Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High, directed by Amy Heckerling and released in 1982, is a teen comedy and it’s a coming-of-age movie but don’t let that put you off. It isn’t an exercise in vulgarity and it’s remarkably goodnatured. It’s honest and clear-eyed and it’s actually funny.

It’s close to the end of the year at Ridgemont High but life for these kids is centred on getting laid and falling love.

The studio was convinced they were going to run into huge censorship problems, and if anyone tried to remake this movie today that would probably happen.

Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is desperate to lose her virginity. She’s found a really nice boy, Mark (Brian Backer) but he’s too scared to do anything. She gets plenty of advice from her friend Linda (Phoebe Cates). Linda is a woman of the world, or at least she thinks he is.

Mark is getting advice from his mentor, super cool guy Mike Damone. Mike is a high school kid and an aspiring businessman, making money from scalping concert tickets. Mike will get involved with Stacy as well.

Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) just wants to surf and stay stoned which leads to clashes with the school’s history teacher, Mr Hand (Ray Walston).

Stacy’s big brother Brad (Judge Reinhold) sees himself as a rising young professional but in fact he works in a burger joint. A job he will soon lose, as he loses every job he gets.

This was 1982. A year of great pop music. This was also Peak Mall Culture, Peak Car Culture, Peak Cheerleader Culture.

These kids are learning about love and sex. They make mistakes. Hearts get broken. But underneath there’s a basic optimism. Growing up is scary but it’s an adventure and life is good.

One of the things I love about this movie is the obvious things that it doesn’t do. We expect the clashes between Jeff Spicoli and Mr Hand to escalate but that doesn’t happen. Despite not understanding each other they don’t hate each other.

We expect the rivalry between Mark and Mike to culminate in a violent clash but it doesn’t.

These are fundamentally good people who sometimes do bad things or stupid things but there’s no malice in them. They just make mistakes because growing up is complicated.

Dating is terrifying. What if you do something wrong or say something wrong? What if you misjudge the situation? What if you’re pushing things too far, or not far enough? The possibilities for embarrassment are limitless.

This movie never crosses the line into outright crassness. Amy Heckerling and screenwriter Cameron Crowe do not despise their characters. They like them. The audience is expected to regard them with affection, or at least tolerant amusement.

The whole cast is excellent. The big surprise for me was Sean Penn. He’s really funny.

Look out for a very young Nic Cage in a bit part.

This movie has no room for self-pity or social commentary or misery. This is not a critique of 80s America. This is a love letter to 80s America, to its optimism and energy. The mall is not a symbol of the evils of consumerism. It’s the beating heart of a living society.

It’s a good-hearted perceptive movie and the audience is expected to leave the movie theatre having had a good time.

I haven’t seen all the 80s teen comedies but of those I have seen this Fast Times at Ridgemont High is the one I love most. Highly recommended.

It looks great on Blu-Ray and the audio commentary by Amy Heckerling and Cameron Crowe is worth a listen.

Die Hard (1988)

For various peculiar reasons I missed out on seeing almost all the big hit movies of the 80s. In the past few years I’ve been slowly rectifying those omissions. Which brings me to the mammoth 1988 hit Die Hard which amazingly I had never seen. I had always assumed it was just a big dumb action movie. It is a big dumb action movie but it’s astonishingly well-crafted and it totally redefined the action movie.

Interestingly director John McTiernan was initially reluctant to have anything to do with this project. He thought the early versions of the script were mean and unpleasant and nihilistic. He agreed to do it if major changes were made.

Apparently the source novel by Roderick Thorp was about a major terrorist incident and that was McTiernan’s biggest objection. He wanted to make an enjoyable summer blockbuster, not a horrifying tale of viciousness. When the script was changed to make it more of a classic heist movie rather than a terrorist movie he suddenly became enthusiastic.

McTiernan also wanted to remove any hint of political content.

He also felt that the hero of the novel is too much in the Dirty Harry mould. The hero of the movie, John McClane (Bruce Willis), is not like that. He is a flawed hero but we like him because he is aware of his flaws and he’s working on them. Fundamentally he’s a decent guy. He’s a nice guy. The kind of guy you’d like to have a few beers with.

The Nakatomi Building, built by a Japanese corporation, has just opened. They’re throwing a Christmas party to celebrate. Among the celebrants is high-achieving fast-rising executive Holly Gennaro McClane (Bonnie Bedelia). Her estranged husband, New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) has arrived in L.A. to see the kids at Christmas. He gets an invite to a party. It turns out to be quite a party.

