As my friends and I sat down in our seats, Phil Blankenship came up to the front of the theater to tell the packed house the good news and bad news: "The good news is you're about to watch 12 hours of Arnold. The bad news is I picked all the movies."
We were at the New Beverly Cinema for the All Arnold Night in celebration of Arnold Schwarzenegger's 70th birthday. Those of us lucky enough to score tickets within a minute of their online availability before they sold out were going to watch a 35mm marathon of films featuring the former Mr. Olympia. The concession stand even had a special hot dog available for the adventurous called the Arnold Dog, which was bigger and meatier than your average dog. Plus, free sauerkraut.
The lights went down and the first trailer reel began; every trailer reel between the films were all for Arnold films. I'm too tired to remember them, but if it was a movie featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, they showed a trailer for it.
Following the grindhouse "Our Feature Presentation" bumper and a scratchy 20th Century Fox logo was a shot of a star field -- and that's all it took for some of us to began audibly geeking out in recognition of what was being projected onto the big screen: Predator, directed by John McTiernan. Once everybody else saw the title, the crowd went nuts because...why do I have to tell you what you should already know? If you don't know, get the video. Or DVD. Or Blu. Or digital download or whatever else you need to get with the goddamn knowledge of how great this movie was, is, and always will be.
This is where I would tell you things you already know about this film, about how it is more than one film; it's an 80s-tastic macho movie filled with macho men -- a team of Badass Muthafuckin Military who chew tobacco, tell pussy jokes, shave on dry skin, toss the word "faggots" around like so many hand grenades, and more importantly, kill the fuck out of all the brown people they are officially cleared to kill in the cine-jungles of Val Verde.
But it is also another film, a tense and horrific slasher body-counter featuring an outer space Jason who is here on Earth to practice his God-given right to hunt in this beautiful galaxy and ain't no libtard cuck gonna take away my rights as a Universal Citizen to hunt and use my here shoulder laser rig or my double-speared hands because if you take away our rights to kill lesser dangerous species and pull out their spinal cords and skulls out of their corpses and then polish off that there skull to mount on top of my space fireplace -- I mean, that ain't no universe I wanna live in, no sirree bob dobalina. #MakeMilkyWayGreatAgain.
One of my favorite sequences -- in this film consisting of nothing but favorite sequences -- is the raid on the evil people camp. That's where they terminate them with extreme prejudice (unless you're a girl, which in that case you just get a rifle butt to the face) and it's all slow-mo bullet hits and bodies falling from short heights and dudes on fire. On the audio commentary, McTiernan said he wasn't fond of this part of the film because it was all 2nd unit stuff and it was done in a typical "stuntman" style. Well, remind me not to invite McT to my next backyard screening of Stone Cold because the director of that film directed this action sequence, and sure there is a lack of stylistic finesse that McTiernan would've provided, but it still works as a straight-up shot of well-made Ownage.
The print was good; colors were perfect, it just had a little wear and tear with occasional scratches here and there (and for some reason, Elpidia Carrillo's credit in the end with her smiling at the camera was chopped off) but nothing to complain about whatsoever for this rare screening of Predator in 35mm. Phil told the audience after that Fox, for whatever reason, doesn't allow this print to go out for screenings, but it sounds like the New Bev people begged and pleaded to the point that Fox was like "OK fine".
Among the next batch of trailers were Twins and Junior; so when the 75th Anniversary logo for Universal Pictures came up, I bounced in my seat like some asshole kid who knows a secret he ain't telling, because I knew it meant we were watching Kindergarten Cop. For years, I associated this film with various quotes that would float about the middle school ether during lunch period and in between classes. Then in recent years, it seemed to be the main source for many an internet sound board.
Arnold is Detective John Kimble, a cop who Plays By His Own Rules with a hard-on for Richard Tyson -- which I can understand, I mean, have you seen Two Moon Junction? Rawr. But anyway, Kimble has been after Tyson's sweet ass for years and it looks like he's finally got his hands on both cheeks but it's gonna mean going to Astoria, Oregon and getting ex-Mrs. Tyson to testify against him. Comedic circumstances dictate that he will be going undercover as a substitute teacher for the K-grade children -- a Kindergarten Cop, if you will -- and then the laughs are scripted to ensue.
