Embracing the Melodrama Part II #71: Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction (dir by Paul Wendkos)

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Now, I originally saw the 1983 made-for-TV movie Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction on Netflix so I have absolutely no first hand knowledge of how this film was advertised. However, I have it on very good authority (i.e., I read it on another blog) that the image above is from the film’s VHS packaging.

Just looking at this image, you would be justified in thinking that Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction was an early David Cronenberg film. Seriously, it looks like a deleted scene from Scanners and Dennis Weaver’s head is about to explode.

But no! There are no scanners in Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction. David Cronenberg did not direct this film. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t even filmed in Canada. Instead, Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction is about one man who gets seduced cocaine.

You may have noticed that I enjoy reminding you that this film is called Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction. That’s because that’s a great title. If the film had just been called Cocaine, you might watch the film expecting it to be set on a 1970s film set. And if the film had just been called One Man’s Seduction, viewers may have watched the film expecting a Double Indemnity–style film noir. But Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction leaves no doubt about what we’re about to see.

Add to that, it’s a very melodramatic title and the name of this series of reviews is, after all, Embracing the Melodrama Part 2!

Anyway, Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction is about a real estate agent named Eddie Grant (Dennis Weaver). He’s the type of semi-successful white-collar suburban guy who you just know is going to have a really over-the-top midlife crisis. He has a wife (Karen Grassle) who loves him. He has a son (James Spader — yes, that James Spader!) who wants to put off going to college for a year. Eddie also has a job where he’s viewed as being an over-the-hill relic. People looking to buy a new home simply are not impressed with Eddie’s cheap suits, mild manner, and old-fashioned scotch-after-work style.

What Eddie needs is a new wardrobe and aviator sunglasses. And, as we all know from watching movies set in the 70s and 80s, nothing gets you into aviator sunglasses faster than snorting a line of coke.

Soon, Eddie is driving a fast car, he’s wearing nicer suits, and he’s keeping a lot of secrets. Then, one day, his son — JAMES SPADER! — happens to look inside Eddie’s shave kit and discovers where dad has been hiding his cocaine.

Now, this is where I was expecting Jeff VanVondern to show up and say, ” I see a bunch of people that love you like crazy and they feel like they are losing you. And they wanna fight to get you back.” But apparently, people in the 80s did not need an intervention to get them to go to rehab. Instead, they just needed to have a dramatic nose bleed at work and nearly overdose on someone else’s kitchen floor. They also needed to be called out by James Spader.

Of course, it also helps that Eddie is friends with a recovering cocaine addict who is played by a very thin-but-already-bald Jeffrey Tambor. Jeffrey Tambor is already something of a hyperactive actor (and that’s why we love him!) so when you combine that natural tendency with a character who is supposed to be coked up, it’s something that simply has to be seen.

Anyway, Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction is a fairly good example of the-worst-that-can-happen-will-happen cinema. If nothing else, it has some worth as a time capsule and it’s undeniably interesting to see James Spader play a role that one would normally never associate with James Spader.

Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction is currently seducing viewers on Netflix.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #70: Staying Alive (dir by Sylvester Stallone)

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh my God, this is so bad.

The 1983 film Staying Alive is a sequel to Saturday Night Fever. That’s right, Tony Manero’s back! And, if possible, he’s even dumber than before.

Actually, that’s not fair. The whole point of Saturday Night Fever was that Tony really was not that dumb. He was poorly educated. He was a prisoner of his culture and his economic situation. If he acted stupid, it was because he lived in a world that distrusted intelligence. If he was selfish, it was because that was his way of dealing with his own insecurities. If we got frustrated with him, it’s because we knew he was capable of more than he realized he was. In Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta gave such good performance and Tony was such a carefully drawn character that we forgave him for the many times that he let us down.

But, in Staying Alive, Tony is just an idiot. Somehow, he’s managed to escape Brooklyn. He now works as a waiter and a dance instructor and goes on auditions for Broadway shows. He has no contact with his old friends. (He never even mentions the night that one of them jumped off a bridge.) He lives in one of those scary New York flophouses — apparently the same one that Travis Bickle called home in Taxi Driver — but otherwise, Tony’s doing pretty well for himself. The only problem is that Tony is now a complete and total moron.

That really is the only conclusion that one can draw from John Travolta’s performance here. It’s not just that Travolta gives a bad performance in a role for which he was once nominated for an Oscar. It’s that Travolta gives such a bad performance that he actually transcends the accepted definition of bad. He resurrects all the tics from his Saturday Night Fever performance but he goes so overboard with them that you feel like you’re watching someone do an imitation of John Travolta playing Tony Manero than actually watching John Travolta.

Speaking of self-parody, Staying Alive was directed by Sylvester Stallone. Now, I know that when you think of the ideal director for a dance movie, Sylvester Stallone is probably the first name that comes to mind.

As for the film itself, Tony gets a job working in the chorus of a Broadway show called Satan’s Alley and, wouldn’t you know it, he eventually replaces the male lead. Tony finds himself torn between the bitchy (and, somewhat inevitably, British) star of the show (Finola Hughes) and his long-suffering, on-and-off again girlfriend Jackie (Cynthia Rhodes).

Jackie, incidentally, is also the lead singer in a band. The band’s guitarist, Carl, is in love with her. Guess who plays Carl? Frank Stallone! That’s right, the director’s brother. There is a hilarious scene where Carl plays guitar while shooting a death glare at Tony. Frank really nails that death glare.

But, ultimately, the main appeal of Staying Alive is that we get to see Satan’s Alley, which is probably the most unintentionally hilarious fake Broadway show to ever be immortalized on film. Satan’s Alley is about one man’s journey into Hell and… well, that really sums it up, doesn’t it? If you asked someone who has never danced, never listened to music, and perhaps never actually stepped outside of their bedroom to write a Broadway musical, chances are that they would come up with something like Satan’s Alley.

And they’d probably cast Tony Manero as the lead!

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #69: Bad Boys (dir by Rick Rosenthal)

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First off, I am not about to review the Michael Bay film where Will Smith and Martin Lawrence shoot people and blow things up. Instead, this Bad Boys is a film from 1983 where Sean Penn doesn’t shoot anyone but that’s mostly because he can’t get his hands on a gun. And, at one point, a radio does blow up. So, perhaps this Bad Boys has more in common with the Michael Bay Bad Boys than I originally realized.

Anyway, Bad Boys is about Mick O’Brien (Sean Penn), who is a 16 year-old criminal from Chicago. One night, when one of his crimes goes wrong, Mick’s best friend (Alan Ruck) is killed and Mick accidentally runs over the brother of rival gang leader, Paco (Esai Morales). Mick is sent to juvenile detention where he and his sociopathic cellmate, Horowitz (Eric Gurry), team up to overthrow the two “leaders” of their block, Viking (Clancy Brown, with scary blonde hair) and Tweety (Robert Lee Rush). Meanwhile, Paco is arrested for raping Mick’s girlfriend, JC (Ally Sheedy), and soon finds himself living on the same cell block as Mick.

And it all leads to … violence!

(In the movies, everything leads to violence.)

Bad Boys is one of those films that seems to show up on cable at the most random of times. I’ve never quite understood why because it’s not like Bad Boys is a particularly great film. It’s hard to see anything about this film that would lead a programmer to say, “Let’s schedule 100 airings of Bad Boys!” If anything, it’s the epitome of a good but not that good film. On the one hand, you have to appreciate a film that attempts to take a serious look at both juvenile crime and the true life consequences of tossing every “lawbreaker” into a cell and locking the door. People fetishize the idea of punishing criminals but they rarely consider whether those punishments actually accomplish anything beyond satisfying society’s obsessive need for revenge. (And it’s interesting to note that the problems of 1983 are not that much different from the problems of 2015.) On the other hand, Bad Boys is way too long, heavy-handed, and repetitive. This was one of Sean Penn’s first roles and, much like the film itself, he’s good without being that good. Watching his performance, you get the feeling that James Dean would say, “Nice try.”

However, the film is saved by two actor. First off, there’s Clancy Brown as the stupid but intimidating Viking. With his bad skin, blonde hair, and a permanent snarl on his face, Brown makes Viking into a character who is both ludicrous and scary. And then there’s Eric Gurry as the small and demonic Horowitz. According to his imdb page, Gurry long ago retired from acting but anybody who sees Bad Boys will never forget him.