Predator (1987)

Film: Predator (1987)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elpidia Carrilo, Carl Weathers, Richard Chaves, Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura

Director: John McTiernan

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)

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, like most movie stars, has had his love life pretty well-chronicled, but for most of his time as a movie star, it was largely linked to one woman.  He had dated English teacher Barbara Outland (who would eventually write a rather scathing memoir about their time together when he was running for reelection as governor in 2006) before he started acting regularly, but other than a brief fling with Eleanor Mondale in the late 1970's (when her father was vice president), his primary romantic partner was Maria Shriver, the daughter of Sargent & Eunice Shriver, and the niece of President Kennedy (meaning that Schwarzenegger, a future Republican Governor, did in fact date the scions of two major Democratic families).  Shriver & Schwarzenegger's romance was unconventional, but seemingly happy for much of its run.  They had four children, and their political views (while commonly-known) were largely kept quiet given that Shriver was a journalist at NBC at the time.  There was the fun juxtaposition of Arnold campaigning for George HW Bush in 1988 while Maria's senator uncle Ted was stumping for Michael Dukakis, but by-and-large they presented as a solid couple even though Schwarzenegger was repeatedly cheating on his wife (the unkind maxim about Kennedy women looking the other way on their philandering husbands definitely feeling accurate in this case), until it was outed that Schwarzenegger had father a love child with a maid (a story that conveniently happened when Schwarzenegger's political career was coming to a close).  The couple remained married for a decade after this, though, until 2021.

(Spoilers Ahead) The start of their marriage was happening when Schwarzenegger's film career 

was hitting a new height.  Freed of his contract with Dino de Laurentiis, he was able to start making major action films in the vein of someone like Sylvester Stallone, who at the time was a bigger star than Schwarzenegger in the genre even if that wouldn't last very long.  A big part of that was Predator in 1987, which featured Arnold as Major Dutch Schaefer on a rescue mission in Guatemala.  The film, like much of Arnold's movies of the 1980's, is short on actual plot.  All you need to know is that they are on a mission that will soon be deterred because they are being hunted by an extraterrestrial being that is not really referred to (the title word "predator" is never uttered in the movie).  His crew, one-by-one, is picked off, and it's left to Dutch to try to hunt the Predator largely solo, doing so through covering himself in mud (that disguises the creatures vision), eventually resulting him trapping the creature (and it then exploding itself in hopes of killing them both...which he doesn't).

Let's start with the movie and my thoughts before we talk about two oddities about this film in relation to Arnold's career.  First, it's a pretty good.  This is not Celine and Julie Go Boating or any such intellectual exercise as a picture, but it's solidly constructed and has a terrific special effects-driven bit of construction when it comes to the actual creature, both the invisibility effects and then (when it's revealed) the fantastically gross alien practical effects & makeup.  I also loved the film's Deliverance-style vibes, which honestly the further I get into this season, the more I realize that Deliverance had as much of an influence on action films as The Godfather did on mafia movies or Star Wars did on science-fiction.  The film also has one of my all-time favorite closing credits, which has all of the (mostly now dead) characters showing up again in title cards with the actors' names, all of them grinning cheesily like they're in a Mentos commercial...except Arnold who totally botches the concept by just being stoic.

Two things I want to note before we go here.  First, this stars Jesse Ventura in addition to Arnold Schwarzenegger-he plays heavy gunner Blain Cooper, one of the men who fall victim to the Predator in the film's first hour.  This is one of three films starring the two men, along with The Running Man and Batman & Robin.  Ventura would be elected the Governor of Minnesota in 1998 in one of the biggest upsets in American political history, five years before Schwarzenegger, and while they did not mirror each other stylistically in politics (Arnold was much more successful in the job & won reelection, Ventura was so unpopular he couldn't even run for a second term) they both represented a level of "entertainment being crucial in politics" that would come to a shocking result in 2016 on a national scale.

