Category Archives: 80’s Movies

Bachelor Party (1984)

Posted on January 22, 2026 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Wild night before marriage.

Rick (Tom Hanks) has decided to settle down and get married to Debbie (Tawny Kitaen) after years of being a party animal. Debbie’s parents (George Grizzard, Barbara Stuart) do not approve of the impending union and enlist the help of Cole (Robert Prescott), Debbie’s former boyfriend, to try and break it up by attempting to win Debbie back. Meanwhile, Rick’s friend Jay (Adrian Zmed) decides to throw Rick a lavish bachelor party by renting out a hotel room, but things soon get completely out of control.

This was pinnacle of the crude 80’s movies where the comedy emphasis was on the vulgar and shocking and while there were plenty of films before and after that had the same format this one is probably the best. A lot of the reason for it is that it has four different scenarios working in tandem that eventually converge into one at the end. Cutting away to the different plotlines and characters helps keep the pace breezy and doesn’t make the story come off quite as one dimensional as with other crude comedies. There are some genuinely funny moments especially the ending sequence that features Rick getting into a fistfight with Cole in front of a movie screen showing a film and theater goers think it’s simply a part of the 3-D effects.

Yet as popular as this movie was, and I was around when it came out where it was a huge hit, you cannot find it streaming anywhere, which is initially baffling. However, when you go back and watch it, I hadn’t seen it since it was released, you can kind of see why as the humor is quite un-PC especially by today’s standards. A good example is at the beginning when Jay, who works as a child photographer, has a mother with big bosoms come in with her kid and he manages to ‘trick’ her into posing in provocative ways, which is something that only happens in a guy’s fantasy world. A woman with big breasts is well aware that it attracts men, so she would immediately recognized Jay’s not so subtle come-ons right away, might even be expecting it as most likely many guys before having done the same thing, and wouldn’t be so naive.

The male strip joint sequence that the ladies attend is kind of dumb too. It features one of the male strippers putting his penis on a tray between some hot dog buns and then ‘serving it up’ to Debbie’s mother (Stuart). However, nobody in their right mind would want to put their sexual organ up to a stranger for them to grab. What if they stretched, or scratched it? It’s making it too vulnerable to injury and if it does get injured could they sue, or because they literally shoved the thing in the woman’s face, would they be considered liable? No idea why Stuart’s hand seems to get ‘stuck’ with it either, but that’s another issue.

While Hanks is engaging his character is a bit over-the-top. He acts very juvenile when with the parents to the extent that I actually sided with the dad as I wouldn’t want my daughter marrying a complete clown like that either. You’d think if he wanted to impress the parents, he’d try to be more serious and upstanding. Had the film done it this way and the father still rejected him then you could sympathize with Hanks, but here his goofing around just makes things worse.

Hanks complete ambivalence in regard to his friend Brad (Bradford Bancroft) who threatens to kill himself and even attempts it, but Hanks blows it off like it’s ‘no big deal’ makes him seem like he doesn’t care about what’s now considered a very serious issue. He also, at a later point, dangles Cole out a hotel window several stories up with nothing more than bed sheets, which is quite dangerous because if the guy slips out of them, he’ll fall and die and thus putting Hanks and his pals on the hook for reckless homicide.

The worst part in the movie, and again I did like it overall, but I feel it’s important to get the negative aspects of it addressed, is the donkey scene. I’m not sure why the donkey was brought to the party, I guess so the lady stripper could perform bestiality, which is both illegal and very unsexy, but having it perish after ingesting a lot of drugs that had been laying around is sad. Then having its dead body show up in an elevator makes it even sadder. Granted they didn’t actually kill a real donkey, but the just the idea is terrible and if anything, they should’ve had the donkey live and run all through the hotel where it would scare the guests and staff, which would’ve been funnier.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: June 29, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 45 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Neal Israel

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Crude Comedy, Movies with a Hotel setting, Movies with Nudity

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The Return of Swamp Thing (1988)

Posted on January 18, 2026 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Doctor creates genetic mutations.

Dr. Anton Arcane (Louis Jourdan) continues in his quest to fight aging by doing, with the help of his assistant Lana (Sarah Douglas) many experiments that combines genes from swamp creatures and people that creates many monstrous mutations, some of whom escape the lab and go out and terrorize the swamp lands including any human victims that they may come upon. Abby (Heather Locklear) travels to visit Arcane, her stepfather, at his lab to find out what really happened to her dead mother. Arcane uses this as an opportunity to have Abby be his next victim to his newest experiment where he hopes to transfer her youthful essence to his body, so he can be young again, but Swamp Thing (Dick Durock) returns to fight off Arcane and all of his henchmen in order to save Abby and the two fall in love in the process.

