Only now does it occur to me... INNERSPACE (1987)

Only now does it occur to me... that I would ever see character-acting legend and scene-stealing nutball Robert Picardo (TOTAL RECALL, THE WONDER YEARS) busting such savagely hip and creepy dance moves, and all in service of seducing America's Sweetheart, Meg Ryan!





Note: "The Invisible Lasso," an essential move in Picardo's dance arsenal.

I saw INNERSPACE on television as a child, and for whatever reason I did not remember much, beyond it being a comedic 1980s update of FANTASTIC VOYAGE wherein an experimental pilot (Dennis Quaid) is miniaturized and accidentally injected into the bloodstream of a hypochondriac (Martin Short).



Dennis Quaid embarks on his 'fantastic voyage' while eating a JELL-O pudding snack and doing some kind of Jack Nicholson/Harrison Ford pastiche.

Upon revisiting, I cannot emphasize enough how anarchic and bizarre a movie INNERSPACE is. Robert Picardo is just the tip of the iceberg––though I must admit that in his minor role as a silky-smooth international smuggler named "The Cowboy," he does his darnedest to steal the entire movie. Whether "Travis Bickling" with a blow dryer:

putting the moves on Meg Ryan:

 

wearing a Speedo and blasting a champagne cork at Martin Short:

or being kidnapped and impersonated by a rubberized (through science-fictioney means) Martin Short:



I guess I'm trying to tell you that it's a live action Looney Tunes episode, a relentless slice of sci-fi mayhem, and a work of good-natured batshittery. In other words, it's a Joe Dante film!

BEHOLD: A villainous henchman (Vernon Wells, "Bennett" from COMMANDO!) with more cyborg arm-appendage weapons than Chuck Connors in 99 AND 44/100% DEAD and "Doctor Claw" from INSPECTOR GADGET combined!


EXPERIENCE: Fiona Lewis (THE FURY, STRANGE INVADERS) as perhaps the most lascivious corporate scientist of all time!


ENJOY: Kevin McCarthy (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS) as a criminal mastermind with impeccable interior (and personal) design!


FIND CATHARSIS IN: Lewis and McCarthy shrunk to the size of children (or we could say "Good Guy Doll"-size) and handling absurdly-proportioned props!



GAZE UPON: 1980s New Wave nuttery and other optical illusions!


SEE: More terrifying rubbery faces than TOTAL RECALL!




WITNESS: A tearful Meg Ryan cab ride, made possible by none other than "That Guy" legend, Dick Miller!


LOOK AT: A Rance Howard cameo! Just look at it!

 
CONTEMPLATE: A world where Henry Gibson is your bitchy-but-well-meaning supermarket boss!


BE FACED WITH UNSETTLING MELANCHOLY: When the scientist who injects Martin Short (John Hora, Dante's cinematographer) is shot and killed at a mall by Vernon Wells' robo-assassin. As the life flows out of him, he is confronted with the startling image of mall mascots coming to his aid.


He fades and dies, scared and confused. This is probably a good example of what I mean when I say this film is anarchic––but it is emotionally grounded, unlike much of the contemporary absurdist comedy, where many jokes rely upon randomness or anti-humor for their effect. There is an order to this film––a cartoon-logic, if you will––but its anarchy supports the story (also see: PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH, WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, et al.), and it's nothing if not well earned.

I feel as if I've barely scratched the surface of this strange beast. Now, go forth, and rent INNERSPACE!

––Sean Gill

Only now does it occur to me... FLATBED ANNIE AND SWEETIEPIE: LADY TRUCKERS (1979)

Only now does it occur to me... that a full five years before he played one in the seminal REPO MAN, Harry Dean Stanton was already repossessing vehicles across the American West in FLATBED ANNIE AND SWEETIEPIE: LADY TRUCKERS!




It's unfortunate that this genre died out (do we blame MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE?), because these movies are all pleasant enough (see: HIGH-BALLIN', WHITE LINE FEVER, and the like) and usually deliver hearty doses of Americana bizarre-itude, zany high-speed chases, and blue collar Davids versus corporate Goliaths.

All of this, naturally, is accompanied by janglin', crawdaddyin' country grooves thicker than Burt Reynolds' chest hair and sweatier than Southern Fried Sleaze-o-Rama.  This particular film puts its own spin on the genre with lady truckers, played by DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK's Kim Darby and CORVETTE SUMMER's Annie Potts.

When Darby's trucker husband (played by Fred Willard) is injured in the line of duty, she has to stay one step ahead of the repo men and joins forces with her best friend to keep the big rig runnin'.  That's pretty much the entire plot.  There's a lot of Harry Dean Stanton "slow burn"

set to banjo music, and I can really get behind that.  It's also notable for being the first and only film appearance of Billy Carter, full-time brother of then-President Jimmy Carter and part-time huckster of Billy Beer.
'
He's given the opportunity to smile a lot, which really plays to his strengths as a performer.  I love that there's a rich history of this sort of political gimmickry, including Roger Clinton's appearance in BIODOME.  But it's really too bad that Jeb Bush never appeared in something like, say... THE PAPERBOY.

 In the end, it's the sort of film where random men declare, "You are some kind of woman, Flatbed Annie!"
 
and it feels only natural. Amen.