I will also end with this-the Predator films five sequels/prequels...none of which would feature Schwarzenegger.  Schwarzenegger refused to make the sequel due to a salary dispute.  This was also a deterrent in sequels to Conan the Destroyer, Eraser, Total Recall, and Kindergarten Cop, as well as a long-gestating sequel to Twins.  Not all of these are totally attributable to Schwarzenegger's salary disputes (Twins 2 was lost in development hell for decades and eventually crashed with the death of Ivan Reitman), but it's a testament to Schwarzenegger's ability at the box office that he could forego solid paychecks like this, as well as his alleged difficulty offscreen that would result in studios walking away not thinking he was worth the money (or the effort) even with probable hits on their hands.  Compare this to some of his contemporaries like Steven Seagal, Dolph Lundgren, & especially Sylvester Stallone, when sequels were being made, they tended to feature in them and take the easy paycheck (Jean-Claude van Damme, like Schwarzenegger, tended to not make it through negotiations).  This ended up being a blessing for Schwarzenegger for a while, we'll find with our final two movies, as going for an original concept (and with better directors) made him a much hotter property as a movie star than always needing to go back to the Rocky or Under Siege well.

OVP: The Untouchables (1987)

Film: The Untouchables (1987)

Stars: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Charles Martin Smith, Andy Garcia, Robert de Niro

Director: Brian de Palma

Oscar History: 4 nominations/1 win (Best Supporting Actor-Sean Connery*, Art Direction, Costume Design, Original Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 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 Sean Connery: click here to learn more about Mr. Connery (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to cover two Connery films today as I missed last week, but didn't want to short-change him, so we'll talk through both his time in the 1980's and, this evening, the 1990's.  Connery was, by the early 1980's, a movie star but not a consistent box office presence.  While he had made hits (Time Bandits dwarfed its production costs in 1981), nothing he had done had, quite frankly, approached what he had achieved with James Bond, and as a result Connery was talked into making his final installment in the franchise in 1983 with Never Say Never Again.  This was something he did without Eon Productions (traditionally the production house for Bond films), and he did so in a head-to-head competition with Roger Moore, who had Octopussy out that year.  Both films were huge successes at the box office, though Moore's film ended up on top.  Connery hated the experience, and stuck to his commitment to "never again" after this one (he would never appear in a Bond film again), and indeed wouldn't even make a movie for two years after this.

(Spoilers Ahead) Connery probably could've played his types of middling, increasingly aging rogues & fictional knights forever for the rest of his career, the memory of Bond so appealing to nostalgic movie producers who grew up idolizing him, but it was today's film that truly changed the course of his career & legacy.  The Untouchables is a film where Connery gets second billing to Kevin Costner, not remotely as famous as him at the time, but it was a smart move to choose a supporting part.  The Untouchables is a highly-fictionalized look at Eliot Ness (Costner), the federal agent who led the efforts to take down Al Capone (de Niro), and features Connery in a role as a rogue cop, one who is brought in as part of Ness's operation, which is ultimately successful in beating Capone (or at least sending him to jail), but (because this is a Brian de Palma film) not without a lot of very bloody corpses along the way.  Like most of de Palma's films, I struggled with this.  Costner's one of the blandest leading men of his era, gorgeous but blank-faced and rarely a compelling figure in the lead (and if we're judging solely on looks, Andy Garcia is even prettier than him at this point), and Robert de Niro is actively terrible in this movie, a hint of the many cash-grabs the acting icon would have in the decades to come.  The best part of the movie, for me, was Ennio Morricone's score (and that flawless Giorgio Armani tailoring).

Connery is solid, though, not nearly as good as he is in, say, The Man Who Would Be King, but he's winning and very good at embracing the role of "aging sexy guy who mentors a younger star," something that he'd started with Christopher Lambert in 1986's Highlander, and which would become the bulk of the remainder of his career.  For much of the catty press he took back in 1983 for Never Say Never Again, about how he and Moore were far too old to be believable as aging action stars bedding women young enough to be their daughters, it did feel like Connery's place as an action star would soon fade.  But here, he showed how well he could fit in-he was a tough guy, someone who was grizzled but had "one last go in him" and this would be something he'd ride for the next 15 years or so, but also would carve out for others like him.  Action stars, because of Connery's work in this and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade a few years later, had a path for a second act, one with a lot of box office (The Untouchables was a massive hit, the sixth highest-grossing film at the domestic box office in 1987, and made 3x as much as de Palma's now much-obsessed Scarface), so the paydays (and movie stardom) could continue even as the stunt work became less intense.

