Worth Mentioning - All Outta Bubble Gum

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning. 

John Carpenter, a Netflix release, an '80s comedy classic, and one crazy sci-fi sequel.

THEY LIVE (1988)

In 1963, Ray Nelson wrote a short story - very short, just 6 pages in the copy I saw - called Eight O'Clock in the Morning, in which a man named George Nada is told to "wake up" during a hynopsis demonstration and becomes more awake than the hypnotist had any idea was possible. So awake that he can see that strange creatures not only live among us, but control us, surrounding us with subliminal messages that tell us how to live our lives. Telling us to obey them.

Twenty-five years later, filmmaker John Carpenter was not pleased with the way things were going in the United States, so he decided to take Nelson's short story and turn it into an '80s commentary on consumerism, greed, the shrinking middle class, climate change, and obsessive TV watching. Nelson laid all the groundwork for what's in They Live, and Carpenter made it bigger.

Roddy Piper stars in the film as Nada, a drifter who comes walking into Los Angeles looking for a job. He ends up working construction alongside Keith David as Frank Armitage (the same name Carpenter used for his writing credit), a guy who came to L.A. from Detroit in an effort to support his family. Frank shows Nada to a homeless camp he can stay in - and Nada soon discovers that a group of people based in a nearby church are aware that there are strange creatures among us, controlling our lives through subliminal messages. This group is hacking TV signals, sending out their own messages in an attempt to get other people to "wake up" and see what's happening. They aren't very successful. The creatures are too good at controlling us.

But Nada is able to see the world as it is thanks to a pair of sunglasses he finds in the church. The group has been manufacturing these sunglasses that can show the subliminal messages in magazines, on billboards, on money, on TV broadcasts, etc. They also reveal the hideous faces of the creatures. This is Carpenter's replacement for the hypnosis set-up of the source material. And when Nada sees what's around him, he's not subtle about it at all. He doesn't try to move around unnoticed. Within minutes, he's picking fights and mocking the creatures. This, of course, gets him in trouble - so also within minutes he has killed some creatures. He even walks into a bank with a shotgun and starts mowing down as many of the creatures as he can. That's certainly not the smartest way for Nada to handle things, but it makes sense for the movie that he gets in so deep so quickly, because Carpenter has taken his time getting to this point. Nada doesn't slip the sunglasses on for the first time until 32 minutes into the 94 minute running time.

As Nada tries to figure out how to get through this, he finds a couple reluctant allies: TV station employee Holly Thompson (Meg Foster), who he first meets by taking her hostage to get out of that bank mess, and Frank. Wanting to mind his own business and keep his job, Frank is so reluctant to have anything to do with whatever Nada's doing that he engages his buddy in a five minute fight rather than simply put the sunglasses on when Nada wants him to.

They Live has a large cult following, but when I was catching up on Carpenter's filmography throughout the '90s, this was one of the last movies I got around to. Something about it just didn't seem appealing to me when I would see it for rent in the video store. After hearing some hype, I decided to check it out... but I have to admit, I wasn't knocked out by it. The build up to Nada putting on the sunglasses seemed so long, and his behavior once he did put the sunglasses on seemed so ridiculous, it just didn't work for me. Things picked up for a while, then the movie got dull to me again. Through further viewings, I have come to appreciate it more. I do like the idea, but it's still not one of my favorite Carpenter movies.

What's interesting is that They Live is still just as fitting for our modern world as it was in 1988. The only things missing are the internet and cell phones.

AWAKE (2021)

Genre fans are used to watching movies about characters who struggle to stay awake, knowing something terrible will happen to them if they fall asleep, but director Mark Raso's apocalyptic thriller Awake flips the concept around and imagines a world where terrible things happen because nobody can sleep. Nearly everyone on the planet loses the ability to sleep in the same moment when all of the power goes out and all electronic devices - including modern vehicles - stop working. People can't last long without sleep, we're told within the film that loss of critical thinking begins at 48 hours without sleep, while hallucinations and motor failure will begin around the 96 hour point. Beyond that, organs will start failing and eventually the heart will just give out. So if this problem is going to be solved, it's going to have to be solved very quickly.