This ill-advised sequel could of been so much better had, or at least had some potential, had it been put in the hands of a talented director, but instead the project was handed over to Jim Wynorski, who’s pretty much the Ed Wood of his era. He not surprisingly flunked out of film school back in the 70’s, but was so desperate to get into the business that he traveled out to Hollywood anyways and managed to get a job as an on-location manager to the short lived TV-show ‘Breaking Away’, but soon got fired from that and feeling demoralized and out of money he humbly took the next flight home thinking that was the end of his Hollywood dreams, and most likely it would’ve been, had he not met someone on the airplane who knew Roger Corman and he set-up a meeting with him, which got him a job writing screenplays for his production company that ultimately lead to him directing. To date he’s helmed over 110 movies, but virtually all of them have been critically panned and many are of the direct-to-video variety making you wonder if it’s really worth making all those movies if nobody ever sees them.

This film is typically of his campy approach where everything is done for cheap laughs, which quickly become tiresome. I don’t mind some humor in horror films and during the 80’s it became common for killers to make jokey one-liners after they killed their victims, which became kind of kitschy, but those at least had some bona fide scares and gore. This one though has no fright or tension and just the tackiest of effects making it all just a cheap, silly mess.

Locklear is certainly easy on the eyes, but her character is written in a way that makes her seem like it’s just some sort of walk-on role where she steps in to make a few snarky comments and then leaves. She seems to have no emotional connection to anything going on around her and she has no discernable arc making her presence overall quite sterile. She also rushes to judgement about things and lets her motivations be known too quickly. For instance, when she first arrives at Arcane’s residence she immediately gets into a bickering match with Lana, but wouldn’t it make more sense since she’s just gotten there to hide her animosity until she’s figured out how to maneuver her way around and see whom she can trust? She also instantaneously falls for Swamp Thing, but it would’ve been more interesting transition had she been reserved around him, or even disgusted by his appearance, as most people probably would be.

Jourdan, in his second to last film, is fun though looking frailer than he did in the same role eight years earlier. However, in the last outing it ended with him turned into a monster and no explanation for how he was able to turn back into his original form, which makes this seem less like a sequel and more like a separate movie altogether.

The only one that I really did like was Daniel Emery Taylor who plays this fat redhead kid that says a lot of amusing lines. His acting his actually terrible, but it jives with his goofy, clumsy character and thus becomes amusing. In fact, I think had he and his friend Oman, played by RonReaco Lee, been the sole protagonists this thing could’ve done a lot better. I also felt that turning it into a live action was a mistake as the comic book visuals that get shown over the opening credits look rather cool making me believe the entire thing should’ve been animated.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: May 12, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Jim Wynorski

Studio: Millimeter Films

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, PlutoTV, Tubi

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Low Budget, Movies based on Comic Books, Movies that take place in the South, Sci-Fi, Sequels

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Swamp Thing (1982)

Posted on January 14, 2026 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Scientist transforms into creature.

Alice (Adrienne Barbeau), a federal agent, is sent to the bayou regions in order to investigate the disappearance of another agent who’d been working at a top-secret facility. It is there that she meets researchers Linda (Nannette Brown) and Alec (Ray Wise) who are brother and sister and working on a chemical that can rapidly regrow plant life. Anton Arcane (Louis Jourdan) is after this formula and raids the facility in order to get his hands on it, but Alec manages to swipe it away just in time only to trip and fall causing him to spill it over himself and getting set on fire. In order to extinguish the flames, he jumps into the swamp but is presumed dead. Alice is able to escape, but Arcane’s henchmen (David Hess, Nicholas Worth) spot her the next day and attempt to drown her, which is when a strange green creature jumps out of the water to save her. Alice is at first unsure of where this creature came from but slowly begins to suspect it may be connected to Alec.

The film is based on the comic book of the same name where the creature first appeared in July of 1971. While I liked the on-location shooting done at the Cypress Gardens in South Carolina the movie otherwise falls precariously flat. I suspect the cause of this comes from the tight budget where the emphasis was for everything to come in on time and limit costs. There’s adequate action, which almost all done on the water, but it eventually gets formulaic. There had been plans to shoot a chase underwater, but this got scrapped and there’s just so many shots of a speed boat one can take before it becomes monotonous. It’s not clear either whether this was to be played up for camp, or not. Some knowing humor could’ve given it an added dimension, but as it is the only real amusing moment is when Alice ‘shoos’ away the giant creature with her hand treating him like he was nothing more than a rodent.

Casting wise it has an appeal. Barbeau was already hitting 40 and it’s refreshing having a female protagonist not having to be youthful and hip, but instead grounded and straightforward. Jourdan is equally enjoyable, and his crusted, stern look and terse delivery makes him sufficiently menacing. I also enjoyed Hess and Worth better known for playing prominent psychos in other films but coming off as sort of klutzy and over their heads here. Out of everyone though I really like Reggie Batts. He was a young black kid that lived in the region but had no other acting experience and was never in another movie but is quite amiable with his humorous observations and his presence gives the movie some earthy balance.

While Wise does well as the main character the fact that when he turns into the creature it gets played by somebody else, in this case stuntman Dick Durock, doesn’t really work. Initially Wise was supposed to play both roles and Durock would only put on the creature outfit when there needed to be stunts done, but his body build was so different from Wise’s that it was determined to just use him as it would be too obvious otherwise. The biggest mistake though, and I haven’t read the comic, so it may be true there as well, is that I didn’t like him speaking. Having the creature be this murky anomaly gave him an aire of mystery, which gets ruined when he starts talking. He becomes like just another character only in a body suit, and outside of super strength and being able to regrow his limbs, isn’t all that interesting.