It's weird, man, how I thought this movie was OK back in 1991 when I saw it on video and was young enough to be all HWAH HWAH HWAH with the Arnold vs. Kids goofball-isms, and yet I remember being underwhelmed. My problem with it, I recall, was that the kid stuff was few and far between compared to the cop stuff between Arnold, his hypoglycemic partner, Richard Tyson in an ill-fitting suit and fake-looking real hair, and Carroll Baker as a mom who should just go out and live the single senior life while letting her murderous asshole son deal with his own goddamn problems.
This time I liked the film more because I found most of the non-kindergarten stuff interesting and/or funny. I really enjoyed Pamela Reed's performance as Arnold's partner this time, while the stuff involving pretty Penelope Ann Miller is where I started to feel the late night whisper into my ear things like "rest your eyes and save up your energy for the other movies". There's a part, the "who is your daddy and what does he do" scene that might be my favorite because there's a few nuggets in there where the kids sound like they're just being themselves, like the one who says that his father is a psychiatrist. It felt real and I was getting into that until they went to the next kid, a girl who is speaking Spanish which of course means Komedy! because it's so funny that this alien is speaking some weird language from some weirdo country, isn't it funny Ivan Reitman, you Czechoslovakian fuck?
Arnold does a really good job here; he's very funny with the kids, but I also liked the way he played those scenes where he mentions that he has a 13-year-old son somewhere out there, and it's interesting to see him do that middle-distance staring thing whenever he talks about him. I have to give the movie points for never giving us an ending to that little ditty; I'd like to think it was a choice to do it that way but it's probably more likely one of those "oh my god, our first cut is six hours long and we need to chop stuff out of this movie" decisions. They probably cast some kid as his son for a heart-to-heart scene and then they cut it out and sorry kid, there goes your big break, enjoy your drug abuse.
Anyway, the whole divorced dad detail made me look at that scene where he beats up some kid's dad for being a kid-beater differently, because maybe Kimble is also working out some I've Abandoned My Boy! issues on the dad, like "you son-of-a-bitch, I don't even get to see my kid and here you are beating on your kid?!"
The kid's mom, by the way, took this opportunity to change her life. She left her husband and dumped the kid at her mom's and drove south to Los Angeles. She crashed at her little brother's place and hit the ground running, eventually finding work as a receptionist at General Apparel West. Soon, things were going very well for our Carolyn, surpassing her brother who was still working at some hot dog joint as she went from pushover to go-getter; she was making money, living the trendy L.A. lifestyle, moving from her brother's couch to a new apartment off Crescent Heights, banging Bruce the head inventory clerk, and leasing a BMW with a CD player installed. Life was good and she was on the fast track to a promotion as the administrative assistant for GAW's head honcho, Rose -- until that bitch Sue Ellen came on the scene.
Carolyn hated this blonde bimbo with a passion, this strumpet who came in to apply for a job at GAW at her desk because she was too stupid to read the big "Personnel" sign on the first floor -- yet SHE got the administrative assistant job! Carolyn knew something was up and she would begin doing some detective work to find out what was really going on with Sue Ellen. But deep down she also knew that this change of luck was probably some kind of karmic retribution for the sin of leaving her son back in Astoria. She managed to keep it to herself, though, even when Bruce noticed the tears rolling down her face after a particularly passionate night of lovemaking. He knew he wasn't that good, so he would ask her what was wrong and every fiber of her being wanted to scream "I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD" but instead she would take a deep breath and say nothing.
I remember a few years back when the Criterion Collection website announced this film as their latest release as an April Fool's Day prank. First off, fuck pranks and fuck pranksters even harder. Second, I wonder if that stung for director Ivan Reitman upon hearing that, because it's basically being laughed at like "As if we would ever consider making a special edition of that film and adding it to our illustrious lineup of excellence plus a couple of Michael Bay movies."
What would sting more, and for who: Ivan Reitman hearing about this prank, or the day Wes Anderson finds out his latest film will not end up on the Criterion Collection?
I would wager on Anderson. Reitman probably has a good sense of humor and realistic attitude about his films (plus he already has a Criterion laserdisc edition of Ghostbusters out there), while I can see Anderson -- standing dead center in the frame -- dropping his monocle, followed by him walking out of his Parisian apartment in ultra-wide-anamorphic-lensed side-profile slow-motion while The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" plays in the background, his mind reeling and memories flashing of the good times in New York, Rome, France, but never will he remember that he grew up in Houston -- no ma'am, he made sure that the visit to Lacuna Inc. would take care of that.
