Video Scripts: FleshEater, Christmas Vacation, Lethal Weapon
Cody shares another trio of videos he wrote for JoBlo YouTube channels.
I have been writing news articles and film reviews for ArrowintheHead.com for several years, and for the last couple years I have also been writing scripts for videos that are released through the site's YouTube channel JoBlo Horror Originals. Recently I started writing video scripts for the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel as well. I have previously shared the videos I wrote that covered
Three more videos that I have written the scripts for can be seen below; one for the JoBlo Horror Originals channel and two for the JoBlo Originals channel.
For the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw video series, I wrote about one of my all-time favorites, Bill Hinzman's 1988 zombie classic FleshEater:
FleshEater script:
INTRO: In 1968, Bill Hinzman terrified audiences as the Cemetery Ghoul in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the first flesh-eating zombie to ever appear on the screen. Twenty years later, Hinzman decided to capitalize on the popularity of his Night character by making his own zombie movie. One that has an exploitation movie sensibility, delivering gratuitous nudity and plenty of gore, all mixed together with a Halloween setting and a thoroughly ‘80s atmosphere. The result is a brilliant piece of entertainment called FleshEater – and it’s the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
CREATORS / CAST: Hinzman directed FleshEater from a screenplay he wrote with Bill Randolph, and they crafted a very simple story for their zombie movie. It begins with a group of college students taking a Halloween hayride out into the woods, where they intend to drink and smoke, and possibly camp for the night. On the way to their destination, they pass a farmer using his tractor to pull a large tree stump out of the ground. After the stump has been unearthed, the farmer discovers something very strange in the ground: a shallow grave containing a coffin that was locked shut with a chain that has rusted and broken. On top of it is an engraved stone and wax seal. On the stone is a pentagram, on the seal a warning: “This evil which will take flesh and blood from thee and turn all ye unto evil.” The farmer doesn’t take the warning. He figures this is just a prank being pulled by the damn college kids that keep wandering onto his property. He opens the coffin… and discovers a zombie played by Hinzman himself. The FleshEater of the title.
In seconds, FleshEater has risen and ripped the farmer’s throat out with his teeth. Twenty years after Night of the Living Dead, a Hinzman ghoul has again kicked off a night of horror. The campers have barely settled in at their campsite when the party is crashed by FleshEater and his already growing legion of zombies. who make quick work of the college kids. The leader type, the couple who can’t keep their hands off each other, the annoying prankster, they all fall prey to the living dead. The kids board themselves up in an old farmhouse that appears to have been turned into a tool shed. You might expect this to be the set-up for a Night of the Living Dead reworking. They’re going to be hiding in that shed for the rest of the movie, right? No. The boarded doors and windows don’t even keep the zombies out for ten minutes.
Only one couple, Bob and Sally, survives to run off into the night, desperately seeking help and trying to warn people about the zombie threat. Since this movie is set in a world where characters have actually seen what are referred to as “cheesy zombie movies,” their warnings aren’t taken seriously. The movie follows Bob and Sally from location to location as each place gets wrecked by the zombies. The woods, the tool shed, a horse ranch, a barn where more college kids are having a costume party. But it also drifts away from Bob and Sally to show us that the zombie plague is spreading through the countryside. FleshEater shows up at a house to ruin a family’s trick-or-treating plans. Reports of zombie attacks make the nightly news. And in the morning, police and citizens join together to form a zombie-hunting posse.
Given that FleshEater was a low budget independent production, you’ve probably never heard of most of the film’s cast members. This was the only movie credit for the vast majority of them. A lot of the cast weren’t even actors, but models that Hinzman found through a modeling agency. As he said at the time, “I don’t know if they’ll be able to act, but everyone’s gonna look good.”
The most prolific actor in the cast is Rik Billock, who briefly shows up as a character called Farmer Ned. Billock previously had uncredited roles in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, and Monkey Shines. He would play a zombie again in the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead. John Mowod, who plays Bob, would go on to work with Hinzman on the Christmas horror movie Santa Claws. A couple cast members, Kevin Kindlin and Terrie Godfrey, had previously worked with him on the slasher The Majorettes. Hinzman got his daughter Heidi into the film as an ill-fated trick-or-treater in an angel costume. His wife Bonnie plays the little girl’s mother. Typecasting. Vincent Survinski, who was a trigger happy member of the zombie-hunting posse in Night of the Living Dead, appears in this one as well, still hunting zombies, and still a little too quick to pull the trigger. Supervising producer Andrew Sands has a memorable cameo at the Halloween party.
BACKGROUND: Bill Hinzman was a still photographer when he joined George A. Romero’s commercial production company Latent Image in the 1960s. During his time with the company, he also became a cinematographer. And when Romero and his collaborators decided they were going to get into feature filmmaking with Night of the Living Dead, Hinzman was one of the initial investors. He was also a crew member on the film – and during production, Romero decided to stick him in front of the camera as a featured ghoul because he was tall, skinny, and owned an old suit. The makers of Night of the Living Dead didn’t intend to re-define the term zombie. They called the flesh-eating living dead creatures in their movie ghouls, because as far as they were concerned zombies were created through voodoo, and voodoo didn’t have anything to do with their ravenously hungry ghouls. But the public started calling the creatures zombies anyway. Now these monsters that made their screen debut in Romero’s movie are the first thing that come to mind when most people hear the word “zombie,” and Hinzman’s Cemetery Ghoul is the very first one we see.
After Night was released, Hinzman continued working in film alongside Romero and Night co-writer John A. Russo. He was a crew member on Romero’s films There’s Always Vanilla and Season of the Witch, and on Russo’s film Midnight. He was the cinematographer on Romero’s The Crazies. He appears in Knightriders. He directed the slasher The Majorettes, which was scripted by Russo. But due to a copyright error, he and his fellow investors didn’t make as much profit off of Night of the Living Dead as they should have. The movie had been released directly into the public domain, so anyone could sell it or show it without paying the filmmakers. And somehow, Hinzman didn’t realize just how popular the film and his ghoul character were until the late ‘80s. When he went to visit Russo at a convention appearance, the fans attending the convention recognized him as well. That fan experience convinced him to make a low budget zombie movie of his own. A movie where he would revive the Cemetery Ghoul in his own way.