Spoiler Alert!

The concept where ingesting the formula will bring out the person’s ‘true essence’ of who they really are was cool but unfortunately gets badly botched. When Worth’s character takes it, he shrinks in size and thus showing that he’s timid inside, which is fine. However, his clothes shrink with the body, but the chemical never got on them, so they should’ve remained normal sized and just his body gotten smaller.

When Arcane drinks it he becomes a hairy monster, but it comes off looking like a guy in a Halloween costume, which cheapens the effects. It might’ve cost more, but doing the transformation via makeup, similar to The Planet of the Apes, would’ve been more impressive and authentic looking.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: February 19, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Wes Craven

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Plex, Roku Channel, Tubi, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies based on Comic Books, Movies that take place in the South, Sci-Fi

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Shirley Valentine (1989)

Posted on January 6, 2026 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Trying to find purpose.

Shirley (Pauline Collins) is a middle-aged woman married to Joe (Bernard Hill) and having two grown children but feeling like her life lacks purpose. While her marriage started out well the passion has now faded and the two find themselves at odds sometime for the most minor of things. Seeking change Shirley jumps at the chance of getting out of working-class England by taking a trip with her friend Jane (Alison Steadman) to Greece. During her vacation she meets up with bar owner Costas (Tom Conti) where he takes her on his boat and the two make love. When it’s time for her to return back home she instead skips out on taking the flight and remains in Greece while taking a job as a cook at Costas’ restaurant, but Joe won’t let go of his marriage and travels to where Shirley is now living in an attempt to woo her back.

The film is based on the stage play by Willy Russell, but with some big differences as the play had only one character, Shirley, and a running monologue. Some of the monologue remains by having her routinely break the fourth wall and speak directly to the camera, which most of the time works and isn’t a distraction. It even helps tie-in some loose ends by allowing us to understand Shirley’s inner motivations, but I didn’t like how the film ‘explains’ her running commentary by having her get ‘caught’ by some of the characters, like Costas, speaking out loud to herself and having them walk away thinking she’s gone ‘a bit batty’. Other films have done a similar concept but play it off more like time just freezes and thus allows the protagonist to speak their thoughts for a bit and I felt the movie should’ve stuck to this same rationale.

The acting is excellent with Collins reprising the same role she had played onstage. Her matter-of-fact delivery and the terse little frown she exudes when she’s with someone she secretly can’t stand help expose her character’s down-to-earth sensibilities though I could’ve done without her nude scenes from both the front and back. Conti is also good playing a Greek man with authentic sounding accent at least I felt it was though other critics weren’t all in agreement.

The story itself is a bit slow with Roger Ebert describing it as a ‘realistic drama of appalling banality’. However, for me that’s what made it work. There’s a lot of people like Shirley out there longing for some point to why we’re here and not able to find the satisfaction through the normal social functions of marriage and raising a family. Too many times, we’re told that having a family should be fulfilling and make us ‘happy’, but for some people that’s not always enough and sometimes just makes things worse especially in Shirley’s case where the kids, now adults, treat her like someone to be taken for granted.

I also liked the way it explored loneliness. Most films that deal with this subject usually portray the person as being the one at fault by having them afflicted with poor social skills, or behaviors that cause others not to want to be around them. Here though it’s Shirley’s ‘friends’ that are the annoying ones and could turn off most anyone. Just having people around doesn’t mean one is actually connecting, and the film deftly examines how a person can be smart and friendly and yet still fall through the cracks.

Spoiler Alert!

The trip sequence, which takes up the third act, is well done as Shirley’s loneliness doesn’t just automatically end with a change of scenery. The fling that she has is okay, but when she decides to stay on and overhears Costas feeding another woman the same lines he had given her about coming onto his boat, I thought she should’ve responded with a hurt, or angered look. Instead, she’s amused, but I’d think most other people in the same situation would’ve felt used and taken advantage of.

I did like the husband coming to Greece at the very end, but I believe his character should’ve been more toned down earlier. The way he gets so extremely upset at not being served the meal he was expecting and then throwing the food on her lap made him seem mentally unhinged. In some marriages people just grow apart. They can both be good people, but through no one’s fault, have much in common and I think the film could’ve approached it that way versus having him blow up in a very over-the-top way that was almost frightening.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: August 24, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 49 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Studio: Paramount Pictures

Available: DVD-R (Warner Archive Collection), Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, British Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with Nudity

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Anna (1987)

Posted on December 23, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: A struggling Czech actress.