By this time it was around midnight and so it was July 30th and officially Mr. Schwarzenegger's 70th year on this planet. The New Bev crew came out with a birthday cake and we all sang "Happy Birthday" to the here-with-us-in-spirit Arnold, who according to Phil, was told about this event and responded with something to effect of "That's nice, have fun." I overheard some people say that they wished he would've stopped by.
First of all, it's his 70th birthday, I'm sure he has other places to be with friends and family to celebrate that landmark. And remember, Arnold told Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to "have fun" at the beginning of The Rundown and where is Mr. Johnson now? Sitting on top of the fucking world. He just finished a movie with a short-shorts-clad Karen Gillan, and I bet you he hugged her every chance he had in a friendly type-of-way while thinking to himself "I would snap this girl in half, I'd bang her so good". So I'm not complaining. "Have fun" is being anointed king of your personal universe, as far as I'm concerned.
We then went outside to help ourselves to birthday cake; the flavors were Vanilla and Chocolate but let's be real, with birthday cake it might as well be the choice between White Diabetes or Dark Diabetes.
As we ate our sugar bombs and slowly became Wilford Brimley, my friends and I discussed the possible films that would be shown later. One mentioned the trailer for Raw Deal we saw earlier, wondering if that would be on the schedule. I responded that in my experience at these marathons, if you see a trailer for the film, you won't see that film in the marathon.
Which is why as soon as I saw the DEG logo come up, I knew I was about to look like a bigger asshole than usual, because that meant the third film of the night was Raw Deal.
Arnie plays Sheriff Raw Deal, an ex-FBI agent who now upholds the law at the kind of small town that probably has a roadhouse in need of a cooler. This is his reward for beating the daylights out of some evil man who pulled off the triple M: Molest, Murder, Mutilation. Poor Arnold has to recite the triple M in this movie and I bet you director John Irvin and the crew were laughing their asses off watching the dailies of this scene while producer Dino De Laurentiis was sitting in the back with his broken English wondering "why-a do they-a laugh-a heem?"
Thankfully, his old FBI boss's son just got whacked during a pretty awesome opening sequence that ends in an awesomely cold-blooded moment of Victor Argo forcing his mark at gunpoint to look at a mirror so the mark can see his own head get blown off. A dead FBI son means an opportunity for Deal to get back into the FBI by going undercover among the Chicago crime families as Joseph Pussy Brenner. It's also an opportunity for Deal to take a break from his wife, who has taken to getting sloppy drunk while making sloppy chocolate cakes because the small town life is killing the big city girl. If he comes out of this job alive, it'll be a win-win for the both of them.
A destroyed mob gambling den later, Deal is in with one of the families, run by Private Benjamin's Dad and Sosa from Scarface, with Robert Davi to do the dirty work. Most of the film is Arnold playing fast and loose with his new bosses, the Chicago authorities, and a lady (played by Kathryn Harrold from Modern Romance) who is just trying to pay off some kind of debt. This must've been an odd one for general audiences at the time, an Arnold movie where he isn't doing much compared to his previous roles. Up until this film, Schwarzenegger was making his name playing larger-than-life characters that pretty much only Arnold could've played; a Cimmerian warrior or a cyborg from the future, among others -- roles that one would've had to invent Arnold Schwarzenegger to play had he not already existed.
Here he's playing a role that doesn't feel like it was written with him in mind; the story is credited to Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Donati, who had written for Dino De Laurentiis and Sergio Leone in the past. I wouldn't be surprised if the original script was kicking around as far back as the 70s for someone like Charles Bronson to star in the Arnold role and his wife Jill Ireland in the Kathryn Harrold role (Maybe Riz Ortolani would compose the score. Michael Winner or Terence Young to direct.)
But they didn't go that way. They got Arnold to play this role (shit, even Stallone would've been more appropriate) and it's like giving the poor guy a suit three sizes too small for him to wear but with big-ass pockets, if that even makes sense. I mean, shit, you know something's amiss when Kathryn Harrold's character has more one-liners than Arnold's character. The one-liners, by the way, were written by the credited screenwriters, Gary DeVore and Norman Wexler. The former died under mysterious circumstances in the 90s, and the latter turned out to be the infamous "Mr. X" that Bob Zmuda told stories about to his buddy Andy Kaufman, who used some of Mr. X as an inspiration for his Tony Clifton character.