It also would define Connery's career because it made him one of the only action stars to date to win an Academy Award.  In the 1980's, with a lot of Golden Age actors aging to the point where they were near death, we saw a lot of the leading actors of that era winning "sentimental" Oscars.  Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, Geraldine Page, Don Ameche, Paul Newman, & Jessica Tandy would all take home Oscars at the time, and with this movie, Connery would as well.  Connery's win is one that it's hard to fault the Oscars (it's cool that he won a sstatue, even if I don't know that I'm going to agree with them in the 1987 OVP), and certainly they did worse in the era, but it gave him a nobility that would become a trademark the remainder of his life, and gave him a further distinction over future James Bond actors none of whom (to date) have ever gotten so much as a nomination.

Hellraiser (1987)

Film: Hellraiser (1987)

Stars: Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Andrew Robinson, Sean Chapman, Doug Bradley

Director: Clive Barker

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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'll be totally honest, I don't know that I actually knew of Clive Barker as a film director until I watched this movie, which is a weird pop culture gap to own up to on a film blog.  But I did read Clive Barker as a teenager.  My cousin Briana, who was something of a hero to me growing up (she was four years older, and the coolest person I knew)-her favorite book was The Thief of Always (by Barker).  Since I wanted to be just like her, I read The Thief of Always, a very good (though kind of melancholy) supernatural fable.  But Barker is better known for the work he has done in horror films, as the inspiration for the Candyman series (it is based off of one of his short stories) and for today's film, also based on a story by Barker, but in this case he directed it: Hellraiser.  The film was a small hit in 1987, but would grow on to have a long shelf life, including sequels, huge success on VHS, and giving us one of the more iconic horror villains of the 1980's, Pinhead.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place when a couple Julia (Higgins) and Frank Cotton (Chapman) move into a house that had previously been owned by Frank's brother Larry (Robinson).  What Frank does not know is that Larry had an affair with his wife before their marriage, and Julia is still smitten with his much-hotter brother.  We come to realize that Larry...has been up to some things he shouldn't be, mainly selling his soul to a group of demons to have kinky S&M sex after solving a magical puzzle box.  We find as the film progresses that Larry can come back to his human form...if he is given enough blood sacrifices.  This means that Julia has to seduce a series of men, and kill them in order for Larry to return to his human form.  Her stepdaughter Kirsty (Laurence) realizes that this is happening, but it's too late when she also accidentally opens the puzzle box, putting her immortal soul in danger, unless she can deliver to the demons, led by Pinhead (Bradley...and I know that's not the character's name but you know it's what everyone calls him), her uncle Frank.  In the end, she destroys the demons (or at least traps them in the box), but not before Julia, Larry, & Frank all meet pretty grizzly ends.

Hellraiser is a big deal for proper horror aficionados, given that it helped spawn one of the more prolific franchises in the genre (if you can believe it, there are 11 Hellraiser films), many of which star Bradley as the popular Pinhead character.  I will not be watching any more of them, as I was more intrigued than pleased by Hellraiser.  I think the best part of the movie is how unflinchingly horny it is.  Clare Higgins' Julia gets the best sex of her life, and promptly sells her soul afterward in hopes she'll get another orgasm.  Every inch of the movie is dripping with sex, with Higgins in a state of ecstasy virtually every time that Larry (in literally any state of decay) is flirting with her, and abject disgust that anyone else might try to keep them apart, even if it means their lives.  This is not good acting, and in fact no one in this film is giving a good performance, but it is something to watch.