Anna (Sally Kirkland) was at one time a major movie star in her homeland of Czechoslovakia, but when a new government regime took over her country during the 1968 communist invasion and she spoke out against it, she was banned from reentry. She then moved to the United States trying to seek acting employment in New York, but only able to eke out a measly living with bit parts and understudy work. Krystyna (Paulina Porizkova) is a young and aspiring actress who’s also from Czechoslovakia and who comes to the U.S. looking to meet Anna whom she has always idolized. Anna decides to take Krystyna under her guidance, teaching her English and improving her appearance in hopes that she can one day land the big role, but for Krystyna things come more easily. Soon she’s a big star, which sends Anna into a jealous and despondent state.

The film was inspired by the life and career of Polish actress Elzbieta Czyzewska and her relationship with a young Joanne Pacula, who came to the U.S. from Poland looking to break into show business and in the process became a bigger star than her mentor. At the time though upon its release the attention was much more on Kirkland’s brilliant performance and whose career struggles had closely emulated the character she was playing having landed a major role in 1968 in the film Coming Apart but had since been relegated to only bit parts until her breakthrough here. This also marked a career resurgence for her co-start Robert Fields, who burst onto the scene in 1958 co-starring in the cult hit The Blob, but outside of The Sporting Club saw very few substantial speaking roles until this one came along of which he also does quite well.

The film succeeds in the recreation of the audition atmosphere. I had in my younger days went to a few acting auditions for small roles in stage productions while living in Chicago and what I went through closely resembled what Anna has to deal with here particularly the improvisational aspect where the actors are expected to discard the scripts they’ve memorized and instead forced to elaborate on a personal or touchy life experience of which Anna refuses to do with good reason. The humiliating demands the casting directors force her to do and the impersonal and competitive vibes she gets from the other auditioners are completely on-target making it some of the stronger moments in the film.

The film’s weaker scenes are when director Yurek Bogayevicz tries for the symbolic. I actually didn’t mind the shot of watching Anna going down a lonely, dark elevator while Krystyna gets invited to a posh party, or her rekindling her relationship with her off-again boyfriend Daniel while outside in a rainstorm, but when she goes to a theater to watch one of her old movies, and the film gets stuck in the projector and the image of her face gets burned up in front of her was pouring things on too thickly.

I also had a hard time understanding how Krystyna was able to get her rotted teeth fixed for free. No dentist is going to repair someone’s teeth, which looked to be a daunting task, for nothing yet that’s what seems to occur here. There’s a passing comment that he was expecting ‘something’ in return, but it’s not clear what. Maybe it was sex I don’t know, but it should’ve been verified instead of glossed over and then quickly forgotten. Krystyna’s ability to find Anna all by herself in the big city of New York where she can’t even speak the language was a bit too easy and needed better explaining as well.

The characters are also, with the possible exception of Daniel, not always likable. Krystyna is appealing most of the way but then goes on a TV talk show where she steals a personal life experience that Anna had told her about earlier and makes it her own. Then she comes back to the apartment and is somehow confused with why Anna is upset with her, which for anyone else wouldn’t have been that difficult to understand. Anna’s meltdown on stage when she was finally able to land a speaking role gets a bit overdone as well. I realize she was going through a lot in her personal life, but as a working actress she still needs to put that stuff behind and able to tackle her role, even if it’s last minute, in a professional manner and not ruin the entire production by behaving like some angry, petulant child, which actually made me agree with a member of the stage crew who told her she’d never work again.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending in which Anna stalks Krystyna and attempts to shoot her while she’s filming a movie scene on a beach is a shocker. This was the type of film where I didn’t see that coming as typically things like that only occur in thrillers, but this one had been a drama all the way, so it’s definitely unexpected, but still works. While it’s realistic that Anna most likely wouldn’t have killed her since she wasn’t used to shooting a gun, so having her miss and hit Krystyna in the arm did make sense, but it still would’ve packed a more powerful punch had she died.

I felt too that having Anna walk in the ocean and commit suicide would’ve given it a more complete finality. The idea that Krystyna would take care of Anna and even let her live in her home defied logic. This was someone who had just tried to kill her and what’s to say she wouldn’t attempt it again? How could she ever trust her again, or be comfortable around her? In reality she would’ve been either charged with attempted murder and incarcerated or put into a mental hospital.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 2, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Yurek Bogayevicz

Studio: Vestron Pictures

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies

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Porky’s Revenge (1985)

Posted on December 10, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rescue from shotgun wedding.

Porky (Chuck Mitchell) has rebuilt his casino that was destroyed by the teens in the first film by turning it into a riverboat. To help pay for this he extorts Coach Goodenough (Bill Hindman) for money and other such favors since he owes him on a gambling debt. Pee Wee (Dan Monahan) and his friends try to come to their coach’s rescue by sneaking onto the boat and taking pictures of the illegal gambling activity, which they hope to show to the district attorney. Porky though catches them in the act and threatens revenge, so to get out of their jam they agree to throw their next basketball game, so that Porky can bet against them and win a lot of money. Meanwhile Meat (Tony Ganios) is having problems of his own when he gets ‘forced’ into having sex with Porky’s daughter Blossom (Wendy Feign) causing Porky to insist that the two now must get married.