A gang of a dozen terrorists seizes the building. Oddly enough they don’t talk about revolution at all. They don’t spout political rhetoric like typical terrorists.

Their leader Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) has devised an intricate and foolproof plan. There’s just one tiny problem. That problem is John McClane. When the guests were rounded up as hostages the gang overlooked McClane. Now he’s on the loose and he’s annoyed and he intends to make trouble. What do you do when you’re outnumbered twelve to one and the situation is hopeless? McClane has no doubts as to what you do. You seize the initiative. You make the bad guys feel like they’re the hunted rather than the hunters.

This sets up a series of dazzling action set-pieces. And they’re relentless and they’re sufficiently well executed that there’s no danger of action scene fatigue setting in.

The building itself becomes a character in the story (and it should be added that the production design is superb). McClane has to get to know the building. The more he learns about the geography of the building the better his chances.

Bruce Willis’s likeability is a major asset. McClane isn’t perfect but that’s why we’re totally on his side. He’s just a cop.

When we first meet Holly she seems like a typical girlboss but we gradually realise that there’s a bit more to her. She really does love her big lunk of a husband. There’s a great moment late in the movie when it’s obvious that she is incredibly proud of him. She slowly comes to realise that their marriage is worth saving.

There’s a fine love story here.

And Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber is such a fun super-villain. He’s a bad man but he’s clever and his plan is so ingenious that we almost find ourselves thinking that it deserved to work.

The LAPD Deputy Police Chief is both arrogant and dumb. When the FBI guys turn up it’s soon apparent that they’re not as smart as they think they are. McClane’s advantage is that he doesn’t think he’s a genius. He’s just a street cop.

You can also see this as a technology vs humans story. The Nakatomi Building has incredibly sophisticated security but it relies entirely on technology. You can’t help thinking that half a dozen armed guards who know their jobs would have been more effective. In fact one ordinary New York street cop with no technological aids whatsoever achieves more than all thew high-tech security devices.

Die Hard is indeed a big dumb action movie but it’s a truly great movie of its type. Fast-moving, hyperactive, stylish. Very highly recommended.

Legend (1985)

Legend is a 1985 fantasy film directed by Ridley Scott and it seems to be almost a forgotten movie. This is old school fantasy, not just in terms of special effects but in terms of overall feel. It has more of an affinity with movies like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth than with more recent fantasy films.

This is a fairy tale movie without any noticeable comic-book influence.

It was a box-office flop and critics were unimpressed.

The central characters are Princess Lili (Mia Sara) and Jack (Tom Cruise). This is definitely the Realm of Faerie, a world of magic with goblins and unicorns and all manner of fantastic creatures, but it appears that Lili and Jack are human. Jack lives in the forest. Perhaps he was raised by the fairies? He does speak the language of the animals. 

Lili and Jack are madly in love and although Jack does not seem to have the usual qualifications one needs in order to marry a princess it is clear that Lili has chosen him.

These two young lovebirds then make two serious mistakes. They do two forbidden things. Firstly Jack allows Lili to touch a unicorn, something no mortal is permitted to do. And then Lili exercises her prerogative as a princess to set Jack a quest. She tosses the ring that signifies their betrothal into the lake. Jack must retrieve it, which proves impossible.

Unfortunately these mistakes aid the magical plans of the Lords of Darkness. He detests the sunshine and plans to create a world of perpetual night. To achieve this he must destroy the forest’s two unicorns and he must corrupt innocence. And Lili is clearly an innocent.

The corruption of Lili began with her impetuous urge to touch the unicorn.

The forest has now been plunged into permanent winter.

Jack is not exactly obvious hero material. He’s a naïve good-natured child of the forest. But now he will have to become a hero. 

Yes, there’s a hero’s journey here and Jack has a Destiny.

He has a small band of fairies to help him. They don’t seem like much of an army but they are devoted to Lili. And the elf Gump will be a useful lieutenant.

Tom Cruise is surprisingly effective as a sweet-natured hapless lad trying desperately hard to do the hero thing. And he’s very likeable. He’s the one cast member who gets it just right.

You won’t be surprised to hear that Tim Curry is incredibly hammy as the Lord of Darkness.

Lili is the problem. But that depends on which ending you choose. Yes, this is a Ridley Scott movie so there are three different cuts of the movie each with a radically different ending which changes the whole movie, and which will totally change your feelings about Lili. Either way the fact remains that Mia Sara just didn’t have the necessary star quality or warmth or depth to make us really care about Lili.

