This brilliant Steve Martin comedy was released in 1982. The movie is a parody of a film noir and pulp detective movie of the 1940's. It was directed by Carl Reiner, who was also involved in the equally brilliant The man With Two Brains (from 1983) and The Jerk (from 1979).
Steve Martin took the lead role as Rigby Reardon, a private investigator, who is hired by Juliet (played by Rachel Ward - who also starred in The Thorn Birds) to investigate the death of her father (played by George Gaynes...yep Commandant Lassard from Police Academy!).
The movie goes in all kinds of directions, royally parodying this type of movie, and the really clever thing is the way they incorporate a ton of old black and white movie footage with the black and white modern work, and incorporating the acting talents of 18 stars including James Cagney, Humprey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.
It's actually a really hard movie to describe plot-wise, but one things for certain, this makes you ache for the days when Steve Martin could do no wrong and was a genuinely funny and innovative performer. He plays a really mean Banjo these days, but really, when was his last good movie?
This hopefully reminds you though of the days when he was just brilliant.
The movie was scored by Miklós Rózsa, his last movie.
Don't push it...or I'll give you a war you won't believe. Let it go!
The first of the Rambo movies was released in October 1982 and starred Sylvester Stallone, Brian Dennahy and Richard Crenna). I really think you need to set this movie completely aside from what followed in the series. Not that the subsequent movies were not entertaining, but they were pretty gory and fiercely pro-American. Whereas, this original movie is pretty anti what the state of life was for Vietnam vets in the USA in the early 80's and is the only movie to have the action all in the USA.
The film was adapted from the novel by David Morrell, from 1972, so the issues in this movie must have been very appropriate at that time especially. The screenplay was all over hollywood for years, with the movie only gaining any traction when Stallone was on board. Having said that, almost every main man of that era was offered the role and turned it down, mainly on the grounds of violence. Having said this, unlike the book, Rambo does not actually kill anyone, though he does injure them.
The movie was directed by Ted Kotcheff. The production team included the super team of Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar, who would go on to do Total Recall, Cliffhanger (also starring Stallone) and Basic Instint amongst many others.
The basic plot of the movie is simple, but powerful. A troubled veteran is abused by an uncaring local sheriff (Teasle)) who wants him nowhere near his town and tries to force him out. When Rambo pushes back, the sheriff arrests him. Rambo is again assaulted in the police station and then escapes using his clearly deadly training to the local forest. Despite the efforts of Rambo's old commander (Trautman) to persuade him to give himself up, Rambo goes deep undercover and, when hunted down by Teasle and his men, he systematically takes out all of the local forces using his survival skills and goes after Teasle. Rambo is eventually arrested.
What I love about the movie is the way that you build up deep sympathy with Rambo's character and the powerful story of what war and the deadly training people go through can do to people when they are released into society.
Here is a great fan movie I came across, where a guy revisits the original locations (Hope, British Columbia) and Sly Stallone talks about the movie.
Great action sequences of course and Stallone in this movie starts a trend in subsequent movies of the main character hunting down someone on his own side or in authority who has wronged him as well as the character fighting what we would think of as the real enemy. One thing that I read that was odd was a scene that they tried out on test audiences, where Rambo takes his own life. They decided (correctly in my view) that this would run counter to the sympathy they had built up for the character and opted for the more hopeful ending.
The music from the movie was by the brilliant Jerry Goldsmith.
If you have been at all put off by the Rambo series, I would heartily recommend this movie, which still has a lot of credibility and was voted one of Empire Magazines Top 500 movies of all time.
The Poltergeist movie was released in early June 1982, about a week apart from ET. Both movies involved Steven Spielberg, this one was produced and co written by Stephen and it was directed and co written by Tobe Hooper. In fact this fact is controversial as it appears most people say that Spielberg was the de facto director and was only not credited as such due to a clause in the contract for ET that prevented him directing two movies at once.
The basic plot of the movie is that a young girl called Carol Anne is kidnapped by a poltergeist that communicates with the girl through the TV set. It emerges the house had been built on the site of a cemetery (isn't this always the problem in horror movies!) and in fact there are a number of poltergeists at work, but a dominant one called The Beast has taken Carol Anne to try to control the rest and to feed off her life force.
The family call in the services of a medium called Tangina Barrons and Carol Anne is freed. Not surprisingly the family decide to move (if it were me it would have been after 2 mins of rescuing her!) but The Beast has a second attempt at kidnapping Carol Anne, before the family escapes and the house disappears into another dimension.
I thought the movie was scary when I first saw it and still do now. Something about children being taken probably and the scenes with the tree coming alive. There are some lighter points in the movie and a few Spielberg trademarks, such as the bicycle scene near the start, when the kids make the guy on his bike drop his beer. That looked like it was filmed on the same streets as used in ET!
This is the famous "They're here" scene
And this is the scene where Carol Anne is taken.
There were two sequels and number 2 was OK. I hear a remake is being planned but would ask why?!
Even after 30 years, this movie still holds up completely and is worthy of a look.
The music was by Jerry Goldsmith and really helped to add to the atmosphere of the movie, especially the creepy song used here.
I'll finish with a trailer and a reminder to TURN OFF THE TV SET. I know I will!