Film Review: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (1992, Roland Emmerich)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 102  minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Jean-Claude Van Damme (BLOODSPORT, KICKBOXER), Dolph Lundgren (MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, ROCKY IV), Ally Walker (SONS OF ANARCHY, WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING), Jerry Orbach (LAW AND ORDER, DIRTY DANCING), Leon Rippy (STARGATE, THE PATRIOT), Rance Howard (Ron's dad, FORCED TO KILL, CHINATOWN), Ed O'Ross (LETHAL WEAPON, RED HEAT), Eric Norris (son of Chuck, DELTA FORCE, TOP DOG), Tiny Lister (EXTREME PREJUDICE, JACKIE BROWN), Michael Jai White (SPAWN,  BLACK DYNAMITE).  Music by Christopher Franke (member of Tangerine Dream, MCBAIN, THE TOMMYKNOCKERS).
Tag-line: "The ultimate weapons of the future have just declared war... on each other."
Best one-liner:  "Say goodnight, asshole!"  –"Good night, asshole!"

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER.  Oh yeah.  This is probably the movie that should have been called CYBORG.  For starters, it's actually about cyborgs, unlike CYBORG, which is actually about post-apocalyptic fashion-conscious nomads who happen to be named after popular guitar brands.  But let me get back to UNIVERSAL SOLDIER.  We've got Van Damme as 'Luc Deveraux,' an ambiguously Belgian-American soldier who died in Vietnam while fighting his mortal enemy Dolph Lundgren (as 'Andrew Scott,' an ambiguously Swedish-American soldier.)  Then, their bodies are reanimated and turned into cyborgs by Jerry Orbach, and then they continue to fight each other, all the way to the Grand Canyon.  Toss in an endless bunch of TERMINATOR homages (and rip-off elements), an obligatory truck vs. bus chase, a grocery store shoot out:

 a blown up gas station:

 Technically, it's not an action movie unless they blow up a rustic, Southwestern gas station.

and that's pretty much the movie.  But what a movie it is.  I mean, it came from the minds who made THE HITCHHIKER– what do you expect?  (Note that I said THE HITCHHIKER, not THE HITCHER.)  As I often say, it's the little things that make a movie special, and I'm about to name a few of them.

Where to begin– well, let's see... how about the fact that Dolph Lundgren's sole character motivation seems to be the desire to make human ear-necklaces, and then make groan-inducing puns about them.


In fact, maybe this movie should have been entitled EAR AND LOATHING IN THE GRAND CANYON or THE SWEET EARAFTER or something, because I'm starting to think that UNIVERSAL SOLDIER is too classy a name for this thing.  I mean, it's presumably purloined from a 1960s Canadian folk rock song.  Eh, no matter.

Anyway, Dolph runs rampant across the greater American Southwest, trying to hunt down Van Damme and delivering soliloquies such as "Well, I'm fighting this thing man, it's like kick ass or kiss ass, and I'm busting heads!"

He steals rednecks' belts,

and at one point, a dummy of Dolph flies through the front windshield of a car, prompting the one-liner, "He should have buckled up."

Above all, Dolph realizes what movie he is in, and he's having a hell of a lot of fun with it.  He's given more to do than, say, in ROCKY IV, and he knows that the line "Now where are we gonna shoot her?  In the stomach?  Naaah.  In the chest?  Noooo...  I think... we... should shoot her... IN THE HEAD!" is ridiculous.  I mean, the man was a chemical engineering Fulbright scholar.  So he does his cartoonish best.  I only mention this, because on the opposite side of the coin is a man who's taking this material seriously.  Very seriously.  And that is the subtle majesty of Jean-Claude Van Damme.



Oh, no!

Van Damme is an Actor, with a capital A.  Don't believe me?  I offer proof:


Sometimes Acting requires a long, lingering shot of Van Damme's ass cheeks.

 The immediate aftermath of a long, lingering shot of Van Damme's ass cheeks.

Sometimes Acting requires a plot point that Van Damme must get naked and cover himself in ice every two hours.

 Insert one of Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze one-liners here.

And sometimes Acting requires THIS, the context and precise nature of which I shall refuse to explain:

 Make sure nobody gets poked in the eye or anything?

I love how almost every JCVD film feels that, despite whatever other mind-boggling suspensions of disbelief are in play, his accent must be addressed.

Later, he's revealed to have vaguely Cajun heritage.  Also, his dad is Rance Howard.  Which, I think makes him Clint Howard's brother.  But I digress.

There's also a wonderful plot element that means JCVD's cyborg-self is always hungry.  This leads to him eating an entire diner's worth of food, which, when he has no money to pay for the feast, leads to a brawl with the chef and several patrons, and some lunch-related one-liners are thrown in there, too.

After kick-blasting everyone into submission, he gets his hands on a complimentary plastic basket of bar popcorn, and the look on his face may very well be the purest distillation of "childish happiness" ever captured on film, at least since Michael Jackson got to live out his "claymation duets and giant transforming robot saving the world" fantasies in MOONWALKER. I mean, look at him:

How could you not be charmed by that kiddie-level sincerity?  Awwww, allllllright– Give him the popcorn, says the audience.  Give him ALL the popcorn.  He earned it.  (Ask me later about my conspiracy theory that JCVD was paid for his role in this film exclusively in popcorn.)

Anyway, it all leads to a final, ridiculous martial arts duel that ends with one of our two combatants suffering a Lucio Fulci-style impalement and then being SHREDDED TO DEATH BY A HAY BALER.  If that's not worth four stars, I'm not quite sure what is.  

Thanks for everything, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER.  Four stars.

-Sean Gill

Also, many further thanks to the wondrous featurette on the DVD called "A Tale of Two Titans," which features interviews with Dolph and JCVD, ridiculous low-budget re-enactment cutaways of everything they're talking about, JCVD doing a Menahem Golan impersonation, Dolph plugging his new production company "Thor Pictures," and the following archival photos of them as youngsters!