Raso, who also scripted the film with Joseph Raso (working from a story by Gregory Poirier) does do a good job giving us glimpses into this world without sleep. Not only do we see a military-supported scientific team headed up by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Gil Bellows as doctors Murphy and Katz shooting up with stimulants while conducting experiments and trying to find a cure for consciousness, since sedatives don't cut it anymore, we're also shown moments in a hospital where someone can't be put out for surgery and coma patients start waking up. This brings the thought that it might have been interesting to see the Rasos explore this concept in a film that was more of an ensemble with a wider scope. Instead, Awake does have a rather narrow focus; we're seeing this event from the perspective of a troubled single mother, Gina Rodriguez as Jill.

Jill has two children, 10-year-old Matilda (Ariana Greenblatt) and teenage Noah (Lucius Hoyos). Every movie family has that kid who's a pain in neck (or is that just every family, period?), and here Noah is the one who's always butting heads with his mom, while Matilda unexpectedly becomes a highly intriguing figure in this new world as she's one of the only two known people who have retained the ability to sleep. The audience will probably be able to figure out why long before the realization strikes the characters. So Jill has a choice to make: does she hand her daughter over to the military so they can study her in their effort to save the human race, or does she just try to make sure Matilda will be able to survive in the apocalypse? She makes a choice, and Noah thinks she should make the other one. Dramatic conflict!

Awake is an interesting, engaging film. I came to care about Jill and her kids as the story went on, and I was hooked to see where this was all going. My biggest issue with it was that it could have used some kind of visual representation of the ticking clock element; perhaps text on the screen letting us know just how much time has passed since people have been able to sleep. Without that, the apocalypse seemed to be progressing much too rapidly. Not much screen time passes between the moment we hear people can't sleep and the scene where a church group suggests that sacrificing a child might be the thing that will allow them to get some rest. The world seems to descend into complete lawlessness within a few hours, but then when a character says how many days have gone by it was a surprise to me. "Oh, that long already?"

Sleep deprivation leads to a good amount of violence in Awake, though the level of the violence didn't always seem likely to me because Raso doesn't let us in on the passage of time, so things seem to get to some outrageous points too soon.  

The actors deliver good performances in the midst of this madness. Rodriguez makes for a solid heroine, with a complicated past that doesn't mean much when things really get rolling. The Noah character could have been annoying if brought to life by a different actor, but Hoyos is able to make him likeable. Greenblatt was recently a standout in the fun creature feature Love and Monsters, and here she continues to prove that she's one of the best child actresses currently around. Speaking of movies about sleep, she happens to be the daughter of Shon Greenblatt from Freddy's Dead. Frances Fisher, Finn Jones, and Barry Pepper make brief appearances, with Pepper sticking around just long enough to tell Matilda a life story that didn't seem like something the 10-year-old needed to know.

Another notable cast member is Shamier Anderson, who shows up as an escaped convict who goes by the name Dodge. Dodge is a good character whose role in the story kind of just sputters out in the end. It's a bit disappointing.

But some disappointments and timeline confusion aside, Awake is a decent way to kill 97 minutes. The concept could have been handled in other ways that might have been better, but this approach works for some apocalyptic adventure time.

The review of Awake originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com

POLICE ACADEMY 4: CITIZENS ON PATROL (1987)

Through cable airings and VHS recordings of those airings, I watched the Police Academy movies a lot when I was a little kid, primarily while staying at my maternal grandmother's house. Police Academy 4 may be the one I saw the most, because I can say with some certainty that this was my older brother's favorite of the bunch. There was a stretch of time when he would put this movie on again and again... and since I'm so familiar with it, it may be my favorite film in the franchise as well.