This was 1985, long before CGI. But by this time old school special effects and makeup effects had become extraordinarily sophisticated and effective. Legend is a demonstration of just how stunning pre-CGI movies could be.

Ridley Scott’s greatest asset has always been his aesthetic vision and his ability to assemble teams of talented people who can put his vision on the screen. His best movies are largely exercises in aesthetic vision and when he sticks to that he makes superb movies. When he makes movies that require storytelling skill and complex characterisation  the results can be very disappointing (Someone To Watch Over Me being a prime example). I think each of the endings of Legend has its pluses and minuses.

Legend has a few problems but they’re outweighed by its strengths. Recommended.

Black Widow (1987)

Black Widow is a 1987 neo-noir and it probably really is a neo-noir if you define neo-noir fairly loosely.

Debra Winger is Alexandra and she’s a Fed. She’s become intrigued by two cases of older very rich men with much younger wives. The two men both died suddenly apparently from a very very rare medical condition. It’s a real medical condition but its rarity makes the coincidence seem just a little odd. The autopsies offer no indications of foul play.

It strikes Alexandra that the two wives looked rather similar. In fact, very similar.

Then another older very rich man with a much younger wife dies suddenly. There are various other odd similarities between all three cases.

Alexandra is convinced that the three wives are all the same woman and that she has now murdered three husbands. Her superior officer thinks she’s go a bee in her bonnet about nothing. The three men appeared to have died of natural causes. Alexandra has zero evidence to back up her hunch.

The audience knows that Alexandra is right. It’s the same woman, played by Theresa Russell. Her real identity is elusive. Her name might be Catherine. For the sake of convenience I’ll refer to her as Catherine.

Alexandra pursues the case obsessively.

At first it’s a hunt. Finding the mystery woman isn’t particularly difficult. She’s now in Hawaii. Alexandra does after all have all the resources of the Justice department behind her. But finding the woman doesn’t help. There is still no actual evidence. It now becomes a cat-and-mouse game. Alexandra is the cat, Catherine is the mouse. It is of course possible that the mouse has teeth, and in such cases it can become unclear as to who is hunting whom.

One criticism levelled at this movie is that the audience knows too much too early but that’s standard suspense movie technique. This is a case where the detective also knows a great deal early on. But knowing the identity of the killer is irrelevant. Alexandra has to find proof. The interest in this movie is provided by the battle of wits between Alexandra and Catherine. Catherine is a very very clever murderess. But Alexandra is a very good very determined cop.

The other major point of interest is motivation. The first murder made Catherine a very rich woman. She has more money than she could spend in a dozen lifetimes. But she keeps killing. Alexandra would like to know why.

In Hawaii some major plot twists kick in and naturally I’m not going to give any hints about them.

There are some interesting supporting players. Nicol Williamson and Dennis Hopper are very good but the only characters who matter are the two women. Debra Winger is excellent but this movie belongs to Theresa Russell. She has the more showy more ambiguous more mysterious and more interesting role and she makes the most of it.

She is very sexy in a very classy way. And she’s fascinating and charming. It’s not difficult to see how Catherine has no trouble acquiring husbands.

In my view in a story such as this it’s a mistake to over-explain things. That’s the mistake Hitchcock made in Psycho. It ended up making Norman Bates less interesting and less scary. When we’re offered detailed diagnoses they always come across as unconvincing and contrived. We already had enough clues to form our own conclusions about Norman.

Black Widow does not make that mistake. Catherine might be motivated by greed but there might be something else. On several occasions she reacts in very odd ways, offering tantalising suggestions that she’s more complicated than she appears to be. There are a number of possible motivations. It could be over-compensation for something. It could be sexual. It could be feminine competition. We get vague hints, which allows us to amuse ourselves by speculating on the basis of those shadowy hints.

What really allows Theresa Russell to display her acting chops to the full is that she is playing the role of a woman who is herself playing various roles. To snare each husband she must adopt a different persona. We cannot be sure that we ever see the real Catherine. Maybe there no longer is a real Catherine.

To make things even more interesting, Alexandra has gone undercover. So she is playing a part as well. There are so many layers of ambiguity and role-playing in this movie and it’s possible that both women have become captives of the roles they’re playing. And the dynamic between these two women is fiendishly complex and Ron Bass’s screenplay avoids the more obvious pitfalls.