While fans of the franchise traditionally rate this at the weakest of the three films I found it to be a step up and even, at least at the beginning, to be moderately amusing particularly the pool scene where the cheerleaders concoct a scheme to get the boys to take off their bathing suits and prance around in front of the parents naked. The script was written by Ziggy Steinberg, whose career is the perfect encapsulation of Hollywood, where if you’re considered ‘up and coming’ you can find plenty of work, but the second your material is perceived as getting stale you can quickly become a leper and no offers to be found. This though came at a point where he was still a sought-after commodity, and I felt the script was better structured and seemed much more like a sequel continuing the elements from the first one versus going off on wild tangents like the second one did.

It helps having Chuck Mitchell back as the title character. It’s not like his acting is all that great, but his big presence and gruff, unfiltered delivery keep it fun and he offers a bona fide nemesis for the kids to go after. The casino boat is impressive, and the majority of the film’s $8 million budget was used just to build it. Seeing it get destroyed, which comes near the end, is exciting too and probably more memorable than the destruction of Porky’s original backwoods casino.

The characters though lack growth. Pee Wee for example is still obsessed about getting laid even though he had already lost his virginity in the first film, so his personality needed to evolve into something else. He should, especially being a senior, be the confident one who now takes some insecure freshman under his guidance to show him how it’s done instead of acting as a perpetually immature junior high kid, which by this point is no longer even remotely interesting.

The pranks continue to go overboard and boarder on cruelty. The one that gets played on Beulah Balbricker (Nancy Parsons) is especially stupid. She is set up to believe that she’s going to have a rendezvous with her long-lost boyfriend Snooky (Sandy Meilke), so she goes to a hotel room lying in bed in her nightie waiting for him to enter, so that they can return to their ‘passionate ways’ of the past. In reality though it would never work that way. These two had not seen, or corresponded with each other in many years, so there was no guarantee that both would still have the same feelings for the other. Since so much time had passed they were by this point theoretically strangers, so to avoid embarrassment and possible rejection they would instead get together at a restaurant, or over drinks in order to ‘catch up’ with things and then if they still both felt the same spark they might check into a hotel room, but nobody would just do that right off the bat.

I did though like the way her character changes, she’s the only one that does, by having her behaving like a completely different person once she’s finally able to get together with the real Snooky. However, I feel it would’ve made more sense had she been portrayed as someone who had never had sex versus one that just hadn’t had it in a while. Having her being lifelong frigid would’ve explained better why she was so hyper obsessed with suppressing everyone else’s sexuality. A better payoff would’ve had her really have sex with Tommy (Wyatt Knight) and found much to her surprise to liking it and this would then inspire her evolution.

Spoiler Alert!

The prank involving the bridge operator (Mal Jones) gets botched as well. It hinges on him believing that Wendy (Kaki Hunter) and Tommy are jumping off it to commit suicide, which distracts him enough so that he leaves to bridge operator room and allows Pee Wee to go in and close the bridge and thus destroy Porky’s boat that is trying to go underneath it. However, the bridge isn’t high enough from the water to be that dangerous. In fact, if it was truly that dangerous then both Tommy and Wendy would’ve died when they jumped off of it, but they don’t so the operator would never have been fooled. If anything, he would’ve thought they were just a couple of teens going out for a late-night skinny dip and wouldn’t have panicked at all.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 22, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated R

Director: James Komack

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Basketball Movies, Crude Comedy, Movies that take place in Florida, Movies with Nudity, Sequels

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Porky’s II: The Next Day (1983)

Posted on December 7, 2025 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Banning a Shakespeare play.

Now that Pee Wee (Dan Monahan) has lost his virginity to Wendy (Kaki Hunter) they decide that their next project will be putting on a production of ‘Romeo & Juliet’ at their high school, which will be directed by Mrs. Morris (Ilse Earl) Pee Wee’s mother. Problems though ensue when John Henry (Joseph Runningfox), a Seminole Indian, gets cast in the lead where he will then kiss Wendy, a white woman, on stage, which gets the local Klux Klan upset and they proceed to ambush things, so it won’t be able to proceed. There’s also outcry from a local Reverend named Bubba Flavel (Bill Wiley) as he and his religious constituents feel that the play is ‘obscene’ and therefore must be shut down in the name of ‘decency’. The teen cast then visits the office of County Commissioner Bob Gebhardt (Edward Winter) hoping he can use his influence to help keep the play going and while he initially promises them that he will, he eventually renegades. This angers the kids, and they devise an elaborate revenge on not only him, but the Klan and Reverend Flavel.

It’s quite clear that writer/director Bob Clark, who was working on Christmas Story while helming this one, had no idea that the first installment was going to be as big of a success as it was and there had clearly been no plans for a sequel. When the studio came begging for one, he felt obliged and spent 6 months, with the help of two other screenwriters, to come up with something. The result though is a movie in desperate search for a story with a script that’s a mishmash of over-the-top nonsense. What made the first one so good was that as crude as it was it still showed teens as they were with dialogue and situations that rang true, but here all of that gets thrown out with everything played up in an extreme way simply for the sake of a cheap laugh.

