Television Review: ZUMA BEACH (1978, Lee H. Katzin)

Stars: 2 of 5.
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Suzanne Somers (THREE'S COMPANY, SERIAL MOM), Michael Biehn (ALIENS, TOMBSTONE, THE TERMINATOR), Rosanna Arquette (PULP FICTION, AFTER HOURS, DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN), P.J. Soles (HALLOWEEN, ROCK N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, CARRIE), Tanya Roberts (THE BEASTMASTER, A VIEW TO A KILL), Steven Keats (DEATH WISH, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE), Mark Wheeler (THE CONVERSATION, APOLLO 13), Gary Imhoff (SUMMER SCHOOL, THE GREEN MILE), Delta Burke (DESIGNING WOMEN, WHAT WOMEN WANT), Kimberly Beck (ROLLER BOOGIE, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART IV: THE FINAL CHAPTER).
Tagline: "Her life had suddenly become a long drive to nowhere... so what better place to get it all together than her old stomping grounds, Zuma Beach! Let's get it together with a batch of beach boys and their golden girls... frolic with Suzanne Somers on Zuma Beach!"
Best one-liner: "Have some confidence in yourself." –"I can't. It's 9:30, and the stores stop selling confidence at five o'clock. And tomorrow is a holiday."

"I wrote that for a producer who just said he wanted a beach movie. He ended up selling it to Warner Bros., and soon Suzanne Somers was starring in it. I was going to direct it––for about ten seconds––but one of my mentors, Richard Kobritz, who later produced Christine, helped me see I didn’t want to do it. It was vastly rewritten, so I really shouldn’t have taken credit for it, but I was a little asshole in those days."

–John Carpenter, when asked about ZUMA BEACH by Fangoria in 2013 

 

Almost ten years ago, I did a "Poor Man's Carpy" series on this blog, devoted to John Carpenter marginalia like the co-scripted TV movie SILENT PREDATORS, the Tommy Lee Wallace-helmed VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS, trashy Hallo-sequels HALLOWEEN 666 and RESURRECTION, and the Dennis Etchison novelizations of THE FOG and HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH. One which slipped under the radar was ZUMA BEACH. So here we are, in the dog days of summer, finally taking a look at this forgotten CBS Late Movie "sort of" written by Carpenter and three other guys.

What can we learn about John Carpenter from ZUMA BEACH? Very little, I'm sure, given his above quote, but I think it's worth looking into. (Says the guy who did a two-part deep dive into John Carpenter's filmmaker-buddy-garage band, The Coupe de Villes.)

It's a straightforward slice of life, giggle and jiggle flick designed to eliminate two hours on a lazy, hazy summer evening. Though it ends with a volleyball game, it never even possesses stakes as high as in SIDE OUT. 

 Suzanne Somers plays a pop star (whose big hit is the fictitious "Silent Whisper"), and she's having a mid-career crisis. 

In need of a reset, she clears her head at Zuma Beach, where she once enjoyed poetry and sand castles as a child. Zuma Beach is populated with a rogue's gallery of horny teens, pre-makeover nerds, beach bums, surfers, football jerks, hot dog enthusiasts, kite fliers, windjammers, cool visor-dudes and the like.

Somers becomes something of a beach elder here, primarily because it's a teenage hotspot. She dispenses wisdom, smiles pensively, and takes in some rays. 

 

Bullies vaguely receive their comeuppance, romances spark and fizzle, and everyone more or less fritters the summer away. This is ZUMA BEACH, ladies and gentlemen. It's so dedicated to its quotidian ensemble that if it were better written and had more interesting characters, it might even feel like an Altman or Linklater flick. As is, it's merely a pleasant time-waster filled with bright 1970s colors and some amusing and unexpected performances. For reference, the real Zuma Beach is in Malibu, about a 70 minute drive from the PRINCE OF DARKNESS church.