What’s even better is that Catherine displays occasional signs of vulnerability and she doesn’t seem as emotionally blank as you might expect from a ruthless murderess. When Catherine cries we almost believe that her emotion is real. And it’s possible that she almost believes it herself. Maybe it is real. Maybe there is real pain there. The fact that we don’t get a detailed diagnosis makes this the most interesting aspect to the film. She’s femme fatale but a complicated one.

The part is a gift for a great actress and Theresa Russell is a great actress and she’s at the top of her game here.

Another strength of the movie is that Alexandra is not one of those female characters who could just as easily have been male. She is obsessed by this case because she knows that this is a killer that only a woman can catch, because only a woman knows what another woman is capable of.

Black Widow is a superb thriller. Very highly recommended.

Rumble Fish (1983)

Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish was released in 1983. Audiences stayed away in droves. In the 80s Coppola was reinventing himself as the crazed visionary wild man of American cinema. This resulted in a series of spectacular box office failures.

It seems like it’s going to be a juvenile gang movie. Rusty James (Matt Dillon) leads a gang in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s about to face a showdown with a rival gang leader, Biff. During the fight his big brother (referred to throughout the film merely as The Motorcycle Boy and played by Mickey Rourke).

The Motorcycle Boy had left town suddenly and mysteriously a couple of years before. Rusty James idolised his big brother. Now he’s back and this sets up certain expectation in Rusty James, expectations which will be disappointed. The Motorcycle Boy had been a big shot. Rusty James assumes that he will now reassume his big shot status and lead the gang to glory in its battles with rival gangs.

Rather than doing this, The Motorcycle Boy broods mysteriously. He continues to brood mysteriously for the rest of the picture.

Their dad, played by Dennis Hopper, is an alcoholic loser. His wife, the mother of the two boys, walked out on him years ago and went to California (in this movie California is like a fabled land across the seas).

Rusty James has a girlfriend, Patty (Diane Lane). She’s a typical high school girl girl. Rusty James treats her with contempt.

The Motorcycle Boy keeps on brooding. Rusty James indulges himself in childish tantrums and self-pity. Nothing really happens until the ending which I guess we’re supposed to see as tragically inevitable.

Coppola also saw this as a movie about time. He does come up with some interesting ways to evoke the passage of time. But in this movie the passage of time is largely meaningless. At the beginning of the story Rusty James is violent, self-pitying and as dumb as a rock. By the end of the story he is violent, self-pitying and as dumb as a rock. At the beginning of the story The Motorcycle Boy is brooding mysteriously. By the end of the story we still have no idea what he was brooding about.

A story about a kid hero-worshipping a big brother had a personal resonance for Coppola since he had hero-worshipped his own big brother.

The movie is based on a novel by S.E. Hinton who also co-wrote the screenplay. It really does feel like a story written by a woman, a woman with zero understanding of men and zero interest in trying to understand them.

This was the golden age of Hollywood flops. Movies like Heaven’s Gate, Ishtar and Waterworld. Some of these - The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, Cut-Throat Island, Hudson Hawk and Coppola’s own One from the Heart - were actually great movies and it’s difficult to see why they flopped. But it’s very easy to see why Rumble Fish flopped.

Coppola went to extraordinary lengths to ensure the film’s commercial failure. He shot it in black-and-white, which in 1983 made it impossible to market.

Stewart Copeland of The Police wrote the score. It’s jarring, discordant and bizarre. That’s apparently what Coppola wanted but it’s jarring, discordant and bizarre in a way that doesn’t fit the tone of the movie.

All of the characters are unlikeable losers. A movie about unlikeable losers can be fascinating if they’re unlikeable losers in interesting ways. But these people are irritating and uninteresting.

The Motorcycle Boy is clearly meant to be a mythic outsider figure. Coppola wanted Mickey Rourke to look like Camus so he clearly had a bit of an existentialist theme in mind - the Motorcycle Boy as a complete outsider totally detached from the world around him. That can work but it requires an actor with the right kind of charisma. It’s the sort of thing that Alain Delon could do effortlessly. Mickey Rourke just doesn’t have that charisma so he comes over as a dime-store would-be Camus.

It sounds like I’m doing a hatchet job on this movie but it does have its strengths. It looks extraordinary. At this point in his career Coppola had a knack for making movies that did not look like anyone else’s movies and did not feel like anyone else’s movies.