The most annoying aspect are the one-dimensional characters particularly the Reverend who is a cartoonish caricature in a silly send-up of a southern preacher. The same goes with the City Commissioner that is well played by Winter, which helps keep it remotely entertaining, but portraying a politician as being sleazy and two-timing is quite cliched and redundant. The return of Beulah Ballbricker, played by Nancy Parsons, is problematic as well. In the first film she was very strict with the rules, but here she’s turned into a religious fanatic, which seems like two different people. The scene where she sits on a toilet and begins singing loudly is dumb. Sure, people may talk on the phone while taking a dump, or read a magazine, or even browse the internet, but bellowing out a loud rendition of ‘That Old Black Magic’ while in a public stall is not one of them making her beyond ‘goofy’ and more into someone who should be institutionalized.

The pranks come off as unnecessarily cruel especially the scene in a graveyard where Pee Wee is made to believe that he accidentally killed a prostitute while having sex with her, which could be quite traumatic for someone and yet his ‘friends’ act like it’s ‘all in fun’. What’s worse is that Pee Wee never brings it up afterwards apparently having no qualms whether a sex worker dies at his hands or not just as long as he’s not blamed, which unintentionally makes him cold and uncaring.

The climactic bit where Wendy dresses up as a big bosomed 17-year-old prostitute who makes a major scene at a posh restaurant in an effort to embarrass the commissioner gets overdone too. For one thing it’s seems awfully extreme to put so much effort to get revenge on what’s nothing more than a tacky high school play with cheap props that isn’t going to make any money and cast members who weren’t all that excited about being in it, so why get so upset if it gets canceled? It also begs the question why these kids are so sure they can get away with their hijinks and not suffer any consequences. The ‘prank’ that gets done inside the restaurant causes a lot of damage and since these teens live in the same community as the adults they would most assuredly get recognized by someone and be either arrested for causing a disturbance and handed a very hefty bill for the repairs, or their parents would, which for them would be just a bad.

The only small funny bit, and I kid you not, comes at the very end during the closing credits, when the head waiter at the now ravaged restaurant tries to save face by convincing the patrons that it had all been an ‘April Fool’s joke’, which got me to chuckle. It’s also kind of amusing how Pee Wee gets so aroused by pics in National Geographic, or sexually stimulated by strippers who aren’t even naked, but just scantily clad enough to excite him anyways, which in this porn saturated era probably wouldn’t be deemed all that titillating, so in that aspect it’s interesting, but everything else is a disaster. It doesn’t even have Porky. How can you have a film titled ‘Porky’s’ if that character never actually shows up though he does reappear in the third installment, which will be reviewed next.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: June 24, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Bob Clark

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Crude Comedy, Movies that take place in Florida, Movies with Nudity, Sequels

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Educating Rita (1983)

Posted on November 28, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Trying to better herself.

Rita (Julie Walters) is a young working-class woman who finds her job as a hairstylist and marriage to Denny (Malcolm Douglas) to be unrewarding. Denny wants her to have a child, but she fears that will just tie her down more. In an attempt to ‘better herself’ she decides to enroll in Britian’s open university where she takes a course in English literature.  Frank (Michael Caine) is a disillusioned college professor who lost the zeal for his job years earlier and has now taken to the bottle. Rita wants him to be her tutor, but Frank initially resists only to eventually agree. Despite their contrasting personalities the two ultimately form a bond and Frank uses Rita’s passion for learning to reignite his own dormant desires that allows him to breakout of his loveless relationship.  However, Rita too begins to see things differently when her roommate/friend tries to commit suicide and she realizes that things aren’t always greener on the other side of the fence.

The film is based on the play of the same name by Willy Russell that premiered in London in 1980 and also starred Walters in the title role. Unlike the movie the play had only two characters and everything took place inside the tutor’s office.

The story’s theme does have an inspiring quality, which is what galvanized the critics to it, but the main character and her transition is a bit hard to believe. On the surface she’s quite likable and well played by the star, but her ambition seems awfully extreme. It would’ve helped had we seen the moment when she first got the idea to go back to school versus having it just briefly be discussed. Wanting to learn a trade in order to make more money and move out of one’s humble surroundings is both commendable and understandable but becoming well versed on the plays of Henrik Ibsen isn’t really going to do that. To pay the bills she’s still going to be stuck working as a hairdresser, which was supposedly the boring routine she wanted to get out of. Expanding one’s literary knowledge may allow her to have lofty conversations among elites at posh parties, but as a whole she’d still be in her same predicament financially.

The Pygmalion-inspired theme was unnecessary. Without sounding snotty I couldn’t buy into the idea that this working-class woman with a limited education could learn to fully appreciate the great literary works or would even want to. The story acts like all that is needed is a great deal of enthusiasm and you can do accomplish anything, but history is full of people who jump into lofty goals with the best of intentions and still fail. Realistically I think this type of person would’ve eventually gotten overwhelmed and realized she was in over-her-head. To solve this the character should’ve been modified to being someone who was middleclass with a literally background, but who had to drop out because her parents died forcing her to go to work at the factory in order to make ends meet, but still longed to get back into what she really enjoyed and thus hired a tutor to help her, which would’ve been for the discerning viewer easier to swallow.