If I were trying to draw a real John Carpenter connection, I'd probably compare it to THE FOG, which also sees a strong woman adjacent to the music industry (Adrienne Barbeau as "DJ Stevie Wayne") finding her footing in a California beach community. There are even times that ZUMA BEACH feels like "a Carpenter horror movie, but before the horror begins."

The image of a child playing with his dog in the surf... recalls Stevie Wayne's son finding a plank from the Elizabeth Dane in THE FOG? C'mon, I'm trying here.

Oh, and there is a lot of feathered hair in this movie. Might I remind you that it was shot in 1978.

Mark Wheeler's elaborate feathered coiffure helmet puts Mark Hamill's to shame

With such a bare bones plot, you start focusing on strange details. Like Suzanne Somers' suntan oil, which looks like it's being dispensed from an Elmer's glue bottle.

We have young, Toto-era Rosanna Arquette as a character who tokes a lot of reefer. She's doing that quirky comedic 'Rosanna Arquette thing,' mostly indistinguishable from her performances in AFTER HOURS and DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, which is okay!

You have to admire (pre-Reagan) CBS Standards & Practices allowing such casual drug use to slip by without dramaturgical rebuke. 

Michael Biehn pops up, also in one of his very first roles, as a crazy-eyed, eyebrow-indicating lifeguard who uses his lifeguard tower as a bachelor pad.

Here, he's trying to pressure HALLOWEEN's own P.J. Soles into pre-marital sex. It's a good thing Michael Myers isn't around!

HALLOWEEN was released October 25, 1978; ZUMA BEACH debuted September 27, 1978. HALLOWEEN was filmed in May, and based on the look and general disposability of ZUMA BEACH, I have to imagine it was filmed that summer. It's quite possible that P.J. appears here as part of some John Carpenter favor; but given his disconnect to this movie, it's equally plausible that it's pure coincidence. I at least have to hope that John Carpenter was not responsible for a line of dialogue about "extracurricular sex-tivity."

Soles: "I have six pigtails"

As usual, P.J. Soles is a hilarious delight. And she has six pigtails. Count 'em––six! Why would anybody need six pigtails? Maybe she's choosing to pull focus by-way-of ridiculous hair/costume accoutrement––she does has a history of that. You may recall that in Brian De Palma's CARRIE, she established herself as the Queen of Pulling Focus with her big 'ol red rainbow ballcap. Bless.

There are some terrible, copyright-skirting faux-Beach Boys songs which play throughout, Tanya Roberts and Delta Burke wander through the frame, and Michael Biehn gets sand kicked in his face: a sobering experience for Zuma Beach's resident bully/Casanova.

There's a volleyball game and a riding-men-by-the-shoulders race,

and that's all she wrote. Er, rather, that's all John Carpenter and (at least) three other guys wrote. Do you feel like know all you need to about the ZUMA BEACH experience? I hope so.

Film Review: A VIEW TO A KILL (1985, John Glen)

Stars:  5 of 5.
Running Time: 131 minutes.
Tag-line: "Has James Bond finally met his match?  Find out this summer."
Notable Cast or Crew:  Grace Jones (VAMP, CONAN THE DESTROYER), Christopher Walken (THE DEER HUNTER, MOUSEHUNT), Roger Moore (THE QUEST), Tanya Roberts THE BEASTMASTER, SHEENA), David Yip (Wu Han from INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM), Alison Doody (Elsa from INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE), Desmond Llewelyn ('Q' from FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE through THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH), Lois Maxwell ('Moneypenny' from DR. NO through A VIEW TO A KILL), Patrick Macnee (THE AVENGERS, WAXWORK), Patrick Bauchau (PHENOMENA, THE RAPTURE), and Dolph Lundgren (ROCKY IV, MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE).  Cinematography by Alan Hume (RETURN OF THE JEDI, A FISH CALLED WANDA). Music by John Barry and Duran Duran. 
Best One-liner:  "Wow!  What a view."  –"TO A KILL!"