Everything about the way it’s shot, and especially the continual use of smoke that seems to come from nowhere, gives it an odd feeling of unreality. In a way that anticipates some of David Lynch’s later movies we’re given the impression that we’re not exactly in the world of everyday reality. At times it feels like a descent into Hell.

Rumble Fish is a failure but it’s an interesting failure.

Urban Cowboy (1980)

Urban Cowboy, released in 1980, is a movie in which a large part of the action takes place in a honky tonk. Not just a honky tonk, but the world’s biggest honky tonk. It’s Gilley’s in Pasadena Texas and it really existed and it really was the world’s biggest honky tonk.

In fact it’s a movie about the honky tonk. The original idea came from a magazine article about Gilley’s. Somehow or other paramount were persuaded to back such a movie. And it was shot on location at Gilley’s in Pasadena Texas.

It’s also a movie about a mechanical bull.

It’s the story about a cowboy who moves to the Big Smoke. Bud Davis (John Travolta) gets a job in a huge chemical plant. It’s dirty grimy factory work. Pasadena is a grimy industrial city. It’s a long way from home for a young cowpoke. The work is hard but at night there’s Gilley’s. Bud feels at home in Gilley’s. They play great country music. And it’s packed with cowboys (and cowgals) for whom it’s a taste of the world they really love, the world they really understand, the world of wide open spaces and horses and steers.

And there’s the mechanical bull. Which really was the thing that made the real life Gilley’s famous. Bud knows he has to ride that bull.

He meets Sissy (Debra Winger). She’s the kind of girl a cowboy dreams of marrying, a unspoilt down-home country girl, sweet but feisty. They fall in love and get married.

There’s a touching scene which could have been played for cruel mockery but it isn’t. Bud blindfolds Sissy and takes her to see the surprise he’s got for her. It’s a trailer. He’s made a downpayment on it. This will be their dream home. Sissy is over the moon. OK, it’s a trailer home, but it’s their home.

There’s a fly in the ointment, in the person of Wes Hightower (Scott Glenn). This movie is a kind of urban-set western and Wes is the equivalent of the sinister gunslinger who’s going to try to take Bud’s girl from him.

There are traumatic relationship dramas, with not just Sissy cheating on Bud with Wes but Bud cheating on her with Pam (Madolyn Smith Osborne). She’s a spoilt rich girl. Her daddy is a rich oil man but in a western she’d have been the daughter of a rich rancher.

And there’s the bull. Bud is obsessed by the bull. Sissy is obsessed by it as well. And there’s a mechanical bull riding contest with a prize of $5,000, a huge fortune for guys like Bud and Wes. In a western we’d be waiting for the climactic shootout but in this case it will be a climactic showdown in the form of this bull-riding contest.

The sexual connotations are very very obvious, with both Bud and Wes having to prove their manhood. And very obvious sexual connotations to Sissy’s obsession with riding the bull - she doesn’t do it to prove she’s as good as a man she does it because it turns her on.

John Travolta’s performance is the film’s biggest asset. Bud does some bad things but they’re comprehensible and Travolta ensures that Bud never loses our sympathy.

This was made not long after his star-making turn in Saturday Night Fever and the two movies have a lot in common - they’re sleazy and grungy and there’s plenty of despair and bleakness. Urban Cowboy is visually depressing but it’s deliberate. Pasadena Texas is not exactly picturesque. It’s a harsh mean urban landscape.

Debra Winger is very good also. The romantic dramas are believable. Bud and Sissy love each other but they’re too proud and stubborn to ask for forgiveness and we really do believe that that’s the kind of people they are.

The script resists the temptation to make Pam a straightforward Bad Girl. She has her character flaws as well but she’s a decent person and she does love Bud. But is her love as strong as Sissy’s?

If you love country music you’ll be in a state of bliss. There’s lots and lots of country music with performances by genuine country music greats like Bonnie Raitt and the Charlie Daniels Band.

Urban Cowboy was a moderate box office hit. It has some bleakness but some quirkiness as well and it has an engaging love story. Highly recommended.

Physical Evidence (1989)

Physical Evidence is a 1989 mystery crime thriller, it’s a courtroom drama and it also has serious neo-noir vibes.

It was directed (but not written) by Michael Crichton. It might seem like an outlier in Crichton’s filmography but in his early career as a novelist he wrote relatively straightforward thrillers so it’s reasonable to assume that he had some affinity for the thriller genre.

It starts with a very impressive visual set-piece on a bridge. Which leads to the discovery of the body of Jake Farley, a sleazy nightclub owner with a spectacularly shady past.