Rita’s ultimate transition is more off-putting than inspiring. I didn’t like her change in hair color where she goes from blonde to brunette, which makes her seem like a different person instead of someone who’s evolved. There needed to be more challenges and roadblocks. A brief spat with her husband, in which he throws her books into a fire, blows over too quickly and she’s able to grasp the complex material, even able to write in depth term papers with a relative ease that didn’t come off as wholly believable. Having her get a bad grade in a course and using this to reassess her goals would’ve allowed in a broader angle and not have been so fanciful, which the film starts to become.

Caine plays his part wonderfully and he certainly is much more into this role than he was in Blame it on Rio, which he did the same year. However, his character’s motives were difficult to understand. I thought this would’ve been the classic case, which can occur with a lot of academics in higher education, where the students aren’t into learning and are apathetic, which frustrates the professors, and this then turns them to alcohol. Here though that didn’t seem to be the case making him come off more like he was just tuning out on his own accord and thus making him less relatable. I also felt he should’ve been fired much sooner as the young adults attending his classes knew that he was drunk, even verbally said as much, so he likely would’ve been reported, and for him to then on top of this get a second chance when he fell over inebriated during a speech, seemed rather implausible.

I did enjoy the scenes involving Frank’s girlfriend Julia (Jeananne Crowley) and her relationship with a married man named Brian (Michael Williams) and how every time Frank comes into the room, and they are there Brian pretends, as a ‘cover’, that he is speaking to someone on the phone. These scenes, which becomes a running-joke, were amusing, but near the end Frank informs Brian that the phone was disconnected and thus revealing that he was in on their charade. This though doesn’t jive because with the old fashioned rotary phone, such as the ones shown here, there would always be a dial tone when one put the receiver to their ear, except of course if the service had been cut and thus Brian would’ve already known that it had been disconnected when he didn’t hear the tone and no need then for Frank to explain it.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: May 3, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, British Movies, College Life, Comedy/Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Stageplays

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Porky’s (1981)

Posted on November 21, 2025 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Revenge on nightclub owner.

Pee Wee (Dan Monahan) is a teen living in the Florida everglades during the 1950’s who suffers from a small penis size, which has prevented him from losing his virginity. He and his high school pals have hatched a plan of pooling their money together and then hiring a prostitute, which they can then all have sex with. Their first attempt doesn’t work out, so they decide to go to a nightclub that sits in a lagoon on stilts and is called Porky’s, which is the nickname of the owner of the establishment, ‘Porky’ Wallace (Chuck Mitchell) that he attained for being overweight. The boys feel they’ll be able to hire one of the strippers at the club to have sex with and Porky agrees to ‘set it up’ and takes their money only to then have the teens fall through a trap door and into the water below. This enrages Mickey (Roger Wilson) who set-up the deal and he becomes consumed with getting revenge on Porky, but when he goes there to ‘settle things’ he gets badly beaten-up, which sends him to the hospital and convinces his friends that even sterner justice is needed in order to get the proper payback.

I remember when this movie came out and there were TV ads capturing people as they left the theaters and getting their first reaction. At the time this was considered ‘outrageous’ and many of the folks in the ad seemed either shocked or embarrassed. Nowadays though it’s unlikely most will consider it extreme, and some might even call it boring particularly in between the moments when it’s raunchy. The idea for it was conceived in 1972 by writer/director Bob Clark who based the story on his own experiences as a teen going to school in rural Florida during the 50’s. The studios though didn’t like the script, and it got shopped around for years before finally getting modest funding out of Canada where it could be used as a tax write-off and thus even though it was filmed in the U.S. by an American director it still gets labeled as one of the highest grossing films in Canadian movie history.

The critics like with the studio heads, didn’t care for it with both Siskel and Ebert naming it one of the worst movies to come out of the 80’s though when compared to the other teen sex comedies from that decade this one doesn’t seem all that bad. The characters have distinct personalities and much of the dialogue while raunchy seemed realistic for that age group and not all that different from what got talked about during my own high school days. The film also manages to tackle some serious topics like antisemitism, which was also a part of that era, so it has an adequate balance and doesn’t just stay hyper-focused on the sex.

On the negative end Nancy Parsons as the female coach version of Nurse Ratched is one-dimensional and Kim Catrall, playing a cheerleader nicknamed ‘Lassie’, plays too much of the bimbo caricature to be even remotely interesting. Neither is the fault of the actresses, who are okay, but more the writer. On the other hand, I loved the bit part of Susan Clark playing a prostitute. She had been in a few Disney movies just before this and later the TV-show ‘Webster’, so seeing her playing against the family image is fun.

I also loved Kaki Hunter who seems just as dirty minded as the guys and how she’s very average looking as I’ve found those types tended to be a little more ‘easy’, as evidenced by her doing it with Pee Wee, in order to get the guys’ attention and make up for not being as attractive versus in other teen flicks where it’s only the super-hot ones that sleep around. In that vein too I enjoyed the fact that during the shower scene when the boys are peeping at the girls there’s an overweight one impacting Pee Wee’s ability to see the thin ones, which is realistic too as in most high schools there’s a mix of body types and not all skinny like most other teen comedies would make you believe.