Anyway, they try to make up for Arnold's lack of action in the last twenty minutes by having him do a pre-Commando arming up routine where he puts on his best leather jacket and packs up his favorite shotguns and automatic rifles before he goes off to massacre -- holy shit, I mean it, it really is a massacre and it involves him going to two separate locations to murder everybody there. He's cleaning house and it doesn't matter if you're armed with a gun or a phone (which you were going to use to call the police) -- he's going to spray you with bullets. Even being an elderly man running away won't help -- Arnold will just pump shotgun shells into your old man back while generic badass music from the DeLaurentiis library plays in the background.
I can see Charles Bronson shooting an old man in the back and having it look awesome, I mean, hell, Bronson blew up an old man with a grenade launcher in Death Wish 4: The Crackdown. But when Arnold does it here, it just looks so fucking wrong that all you can do is laugh.
(On the other end of the spectrum, you have peak physical condition Jean Claude Van Damme beating up a dying Raul Julia in Street Fighter, which is just sad.)
The audience definitely did laugh (and cheer) at that old man death, as well as the touching ending that involves a teary-eyed nurse that had everybody in stitches while I laughed along because I wasn't ready to admit to anybody that the first time I had seen this film, I actually got legit teary-eyed at that ending because I'm a mess of a human being who in reality sees most of everything in the most overly sincere manner possible. But I'm not ready to admit it now.
Overall, this is not a must-see Arnold movie, but the last twenty minutes should definitely be watched on YouTube or wherever you can find it. It's not a bad film; it's well paced, the dialogue is pretty snappy, and I really liked the way it was shot (lots of nicely composed widescreen location-flaunting cinematography by Alex Thomson). I just think Arnold was kinda miscast here.
By the way, the print for this film was gorgeous. I recall the print for another DEG production that was shown at the New Bev years ago, Trick or Treat, looked just as good. What I'm getting at is this: If there are pristine prints of DEG flicks around, there has to be a good-looking print of Traxx somewhere out there, right?
Phil told us that we were now going to get into the weirder stuff, leaving me to rack my brain for "weird" movies that Arnold starred in. I couldn't come up with any, because I had never seen the sword & sorcery joint Red Sonja, the fourth film of the night. Mr. Schwarzenegger does not star in this even though his name comes up first and is printed in bigger font than star Brigitte Nielsen's name, so the powers that be must've literally wanted him to be the biggest name in the film.
Ms. Nielsen plays the title role, a gal living life in the Hyborean Age until Sandahl Bergman and her minions come in for some rape and murder. She's left lost and family-less until some special Girl Power specter tells her to get her shit together and so she does, learning how to slice and dice others via swordplay by some Mako-esque peacock of a master. She and him have a funny conversation that I interpreted as being about how she should give dudes a chance and boy, Red Sonja, if I were 30 years younger I'd give you such a bangin', you wouldn't believe it.
It all comes down to Sonja and company in search of a stolen ball filled with Predator blood that has the power to destroy shit -- a ball only women can touch, by the way. If a dude touches it, he's vaporized because fuck that shit, bro, why would you wanna touch a ball, that's fuckin' gay, bro. This ball's for chicks only.
I don't even think vengeance is on the menu until Arnold shows up as Not Conan to tell her something like "Red Sonja? I'm looking for Red Sonja. You're Red Sonja? Yeah, your sister? The one who's played by the chick from City of the Living Dead? You know, the one who does paintings of rhinos and ends up getting her brains squished out of her head? Yeah, her. Well, she's dying, I guess, whatever."
I'm guessing this was a contractual obligation for the Oak; his line readings are hilariously stiff and, well, "I guess, man" in their deliveries. The only time he seems to come to something resembling Life is when he's talking about getting with Sonja in the biblical sense; it turns out she will only give herself to the man who can defeat her, which I guess gets him hard because it's like "Oh wow, so I get to beat you and THEN bang you? Two for one, baby!"