A working title on Night of the Living Dead had been Night of the Flesh Eaters, so Hinzman decided to call his movie Zombie Flesh Eaters. That was then shortened to FleshEater. As he was gearing up to go into production, he took some promotional pictures of himself in character. He sent a picture to Romero and Russo to let them know what he was up to… and got an unexpected response: cease and desist letters from their lawyers telling him not to make the movie. Hinzman decided to ignore their warnings and go ahead with his plans. As he said in an interview, he felt his script made it clear enough that the FleshEater isn’t really the same creature as the Cemetery Ghoul, who was shot in the head and put in a bonfire by the end of Night of the Living Dead. He said, “I gave this guy almost a supernatural type of strength. He can do just about anything. And having him discovered buried by insinuated witchcraft, I think that changed it enough.” He didn’t feel that Romero and Russo had ownership of the Cemetery Ghoul anyway. He was an investor and played the character, so he felt he had some ownership of it as well. So he made FleshEater. Romero and Russo didn’t pursue legal action, but when they made the Night of the Living Dead remake a couple years later, Hinzman wasn’t invited to participate.
The budget for FleshEater started out at sixty thousand dollars, and Hinzman and Randolph were aiming to make a small film when writing the script. Something that could be shot entirely on farmland and in private residences not far from Pittsburgh. Hinzman already had the necessary 16mm film equipment from his career making educational and industrial films, so at least he avoided that expense. And once the film was in production, they were able to widen the scope thanks to volunteers and the resources of their collaborators. Andrew Sands had worked on a TV movie called Alone in the Neon Jungle, starring Suzanne Pleshette and Danny Aiello. That was about a female police officer working in a corrupt precinct in Pittsburgh – and Sands knew that the police supplies used for the shoot were still in storage there. So he dug some of that out to be used in FleshEater. A college offered the use of its media center, allowing for a scene set in a news studio. Real life newscaster Dave Kelly volunteered to appear in the movie. Hinzman knew animator Rick Catizone, who had worked on Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead II, and the Creepshow movies. Catizone animated the face of the FleshEater for the movie’s opening title sequence. And by simply putting an ad in the paper asking if any local landowners had a barn that could be burned down, they were able to have a literal barnburner of a climactic sequence.
Most of the cast members wore their own clothes in the film, resulting in the characters wearing a whole lot of denim and plaid. Those who wore layers to set were wise to do so, because once FleshEater got rolling it was miserably cold outside. Hinzman had planned to start shooting in September, but the start date got pushed back to November. Which was great for the look of the film, as cinematographer Simon Manses captured images of a beautiful Pennsylvania fall, perfect for the story’s Halloween setting. But not so good for the comfort of the cast and crew. Soon enough, full-blown winter hit, so FleshEater had to shut down for several months, waiting for temperatures to rise and the snow to melt. But this is another thing that turned out to be beneficial, since it allowed Hinzman the time to cut together the footage that had been shot. He then presented this footage to potential distributors, telling them the movie was already complete. FleshEater landed distribution deals, and Hinzman put the money from those deals into the movie. According to Terrie Godfrey, who also worked as the director’s assistant, the budget ended up being two hundred thousand dollars, and they were able to come in under budget. It helped that crew members only received twenty-five dollars for a regular day’s work, and half that for a shorter day.
There were cold temperatures, low pay, and other hardships that come with working on an independent production, like actors not showing up to set, or needing to be replaced at the last minute, and Hinzman getting shot in the foot with one of the blanks he made for the gunfire. But looking back, many of the cast and crew say that working on FleshEater was some of the most fun they ever had.
FleshEater was a direct-to-video release, put out on VHS in the United States by Magnum Entertainment. Magnum sent two different versions of the movie out to video stores: an R-rated cut, and an unrated cut. It’s the unrated cut that made its way to DVD, Blu-ray, and the Vinegar Syndrome 4K UHD release, as well as the Tubi streaming service. The R-rated cut faded into video obscurity. But the title on the movie wasn’t FleshEater when it reached store shelves in 1988. The distributor wanted something that sounded similar to Night of the Living Dead, so they called it Revenge of the Living Zombies. In some countries, it was called Zombie Nosh. If you watch a copy these days, chances are the title on screen will be FleshEater: Revenge of the Living Dead.
There was no premiere held for the film. Investors had to rent it on VHS like the rest of the public. And apparently it was a popular rental for a while, as Hinzman said he made a lot of money off of it. Magnum Entertainment was so pleased with their profits, they asked Hinzman to deliver another movie. There were some ideas considered, but oddly no thought was given to making a FleshEater 2 at the time. Whatever Hinzman was going to make, he was in no hurry to do so. He used his FleshEater money to buy a horse ranch and spent some time enjoying life. By the time he was ready to get back to work, the video scene had evolved and the interest from Magnum had gone away. Hinzman never directed another movie, but he did cinematography work on things like Santa Claws, Children of the Living Dead, and the thirtieth anniversary edition of Night of the Living Dead, where he worked with John A. Russo to add new scenes into the classic film. An effort to secure the copyright of at least one version of the title, since the original remained in public domain.
A black and white version of the FleshEater scene where Hinzman chomps on the trick-or-treater played by his daughter was included as a bonus feature on that edition of Night of the Living Dead. Hinzman and Russo had even thought of editing Night of the Living Dead and FleshEater together, then shooting more scenes to turn it into one huge zombie epic. But that idea never panned out. More than twenty years after the release of FleshEater, while being interviewed for the Mail Order Zombie podcast, Hinzman mentioned that he was interested in making FleshEater 2. Sadly, he was diagnosed with cancer soon after that interview aired and passed away in 2012. So we only ever got one FleshEater, but the one we got is awesome.
