This 80s Movie: Cruising (1980)

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This 80s Movie: Cruising (1980)

(spoilers ahead)

Cruising is a confused movie, confused about its intention, its story and ending, but also about what it wants to say about homosexuality. And, to get straight it, it should say something about homosexuality. Being one of the few movies to deal with the issue, it shouldn’t act like it doesn’t have an opinion on it. But the movie is so unfocused and messy that it shouldn’t be a real surprise. On the surface a crime mystery about a killer who kills gay men who indulge in the leather scene, the movie doesn’t do much but being grim, cold and dark, while having a protagonist that never allows us to know what happening inside of him. The movie got its attention only because it tackled homosexuality and supposedly showed gay sex in a graphic way before it had to be cut. Would this be a movie a killer in a heterosexual swinger scene, it probably would never have seen the light of day.

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This 80s Movie: Prom Night (1980)

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This 80s Movie: Prom Night (1980)

(spoilers ahead)

Prom Night is a terribly formulaic and terrible slasher movie. It sets up everything it needs for a by-the-numbers slasher concept and follows it through without even the slightest hint of surprise. It starts out with a wrongdoing in the past, makes a time jump of six years (in which all the characters age by about 15 years), just so that a killer can take revenge on them for what they did as kids. It’s amateurishly filmed and acted, the dialogue is boring and even the murders are uninventive. Actually, the murders astonished me the most, since there is no attempt made to graphically show them at all, although movies like this are all about showing grisly murders. A lot of them happen off-screen and it takes the movie over an hour to even get there. Considering this is one of the first examples of slasher movies, it should have been clear to anyone seeing it in 1980 that there wouldn’t be another gem like Halloween anytime soon.

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Poster of a Girl: 1980 Edition

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Poster of a Girl: 1980 Edition

It’s 1980 Week! What does that mean, you ask? Well, I decided to try out doing theme weeks from time to time, dedicating each post during that week to cultural artifacts (movies, comics, books, music) or historic events from one specific year. In the future, I will pick those years randomly, but for a start I decided on 1980, the year I was born, because, well, today’s my birthday. I don’t know how this will work out, so it’s an experiment. But I like experiments, obviously, which means I’m very excited!

To get an overview of this particular year, I thought it would be nice to look at its movie posters. I looked at all the posters of 1980 that can be found on IMP Awards and picked out the ones I found interesting. Which is still a lot (49). But because there are so many, I grouped them in categories, because many things repeat themselves. Without further ado, let’s give it up for 1980!

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Music Box: Pulp's "This Is Hardcore"

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Music Box: Pulp's "This Is Hardcore"

Pulp’s This Is Hardcore, released in 1998, is a testament of anxiety in our culture, the diary of someone failing at life despite having success, a war report from the front of unsuccessfully battling to fill the void. Pulp, the Britpop band that had been releasing albums for over 10 years before suddenly having enormous success, published this album three years after Disco 2000 was an international hit and the fallout was wearing them down. Artistically I consider this album their masterpiece, despite its flaws. It’s a bit messy, untrimmed and unfocused at times, but when it hits its mark, it goes straight for the kill. It’s unflinching and bitter and cynical but always with a certain sense of humor and full of brutal honesty. And it’s brilliant. You might feel uneasy and slightly embarrassed while listening to it, but you might also get an idea of an artist struggling with life in this culture, but never stopping from telling us about it.

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I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

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I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

I Know Who Killed Me is a great bad movie. It’s so ridiculous that it’s entertaining. If only more bad movies were like this. There are some boring scenes, but watching the movie stumble to its unbelievable ending is undeniably fun. Or “fun.” I’m a fan of using color in movies, but this movie was the most exaggerated and blatant use of color schematics that can be imagined. My 3-year-old-daughter would have figured out the concept after five minutes because it’s so incredibly obvious. Hearing Lindsay Lohan’s hangover voice is great when you see her as a high school student. And let’s not talk about her robotic limbs, because at this point you don’t know what kind of movie you are watching anymore. If you like funny bad movies, this one will be for you.

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You Belong on the Radio - U.S. Music Charts

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You Belong on the Radio - U.S. Music Charts

So, here we go through the charts again. This time I’ll look at the Billboard Hot 100, which are the singles charts for the U.S. Since I almost know no current music, I know as many songs here as in the German charts, so the surprise factor should about be the same. Be ready to be offended! Here we go!

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This 70s Movie: Vanishing Point (1971)

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This 70s Movie: Vanishing Point (1971)

Vanishing Point feels like the quintessential 70s movie. “Wait, isn’t that Easy Rider?” Sure, you could argue that (even if it’s from 1969) and there are similarities, but viewed without competitors this movie screams and shouts, “I’m from the 70s!” I picked it randomly for a 70s movie and it fits my parameters perfectly. It shows a lot about its time and has some interesting if extremely strange ideas. It’s not necessarily a good movie unless you like a basically non-story about a driver who wants to bring a car to San Francisco, is chased by the police and makes many police cars crash, while also meeting all kinds of 70s tropes. I can see how it has the potential for a cult movie (which it seemingly is), but that doesn’t make it good. Unless you like to see cars drive off the road or crash into something.

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Did I Like This? (Power)

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Did I Like This? (Power)

After two obscure choices that were on my mind when cooking up the idea for this series, I want to come to something more ‘profound’, I want to say, although that might be the wrong word. My next pick is an album that also has a special place in my childhood gangsta rap heart and this is Ice-T’s second album Power, released in 1988.

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Miami Vice (2006)

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Miami Vice (2006)

(spoilers ahead!)

There is not that much to say about Miami Vice as a movie except that I found it pretty disappointing. I’m confused by the critical acclaim it got but then again, it seems like a movie that is more or less forgotten by now and that I understand. It’s a bit of a mess, a plot that’s hard to understand but in which also nothing really happens most of the time. The movie on the one hand appears so gritty and realistic but then on the other hand relies on big romantic love and sex scenes that totally feel out of place. I didn’t feel a lot for the characters either. I like both Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx but they were so damn serious all the time that I found it hard to care about them. And why is Justin Theroux in this movie? He has about two lines of dialogue and his face is obscured most of the time. He could have been an extra and it wouldn’t have made a difference. The whole opening sequence was great, though, it felt like the movie was trying something different, there was an interesting mood going on and John Hawkes is just brilliant. But after his death (so after about 15 minutes) the movie quickly deteriorated into long talks between people who didn’t trust each other, dance scenes, racing boat scenes, container boat scenes, plane scenes and a confusing shoot-out finale. And one of the most pointless final shots I can remember. It’s hard not to compare this to Michael Mann’s Heat and not feel sad. (This article seems to explain why the movie is such a mess.)

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Crank: High Voltage (2009)

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Crank: High Voltage (2009)

I like to listen to podcasts on my way to work and one of them is “How Did This Get Made” which deals with bad movies. I like bad movies, either because they are funny or because there is a big fascination with, well, how they got made and ended up so bad. The podcast is often funny, so I don’t want to miss out and slowly watch all the bad movies they talk about. Which is a bit masochistic I guess.

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