The film's best attributes are the makeup & visual effects, which are totally of another level.  The Pinhead character looks remarkable (Bradley become iconic for a small part for a reason), as do all of the Cenobites (and a regenerating Larry).  The visual effects are also impressive.  The CGI is prosaic (though still not bad for 1987), but it's really the makeup effects, especially during some of the torture scenes at the end, that make you shocked at how well the movie comes together.  I've talked about this a lot over the past couple of seasons, but if any film has a grievance with the Academy for letting their prejudice for good makeup & VFX get in the way of a nomination just because of genre bias, it's Hellraiser.

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, The Fly, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

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

Raising Arizona (1987)

Film: Raising Arizona (1987)

Stars: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, Trey Wilson, John Goodman, Sam McMurray, Frances McDormand

Director: Joel Coen

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

As you might be aware I tend to write these articles a bit in advance of when they actually go live, and so I'm writing this before today's Academy Award nominations came out.  Inevitably, people on social media have critiqued what happened this morning pronouncing the Oscars "out of touch," "obsolete," and said they have committed "unforgivable sins"...it's possible even I said something like that (though I don't feel super strongly this year about most of the nominees so I doubt I'm that excitable).  This happens every year-hyperbole goes hand-in-hand with the Oscars.  So today I thought it'd be nice to have for our review a film that is considered by many to be a modern classic, one that features a number of up-and-coming actors in early roles, and one that, well, received no Academy Award nominations, a reminder that Oscar having fickle taste is not new, and that just because he doesn't provide his stamp on a film doesn't mean it won't have legs.

(Spoilers Ahead) Raising Arizona is about a couple, Hi (Cage), a convenience store robber, and Ed (Hunter), a police officer who takes his mugshots repeatedly & falls in love with him in the process.  They find out that they cannot have children, and in their despair, they decide to steal a baby from a couple they don't think can handle all of their children.  The reward that the biological parents put up for the child result in a lot of hijinks & people trying to steal the baby (known as Nathan Jr) for money, for themselves, or for some sort of combination thereof.  In the end, the young couple know that the right thing to do is to give back the infant even if they may never have their own kids (since they'll have each other), though it's heavily implied in the end that they will raise their own family despite the odds.

Made several years after Blood Simple, Raising Arizona is during the period where the Coen Brothers were on the critical map, celebrated by cinephiles everywhere, but before Fargo, when they crossed over into more mainstream awards success (and broke out with mainstream audiences).  It is quirky, sometimes to the point where you might roll an eye or two, but as the film goes by it earns that quirk.  Holly Hunter & Nicolas Cage are both terrific in their lead roles, as newlyweds who cannot have children of their own and therefore kidnap one of a set of quintuplets whom they fall in love with deeply even if they know he can't stay there's forever.

The supporting cast is great, of course (Coen Brothers staples like Frances McDormand & John Goodman appear in key roles), but Hunter & Cage are where it's at.  This is before Hunter took on The Piano (becoming an acting icon) and Cage became something of a national punchline with his indiscriminate choice in scripts.  In the hands of less-gifted actors these roles wouldn't work-Cage would be played as a joke rather than genuinely sweet, and Hunter's crying jags would be ridiculous instead of having the requisite amount of caring to make the movie's final moments, when Hi sees a future where they'll eventually have children of their own but never stop loving Nathan Jr, work beautifully.  The film isn't perfect (the renegade biker bit feels tacked on, as does the cheap jokes about swingers), but it's yet another testament to the Coen Brothers ability to find the emotionally felt in the absurd.

OVP: Broadcast News (1987)

Film: Broadcast News (1987)
Stars: William Hurt, Albert Brooks, Holly Hunter, Robert Prosky, Lois Chiles, Joan Cusack
Director: James L. Brooks
Oscar History: 7 nominations (Best Picture, Actor-William Hurt, Actress-Holly Hunter, Supporting Actor-Albert Brooks, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

