Film Review: DREAMSCAPE (1984, Joseph Ruben)

Stars: 4 of 5.

Running Time: 99 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew: Dennis Quaid (ENEMY MINE, INNERSPACE), Kate Capshaw (INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, SPACECAMP), Max von Sydow (THE SEVENTH SEAL, MINORITY REPORT), Christopher Plummer (THE SOUND OF MUSIC, A BEAUTIFUL MIND), George Wendt (CHEERS, HOUSE), David Patrick Kelly (COMMANDO, THE CROW, TWIN PEAKS, THE WARRIORS), Peter Jason (THEY LIVE, PRINCE OF DARKNESS), Chris Mulkey (TWIN PEAKS, QUIET COOL), Eddie Albert (ROMAN HOLIDAY, THE HEARTBREAK KID). Music by Maurice Jarre (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, THE CELEBRITY GUIDE TO WINE). Casting by Johanna Ray (TWIN PEAKS, MULHOLLAND DR., KILL BILL, SHOWGIRLS, COOL AS ICE, BLUE VELVET). Special makeup effects by Craig Reardon (THE GOONIES, DICK TRACY, POLTERGEIST). Special effects by John Eggett (NIGHT OF THE COMET, THE PIRATE MOVIE), Jim Doyle (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO), and Jim Aupperle (THE THING, ROBOCOP 2, BEETLEJUICE). Directed by Joseph Ruben (THE STEPFATHER, SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY). Written by Ruben, David Loughery (PASSENGER 57, STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER), and Chuck Russell (NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET III: DREAM WARRIORS, THE BLOB '88).

Tag-line: "Alex Gardner has an extraordinary gift. The government wants it...The scientists want it... To keep it may cost him his life..."

Memorable Quote: "So, Jane, what you do here, in effect, is count boners."

In a familiar, darkened alley:

"It's been a while!"
–"Sure has. Whaddya got for me?"
"A riddle. What do you get when you combine David Lynch's casting director, the writer of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET III, the makeup effects dude from DICK TRACY, and a villain who's a combination of Freddy Krueger and Revok from SCANNERS?"
–"If the VHS art you're clasping is any indication... an INDIANA JONES rip-off?"
"Yeah, I don't know why they did that. It's not really like INDIANA JONES at all, unless you consider Kate Capshaw's presence and a stop-motion snake monster to be the full Indy experience.

'Snakes with hands... why'd it have to be snakes with hands?'

Frankly, it's a paranoid science-fictional political thriller that's lot more like SCANNERS, THE FURY, or FIRESTARTER. You could even call it a proto-INCEPTION. Dennis Quaid plays a psychic on the run from the government. He's using his abilities to win big at the racetrack when he's hunted down by special agents Peter Jason

and Chris Mulkey."

–"Wow, that's some genuine '80s street cred right there! I'd watch that MIAMI VICE rip-off."
"You ain't seen nothin' yet. Quaid is then delivered unto Max von Sydow and Kate Capshaw, who are running a sleep research center. They believe that Dennis Quaid can use his psychic abilities to enter other people's dreams and heal their neuroses.

You will note this is not Willie Scott

They believe this because they already have a psychic who can enter dreams. And while you're busy in the shower, he's in your bedroom, wailing on your saxophone."
–"Uh... what?"

"And his name is...

D...

P...

...motherfuckin' K!  DPK! That's right, David Patrick Kelly!"
–"From TWIN PEAKS? From 'Warriors, come out and play-yee-yay?' You're the only person on Earth who calls him that."
"That's definitely not true."
–"But I do appreciate that levitating saxophone squeal. Looks like this movie's '80s trash element just went into overdrive."
"Ohhh yes. So Dennis Quaid agrees to work with the dream researchers after he gets over the spartan decor

'Who's your decorator, Darth Vader?'

and enjoys some serious dive bar pitchers with Max von Sydow."


–"Why doesn't Max von Sydow ever invite me out for beers? And what bar is that?"
"Supposedly it was called the Village Pub, was in Santa Monica, and has been closed down for a while. But I couldn't find a whole lot of information about it. Annnyway, with DPK comes the next phase of the film and the main plot: evil CIA spymaster Christopher Plummer hijacks the project in order to manipulate and assassinate the U.S. president... in his dreams... using DPK as a dream assassin!"

–"That's quite something. You're right, this kinda sounds like a higher-stakes version of INCEPTION. But didn't you say something earlier about... snake monsters?"
"I sure as shit did! This dream world's way more like Freddy Krueger's. Anything––and everything––can happen. You want snake monsters? We got that.