Cop Joe Paris (Burt Reynolds) is arrested for Farley’s murder. Joe is already on suspension. He’s a good cop with a very short temper which has landed him in trouble many times.

Hotshot lady lawyer Jenny Hudson (Theresa Russell) works for the Public Defender’s Office and she begs for the case. It will be a very high-profile case, the kind of case that can make or break an ambitious lawyer’s career.

The audience has no idea whether or not Joe is guilty. The evidence against him is very strong but if he is being framed by someone powerful you would expect that, and Joe has plenty of powerful enemies.

Jenny Hudson also has no idea whether or not Joe is guilty. She’s a lawyer. Her job is to defend him either way.

And the uncertainty about Joe’s guilt is maintained quite skilfully, for a while at least. The evidence against him steadily accumulates but the possibility that someone might be framing him also increases. We still do not know. Nor does Jenny. It’s a good basis for a neo-noir suspense thriller and it works.

The main problem is that this is the most potentially interesting aspect of the plot and it gradually gets lost and the story thereafter becomes rather routine.

There’s also the problem that courtroom dramas are always dull because courtroom scenes are always dull. They’re stagey, rather than cinematic. They’re all about dialogue and dialogue scenes are inherently uncinematic. They’re at best a necessary evil. And it’s very difficult to get away from that staginess in courtroom scenes.

I have seen very few Burt Reynolds movies but he’s pretty good here, not making Joe too sympathetic but just sympathetic enough.

Theresa Russell’s specialty was playing offbeat roles in offbeat roles in offbeat movies for directors like Ken Russell and her husband Nicolas Roeg. This is a much more straightforward role but she handles it well. I like the way she does the full-on power-dressing girl boss thing on the job but throws off that persona as soon as she’s off-duty. She’s a pro. The girl boss routine is part of the job.

The sexual tension between Joe and Jenny works quite well because they’re so radically mismatched. Yes, that’s an established formula, but Reynolds and Russell carry it off well enough.

It bombed at the box office but there’s nothing really wrong with this movie. It’s a bit like an old-fashioned B-movie or a well-crafted TV-movie. It’s decent entertainment but it isn’t going to knock your socks off. And if, like me, you’re a bit of a Theresa Russell completist you’ll enjoy her performance.

This movie is paired with The Anderson Tapes on a double-header Blu-Ray from Mill Creek. There are no extras but it looks terrific. Physical Evidence isn’t particularly special but if you buy the set for The Anderson Tapes (and you should) it’s worth giving Physical Evidence a spin as well.

Tarzan the Ape Man (1981)

Tarzan the Ape Man was released in 1981. This is the notorious Bo Derek Tarzan movie. The one directed by her husband John Derek. Everybody knows this is a really bad movie because everyone says so. And film critics said so, so it must be true.

Personally I don’t care what everybody knows and I certainly don’t care what film critics think so I’m going to approach this one with an open mind.

Bo Derek burst onto the film scene with her role in Blake Edwards’ 10. It was bit part but she got all the attention. Right from the start critics were out to get her.

This was an attempt to do a slightly different sort of Tarzan movie. Tarzan enters the picture quite late.

In 1910 Jane Parker (Bo Derek) arrives in Africa to be reunited with her father. She has never met him. She knows him only by reputation. He is the legendary explorer James Parker (Richard Harris).

Jane insists on joining him on his latest expedition. He is hoping to discover the fabled Inland Sea, and perhaps there are other things he hopes to find.

Also accompanying him will be big game hunter and photographer Harry Holt (John Phillip Law).

While they’re camped deep in the jungle blood-curdling cries are heard in the night. It is the legendary Tarzan. No-one knows who or what Tarzan is. Some say he is a gigantic white ape. Some say he is a gigantic white man. Everyone fears him.

Jane is rather surprised when she meets Tarzan. He rescues her from a lion. She realises that he is only a man. She also notices that he is quite a man.

Having caught sight of Tarzan at last James Parker is convinced that this jungle man is appallingly dangerous.

Tarzan carries her off. This is what James Parker feared would happen. He has no doubt that Tarzan intends to make Jane his mate. James is determined not to let that happen.

There’s a weird kind of courtship taking place between Jane an Tarzan but other sinister things are afoot. A hostile tribe is tracking the expedition. It’s at this point that the movie becomes interestingly weird and slightly surreal and perhaps just a bit kinky.

