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 October 9, 1987 Director: Phil Joanou It's an underrated gem of the '80s, IMO. I don't think anyone really knows about it because it was like a minor blip on the '80s teen movie radar that basically no one saw and never even became a proper cult classic (it seems like it got mostly favorable reviews despite being a flop, though Roger Ebert did do a scathing review of it at the time). I only know about it because it was one of the D-list movies you could watch for free on Hulu back when I was in high school and I was really bored during the day one weekend and it was literally the only thing on there that looked tolerable enough to watch. A few months ago I heard Bill Burr make a quick, blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to it on his podcast like it was the most natural thing in the world, and I did a mental double-take because I thought I was the only person who'd ever heard of it and liked it. I still occasionally find myself shouting "Don't gently caress this up, Mitchell!" but no one knows what I'm talking about, and even if they did they would probably find such behavior behavior strange and off-putting, which is why I have no friends. One of its biggest selling points is Buddy Revell, the primary antagonist of the film played incredibly charismatically by a D-list actor named Richard Tyson (who's appeared in bit parts in various much more well-known films), a larger-than-life villain of the high school bully archetype who really deserves to be more iconic than he is:  Hell, the ending fight between Buddy and the hapless nerd protagonist Jerry Mitchell (played by Casey Siemaszko, better known as one of young Biff's flunkies in Back to the Future) is one of the all-time great underdog fight scenes as far as I'm concerned:  (Also Mitch Pileggi and Jeffrey Tambor are in it in secondary roles, and Tangerine Dream did the soundtrack.) But anyway, it's actually a really solid movie with some pretty cool and creative cinematography. This page does a pretty good, brief write-up of it in that regard that I can't really improve on, and mentions the rumor that Steven Spielberg may have been an uncredited producer on the film (Aaron Spelling was credited as executive producer). But mostly I just wanted to see if anyone else here liked or had ever even heard of this movie, because it's one of my sort-of guilty, all-time favorites and I feel like I'm the only one. I don't know, maybe it's just a mix of my own teenage nostalgia watching it and the total unexpectedness of it actually being pretty good, but I love it anyway and I'd enthusiastically recommend it as a kind-of obscure movie that's way better than you'd think it is. Cnut the Great fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 05:47
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 19:54 |
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i agree with you, its a classic
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Feb 11, 2017 09:03
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This was a favorite of mine, I caught it on cable about a year after it came out, the trailer got me interested, I thought Buddy punching the principal right after he says "There will be no fight today!" was pretty funny---too bad it wasn't exactly how it occurs in the film. Still, it became a running joke among my friends and I, the line was delivered really well.
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Feb 11, 2017 15:51
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I watched this again recently. It's a dark surreal teen comedy in the vein of Heathers, Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer, but I thought it held up much better than the John Cusack movies. I might even lump it in the same bucket as Nightmare on Elm Street. 80's movies really heightened the sense of teenage isolation. The main antagonist was never as scary as the fact that the whole universe was against you.
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Feb 11, 2017 20:16
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Way back when I was a kid my older brother videotaped this once when it was on TV. I remember not really thinking too much of it at the time and that it dragged a bit in places; I may need to give it a re-watch at some point in time. One thing I did think was interesting was that the protagonist ended up having to cheat to win the fight, for a given definition of cheating.
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Feb 12, 2017 05:36
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Holy poo poo! I saw this once when I was super young on TV. I only saw it once, and I still remember the bully and fight at the end. I'm going to have to watch this again! Thanks for the reminder.
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Feb 13, 2017 04:45
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This movie was the answer to a $1,000 question on Jeopardy on the same day you posted the thread. Were you inspired by that or is this a freaky coincidence?
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Feb 13, 2017 08:56
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Heh, I saw this in the theater.
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Feb 13, 2017 21:55
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It was just added to HBOGo lol and now I'm interested in watching it because of this thread.
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Feb 14, 2017 05:05
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 19:54 |
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One of my favorite movies of all time. I was just thinking about this after reading a thread in the other movie section, so I'm surprised seeing it here. I need to rewatch it! Thanks for the reminder!
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Feb 16, 2017 19:53
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