I did have some problems though with the nicknames mainly with Pee Wee and ‘Meat’ the name for Tony Ganios’ role. Supposedly this is for their penis size, but how would anyone know what their penises looked like? Normally one gets nicknames for physically attributes that everyone can see for instance if they’re a short height they could be called ‘shorty’. Yes, there is a scene where all the boys strip naked together, but their nicknames had already come about long before then. One could argue that maybe it started while they took showers after gym class, but in my high school if some guy was caught looking at another’s genitals, they’d be accused of being ‘gay’, which during that time period would be considered a stigma.

While the plot is lean and there are a few lulls there are enough comical moments to keep it afloat. The segment dealing with Nancy Parsons character going to the principal to ‘report’ seeing a penis in the girl’s shower and advocating for all the boys to undress so she could spot which one had a dick with a mole on it, is a gem especially with the way the camera zooms in on a hanging portrait of a smiling Dwight Eisenhower like even he too is in on the humor. The demolishing of Porky’s bar, which comes near the end, isn’t bad either and helps to make this thing a minor cult classic.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 13, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Bob Clark

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Crude Comedy, Movies that take place in Florida, Movies with Nudity

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Celia (1989)

Posted on October 22, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Revenge for her rabbit.

Celia (Rebecca Smart) is a head-strong 8-year-old living in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia during the end of the 50’s. She is mourning the recent loss of her grandmother while also fearing the hobyahs, which are mythical creatures she read about in school that she has nightmares about breaking into her bedroom late at night. When Alice (Victoria Longley) and her three children move in next door it allows Celia to get her mind off of things as she becomes fast friends with the kids and even Alice herself, but their relationship is soon hampered when Celia’s father, Ray (Nicholas Eadie), finds out that Alice and her husband are supporters of the Communist Party. Ray forbids Celia from seeing them and offers her a pet rabbit, something she’s wanted for a long time, as a bribe insisting that she can keep the pet as long she no longer socializes with the neighbors. However, this brings up more problems as the Australian government has deemed rabbits to be an invasive species and has outlawed anyone from having one. Burke (William Zappa), the local police Sargent, confiscates the rabbit in the middle of the night and then it’s later found dead while being housed at the local zoo causing Celia to come up with a devious plan in order to exact her revenge.

The film, which was inspired by a news article writer/director Ann Turner read when she was 24 involving the rabbit invasion that plagued Australia during the 50’s, is labeled a horror movie, though in a compromised form as IMDb calls it a ‘folk horror’ while other movie sources call it a ‘horror drama’. In any case fans of the conventional horror film may not take to this or find it off-putting as the typical scares and tension are not present. There are some creepy moments particularly the dream sequences involving the hobyhahs, which I wished had been in it more, and a segment dealing with Celia’s dead grandmother tapping on her bedroom window late one night, but overall, that’s about it. Most of the rest of the film comes-off more like a coming-of-age drama, which is excellent, but the real disturbing part doesn’t come until the very end. It’s effective and well earned, but whether all viewers will be patient enough to wait for it I’m not sure.

With that said it’s still a great movie with characters that are three dimensional, something that Australian cinema does very well, and the viewer gets wrapped up into the drama quite quickly. The best element is that the kid characters are genuine. These are like real children that I knew growing up where they could be cute and precocious one minute and mean and bratty the next. The inner rivalries that Celia has with the other kids in the neighborhood are quite real too. Kids don’t just automatically get along, there can be contrasting egos and personalities that can easily get in the way, just like with adults, that can quickly turn playmates into enemies. It’s rare that I can say this, but I really felt while watching this, that I had been transported back into my own childhood as the encounters and exchanges very closely reflected my own in many ways.

The adults are portrayed much better here too. Usually, movies that revolve around young people have the grown-ups stigmatized in one extreme or the other. Either they’re clueless dimwits that are totally out-of-it or overly controlling. Here though they’re well meaning, but so busy with their own lives that just can’t stay attuned with everything their kids are doing and much of the time is spent with them just trying to catch-up with the drama that they didn’t even know was occurring. Celia’s father isn’t mean here either, he simply has a different perspective of things and doing what he thinks is best for his child even as this gets Celia to hate him but like with many households this type of scenario can and does happen even with the best of intentions.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending should leave you with an unsettling feeling when it’s over. This is the rare time when if fully works too. No loose ends, or loopholes. Everything fits perfectly with the characters fleshed out so it all makes sense. This is also a unique film in that there really aren’t any villains. No one is ‘bad’, or ‘evil’. It’s just people, young and old, with different ideas about things and their inability, through no real fault of their own, to effectively communicate it to the other, or for the other to fully listen and understand, which is ultimately what makes it so horrifying as this could easily and believably happen anywhere.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: March 3, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Ann Turner

Studio: Seon Film Productions

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies from Australia

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