As I watched this film I was trying to see what it was about Bo Derek’s performance that earned her so much critical derision. But I couldn’t see it. I think her performance is fine. There’s one moment, where Jane is watching Tarzan and it’s clear that she is, for the first time in her life, feeling the stirrings of sexual lust. Miss Derek really nails it. She gets the point across subtly and without being crass, and in a rather sweet good-natured way.

I was also trying to spot exactly what it was about about the job John Derek does as director here that made him the target of critical venom. Again I couldn’t see it. He does a perfectly fine job.

Richard Harris goes way over the top but you don’t hire Richard Harris if you want a low-key performance. This movie is very much a story of obsession. James Parker is an obsessed inspired madman. Which really was true of most of the real-life explorers of that age. Harris plays him as a larger-than-life character, which is as it should be.

There’s also a lot of emphasis on the father-daughter relationship. Initially she hates him. Gradually she falls under his spell. She starts to like the idea of having a remarkable man as a father.

And of course there’s the love story, which is handled nicely. Jane and Tarzan are like two nervous teenagers, strongly physically attracted to each other but too innocent to know what to do about it.

Some of the action scenes are edited in very odd ways. It is quite a weird movie at times but that aspect, along with the slight hints of perversity, make it in some ways quite close to the spirit of pre-WW2 pulp adventure fiction.

And course Miss Derek takes her clothes off.

This is a slightly oddball movie but I rather liked it, and I liked Bo Derek. I’m going to highly recommend it because that’s the crazy sort of guy I am.

And yes I agree that Tarzan and His Mate (1934) is still the best Tarzan movie.

High Road to China (1983)

The problem with High Road to China is that it inevitably gets pigeon-holed as a Raiders of the Lost Ark rip-off and slammed for not being as good as Spielberg’s movie.

It also seems to have had a rather troubled production history with both John Huston and Sidney J. Furie being lined up to direct. In the end Brian G. Hutton directed. It was a co-production with one of the partners being legendary Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest.

Tom Selleck famously had to turn down the lead role in Raiders of the Lost Ark after having signed the contract to do Magnum, P.I. for television. That of course is another reason for the endless comparisons between the two films.

What Raiders of the Lost Ark actually did was to establish that there was still a huge market for old-fashioned adventure movies and thereby made movies such as Romancing the Stone (1984) and King Solomon’s Mines (1985) possible. Which in my book was a good thing. I love those movies.

High Road to China is set in the 1920s. O’Malley (Tom Selleck) is a broken-down former fighter ace. When the war ended he crawled inside a bottle. He’s been there ever since. He also consoles himself with women. This tends to get him into trouble with the husbands of those women.

And now Eve Tozer (Bess Armstrong) enters his life. She needs to find her father. He’s been missing for several years. His slimy business partner Bentik (Robert Morley)

is trying to have him declared legally dead. Bentik will then own the business and Eve will be left with nothing. Eve has to find dear old dad pronto. She will need a plane. O’Malley has two planes. She offers him a lot of money to help her find her father. O’Malley is indignant. He tells her he can’t be bought. She doubles the offer and he decides he can be bought after all.

O’Malley doesn’t know that Bentik has hired people to kill Eve. It’s one of several important things she forgot to tell him.

They get captured by a crazed Wazieri chieftain (Brian Blessed in glorious full-blown Brian Blessed Mode). The trail later leads to Nepal, and to China. With lots of action along the way.

Now maybe this movie is a bit formulaic but that’s the point. It’s trying to be an old-fashioned rollicking adventure tale and it has to include the elements people expect in such a story.

There are lots of narrow escape from certain disaster. There are aerial dogfights. There are larger-than-life villains. There’s the beautiful slave girl who might be able to help them. O’Malley has the standard likeable loyal sidekick, Struts (Jack Weston).

There’s the broken-down embittered hero who might still be a hero if he can stay sober long enough. Tom Selleck is perfect - alternating between being charming, pathetic, amusing, suspicious, brave and really really annoyed.

And there’s the Feisty Heroine, in this case belonging to the Spoilt Rich Girl sub-group. When we first see Eve she is wearing the full-blown flapper gear, a look that I happen to love. Not every woman can get away with wearing the dress she’s wearing but Bess Armstrong pulls it off perfectly. Bess Armstrong is as cute as a button and she’s lively and fun.

Of course the embittered hero and the feisty heroine hate each other until they finally figure out that they’re madly in love.

