you've seen the picture, what are your thoughts-do you agree the film feels disjointed and lacking a clear vision?  Are you also wondering why Lahti didn't become a bigger film star as a result of this movie?  And which of the 1984 Supporting Actresses gets your vote?  Share in the comments!