DR. CALIGARI by-way-of evil '80s funhouse?


DPK with.... Freddy Krueger fingers?

Rippin' out hearts like he's in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM?

Well, guess there's one more thing to connect it to INDIANA JONES.

Droppin' one-liners like he's James Bond?"

'Have a heart,' he says. [tosses heart]

–"This looks completely insane."
"I haven't even gotten to George Wendt yet."
–"What?! Norm?"
"He plays a Stephen King-style horror writer who has a host of conspiracy theories about the whole dream-assassin operation... and it turns out he's right. Naturally, we first meet him at Max von Sydow's favorite glorious dive."

–"Is George Wendt legally allowed to not be at a bar?"
"Hard to say. Also, did I mention that DPK has dreamworld laser nunchucks with morningstar handles?"



–"Okay, okay, goddamit! You got me! I'm sold."
"I knew that'd take you over the edge."
–"Why have I never seen this before? Why has the universe conspired to keep this film from me?"
"It's a cruel world, my friend, and rarely does it make sense. But I think it's going to be okay. You have a copy of DREAMSCAPE now."

Film Review: COMMANDO (1985, Mark L. Lester)

Stars: 4.5 of 5.
Running Time: 92 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong (TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE, CHAINDANCE), Alyssa Milano (DOUBLE DRAGON, POISON IVY 2), Vernon Wells (WEIRD SCIENCE, KING OF THE ANTS), David Patrick Kelly (WILD AT HEART, THE WARRIORS), Bill Duke (ACTION JACKSON, PREDATOR, THE LIMEY), Dan Hedaya (BLOOD SIMPLE, THE HUNGER, MULHOLLAND DR.), James Olson (AMITYVILLE II, RAGTIME), and a very special appearance by Bill Paxton. Music by James Horner (48 HRS., TITANIC). Cast by Jackie Burch, clearly one of the best casting directors of all time (THE BREAKFAST CLUB, SIXTEEN CANDLES, D.C. CAB, PREDATOR, DIE HARD, THE RUNNING MAN). Cinematography by Matthew F. Leonetti (EXTREME PREJUDICE, FAST FORWARD, POLTERGEIST).
Tag-lines: "Let's party!"
Best one-liner: See review.

Now this is a difficult task I have before me: what can one write about COMMANDO which has not already been writ in the annals of cinema history? I believe that COMMANDO has universal appeal. There's truly something for everyone in COMMANDO. Yet not everyone is willing to sit down and check themselves out some COMMANDO. Thusly, there are many people- the sorts of people who wouldn't immediately recognize DPK as the universal abbreviation for David Patrick Kelly- that aren't giving COMMANDO a fair shake. So I shall put forth the solution to a perennial problem: how to vault COMMANDO from its position as a beer n' nachos slugfest to something that even the Cabernet Sauvignon crowd could enjoy? Well here ya go: a list of 7 low-brow and 8 high-brow happenings in COMMANDO- the best of both worlds. Hopefully, I can win over some hearts and minds. I'll begin with the low-brow because that's exactly the sort of no-class pandering you'd expect of this site:

LOW-BROW HIGHLIGHTS OF COMMANDO:

1. RDC. Or, for the uninitiated, Rae Dawn Chong.

I like Rae Dawn Chong. I like Rae Dawn Chong a lot. When Ironside needed a go-to lady in CHAINDANCE, who did he pick? Rae Dawn Chong. When C. Thomas Howell was pretending to be black in SOUL MAN, whom did he romance? Rae Dawn Chong. When James Remar needed some luvin' after getting freaked out by gargoyles in TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE, who did he shack up with? Rae Dawn Chong. All these great minds can't be wrong about Chong. Anyway, she's pretty horrible in this movie. She's kind of the Kate Capshaw/Willie Scott of COMMANDO. I don't know why I started with this one. Hell, I don't know why I'm telling you this, period.

Anyway, somebody must've liked it, or else they wouldn't have told her to be really annoying for the duration. Which only proves my point: this theoretical person who likes screechingly vocal, nettlesome female leads is dissimilar to me in almost every regard. And yet the both of us can find common ground in COMMANDO!

2.

I really miss these kinds of mall elevators. They used to be in every movie. Well, they at least used to be in RUNNING SCARED.

3. The emphasis on sweaty Arnie pec-shaking as legions of men wearing mustaches constructed from felt purchased at Jo-Ann Fabrics are gunned down in a wanton display of gratuitous violence.