Ernie Reyes Jr. shows up as a real brat of a prince, and it's to the movie's credit that as rude and punkass as he is, he never quite crossed the line into PLEASE DIE ALREADY, at least for me he didn't. Maybe it's because Red Sonja straight up tells Reyes' servant that he should give him a spanking, followed by her telling Reyes that his servant is a real man compared to the petulant fuck that he is. I'll take that as a reasonable compromise for justice, her making him feel like shit with words.
What a goofy movie. It's the kind of movie where they'll spend big money early on with impressive sets and costume design but then they'll start running out of money along the way and cheapen out on special effects sequences like, say, the destruction of a city, where they'll just have characters talk about it instead of showing you, or when the heroes fight this giant water serpent and you're left wondering why it looks all robotic and maybe it's a robot and then the characters say out loud "it's a machine" and you're now wondering if it was because the filmmakers couldn't afford to make a realistic looking serpent, so the filmmakers just said "Screw it, it's a robot serpent, then. Make sure to have the characters say out loud that it's a robot serpent".
It's the kind of movie where the villainess will stride into her evil lair and casually pets her Golden Retriever-sized pet spider -- a spider that looks so fake just standing there and kinda bouncing like it drank too much Red Bull. Silly spider, I know Red Bull gives you wings but you're a spider, you can just web your way around, you don't need wings. You never see that spider again, by the way. I guess it just walked away during the climax of the film, the same way one of Sandahl's ladies does rather hilariously while she and Sonja face off. This chick does that whole "Don't mind me, just passing through" in the background and goes off to who knows where.
It's the kind of movie Richard Fleischer would direct at the end of his career.
Nielsen does what is required of her in the role; she looks good and wields her sword well, and that's about it. If I had any real problems with this movie its that Red Sonja doesn't really get to do her own thing. She says she doesn't need a man, but there sure is a lot of Arnold coming in to save the day. Is the movie saying she (and all women) are wrong? It's like the movie doesn't have faith in her carrying it, because after all, she's just the titular character. Maybe I'm just spoiled by current movies like Wonder Woman, and this was as good as it would get for lady heroes in the 80s, at least in American cinema (produced by Italians).
But hey, it moves fast, Giuseppe Rotunno's photography looked nice and Ennio Morricone's music sounded nice. Morricone got a nice round of applause from the audience when his credit came up. Would I watch it again? No. But at least I can say I watched it once.
My friend had said earlier that night that she was hoping Red Sonja would be one of the films shown at the marathon because as bad and cheesy as it was, she had fond memories of it as a kid. When it turned out to be one of the films being shown that night, I believe I saw her raise the roof in my peripheral vision. After the movie, she told me that she didn't remember it being this bad and cheesy.
Phil told us the last two films would be shown back-to-back with no intermission, so I made sure to get a hot dog and settled in for the last leg of this Arnold cine-tour. The fifth film was The Terminator, a movie that is similar to Predator in that I'm going to have a difficult time writing about it because what can I add that hasn't already been said much better by so many? Then again, that's pretty much the same deal with all the other movies I've talked about here, so why am I worrying now?
Watching this film today, with the opening text telling us about the "ashes of the nuclear fire" brought back a Cold War chill in my system that I'm sure was gone for a couple decades. I mean, back in '84 people lived with a low-grade anxiety that Nuclear War could break out at any time, so it must've been interesting to watch movies like this and the countless other post-apocalyptic joints that were made back then. There was always that thought in the back of your mind that, shit, there's always that possibility, right?
Then the Cold War ended and people kinda forgot about dem nukes, didn't they? Even me, Debbie Downer that I am with my belief that nukes are the ultimate Chekhov's Gun and that it's not so much a question of If as much as When, even I forgot about them. Those were beautiful days, man. And now they're back, baby! Thanks to that scary motherfucker Putin and that fat motherfucker Kim Jong Un and that bloated walking shit stain some call President, it's all about clocking those N-Bombs -- and I ain't talking about the N-Bomb that supporters of POTUS probably throw around when they know there are no Black people in the room.
I wonder how James Cameron feels about the New Cold War (from the makers of "The New Odd Couple")? Between this film and the nuclear holocaust scene in the sequel, I'm sure it's something he's thought about more than once. I remember hearing a rumor long ago about how supposedly Cameron spent New Year's Eve '99 holed up in his private bunker with booze and an AK-47 in case the Y2K bug was legit and the world fell apart come midnight. Then nothing happened and he was probably like, shit, I guess I better get working on another movie now. Maybe that's why he's now dragging his heels on another Avatar movie. He's probably freaking out like Sarah Connor in T2 ranting about how people not wearing 2-million sunblock are going to have a really bad day.