The 1980's will probably always be my least favorite decade of cinema.  The most lasting films of the era are in genres I don't gravitate toward (teen comedies, action flicks, biopics), and the decade seems to have become obsessed with its own nostalgia.  Perhaps it's partially this-the worst of modern-day cinema clearly stems from people still not over the 1980's (look at a film like Ready Player One for Exhibit A in such indulgences).  Whatever the reason, when I saw at a recent "Secret Cinema" night that Broadcast News was playing, I was like "well, at least I need to see it for the OVP" rather than getting genuinely excited about what was in store.  That's a pity, because Broadcast News is the 1980's at their very best-adult, funny, ruthless, but still knowing, and weirdly psychic about the future.  Examining the intricacies of a TV newsroom at the cutting edge of the cable revolution, the film shows the way that our lives revolve around work, and the unintended side effects of letting all of our personal lives slide in pursuit of success.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie's main focus is on Jane Craig (Hunter), a woman who, to quote John Mulaney, "is a busy businesswoman who only likes business."  Her entire persona and life are based around her successful work at a DC news station, where she works with her best friend Aaron (Brooks), a man who clearly views her as more-than-a-friend even though she doesn't see him that way.  They are forced to work with Tom (Hurt), a sports reporter who was hired not because he's a talented journalist, but instead because he's handsome & charming, a sign that the news is becoming less about the facts on the page and more about how pretty the people reading the cue cards are.  This upsets Aaron, who wants the news anchor job for himself, and feels he's earned it through years of solid reporting.  Unfortunately for Aaron, not only does his eventual on-air reporting go terribly, but also he starts to lose Jane to Tom, whom she falls in love with despite not really respecting him.  This all takes place in the backdrop of looming layoffs at the company, which means that many of the people that we see in the background (like Cusack's Blair), will lose their jobs, another sign of the impending downsizing of the news industry.  The film ends with Jane realizing that Tom staged himself crying in an interview with a rape victim to make for better television, and this is a bridge too far for her journalistic ethics.  The three meet years later, with Aaron now a father and Tom a considerably more successful news anchor (and Jane largely where she was, loving her career), watching as time has mended their past grievances with each other, but ultimately acted as a separator as they'll never feel a "part" of each other's lives again in the same way.

Like I said above, this film exhibits the best aspects of 1980's cinema, particularly since the characters are flawed, and don't necessarily need to be likable (even though they are).  This movie pretty much put Holly Hunter on the map (it was her first Oscar nomination, and along with Raising Arizona, made her a household name), and there's a reason for that-Hunter is magnificent as Jane.  The neuroticism feels authentic, the way that she stands by her principles, bending them occasionally, but never breaking them-Jane is the sort of figure you imagine is disgusted by today's news, the rare person who will continue working for smaller-and-smaller outlets just to continue to drive journalism's ethics into future generations, however fruitlessly.  Hurt & Brooks are both fun in her support, but it's Hunter who steals this show (real talk-Albert Brooks is way more a third lead than a supporting player here in a very early sign of category fraud so that the two male leads don't have to compete with each other in the top category).  Even in a year like 1987, it's going to be difficult for me to imagine her not making a serious play for the OVP statue come that year.

But the best part of Broadcast News other than Hunter is in fact its script.  The movie is funny, wry, and knowing, and omnipresent in the way that it treats news as simply another scripted television show rather than a public rite.  It's also telling about the way that the people we work with rarely become part of our actual lives.  I loved the bittersweet nature of the ending, where Jane, Aaron, & Tom all meet, old friends but that's it-just ready to discuss old times, but not really connected to each other's lives.  So often in film and television we get the fiction that close friends will be a part of our existences eternally, rather than just passing ships that meant something to us, but aren't there forever.  Jane has the option of making Tom or Aaron a part of her life forever, and chooses (correctly?) not to include them in her future because she doesn't think they fit...and director Brooks doesn't give us a hint that this will change.  Decisions have consequences, and Broadcast News gives us the reality of this when it separates these three people into their own paths.  Broadcast News is a loving film with a cynical bite, but it's at its best when it shows that we rely upon people for a time, and love them, but ultimately only a few (if any) stay with us for long swaths of time.  This is a smart movie, and one of the best the decade has had to offer in my cinematic sojourns.