So there’s nothing dazzlingly original but the movie is fast-moving, there’s great location shooting, there are flying sequences, shoot-outs and explosions. The action sequences are nicely done. The two leads have fine chemistry.

Most critics seem to have approached this movie with the assumption that it was going to be a second-rate Raiders of the Lost Ark knock-off and so they’d already decided they didn’t like it before they actually watched it. If you just approach it as a lightweight romantic adventure movie you might enjoy it quite a bit, as I did. Highly recommended.

The Hen’s Teeth Video Blu-Ray is basically barebones but it’s a good transfer.

If this is the sort of thing you enjoy I can’t recommend the 1985 King Solomon’s Mines too highly. It’s a blast.

No Mercy (1986)

No Mercy is a 1986 thriller which pairs Richard Gere and Kim Basinger. It could perhaps at a stretch be considered to have a slight neo-noir tinge and also perhaps an erotic thriller vibe although to be honest that’s a lot of a stretch.

As an indirect result of a bungled drugs stakeout Chicago cop Eddie Jillette and his partner Joe Collins stumble upon something much bigger - a planned hit. Eddie and Joe, perhaps unwisely, arrange a meet with a mysterious New Orleans businessman (we will find out that his name is Paul Deveneux) who wants a rival rubbed out. Eddie poses as a hitman. Perhaps Eddie and Joe should have realised the meet might not go smoothly. The guy who wants to hire a hitman doesn’t seem the type. He’s more of an old southern aristocracy type.

This guy has a girl with him. Her name is Michelle (Kim Basinger). She’s the reason for the hit. So it’s not business but a personal grudge, which could get messy.

It does get messy. Eddie’s partner gets disembowelled. He’s not the only one who gets killed. Eddie is off to New Orleans, ostensibly to bring his partner’s killer to justice but in fact his objective is revenge pure and simple.

The problem is that Eddie doesn’t know the identity of the target of the aborted hit. All he knows is that the target was a powerful ruthless man, and that he is Michelle’s owner.

Eddie is going to have to track down Michelle. He finds her, and he finds the man who owns her, Losado (Jeroen Krabbé). He also finds out that everything that he assumed he knew about the case is wrong, and everything that he assumed he knew about Michelle is wrong as well.

Another unpleasant discovery is that the New Orleans cops do not want him in their city. Or rather Deveneux’s brother doesn’t want him in New Orleans. Deveneux is extremely rich. If he’s upset, the New Orleans PD is upset.

Eddie ends up in the middle of a bayou, handcuffed to Michelle. They’re lucky to be alive. Losado doesn’t just employ a couple of goons to enforce his will, he has a veritable private army.

Eddie is just one cop on his own in a strange city but by now he’s seriously annoyed. You don’t want to get Eddie Jillette seriously annoyed. And as far as Eddie is concerned if his mission is to be a kamikaze mission, so be it.

He still has to figure out what to do with this strange girl. And Michelle is a very strange girl. Eddie is not just in a strange city. He’s stumbled into a totally foreign world. This is the world of the old French Louisiana. It’s the 1980s in Chicago but here time has stood still for a couple of centuries. And Michelle is like a girl from another planet.

Looking at online reviews I’m surprised that so many people dislike this movie. There’s no shortage of adrenalin-rush action and mayhem with some terrific action set-pieces. There’s good suspense. There’s a weird twisted love story. There’s an exotic setting. As far as thrillers go this one ticks most of my boxes.

I’m also surprised so many people dislike Richard Gere. His performance is very much in that intense edgy wired mode that was so popular at the time but for my money Gere does this sort of thing with more class than most actors of this type. He doesn’t have to shout and wave his arms about and jump up and down to get the message across that he’s a man on the edge. I like him a lot in this movie.

As for Kim Basinger, she has a tricky role. She’s playing a woman who just doesn’t see the world the way women of the 80s see it. She’s like a woman living in two different eras at the same time. I think Basinger is very good indeed in this part.

There’s nothing subtle about Jeroen Krabbé’s performance as Losado but he radiates pure evil and that’s what the part calls for.

The one weakness is that although the acting chemistry between Gere and Basinger is excellent this is a movie that needed a lot more erotic heat.

Richard Pearce is not a particularly big name as a director but he handles matters here with assurance.

No Mercy hits the ground running and maintains the momentum. Whether it’s a neo-noir or an erotic thriller or a plain old action thriller doesn’t matter - whatever it is it delivers the goods. Highly recommended.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray presentation looks great.