So it's 1984 and thanks to time travel technology, Kyle Reese arrives naked as the day he was born and so he needs some clothes, right? He ends up jacking a pair of pants from a homeless dude and for years I was like Ewww because let's be real, man, those homeless pants haven't been washed in who knows how long. So many scents and textures and stains -- boy oh boy, the stories those pants could tell. Any port in a storm, though -- right Reese?
But it wasn't until this recent viewing, slow fuck that I am, that I thought it really doesn't matter to Reese because he just came from a post-apocalyptic world where the word "bath" probably doesn't even exist. OK, maybe they have do take baths between Hunter Killer attacks and eating slop in dark rubble-strewn hallways and just generally being miserable, but you just know those baths are few and far between. At most, maybe every other week. And it's probably by lottery. And the survivors live with dogs because dogs can tell who's human and who's a Terminator, so you know they got unwashed dog stink on top of human stink. Christ, the lucky ones did die in the blast.
And Sarah Connor -- freak that she is -- falls in love with this sweaty fuck! Me, I'm back to two showers a day now that we're not in a drought anymore, but I ask a lady for the time and she looks at me like I'm Willem Dafoe in Auto Focus asking her for the time. Me, I'm sitting here at the New Bev looking over at the male & female smoocher couple in the row in front of me and the dude's hair clearly hasn't been washed or combed in god knows how long WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING WRONG?
Lady and gentleman, allow me to talk about the smoochers. I always get these people sitting in front of me, and if it's not them, it's the sasquatch-sized motherfuckers wearing a hat. But for now, let me talk about these here smoochers at the New Bev that night. So earlier that night, a couple sat in the row in front of me and it's all good. Then the dude puts his arm around his lady and keeps it there. All night. And every five minutes or so, he would lean in and whisper or smooch or whisper then smooch. And I was able to see and hear every last one of them. Smooch. Smooch. Smoochity smooch smooch smooch.
I began a tally. Predator: 16 smooches. Kindergarten Cop: 8 smooches. Thankfully an opening a few seats down was available by the third film and so I moved over there. But every once in a while, I'd glance over to see if this dude still had his arm around her, giving her the smoochy smooch smooch smoocharoo, and sure enough he was.
I get it. As a perma-single, I'm probably jealous and a hater, right? Except I'm really not. I'm just not a fan of PDAs and I get it if that makes me an asshole, I'll accept that. But allow me to let you glimpse my diseased soul by telling you that I always found something of the "Hey everybody, you worthless sad fucks, look at how much in LUUUUUUV we are with each other, don't you wish you could be us" with the public smooching. And I'm a pretty lenient guy about this shit. It's one thing if they're smooching in a park or some nice area with a nice view or somewhere with the hint of romance or something like that. But right in fuckin' front of me at a movie theater or at a fuckin' restaurant or the fucking bank! The bank! THE FUCKING BANK, PEOPLE. WHILE WAITING IN LINE! AT THE BANK! SMOOCHERS!
But I'm the asshole here. That's cool. It's me, that's what it is. Maybe the sounds of kissing are like the smell of food: Wonderful if I'm partaking, disgusting if I'm not.
Speaking of food, back to Sarah Connor. Before all the shit goes down, she was planning to go out on a date but then her date cancels on her with some lame bullshit, so off she goes to see a movie by herself followed by dinner alone. Sounds like my kind of girl, right there. Anyway, she's at this pizza place, about to tuck into a whole pizza (again, my kind of girl) and she's about to bite into a slice but then she overhears the latest report of another Sarah Connor being murdered. She freaks out and never gets around to eating that pizza, which is a bummer.
I don't think she gets to eat anything for the rest of the film -- not even a bullet, much to the T-800's dismay, I'm sure. Later in the motel with Reese, I didn't see any food come out of that grocery bag of supplies he brings over, just ammonia and moth balls. The closest thing to food in that bag is corn syrup, but good luck with getting sustenance from that, chief. I hope she was able to at least scarf down a couple doughnuts at the police station.