Police Academy 3 writer Gene Quintano (who would go on to write the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Sudden Death) wrote the screenplay for this one as well, but since Police Academy director Hugh Wilson was done with these movies and Police Academy 2 and 3 director Jerry Paris had passed away right after 3 was released, a new director had to step in. That was Jim Drake - who, just like Wilson and Paris, was best known for his television work. Drake did well with his first theatrical feature, and you can tell in its quality that Police Academy 4 had the highest budget to work with.

Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg), Zed (Bobcat Goldthwait), Hightower (Bubba Smith), Jones (Michael Winslow), Tackleberry (David Graf), Sweetchuck (Tim Kazurinsky), Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook), Hooks (Marion Ramsey), Nogata (Brian Tochi), and Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes) are all back for this sequel, but this would be the last Police Academy movie for some of the major players. Fackler, played by Bruce Mahler, is already missing, apparently because Mahler and the producers ran into a pay dispute. According to online trivia, Zed and Sweetchuck are only in this movie because the deal with Mahler fell through, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Goldthwait was so great at stealing scenes in 2 and 3, why wouldn't he be part of the plan for 4 from the beginning? It's definitely not evident in the film that Zed was a last minute addition, because he has his biggest role yet in this one.

Police Academy 4 begins when Commandant Lassard comes up with the Citizens on Patrol community outreach program (C.O.P. for short), in which citizen volunteers will receive training at the police academy - with returning characters as their instructors - in subjects like crime detection and first aid. Oddly, the start of the program coincides with Lassard leaving for an international police seminar in England, which is how the film's antagonist enters the picture: in Lassard's absence, Captain Harris (G.W. Bailey) from the first movie will serve as stand-in Commandant. With the return of Harris, part 2 and 3 antagonist Mauser has officially made his exit from the franchise. However, Harris has inherited Mauser's dimwitted sidekick, Lieutenant Proctor (Lance Kinsey). Harris believes from the beginning that C.O.P. is a terrible idea, and he has reason to be even more against it when Mahoney and Jones get a couple "skateboard punks" (Brian Backer as Arnie and David Spade, in his screen debut, as Kyle) that Harris wanted jailed assigned to the program instead.

Harris and Proctor continuing to be jerks makes them the target of pranks pulled off by various different people, but they're not the only ones who get pranked. Arnie, Kyle, and C.O.P. volunteer House (Tab Thacker) get pranked big time for being over-confident in their newly learned crime fighting abilities, and the prank pulled on them is my favorite part of the entire franchise. The three are convinced that Mahoney and Jones have taken them on a real mission to apprehend two fugitives. While they wait outside a location, they hear gunfire coming from within - and soon Mahoney and Jones come walking out with an arrested fugitive, a hulking voodoo practitioner called Badula, who is carrying a body bag that contains the body of his brother, who was just killed in the shootout. Arnie, Kyle, and House then have to ride in the back of a paddy wagon with the body bag and Badula, who starts chanting and sprinkling some kind of powder on the body bag. This voodoo spell resurrects Badula's brother, who comes ripping out of the body bag with a chainsaw, wearing a red hockey mask. In this moment, Police Academy 4 pays homage to the '80s slashers that I was already in love with when I was a little kid watching this movie over and over, so getting a moment like that in this movie was like a special treat to me.

Other C.O.P. volunteers who get attention over the course of the movie are Mrs. Feldman (Billie Bird), an intense, tough-talking elderly woman who is basically like a granny version of Tackleberry, and Laura (Corinne Bohrer), a poetry and photography-loving woman who becomes an unexpected love interest for Zed. I've always loved the scenes with Zed and Laura. There's also a love interest for Mahoney, as usual. This time it's Sharon Stone as Claire Mattson, a reporter who is always lingering around but doesn't really do much.

As is the case with Police Academy movies, this one breaks out into action sequences toward the end. In this one, it's because a bunch of criminals - including Randall "Tex" Cobb and a group of ninjas - are able to bust out of the jail and wreak havoc throughout the city. Because of the ninjas, Jones gets to demonstrate his martial arts abilities again. Along with slasher movies, ninja movies were also a huge favorite of mine when I was a kid, so this hits all of my cinematic sweet spots.