I'm going to begin with a quote by Roger Moore:

"I was horrified on the last Bond I did. Whole slews of sequences where Christopher Walken was machine-gunning hundreds of people. I said, 'That wasn't Bond, those weren't Bond films.' It stopped being what they were all about. You didn't dwell on the blood and the brains spewing all over the place."

What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Walken?  Have you besmirched the legacy of Bond by rewriting the punctuation in your lines and machine-gunning hundreds of innocents?

Walken weighs in:

"In the Bond movie I had my hair dyed an impossible yellow color, and that became my motivation in a lot of scenes: I had a secret subtext, which I never discussed with anybody. Every time I had a scene with somebody I’d be thinking: What do you think of my hair? Do you like my hair? Do you like what they did to me? That they made me look like this? So next time you see the movie, every time I torture somebody I’m really thinking, You see what they did to me with this hair?"

It would seem from those quotes that A VIEW TO A KILL took Bond in a new direction, truly a Bond for the 80s; a Bond that came out the same year as COMMANDO and ROCKY IV and DEATH WISH 3; a Bond for a Cold War edging its way toward a natural conclusion (whether that means a "hot" war or Glasnost); a Bond for the Reagan-consumerist era; a Bond for the Computer Age; a Bond for the hair salon; a Bond that's not afraid to live dangerously; a Bond that's not afraid to–
DANCE!

 

INTO THE FIIIIYAHH

THAT FATAL KISS 

ISSS ALL WE NEED

DANCE INTO THE FIIIIYAHH

TO FATAL SOUNDS OF BROKEN DREAMS

DANCE!

INTO THE FIIIIYAHH 

 

 

And just like that, James Bond's silhouette shoots a leftover laser from MOONRAKER at a black-light day-glo body-painted skiing-gal who happens to be on fire, and said laser transforms her into an ice sculpture.  All of this is accompanied by the best of all the James Bond themes, Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill."  This is the only Bond film that could ever be confused with Lorenzo Lamas' BODY ROCK, and that's the highest praise I can give anything.

Here are five reasons why A VIEW TO A KILL joins MOONRAKER and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER in the holy trifecta of Bond movies that perfect the art of big-budget absurdity:

#1.  The Grace.  As villain/quasi-Bond girl and Chris Walken-squeeze "May Day," Grace Jones takes what could have been a throwaway role and makes it subversive, beautiful, insane, and transcendent.

Here she is, dressed in 'Cardinal Chic' with a New Wave miter, I guess?

Shes a badass, she's a singer, she's a fashionista, she's the scariest vampire of the 1980s, and according to her own drunken rant, she's the "Queen Bitch Jungle Mother of New York."  And no one will ever dispute that.  Hell, if I was Mayor, I'd make it official.  I'd build her a statue on Liberty Island.

Pictured:  an artist's rendering of said statue.

It's a pity that she hasn't starred in more movies (though we still have this, VAMP, CONAN THE DESTROYER, and STRAIGHT TO HELL, among others).  However, I must point out, having seen her live in glorious concert in Fall of 2012, that she looks exactly the same at age 64 as she did in the 1980s.  At the risk of offering too much information, yes, this means she can rock out a thong (which she did) and receive a senior discount at the same time.  So, Hollywood: it is your duty to cast her in every action movie from now on (or at least THE EXPENDABLES 4?).

At any rate, she's on, to quote Duran Duran, "FIIIIYAHH": 

WATCH!  Grace Jones force-eject some poor sap from a zeppelin with extreme prejudice!

AIEEEEE!

SEE!  Grace Jones evolve hairstyles and make more costume changes than at one of her concerts (once per song, by my reckoning).

GAZE UPON! Grace Jones clawing and fighting her way through an assortment of action scenarios, relentless as a Terminator, and then some!

BEHOLD!  Grace Jones base-jumping off the Eiffel Tower as some perturbed guy tries to chase her:

Who is that guy, anyway?  I've already forgotten.  Isn't this film part of a larger series?

#2.  The Dolph.  Grace Jones' then-bodyguard/boyfriend Dolph Lundgren happened to be on set when the role of a "KGB henchman" needed to be filled, and the rest is film history.