Anyway, when the panic-stricken Sarah finally gets in touch with Lt. Traxler, she tells him she's at the Tech-Noir club and he tells her he knows where it is, which got laughs from the audience. See, that's what happens between watching a movie at home by yourself and in a movie theater with a sleep-deprived crowd: what I once interpreted as Traxler basically saying "yes, I know where that club is because I've had to go down there or near there before for law enforcement purposes" was now being taken as "Oh yeah, I know that place, honey. Ol' Traxler here likes to go down there on Saturday nights and teach those lame White kids a thang or two about real dancing."
"Hey man, you got a serious attitude problem" says the bearded dude in overalls, right after Arnold quite rudely pulls him away from the pay phone he was using. That's all he can say, and he knows it, and it amuses me to no end, as does the Bad Outfit moment late in the film when the Terminator walks down a motel hallway with his rifle in full view, passing by a guy who observes this with a "God damn!"
So, there you go. The Terminator. Lean, mean, and relentless action filmmaking from a hungry motherfucker with something to prove. Some of the effects are dated in a bad way, while others are dated in a charming pre-CGI way, but it's still all very impressive for the budget they were working with. It was awesome in '84 and it holds up now. Most of all, I was very happy to get to see this movie on the big screen in a spiffy 35mm print.
Before the trailer, there was an anti-crack ad featuring Rae Dawn Chong and a final reel of Arnold trailers. Then, the Fox logo followed by a shot of a garbage truck driving up a suburban hill and we all knew what that meant: Commando, the sixth and final film of the night. This is the one where ex-military badass Arnold is out to save his kidnapped daughter while killing lots of motherfuckers in the process. Also, there's a bad guy named Bennett who has a hard-on both literal and figurative for Arnold.
I already did a full way-too-long rambling on it years ago, and I'll post an excerpt from it below. But if you'd like to check out the whole deal, you can click here if you want to destroy the rest of your free time:
People go on about Why Do People Love Commando When It's Just A Shit Movie and to that I respond with Silence You Commie Motherfucker. The movie is 92 fast-paced minutes of ownage, and if you didn't feel that way for the first two acts, you'll sure as shit feel that way about the last act, because that's all it is, ownage. Supposedly the original script for this had a more serious tone and I think it took place in Israel, which to me sounds like it would've played like The Delta Force -- not nearly as fun as you'd think it would be. Thankfully, Joel Silver stepped in and had Steven E. De Souza do his thing, which is take everything out but the bare bones, and put in a bunch of one-liners. Works for me.
This movie should please anybody
I'll add this, though. Before, I thought Bennett wanted to bang Matrix and that's why he was so hard up for him. Now I'm of the belief that he and Matrix actually did have one sweaty night together long ago. I can see it now: They had already spent weeks doing recon, just the two of them, and here they were, the night before the Big Day, sharing a couple flasks of whiskey for warmth and preparing themselves mentally for a suicide mission. Next thing you know, they lock eyes, one hand ends up on another's thigh, another hand ends up on the other's shoulder, and soon it's Brokeback time.
Now, the mission goes through and it's a complete success and they survive. Everything's great, except Bennett caught feelings for Matrix and doesn't understand -- despite Matrix constantly telling him -- that what happened that night was just a one night stand and nothing more. And that was pretty much the beginning of the end for Bennett's time on Arnold's team.
Anyway, it was a great way to end the marathon, with a full-on display of Arnold being Arnold in the purest way possible: muscles, one-liners, and lots of killing. The movie ended and those of us left in the audience were given special Arnold pins as a gift on our way out.
My friends and I went to eat next door at Lulu's next door (I recommend the smoked salmon benedict); we talked about the movies and I brought up something my friend said earlier about how she associated Arnold Schwarzenegger films with her father, who was a big fan. They watched a lot of those films together. I brought up how they reminded me of my cousin and my father, who were the ones I'd watch those movies with back in the good ol' days: a simpler time of eating pizza and watching movies starring an awesome motherfucker named Arnold Schwarzenegger on a square tube standard definition television.
So I can't speak for everybody else but it seems like maybe that's what some of us -- if not most, if not all -- got out of the Arnold All-Night movie marathon. Not just 12 hours of entertainment Governator style, but a trip down childhood memory lane when we'd watch our movie heroes on-screen and we didn't have goddamn smoochers sitting in front of me with their goddamn smooching NO I STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN OVER IT LEAVE ME ALONE
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