Maureen Flannigan | Through the Shattered Lens

Scott Wolf plays Clyde, a nerdy high school student who has a go-nowhere job at a burger place. Maureen Flannigan, best known for starring in Out Of This World, is Bonnie, who likes to steal stuff and have fun. Unfortunately, Bonnie’s father (played by Tom Bower) is not an avuncular alien who sounds like Burt Reynolds. Instead, he’s the extremely strict and controlling police commissioner of their hometown. Clyde like Bonnie but Bonnie wants nothing to do with him. It’s not until Clyde spies Bonnie shoplifting in a record store that he realizes that larceny is the key to her heat. When Clyde steals a van and Bonnie steals her father’s guns, the two of them head for Mexico, robbing banks, shooting guns, making love (which, judging from the comments I have found online, is the main reason the film found an audience once it started showing up on HBO) and becoming media celebrities along the way.

An attempt to do a teenage version of Bonnie and Clyde, Teenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde predates Natural Born Killers by a year with its critique of the public’s fascination with sex and violence. While the film was hurt by its low-budget, both Maureen Flannigan and Scott Wolf were ideally cast as the young lovers and the entire movie is a hundred times better than anyone would ever expect something called Teenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde to be. After being typecast of Out of this World‘s wholesome Evie, Maureen Flannigan tried to change her image with this violent film. Unfortunately, the movie ended up exiled to late night showings on HBO where it guaranteed that kids like me would never look at reruns of Out of This World the same way ever again.

Now for something completely different and not serious at all. Despite it being established several years prior by Rockwell that somebody is indeed watching you, Tiffany went ahead and covered Tommy James & The Shondells to create the definitive 80’s mall music video. Is there much to say about this? It’s so 80s it hurts. I think the only way this could be more 80s is if this were a post for The Go-Go’s Our Lips Are Sealed.

Yes, I do prefer this version to the original one. Mony Mony and Crimson and Clover are good both ways, but I really do like this one better. As for Tiffany and her sparing partner Debbie Gibson, I prefer Debbie Gibson. Something that is funny about this whole Tiffany and Debbie Gibson nonsense is that Mary Lambert who directed Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2011) with both of them also directed a few music videos you might know such as Material Girl for Madonna. In other words, we’ll see her again. That, and “Baggage” is spelled “Bag”. You don’t need the rest of the letters any more than Tiffany needs a last name.

Now because there is no good reason that I have it, here is Tiffany’s 1990 appearance on a favorite childhood sitcom of mine called Out Of This World.