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Romero had made the Night of the Living Dead follow-ups Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead by the time Hinzman made FleshEater. Russo had been involved with The Return of the Living Dead. All those films are considered classics. Fans love their characters, and Romero’s films earn praise for their social commentary. But Hinzman wasn’t aiming to make something that could be held up as a classic alongside Night of the Living Dead. Instead, he delivered an exploitation-style companion to that classic. FleshEater doesn’t aim to be anything more than a mindless good time, a gore-soaked movie filled with ghouls and gratuitous nudity. Hinzman clearly wanted to make something along the lines of the sort of horror movie that was very popular at the time: the slasher. That’s why we get college student characters, bare breasts, and as much bloodshed as possible. Of course, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead had been quite gory as well, so it had been proven that audiences liked to see guts being spilled in their zombies movies.
The FleshEater himself even behaves like a slasher at times, as he has a tendency to attack people with weapons. He impales one victim with a pitchfork and buries a hatchet in the head of another. But he doesn’t really need weapons when he can just punch his hand through a person’s body and tear out their heart. Like Hinzman said, the character has a supernatural level of strength, like Jason Voorhees in the later Friday the 13th sequels. The existence of zombies in this film seems to be tied in with reports of Satanic cult activity in the area some years earlier, and the zombies that are created as a result of those occult rituals are nasty. In Romero’s movies, the zombies often come off as being rather pathetic creatures. You can feel sympathy for them. That’s not the case in FleshEater. You can’t feel sorry for these zombies. As the seal on the coffin warned, these things are pure evil; snarling, malicious monsters that tear into victims with hate in their eyes. While this is a rather ridiculous movie that is more likely to make you chuckle than scream, the zombies are effectively creepy at times. The synth score composed by Erica Portnoy also adds an unnerving edge to scenes.
The gore was provided by special effects artist Gerald Gergely, whose credits include The Majorettes, Night of the Living Dead ‘90, The Dark Half, and My Bloody Valentine 2009. He did some impressive work on this film, even though he didn’t have much time to prepare some of the effects. Hinzman contacted him about the job on a Friday, and Gergely was on the set the following Monday. Luckily, he was very inventive, putting things like peanut butter, Rice Krispies, and pink grapefruit to use and making it look like brains and a destroyed head. The corpse of a zombie that was caught in a fire was created with a sofa cushion, a cardboard tube, some latex, and gel blood. It looks great. For a moment where the FleshEater reaches into a victim’s stomach and pulls out their heart, Gergely and his assistant had to resort to using real pig guts. They failed to inform Hinzman about this, though. So Hinzman pulled out the heart and bit into it, expecting it to be made of gelatin. Biting into a pig heart wasn’t pleasant for Hinzman, but it works for the movie. Since FleshEater had a low budget and was being shot on film, almost everything was done in just one take. Gergely faced the challenge and succeeded, giving gorehounds plenty to enjoy about this movie.
BEST SCENE(S): FleshEater moves quickly from set piece to set piece, never going too long before we get another zombie attack scene. Between the kills, there’s some clunky dialogue and atrocious line deliveries. It’s all just part of the fun. One of the best moments is when the little angel opens the door expecting to see fellow trick-or-treaters and instead finds the FleshEater there. She clearly doesn’t believe there’s an age limit to trick-or-treating, because she still thinks this guy is there for candy. He picks her up and takes a bite out of her instead, her blood spilling onto a dropped Krunch bar.
The Halloween party sequence is another standout, as supervising producer Andrew Sands is hilarious as the drunken Dracula hosting the party. When Bob and Sally come to him for help, he berates them for not wearing costumes. Then he compliments the look of a zombie that comes wandering in. This doesn’t turn out well for him.
PARTING SHOT: If you want to see a well-polished horror movie with great character work… FleshEater is not the movie for you. But it definitely is if you just want to kick back and watch something fun. The legendary Joe Bob Briggs came up with a Drive-In Oath that includes the line “We believe in blood, in breasts, and in beasts.” And if you’re the kind of horror fan who could recite that oath with feeling, you should know that this movie has it all. So seek out a copy of FleshEater. Head back into the Pennsylvania countryside with Hinzman and his fellow ghouls. It will be one of the best Halloweens you’ve ever had.
For the non-horror Revisited series, I wrote about a movie I make sure to watch every December, director Jeremiah Chechik's Vacation sequel Christmas Vacation:
Christmas Vacation script:
INTRO: Comedy sequels are very difficult to pull off successfully. Often, the humor that worked so well the first time around can feel forced or lacking in a follow-up. Sometimes you just can’t recapture the magic. But sometimes a sequel manages to become a classic in its own right. And sometimes a film that features an electrified cat, a kidnapping, an unstable man with a chainsaw, and raw sewage being pumped into a storm drain can become a beloved holiday staple, a film that families make sure to watch together every December. The film we’re talking about is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation – a comedy sequel that deserves to be Revisited regularly.
SET-UP: A decade before Christmas Vacation reached theatres, during the Chicago blizzard of 1979, John Hughes wrote a short story for the National Lampoon comedy magazine. Titled Vacation ‘58, that story told of a family’s hilariously disastrous road trip to a famous theme park, from the perspective of a young son. National Lampoon publisher Matty Simmons thought Vacation ‘58 could serve as the basis for a fun movie, so he pitched the idea to Hollywood studios. And ended up selling it to Warner Bros. Hughes wrote the screenplay for the film that was released in the summer of 1983 under the title National Lampoon’s Vacation. Once he was done with his draft, the film’s director Harold Ramis and star Chevy Chase then did a rewrite that shifted the perspective. Instead of the young son being the lead, the lead would now be Chase’s character. The father. Clark W. Griswold. Hughes would later complain that this shift in perspective would turn the Vacation movies into nothing more than “Chevy Chase vehicles”… but audiences enjoyed it.
National Lampoon’s Vacation was such a big hit, Warner Bros. wanted another sequel. Fast. European Vacation, which would follow the Griswold family on a tour of London, Stonehenge, Paris, West Germany, and Rome, was greenlit for a summer 1985 release. Amy Heckerling was hired to direct, Robert Klane wrote the script – and shared credit with Hughes, even though Hughes would want you to know he didn’t actually write anything for that sequel. Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo were brought back to reprise the role of Clark and his wife Ellen – but new actors were brought in to play their teenage children Rusty and Audrey. Dana Barron, who played Audrey in the first Vacation, was told that she would be back for the sequel. But when the first Rusty, Anthony Michael Hall, proved to be too busy to join European Vacation, the decision was made to recast both kids. Jason Lively and Dana Hill became the new Rusty and Audrey, and looked somewhat similar to their predecessors.
As mentioned before, comedy sequels are very difficult to do. European Vacation is one of those comedy sequels that wasn’t received nearly as well as the first film. But while it wasn’t as highly revered, it was a financial success. So the door was open for another sequel to be made. And Matty Simmons knew what the story should be. It was a story that had already been written by Hughes and published in the pages of National Lampoon. It was called Christmas ‘59, and was about the family from Vacation ‘58 having a hectic holiday at home. Warner Bros. waited a little longer to move forward on a third Vacation, but they eventually agreed with Simmons that they should make Christmas Vacation. And this time they really wanted Hughes to be involved.
By this time, Hughes was known as a highly respected and successful comedy director. Since the release of the first Vacation, he had already directed Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; Planes, Trains & Automobiles; and She’s Having a Baby. Next up for him was Uncle Buck. He was doing just fine on his own, he didn’t need to take part in another Vacation movie. He wasn’t into the ideas of sequelizing his work anyway. But Warner Bros. was desperate for him to work on Christmas Vacation – and he agreed to do so, because he felt Christmas ‘59 was an idea worthy of bringing to the screen. Even if he would have to drop a prominent character from the story because they had already been included in Sixteen Candles under the name Long Duk Dong.
The set-up is very simple: the Griswolds have decided to host the family Christmas celebration at their home this year. Relatives are going to be coming in from across the country to spend the holidays with them… and Clark is determined to make this the perfect Christmas for everybody. This proves to be quite a challenge, as everything that could possibly go wrong during the days leading up to Christmas does seem to go wrong. And while Clark is dealing with all of this at home, he also has trouble at work. He has been counting on receiving the bonus check his company sends out every year. He’s going to be putting in a swimming pool, and has already paid the down payment. But if he doesn’t receive the bonus check, he’s not going to be able to give his family that pool. Clark doesn’t know that his boss has decided to send his employees something other than the bonus check this year. This adds even more stress and insanity to the situation at the Griswold home. Which is already becoming a madhouse.
In addition to writing Christmas Vacation, Hughes also wanted to produce it. So Simmons, who had produced the previous two Vacationmovies, was pushed back into executive producer position on this one. Once the script was ready, Hughes sent it to the person he wanted to direct the film: Chris Columbus. Columbus had gotten his start as a writer, scripting classics like Gremlins and The Goonies. He made his feature directing debut with the comedy Adventures in Babysitting – which takes its characters on a journey through Hughes’ beloved Chicago. The script for Christmas Vacation arrived at Columbus’s door at just the right time, as he was hurting from the box office failure of his second feature, Heartbreak Hotel. Getting the chance to direct a Christmas comedy was a dream come true for Columbus, so he signed on. Then he had a meeting with Chevy Chase… and his enthusiasm for the project took a heavy blow. Speaking with Chicago magazine, Columbus said, “To be completely honest, Chevy treated me like dirt.” But despite that issue, he stayed on the project and went to work shooting second unit. Some of the establishing shots of downtown Chicago that were captured by Columbus ended up in the finished film. But he didn’t end up directing the movie. His second meeting with Chase was even worse than the first one. After that meeting, Columbus called Hughes and said, “There’s no way I can do this movie. I know I need to work, but I can’t do it with this guy.” Hughes let Columbus drop out of Christmas Vacation, no problem. A couple weeks later, another script written by Hughes was delivered to Columbus. It was another Christmas comedy. Home Alone. Columbus signed on for that one, and had a major hit at the box office in the last months of 1990.
Christmas Vacation had a December 1989 release date it needed to meet, so there was a scramble to find another director. Hughes considered taking the helm himself, but he was too busy working on Uncle Buck. Chase suggested George Roy Hill, who he had just worked with on the comedy Funny Farm. He felt that Hill, whose credits included Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, Slap Shot, and The World According to Garp, was the best director he had ever worked with. But Hill was also in his late sixties, so when Funny Farm received a lukewarm reception he was ready to retire. And he never did direct another film. So the choice moved on from a filmmaker at the end of his career to one who had never directed a movie. Jeremiah Chechik, who had caught Warner Bros’ attention with his work on commercials and music videos. Chechik was glad to make his feature directorial debut with Christmas Vacation.
Chase and D’Angelo were locked in to return as Clark and Ellen. And while Columbus had issues with Chase, it was D’Angelo that Chechik found difficult to work with. He told Rolling Stone, “During the filming, Beverly and I really fought like hell. But when we did the DVD commentary, we had the greatest time together ever. Who knows how this all works?” With the leads already on board, Chechik had to build a supporting cast around them. Several characters are family members we hadn’t met before: Ellen’s father Art and mother Frances, Clark’s father Clark Senior and mother Nora. The idea was to fill these roles with strong character actors who had soulful natures combined with a quirkiness. And a great ensemble was formed: E.G. Marshall and Doris Roberts as Ellen’s parents, John Randolph and Diane Ladd as Clark’s parents. None of these characters have a great deal to do in the film, but they are present for much of its running time, and they all get laughs along the way. Clark Senior also has a nice heart-to-heart moment with his son when things appear to have fallen apart. Ladd is actually very close in age to Chase; they would be more likely to have passed each other in the halls at school than be mother and son. But Ladd aged herself up for an audition with old lady fashion choices and baby powder in her hair. She feared that being cast as an elderly woman could be the end of her career, but ended up making more in residuals from Christmas Vacation than from anything else she has ever worked on.
The movie also introduces viewers to Clark’s grumpy, cigar-smoking uncle Lewis and Lewis’s senile wife Bethany. A woman who shows up for Christmas with her cat and a Jell-O dish wrapped up as presents. The inspiration for these characters was the legendary comedy duo of George Burns and his wife Gracie Allen. Allen passed way in 1964, but there was some hope Burns – who was known to enjoy cigars in his day – might take the role of Uncle Lewis. When he chose not to, the roles were filled by William Hickey, who had recently received an Oscar nomination for his performance in Prizzi’s Honor, and Mae Questel, whose career went back to the ‘30s. She had provided the voices of cartoon characters Betty Boop and Olive Oyl. This was the final role for Questel, who was almost twenty years older than Hickey. But that age difference doesn’t come across on the screen.
Since Rusty and Audrey had been recast for European Vacation, it was decided that they would be recast again for Christmas Vacation. And while you could kind of buy that Lively and Hill were playing the same characters in European Vacation as Hall and Barron had played in the first Vacation, there is no continuity with the characters this time. Previously Rusty had been blonde and taller than his dark haired sister. For Christmas Vacation, Juliette Lewis was cast as Audrey, who has blonde hair and is taller than her dark haired brother Rusty, played by Johnny Galecki. They’re nothing like the previous Rusty and Audrey – but Lewis and Galecki are good actors, so they come off well in the movie. Just try to keep Hall, Lively, Barron, and Hill out of your mind.
Vacation cast member Brian Doyle-Murray returns for Christmas Vacation in a different role, now playing Clark’s boss Frank Shirley. Sam McMurray appears as one of Clark’s co-workers, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Nicholas Guest play neighbors who are not fans of the Griswolds, and Nicolette Scorsese plays a lingerie clerk who catches Clark’s attention. And Randy Quaid and Miriam Flynn were brought back as their Vacation characters – Ellen’s cousin Eddie and his wife Catherine. Who show up at the Griswolds’ house unexpectedly, with their kids Ruby Sue and Rocky, played by Ellen Hamilton Latzen and Cody Burger. Plus their dog Snots. Things go off the rails at the Griswold household for a variety of reasons, but Eddie is responsible for a good deal of the insanity. And for some of the funniest moments in the movie.
REVIEW: Christmas Vacation began filming in March of 1989, with the first ten days of production taking place in snow-coated Colorado. Scenes filmed there include the Griswolds’ trek out into the countryside to acquire a Christmas tree. And the scene where Clark speeds down a snowy hill in a sled that has been coated with cooking spray. Chase was really scared while filming that scene, as the sled he was on did pick up a lot of speed as he went down the hill. The actors described conditions in Colorado as “brutally cold” – but filming the scenes in actual snowy, cold weather gives the film the necessary atmosphere of a Midwestern Christmas.
The crew then did an impressive job of creating a Midwestern Christmas on the Warner Bros. backlot in the Los Angeles area. That’s where the Griswold house is located, right next door to the house where the Murtaughs live in the Lethal Weapon franchise. Chase said the toilet used for the bomb scene in Lethal Weapon 2 was still in the house’s front yard when they arrived to start working on Christmas Vacation. Filling the backlot with fake snow, the filmmakers were able to match it with the look of the scenes shot in Colorado. The movie feels like it takes place during a chilly December, even though it was largely filmed during a warm Los Angeles spring.
And while enveloping the viewer in its cozy, comforting holiday atmosphere, the movie also delivers some great laughs. Hughes scripted some hilarious dialogue for the characters, and Chechik also worked in some great sight gags. Chevy Chase and Randy Quaid both give genius comedic performances, with most of the supporting cast getting the chance to provide chuckles as well. The movie really lends itself to multiple rewatches, as you can catch new humorous moments from viewing to viewing – and the comedy is so well-crafted and effective, it remains funny each time you see it. Even if you’ve watched it every Christmas for over thirty years.
Things do go over-the-top at the Griswold house, but at their core the best Vacation movies work so well because they’re relatable. When Hughes wrote about the disastrous family road trip of the first Vacation, you could tell he was drawing from personal experiences. And the same can be said for the hectic family holiday depicted in Christmas Vacation. Maybe a SWAT team never busted into the Hughes home because a dimwitted cousin took dad’s boss hostage. Maybe the sewer never exploded because that same cousin pumped his RV waste into it. Maybe a cat never got fried by biting into the tree lights. But Hughes clearly knew what it was like to try to make the holidays pleasant for a house full of relatives. Chances are, there are people in Christmas Vacation who will remind you of some of your own family members. And you might be able to relate to the scenes showing the acquisition of a Christmas tree. Or those depicting how much trouble it can be to keep a pine tree in your living room. The scene of sledding down a snowy hill. The family dinner scene. The dog getting into the trash. The scenes showing Clark’s struggle to decorate the house and keep all of those Christmas lights lit up.
Clark does go overboard with the decorations, wrapping the Griswold house in twenty-five thousand lights. This causes him a lot of grief. There’s one moment where he gets so frustrated with the lights, he vents by beating the hell out of a display of Santa and his reindeer. Chase was so committed to this moment, he broke his pinky finger while beating up these decorations but kept going until Chechik cut.
If you have fond memories of childhood Christmases, the movie will really tug on your heartstrings when Clark finds himself trapped in the attic and decides to pass the time by watching old home movies. Chechik puts the Ray Charles song “That Spirit of Christmas” on the soundtrack to try to make you get teary-eyed along with Clark. Then quickly shifts back to the laughs when Clark’s beautiful moment is interrupted.
There are some great Christmas songs on the film’s soundtrack. In addition to Ray Charles, we get “Mele Kalikimaka” by Bing Crosby and “Here Comes Santa Claus” by Gene Autry. There’s also a nice score, composed by Angelo Badalamenti, who Chechik hired specifically because you wouldn’t expect the Blue Velvet and Nightmare on Elm Street 3 composer to be hired for a Christmas score. And there’s an original theme song, performed by Mavis Staples, that plays over the film’s animated title sequence. A sequence the studio didn’t want to pay for, but Chechik convinced them to by presenting an awful alternative of credits accompanied by a purposely bad song choice.
Chechik also faced resistance from Warner Bros. when it came to the scene where Aunt Bethany’s cat gets zapped by the Christmas lights. The studio didn’t even want him to film that moment, but he would always tell them to check with Hughes about it. Then he would call Hughes to tell him he needed to be prepared to defend the cat scene. The scene was filmed – and Warner Bros. asked that it be removed before the first test screening. Matty Simmons begged them to at least let the first test audience see the scene. So they let it stay in. After the screening, the test audience scored the cat scene as their favorite scene in the movie. That ended the discussion of whether or not it should be cut.
LEGACY/NOW: Christmas Vacation reached theatres on December 1st, 1989 – and didn’t open at number one because Back to the Future Part II, which was released the previous week, was still in the top spot. It didn’t reach number one in its second week, either. Because Danny DeVito’s dark comedy The War of the Roses was released that week, and movie-goers wanted to see its reunion of Romancing the Stone duo Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. But Christmas Vacation finally reached number one in its third week, and remained at the top for its fourth week. Made on a budget of twenty-five million dollars, the movie ended up earning over seventy-four million at the domestic box office. Exceeding the sixty-one million made by the first Vacation and the forty-nine million made by European Vacation.
The critical response was surprisingly subdued. There weren’t many reviewers naming it an instant holiday classic, but it quickly earned that reputation. And for decades now, it has continued to be regarded as one of the best Christmas movies ever made. Through the days of cable, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, 4K UHD, and streaming, fans have been making sure to take in a viewing of Christmas Vacation every December since 1989. The Vacation franchise has also continued since then. There was another sequel, Vegas Vacation, released in 1997, a Cousin Eddie spin-off, a reboot that centered on an adult Rusty Griswold. Some of these were financially successful, but none were as positively received as Christmas Vacation was. It’s not easy to become a treasured classic. But Christmas Vacation pulled it off. Just like Clark Griswold managed to give his family an enjoyable holiday, despite everything that went wrong.
Also for the Revisited series, I covered Richard Donner's 1987 action classic Lethal Weapon (which happens to be a great Christmas movie as well):
Lethal Weapon script:
INTRO: There’s a formula for buddy action movies. Take two characters with conflicting personalities and force them to work together, solving crimes and bringing villains to justice. Drop them into intense situations and watch them go from butting heads to respecting and caring about each other. It’s cliché, but sometimes it really works. This formula was perfected in the 1987 film Lethal Weapon, which took family man Roger Murtaugh and paired him with the irreverent, suicidal Martin Riggs. Then sent them after heroin smugglers with military training. That set-up was executed so well, it spawned a franchise. What went into making this action classic? Let’s find out in this episode of Revisited.
SET-UP: Today, Shane Black is known as one of the most highly respected and highly paid writers in Hollywood. But when he started writing Lethal Weapon, he had just graduated college. Twenty-three years old and writing his first solo screenplay. As he wrote the initial draft, he was drawing inspiration from the Western genre, the pulp fiction detective stories he loved, and one of his favorite movies, Dirty Harry. He even included a version of a scene from Dirty Harry where one of our police officer heroes attempts to talk down a man threatening to jump off a building. And if you’re a movie fan who would pay tribute to one of your favorites like that, you should subscribe to the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel to get fresh movie-related content throughout the week.
At the heart of Black’s story are two Vietnam veteran LAPD Sergeants. There’s Roger Murtaugh, a family man who has just celebrated his fiftieth birthday. As we see Murtaugh interact with his wife and three kids, it’s clear their household is a fun place that’s full of love. That’s a stark contrast to the lonely life of Murtaugh’s new partner Martin Riggs. Riggs’ wife was recently killed in a car accident, and grief has dropped him into a depression so deep the police psychologist suspects he may have had a psychotic break. On the other hand, his Captain thinks he’s just acting out so he can receive a psych pension. Which he doesn’t intend to give him. Riggs definitely acts like he’s out of his mind, wading into dangerous situations with total disregard for his own well-being. When he’s off duty he drinks too much and contemplates suicide. Murtaugh doesn’t think much of his new partner at first, complaining that “I’m too old for this shit” while believing that Riggs is going to get him killed. But they gradually bond and come around to liking, respecting, and caring for each other. Murtaugh even invites Riggs over to his house for dinner with the family.
Riggs has a dark past of carrying out assassinations during the war, and when writing this character Black envisioned him as an old gunslinger type. Or even an action take on Frankenstein’s Monster. Someone who is hated and reviled for what they’ve done and what they’re capable of. But when things go wrong and violent villains have to be dealt with, society needs to rely on this person to kill for them. As you can tell from that description, Black’s script was much darker than the film that was eventually made. He even gave Murtaugh a tragic back story about accidentally killing a fellow soldier during his military training. That didn’t make it into the movie, and Riggs doesn’t come off like much of a Frankenstein’s Monster character either.
Around these characters, Black crafted a mystery that starts off small. A young woman named Amanda Hunsaker, who is clearly high on drugs, steps off a balcony at a high-rise apartment building and plummets to her death. But the case isn’t as cut and dry as it appears to be. Amanda’s death wasn’t an accident or suicide. Her drugs had been spiked with drain cleaner, she was going to die whether she stepped off that balcony or not. Murtaugh has a personal connection to this case, because he served with Amanda’s father Michael in the war. Michael even saved his life. Worried about his daughter, Michael had been trying to get in contact with Murtaugh in the days before her death. Hoping he could help her get away from bad influences. But he didn’t reach him in time. Murtaugh will come to find out it was Michael’s own shady dealings that got Amanda killed. It goes back to their time in Vietnam, when Michael was working for a CIA unit called Shadow Company. This group started running heroin during the war – and a dozen years later, they’re running heroin in Los Angeles. The smuggling organization is headed up by General McAllister, whose lackeys are all mercenaries with military training. Including his right hand man, Mister Joshua. And now that Riggs and Murtaugh know all about Shadow Company, they’re on the General’s hit list. So this case gets even more personal for them. Murtaugh’s teen daughter Rianne, who develops a crush on Riggs the moment she sees him, is also pulled into the mix. She gets abducted by the General and his henchmen.
Shootouts, explosions, and assassination attempts ensue… and Black wrote a massive climactic sequence for his script. A sequence that involved Mister Joshua taking down a police helicopter with a missile. The helicopter crashes into the Hollywood sign, catching it on fire. Then a tanker truck loaded with heroin would crash in the Hollywood hills, sending the white powder drifting out over the burning sign and the city below. Like snowfall. Very appropriate since, like many of Black’s stories, Lethal Weapon takes place around Christmas. The climax of the film is much smaller. The heroin snow only fills the air of one city block, no missiles are launched, there’s no helicopter crash. And the Hollywood sign makes it through intact.
Lethal Weapon almost didn’t happen at all, because Black thought his first draft of the script – which he wrote in six weeks – was dreadful. He dropped it in the trash. Thankfully, he dug it back out later and decided to do some revisions. He ended up passing it over to his agent – and after some rejections, the agent caught the attention of Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver. They ended up buying the script for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Keeping Black on board to do further revisions, they then began searching for a director. Silver has said his first choice to direct the film was Ridley Scott. But Scott didn’t have a great experience working with Warner on Blade Runner, so an offer wasn’t made. An offer was made to Leonard Nimoy, who had great success directing the two most recent Star Trek movies. But Nimoy didn’t consider himself to be an action director and he was busy working on Three Men and a Baby, so he passed. That’s when Warner and Silver turned to Richard Donner, the director of classics like The Omen, Superman, and The Goonies. Donner felt that Black’s script was too dark and bloody, but that could be dealt with in rewrites. It was great otherwise, so he signed on. When it became clear that the script was going to be too dark for Donner’s taste no matter how many revisions Black did, he brought on another writer. That was Jeffrey Boam, the writer of the vampire movie The Lost Boys, which Donner was producing. That’s why you see a theatre marquee in Lethal Weapon that advertises The Lost Boys as “this year’s hit”. Even though Lethal Weapon was released four months before The Lost Boys. Boam was able to add in more humor and lighten the tone of the script. He wasn’t credited for his contributions to the first Lethal Weapon, but he would receive credit when he returned to work on the sequels.
Sequels that wouldn’t have happened if Donner hadn’t found the perfect actors to play Riggs and Murtaugh. Black had written Riggs with William Hurt in mind, but the studio wasn’t into that idea, feeling that he was too obscure. There are a lot of familiar names on the list of actors who were considered for the roles. It seems like any actor who played the lead in a popular movie released in the ‘80s was in the running. Christopher Reeve, Michael Biehn, and Rutger Hauer were among the potential Riggs, Brian Dennehy a potential Murtaugh. Bruce Willis was offered the chance to play Riggs and turned it down, but he did team up with Silver on Die Hard the following year. Donner was interested in working with Mel Gibson, so he reached out to him. Which makes sense, as Gibson was already known as Mad Max and now Donner needed to cast another character who was mad. Casting director Marion Dougherty suggested Danny Glover for Murtaugh, having been impressed by his performance in The Color Purple. And once they got Gibson and Glover into the same room, it was clear these two had incredible chemistry with each other. From just one script reading together, Donner could tell this was a magical pairing. Both actors were technically too young for their roles. At thirty, Gibson was eight years younger than the character of Riggs. At forty, Glover was a full decade younger than Murtaugh. But there doesn’t seem to have been any objections to them playing older than they were. Gibson and Glover were both impressed by the script and its focus on the characters and their interactions with each other.
With the leads in place, Donner built the supporting cast around them. Several of the actors had unknowingly just secured employment for the next decade, as they would be back for sequels. That includes Darlene Love, Traci Wolfe, Damon Hines, and Ebonie Smith, who play Murtaugh’s wife and children. Cast as Murtaugh’s seventeen year old daughter Rianne, Wolfe was doing the opposite of Gibson and Glover and playing several years younger than she was. She was only four years younger than Gibson, whose character is meant to be twenty-one years older than her. And fourteen years younger than Glover, whose character is thirty-three years older than Rianne. Mary Ellen Trainor and Steve Kahan only have one scene as police psychologist Stephanie Woods and Captain Ed Murphy, but they would reprise those roles in three sequels.
Tom Atkins is known as a horror icon for his roles in movies like Halloween 3, The Fog, and Night of the Creeps, among others. But he shows up in this action movie as Murtaugh’s ill-fated friend Michael Hunsaker.
The likes of Lee Marvin, James Earl Jones, and Robert Duvall were on the list for General McAllister, but it was Mitchell Ryan who ended up taking on the role. Steve Railsback, who played Charles Manson in the 1976 Helter Skelter mini-series, was offered the role of Mister Joshua. He turned it down because he didn’t want to be typecast as a bad guy. That’s a decision he would later regret. With Railsback out of the picture, Gary Busey eagerly accepted the role of Mister Joshua, using this opportunity to show off the fact that he had just gotten back into shape. While Busey is known to have a tendency to go over-the-top, he mostly holds back in Lethal Weapon, playing Mister Joshua as a stoic, cold-blooded killer. The character is basically an evil reflection of Riggs. Both were in the Special Forces, they have received the same training, have the same martial arts skills. And they’re on a collision course.
REVIEW: Lethal Weapon ranks highly as one of the best action movies ever made because all of the right elements came together on this one. You start out with the screenplay written by Shane Black. The script he was so disappointed with that he put it in the trash. This, along with the fact that Stephen King also dropped the first pages of his novel Carrie in the trash, really shows that writers are not always the best judges of their own work. Black’s script for Lethal Weapon was incredible, blending an intriguing mystery with strong character work and exciting action. The film isn’t as dark or violent as Black envisioned, but the story didn’t lose anything from Donner softening the edges. It just became something that a wider audience could enjoy. As Donner described it, his approach to the movie was to make it like an old-fashioned Western. And while the movie doesn’t have action sequences as big as the ones Black wrote, the action it does have is exciting and fun to watch.
Gibson and Glover perfectly inhabit the roles of Riggs and Murtaugh. These guys are fascinating to watch from the moment they appear on the screen. Riggs is an angry mess, he’s always on edge and can go berserk at any moment. You want to keep your eyes on him to see what he’s going to do next. But we understand his pain, and through his darkness we can see that he is still a good, affable person with a nice sense of humor. In the midst of a drug bust gone wrong, he even demonstrates his love for the Three Stooges. Murtaugh and his family are instantly endearing and we want to see all of them get through this dangerous situation unscathed. There is real emotional depth and humanity to the two lead characters, and it’s great to watch them bounce off of each other. To watch the progress of their working relationship and the personal bond they form.
The villains they’re up against in this film are cold bastards who think nothing of the lives they’re destroying. The fact that they target Riggs and Murtaugh and even drag Rianne into the situation makes us want to see them get taken down hard. The General is clearly a bad guy, but it’s Mister Joshua who draws most of our attention and ire. He’s the biggest threat – and almost kills Riggs long before the ending. Donner and Black knew the audience would need Mister Joshua to be taken out in a cathartic way. So we get an extended fight sequence between him and Riggs. Gibson and Busey were trained in the capoeira, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and jailhouse rock fighting styles for this confrontation. Where they beat the hell out of each other in Murtaugh’s front yard while Murtaugh and the L.A. police force stand back and watch.
Another iconic component is the musical score composed by Michael Kamen and Eric Clapton, a mixture of guitar and saxophone that represents the two leads. Clapton played guitar for Riggs’ theme, while David Sanborn plays the saxophone for Murtaugh’s theme. Kamen and Clapton had previously worked together making music for the mini-series Edge of Darkness, which is how they ended up on Lethal Weapon. Donner was using their Edge of Darkness music as the temp score for the film when he was cutting it together. Then hired them to make new music for it. They brought a unique sound that is instantly recognizable and very memorable.
And while Lethal Weapon tends to be overshadowed by Die Hard when it comes to Christmas action movies, this one does have Christmas all over it. The Murtaugh home is decorated for the holiday, complete with tree and wrapped presents. Which get demolished when Mister Joshua shows up at the house. The final moment takes place on Christmas, with Murtaugh inviting Riggs in for dinner with the family. Black has a tendency to set his stories on Christmas. As he explained to Entertainment Weekly, the holiday is a touchstone for him because it “represents a little stutter in the march of days, a hush in which we have a chance to assess and retrospect our lives. I tend to think also that it just informs as a backdrop. … Christmas is a thing of beauty, especially as it applies to places like Los Angeles, where it’s not so obvious, and you have to dig for it, like little nuggets. … All around the city are little slices, little icons of Christmas, that are as effective and beautiful in and of themselves as any 40-foot Christmas tree on the lawn of the White House.”
An early shootout takes place in a Christmas tree lot. This is one of Jeffrey Boam’s contributions to the script, as Donner was having trouble figuring out how to properly introduce Riggs. His first scene in the script saw him fighting off some thieves in a bar. That scene got cut, so the first time we see him in the movie is a simple moment where he wakes up in his trailer. Drinking and smoking, getting out of bed naked. Boam wrote a scene where he saves the dog Sam from some abusive drunks. That wasn’t even filmed. He had to have some kind of intense action moment before he’s partnered with Murtaugh, but what could it be? Black had written a scene where a sniper has set up in an elementary school. Riggs handles the situation by walking into the line of fire and taunting the guy before unloading his gun into him. Donner chose to replace this scene with the tree lot scene. Years later, Warner Bros. would release an extended cut of Lethal Weapon that they marketed as a director’s cut, even though it wasn’t. That cut of the film has both the sniper scene and the tree lot shootout, even though Donner didn’t think it worked to have them both in there.
LEGACY/NOW: Lethal Weapon warranted an extended cut release down the line because the movie was a big hit when it reached theatres in March of 1987. Made on a budget of fifteen million, it earned sixty-five million at the domestic box office. It brought in another fifty-five million internationally, ending up with a total of one hundred and twenty million. It went over well with critics, with Roger Ebert giving it a rave review, and with the general audience. Lethal Weapon was number one at the box office for three weekends in a row. Until it was dethroned by Blind Date, a comedy starring one time potential Riggs Bruce Willis.
The movie even earned an Academy Award nomination in the Best Sound Mixing Category. But it didn’t win. Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor went home with the Oscar. That movie had a two hour and forty-three minute running time, something that seems to be much more common now than it was in the 1980s. That’s part of what makes Lethal Weapon so nice to revisit all this time later: it tells a great story with twists and turns, action, and wonderful character moments. And it accomplishes all of that with a running time of just one hundred and nine minutes.
When you watch Lethal Weapon now, it’s also obvious to see why this would kick off a franchise. Despite the fact that everything is as neatly wrapped up as a Christmas present by the time the end credits start to roll. Not only was it a financial success, but it’s so successful at making you like and care about the characters that it leaves you wanting to see more of them. You want to go on more adventures with Riggs and Murtaugh, and see them continue to interact with each other. One movie with them wasn’t enough. Thankfully, Richard Donner, Mel Gibson, and Danny Glover were all on board with the idea of giving the audience more. Multiple times. So with the next episode of Revisited we’ll be looking back at Lethal Weapon 2. The sequel that brought in a fast-talking character who quickly became a fan favorite, and put our heroes up against a villain who hides behind diplomatic immunity.
More video scripts have been written, so another batch of videos will be shared here on Life Between Frames eventually. In the meantime, keep an eye on JoBlo Horror Originals and JoBlo Originals!
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