Here is a picture of Grace Jones and Dolph Lundgren, in case you've forgotten what they look like:

Again, just imagine this, 900 feet tall and where the Statue of Liberty used to be.  It'd be like the Colossus of Rhodes meets the ISLAND LIFE album cover.

(By now, you've probably figured out that Grace Jones will slink her way into as many entries on this list as possible.)  So the scene is this:  the KGB comes after Christopher Walken for reasons that don't really matter, and he sics Grace Jones on their caviar-eatin', vodka-swiggin' asses:

 She promptly free-lifts (did I mention that she has super-strength?) one of the KGB,

prompting a young agent who doesn't get any lines (Dolph) to briefly leap into action, drawing his gun.

This isn't quite a Mexican standoff.  I'm actually not sure what to call this. 

Walken gives her the ole' pursed-lip head-nod

and Grace flings the guy to his well-deserved humiliation.  Dolph blankly checks on him and gives Grace a look of respect and abject fear.  It is difficult to determine whether or not he is "acting" in this moment.

Even Ivan Drago cowers in the presence of Grace Jones.

#3.  The Walken.  It's already been said, but I can't emphasize enough that Walken's acting motivation is whether or not the other characters in the scene like his hair.  

 

 Walken gets needy when his hair is ignored.

That alone could be enough to make him the most ludicrous Bond villain, but then you stick him in a scene with Grace Jones, and it's like mixin' bleach and ammonia– they're edgy, they're volatile, and if you have inadequate ventilation, they could induce a fainting spell.

Take this scene for instance, where Grace and Walken are practicing aerobo-judo-jazzercise or whatever

and Grace is revealing that she has the best crazyfaces since Jean-Claude and Bolo hit the mat.  After a takedown, the pin quickly takes on a sexual connotation and the two bark and growl and bite at one another

for what seems

an inordinate amount

of time.  

The fact that this was allowed in a Bond movie is simply wonderful.  It's like performance art, like they were having a joke on mainstream movie audiences; an outré, private joke.  

I wish that there was a freeze frame that could perfectly encapsulate this sentiment.  Wait, there is!

Eat yer hearts out, Bond fans!

#4.  The Robot.  There's a subplot where 'Q' (Desmond Llewelyn) is fucking around with a comical robot creation who is the median point between SICO in ROCKY IV and Johnny Number Five in SHORT CIRCUIT. 

The film ends with Q fondly using the robot to spy on Bond's sex life,

a voyeuristic episode that ends prematurely with a well-flung towel.

The fact that Q is a massive creeper is casually brushed aside because the robot is pretty fucking adorable.  I approve of all of this.

#5.  The Music Video.  Technically this isn't part of the canon, but I couldn't resist checking out Duran Duran's tie-in music video for "A View to a Kill."  The premise is that the members of Duran Duran are wandering around the Eiffel Tower, doing "spy" things, like Simon Le Bon operating a secret remote control hidden inside a walkman

 and Nick Rhodes taking high-fashion photographs.

It bears mentioning that all of this is basically a backdrop for some amazing blue-screen cut-out images of flying videocassette cameras that zoom to and fro like 2-D drones, with no sense of depth or perspective:

It's jaw-droppingly terrible, and by terrible, I mean "great."  I have no idea how one would even come up with such a concept, much less actually try to visualize it.

It ends with the brilliant one liner, "Bon.  Simon Le Bon."  

Then an explosion is set off on the tower and all of Duran Duran are apparently caught up in the blast.  We cut to a wide shot of an Eiffel postcard exploding, and not the actual Eiffel Tower.  

 

I suspect this was done so not as to offend some French tourism bureau, but it thus implies that the entirety of the music video took place on the surface of a postcard of the Eiffel Tower (thus vindicating the terrible 2D camcorder graphics?), which is the kind of logic that simply doesn't exist outside of a classic music video.

 

And hell, what's once more for good measure:

Five stars.

–Sean Gill