4. Occasionally in an action movie, they'll show the same explosion twice, from different angles, for dramatic effect. Sometimes they'll show it three times, perhaps alternating shutter speeds or frame rates to give it that DAYUM SHIT IS BLOWIN' UP sparkle. Once in a blue moon, they'll even show an explosion four times, cause they just couldn't resist.

Well, in COMMANDO, the same explosion is shown nine times. Don't take my word for it, either:


5. One-liners, one-liners, one-liners. I know you've heard them all before, from "Don't disturb my friend, he's dead tired" to "BULLLLLLLL-SHIT!!!" My personal favorite is probably the head-scratchingly homoerotic, "John, I'm not going to shoot you between the eyes. I'm going to shoot you between the balls!" Regardless, I don't think that I can quite emphasize enough how many one-liners are used in COMMANDO. Look at this graph which compares the number of successful one-liners used in COMMANDO to the number of successful one-liners used in everyday life.

The numbers are staggering. I also appreciate that three thousand years of dramatic writing from Aeschylus to Shakespeare to Eugene O'Neill found culmination in 1985 with the following exchange:

FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE! *click*


Fuck YOU, asshole!

6. Arnold flinging a phone booth containing a frightened David Patrick Kelly!


7. An axe-low-blow!?


Alright, before I get off track and we lose too many brain cells:

HIGH-BROW HIGHLIGHTS OF COMMANDO:

1. So many random windows in COMMANDO have artsy, Vittorio Storaro/Dario Argento/Bernard Bertolucci-style colorful backlighting. Didn't expect that in COMMANDO, did you? Well, COMMANDO is full of surprises.



2. I've been working, on and off, on this sort of existential science-fiction film called BLACK HOLE ADVENTURE. It attempts to merge the youthful whimsy and 80's-tastical-ness of those old CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE novels with the crushing pessimism and random tragedies of adulthood, and it's all wrapped in a package that's half ROBOT MONSTER and half SPACE ACADEMY. I only mention this, because I discovered that David Patrick Kelly is somehow wearing BLACK HOLE ADVENTURE.


That out-of-this-world suit! The scratchy, woolen needlework! All tied together with a pair of Spicoli's checkered surf shoes from FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH! A-plus, DPK. An A-plus.

3. Hedaya's ponderous jowls. Hedaya's shaggy, caterpillar-esque eyebrows. Hedaya's deeply cleft chin. Hedaya's sunken, terrifying eyes. Hedaya's five o'clock shadow. Hedaya's unnervingly fleecy chest hair, always threatening to crawl out of his shirt and onto YOU. All of these disparate elements converge to form Dan Hedaya.


4. BOOM- out of nowhere- Paxton. He only gets like three lines in a throwaway role as an air-traffic controller, but I still say even just ten seconds of Paxton is ten seconds of class.


5. The COMMANDO font.

Busy, but not too busy. Colorful, but not too colorful. Kinda sporty, but kinda militaristic. Framed elegantly by parallel horizontal lines. I could go on.

6. The opening montage of Schwarzenegger and daughter Alyssa Milano which seems to borrow equally from Leni Riefenstahl propaganda, contemporary political advertisements, the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and THE SOUND OF MUSIC.




7. The void in Bill Duke's eyes. Even for the film fan who has seen it all, there's something sincerely uncanny about Bill Duke's deadpan stare. Most of filmdom's great psychos- from Lon Chaney to Dwight Frye to Anthony Perkins to Crispin Glover- have an active glint in their eye, a quivering eyebrow, a narrowed eyelid. Not Bill Duke. Bill Duke looks into your soul, confident that neither he nor you even have one. Then he says that he likes the price of your Cadillac and runs you down with it.


8. James Horner's score. Ever since I got my hands on a copy, I've had nothing but steel drums and discordant wailin' sax stuck in my craw. Now, it may be a total rip-off of Horner's previous score for 48 HRS., but at least this time the tropical locale provides a bona fide excuse for the steel drum action. This is a throbbing, pulsating, hard-driving score that never lets up, never quits, never stops with its firm jams and unyielding grooves.

In all, COMMANDO is the tale of a man who so loves his daughter, Chenny, that he blasts, low-balls, and blows away a ton of dudes so that he can get to a fictitious Latin-American country, change into a Speedo,

row to shore, change back into commando clothes, blow away some more dudes, take off his shirt, and finally face off in a steam room with the leather-pantsed, chainmail-sweater-wearing bastard who has wronged him.











Four and a half stars. Make sure, uh, nobody gets poked in the eye or whatever.

-Sean Gill