As far as I'm concerned, Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol is where they perfected the Police Academy formula. It's very rare that the fourth film in a franchise be better than its three predecessors, but I believe this one is. It was a great sendoff for the cast members who left after this one - especially Guttenberg / Mahoney, whose final moment in the movie always felt like a goodbye to me, whether or not it was intended to be at the time.

NEMESIS 4: CRY OF ANGELS (1996)

According to IMDb, Nemesis 3 was released in Germany in February of 1996, and Nemesis 4 was out in that country just ten months later, in December of '96. That may be the case, but for some reason the film didn't get released in the United States until April of 1999. I remember when that happened. Nemesis 3 had been a letdown, but I had enjoyed Nemesis and Nemesis 2, so I was interested in seeing what was going to happen next. There were very few things I watched pay-per-view back in the day, but Nemesis 4 was one of them, because I was so intrigued to see a new sequel three years after the previous one. (And at that time of life, when I was in my tweens and teens, three years still felt substantial.)

Nemesis 4: Cry of Angels (a.k.a. Nemesis 4: Death Angel) was not what I expected it to be. Not only does it have a completely different style and tone than the previous two movies - Nemesis 2 and 3 were action movies about Alex (Sue Price) getting chased around in the desert, while 4 is a European thriller filmed in Bratislava, Slovakia (the setting is supposed to be New York City, but is clearly on a different continent) - it doesn't make much sense within the continuity of the franchise. Last time we saw Alex, she had time to kill in 1998 before she could get back to the future and try to save humanity from a war with cyborgs. We had previously been told that the war between humans and cyborgs would begin in 2027 and end in 2037, with cyborgs victorious and humans enslaved. There were still resistance fighters working against the cyborgs for decades after, using a "super DNA gene" to create Alex in 2077, before her mother took her back in time to 1980. As of 2097, cyborgs were still in control and sending bounty hunters to hunt Alex in the 1990s. We were also told that procreation was mean to be a major part in Alex's fight against the machines. Nemesis 4 had the same writer/director as the other films, Albert Pyun, but it really turns things on its head.

This film is set in 2080. The cyborg/human war is over, but humans are not enslaved. Cyborgs and humans now live in an "uneasy peace", and if Alex had anything to do with this, it's never stated. It definitely doesn't seem like she has ever procreated. After the war, both cyborgs and humans drifted into working for global crime syndicates that rose up after the war. Alex has taken such a job herself. For the last 13 years, she has been working as an assassin for a cyborg called Bernardo (Andrew Divoff), and she has a cyborg partner called Earl Typhoon (Nicholas Guest).

This is such a different type of movie, and makes so little sense as a sequel, it sort of seems like Pyun had an idea for a story about a woman working as an assassin in a world full of cyborgs and just decided to drop Alex into it. This movie also has a much greater interest in sex than its predecessors; Price has bared her breasts on multiple occasions within the first 30 minutes, and we've been treated to a disturbingly graphic cyborg/human sex scene, where a metal probe with electricity coursing through it pushes out of Earl Typhoon's stomach and penetrates Alex through her navel - which is somehow able to open itself to accept his probe. Bernardo chastises Alex for being so different from other humans when she's supposed to blend in as part of her job, and this is a hell of a way to show just how different she is.

There's more nudity and sex to come after that, as Alex drops her clothes in every single life and death situation she finds herself in - and her life is threatened quite often. Especially after her boss double crosses her. So there's a whole lot of Sue Price flesh in this movie. And wait 'til you see what she can do with her nipple!

Despite this being nonsensical as an entry in the Nemesis franchise, I actually find the movie to entertaining as a crazy little erotic sci-fi thriller. It helps that it goes by really fast. It only has a 79 minute running time, and the end credits kick in after 72 minutes. If you're wanting to hear anything at all about what was going on in the previous movies, you'll be deeply disappointed, but if you take it as something separate - like it really should have been - then it's decent.