Michael Cummings | Through the Shattered Lens

On February 22nd, 1980, the U.S. Olympic Hockey team pulled off one of the greatest upsets in sports history when they defeated the Soviet team during the Winter Olympics. At a time when America was struggling under Jimmy Carter and the Soviet Union appeared to be winning the propaganda war, a group of unheralded college students brought the U.S. together in celebration as they defeated the Soviets and then went on to defeat Finland for the gold medal.

Everyone knows that the Miracle On Ice, as it was called, served as the basis of the Disney film Miracle, with Kurt Russell playing coach Herb Brooks. What is now forgotten is that the story was first recreated in 1981, with a made-for-tv movie called Miracle On Ice. Who played Herb Brooks in that movie?

Karl Malden.

Keep in mind, Herb Brooks was 42 years-old when the U.S. team defeated the Soviets and he was a former player himself. Malden was 69 when he starred in Miracle On Ice and didn’t look like he had ever worn skates in his life. Malden is convincingly grumpy and hard-nosed as Brooks but he’s still very miscast and the movie misses the point that one of the reasons why Brooks could coach the young American team was because he was still relatively young himself. The actors playing the members of the team are better cast, with Andrew Stevens playing team leader Mike Eruzione and Steve Guttenberg cast as goalie Jim Craig. A lot of time is devoted to Craig’s financial difficulties and his fear that remaining an amateur for the Olympics, instead of going pro, will continue to make life difficult for his family. On the one hand, it is messed up that the U.S., at the time, did not allow its Olympians to turn professional. On the other hand, the fact all of the players were considered to be “amateurs’ made their victory over the Soviets all the more special.

It takes a while for Miracle on Ice to get to the main event. There’s a lot of scenes of Brooks dealing with everyone’s skepticism and Eurozione trying to keep the players from giving up in the face of the Soviet Union’s previous domination of the game. Once the movie does finally reach the Winter Olympics, it relies on actual footage from the game, which is actually pretty cool. Watching the real footage, you can still feel the growing excitement in both the stadium and the broadcast booth as people started to realize that the American team was going to pull it off and defeat the Soviets. It’s impossible not to be inspired by the Soviet Union getting humiliated by a bunch of American college players. The Soviets may have had the performance enhancing drugs but the Americans had the spirit!

Of the two films about America’s victory, Miracle is definitely the one to see but Miracle On Ice still pays tribute to a great moment.

YouTube, my old friend, you have failed me.

For the longest time, the 1982 anti-drug melodrama Desperate Lives has been available for viewing on YouTube. I first watched it two years ago, after I read an online article about a scene in which a teenage Helen Hunt takes PCP and jumps through a window. And, when I watched it, I was stunned. I knew that the film was going to be over-the-top and silly, largely because it’s hard to imagine how a film featuring a teenage Helen Hunt taking PCP could be anything other than that. But, even with my experience of watching over the top message movies, nothing could have quite prepared me for Desperate Lives.

So, I figured, for this review, that I’d say a few snarky words about Desperate Lives and then I’d just add something like, “And you can watch it below!” And then I would embed the entire movie and all of y’all could just click on play and watch a movie on the Lens.

Unfortunately, Desperate Lives has been taken off of YouTube. I assume the upload violated some sort of copyright thing. And really, it’s kinda stupid because seriously, Desperate Lives is one of those films that really deserves to be seen for free on YouTube.

Oh well. You can still watch a video of Helen Hunt jumping through that window. The video below also features some additional elements from Desperate Lives.

For instance, you get to see Diana Scarwid playing the angriest high school guidance counselor in the world. Scarwid knows that students like Helen Hunt are using drugs and that her fellow faculty members are turning a blind eye to everything’s that’s happening. From the minute she first appears on screen, Scarwid is shouting at someone and she doesn’t stop screaming until the film ends.

And you also get to see Doug McKeon, playing Helen Hunt’s brother. McKeon goes for a drive with his girlfriend, who has just taken PCP herself. As their car goes flying off a mountain, she says, “Wheeee!”

In the video below, you also get to see that the only reason Helen Hunt used drugs was because her boyfriend begged her to. That’s a scenario that seems to show up in a lot of high school drug films and it’s strange because it’s something that I’ve never actually seen happen or heard about happening in real life. In fact, in real life, most users of hard drugs are actually very happy to not share their supply.

Unfortunately, the video below does not feature any scenes of Sam Bottoms as the world’s most charming drug dealer and that’s a shame because he gives the only good performance in the entire film (sorry, Helen!).

Even worse, the video doesn’t include any scenes from the film’s memorably insane conclusion, in which Scarwid searches every single locker in the school and then interrupts a pep rally so she can set everyone’s stash on fire in the middle of the gym. Making it even better is that all the students are so moved by Scarwid’s final speech that they start tossing all of the drugs that they have on them into the fire.

Which means that the film essentially ends with the entire school getting high off of a huge marijuana bonfire.

No, that scene cannot be found in the video below. But you can find Helen Hunt jumping through a window so enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEpyLzHeozY