Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.
This week, it’s all about dreams!
Episode 2.16 “Perchance to Dream”
(Dir by Paul Boyington, originally aired on February 4th, 1990)
Alex (Raphael Sbarge) is a college student whose dorm room has become one wild place. Blood continually drips from a chair. A subway train occasionally roars past the window. A giant nun peeks in on him and tries to swat him with a ruler. These are all images that Alex used to see in his dreams but now, they’re entering his waking world and what’s really strange is that everyone else can see them too. His subconscious has become reality.
Thinking that it might have something to do with a recent mugging in which Alex struck his head and apparently lost the ability to sleep, Alex’s girlfriend, Megan (Sarah Buxton), asks Kyle (Kenneth Danziger), an expert on dreams, for help. Arriving at Alex’s dorm room just in time to save Alex from the nun and her ruler, Kyle theorizes that, because Alex isn’t sleeping, he’s projecting his dreams into the real world. The only solution is for Alex and Megan to enter a portal that leads them straight into Alex’s subconscious. If Alex can find his dream self, he can finally get some rest. Of course, Alex and Megan will have to avoid and defeat a series of trains, muggers, and nuns to accomplish their task.
This episode is entertainingly goofy. It was obviously inspired by the popularity of the Nightmare on ElmStreet films but the monster here is not a wisecracking killer like Freddy Krueger but instead, it’s just Alex’s bad childhood memories and the trauma of having been mugged. As I watched this episode, I was impressed that Monsters tried to do something different than usual but I was also very aware that 20 minutes was not enough time to tell the story that this episode wanted to tell. For this episode to really work, the viewer would have to feel a deep connection to Alex. Raphael Sbarge gives a likable performance as Alex and he has a really cute chemistry with Sarah Buxton but 20 minutes still isn’t enough time to really get to know the guy.
When seen today, the special effects are undeniably primitive but there’s something kind of charming about that. The scene where the giant nun tries to swat Alex with a ruler looks silly today and I imagine it probably looked silly in 1990 as well but it’s a fun kind of silly. The same can be said of the scene where Alex and Megan plunge into his subconscious. CGI has come a long way but today’s realistic CGI just doesn’t have the do-it-yourself charm of early chroma keying and matte shots. I liked that Alex’s subconscious was not only goofy but cheap as well.
Last night, as I was watching the 1988 film, Miracle Mile, I found myself thinking about the fact that this film literally could not be made today.
No, it’s not because the film itself is about the treat of nuclear war. Though nuclear war may no longer be as much of a cultural obsession as it apparently was back in the 80s, the fact of the matter is that the U.S., Russia, the UK, France, and China all still have nuclear weapons. Pakistan, India, and North Korea all claim to have nuclear weapons. It’s believed that Israel also has a few. Iran is apparently working on developing an arsenal. It’s estimated that there are currently 13,865 nuclear weapons in existence, 90% of which are divided between the U.S. and Russia. That’s not even counting the threat of a terrorist group setting off a nuclear device. In short, the threat of nuclear war is still very much a real one.
Instead, what truly makes Miracle Mile stand out as a film of its time, is the fact that almost the entire plot revolves around the character of Harry (played by Anthony Edwards) answering a Los Angeles pay phone at four in the morning.
Why is Harry answering a pay phone at 4 in the morning? It’s because, earlier, he met Julie (Mare Winningham) at the La Brea Tar Pits and they fell instantly in love. After spending most of the afternoon together, they made a date to meet at the local diner where Julie worked as a waitress. Julie’s shift ended at midnight. Harry went home to get a quick nap before picking her up. Unfortunately, a power failure — one that was largely caused by Harry carelessly tossing away a cigarette — resulted in Harry’s alarm not going off. At midnight, while Julie was standing outside the diner, Harry was asleep.
Harry doesn’t wake up until well-past 3 a.m. After hastily getting dressed, Harry drives down to the diner. When he arrives, he bumps into a tree and three rats fall off the branches and land on his car, which is a bit of an ominous omen. (After watching the movie, I did a Google search and discovered that it’s actually not uncommon for rats to hang out in palm trees after dark. I had no idea. I’m glad I don’t live near any palm trees.)
By the time Harry arrives, Julie’s already gone. From the payphone outside the diner, Harry calls Julie and leaves an apologetic message on her answering machine. (Julie sleeps through it.) Within minutes of Harry hanging up, the pay phone rings again. Harry answers it, expecting to speak to Julie. Instead, he finds himself talking to a panicked soldier who was trying to call his father but who dialed the wrong area code. The soldier says that a war is about to break out and that everyone is going to die. Suddenly, Harry hears what sounds like a gunshot. Another voice gets on the phone and tells Harry to go back to sleep and forget about the call.
Of course, the reason why this story couldn’t take place in 2020 is pretty obvious to see. No one uses pay phones anymore. If the movie were made today. Harry would have just Julie on his own phone and then waited for her to call him back. The soldier would never have misdialed his father’s area code. Harry never would have gotten the message that the world was about to end and most of the subsequent events in Miracle Mile never would have happened. Harry would have just sat in the diner and had a cup of coffee and waited for Julie to call until the inevitable happened. In 2020, that would have been the movie.
So, let’s be happy that this film was made in 1988. during the time when pay phones were everywhere, because Miracle Mile is an excellent film. Miracle Mile starts out as a romantic comedy, with Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham making for an incredibly adorable couple. Then, after Harry answers that pay phone, the movie grows increasingly grim as Harry desperately tries to make his way to Julie and arrange for the two of them to board a plane that a mysterious woman (Denise Crosby) has charted for Antarctica. The problem, of course, is that in order to reach Julie, Harry is going to need the help of the type of people who are typically up and wandering around at 4 in the morning in Los Angeles. Several people die as Harry tries to make it to Julie and, smartly, the film doesn’t just shrug off their deaths. For the majority of the film, Harry isn’t even sure if there’s actually going to be an attack and it’s possible that he’s not only panicking over nothing but that he’s causing others to panic as well. People are dying because of that phone call and Harry doesn’t even know whether it was real or not. Even when full scale rioting breaks out, Harry doesn’t know if it’s because the world’s ending or because of a bad joke that he took seriously. Transitioning from romantic comedy to dark comedy, Miracle Mile eventually becomes a nightmare as it becomes obvious that, even if Harry does reach Julie, escaping the city is not going to be easy. The sun is rising and the truth is about that phone call is about to revealed….
Miracle Mile is a film that will get your heart racing. On the one hand, Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham have such a wonderful chemistry and they’re both just so damn likable that you want them to find each other and stay together. Even if it means running the risk of being incinerated in a nuclear explosion, you want Harry and Julie to be with each other. At the same time, you watch the movie with the knowledge that, even if they do manage to reunite, it might not matter because the world’s going to end. Remarkably, almost everyone who Harry talks to about the phone call believes him when he says that a war is about break out. Almost all of them have a plan to escape and, as a viewer, you get so wrapped up in the film that it’s only later that you realize that none of their plans made any sense. Hiding out in Antarctica? How exactly is that going to work? Antarctica’s not exactly a place to which you impulsively move. If there is truly no way to escape the inevitable, perhaps we should just be happy that Julie and Harry found love, even if it was right before the apocalypse.
“It was great the way her mind worked. No guilt, no doubts, no fear. None of my specialities. Just the shameless pursuit of immediate gratification. What a capitalist.” — Joel Goodson (Tom Cruise) in Risky Business (1983)
So, this is the film where Tom Cruise — playing a high school senior named Joel, who has been left at home on his own while his wealthy parents go on vacation — ends up dancing around his living room in his underwear. It’s a scene that has shown up in countless awards show montages and which has been parodied, imitated, and recreated to such an extent that even people who have never seen the movie know the scene.
Risky Business is about a lot of different things. It’s a coming-of-age film. It’s both a celebration and a satire of material excess and greed. It’s a time capsule of the 80s. It’s a comedy. It’s a drama. It’s a somewhat twisted romance. It features good performances, clever dialogue, and an excellent soundtrack. It’s a film that does for “Sometimes you just go to say, ‘What the fuck?'” what Dead Poets Society did for “Carpe Diem.”
But ultimately, for a lot of people, Risky Business is always just going to be about Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear.
And why not? It’s a great scene, one that deserves its fame. I’m not just saying that just because I happen to love dance scenes in general. When Joel celebrates having the house to himself by dancing, he’s also celebrating his independence. He’s celebrating the fact that he can do whatever he wants. He’s celebrating freedom. It’s true that sometime you just got to say, “What the fuck?” But some other times, you just have to dance.
And you can’t deny that Tom Cruise is at his most appealing and spontaneous in this scene. Actually, he’s at his most appealing and spontaneous throughout the entire film. Up until I watched Risky Business, my main impression of Tom Cruise was that he was the creepy guy who forced Katie Holmes to abandon Catholicism for Scientology and chop off her hair. I knew he was an okay actor but his greater appeal was lost on me. I think that if I had gotten to know the Tom Cruise in Risky Business before I got to know the Tom Cruise who jumped up and down on that couch and who is rumored to be the secret leader of Scientology, I might have a different opinion of him as an actor.
Anyway, with all that said, here’s that famous scene:
As I said, as famous as that scene may be, there’s actually a lot more to Risky Business than just Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear. In fact, you could remove that entire scene and Risky Business would remain one of the defining films of the 80s. It tells the story of Joel Goodson who lives up to his name in almost every way. He’s a very good son. He gets good grades in high school. He’s a member of the Future Enterprisers of America. His father has decided that Joel is going to go to Princeton and Joel isn’t one to argue. When his parents leave him alone at the house, they also leave him with a long list of rules and they have every reason to believe that Joel will follow every one of them.
But then Joel meets a prostitute named Lana (Rebecca De Mornay) and he makes an enemy out of Guido the Killer Pimp (Joe Pantoliano) and then his father’s car ends up rolling into a river and, next thing you know, Joel is partnering up with Lana to turn his house into a brothel and they’re making $8,000 in one night.
And really, as good as Tom Cruise is, Rebecca De Mornay is even better because she has a tougher role to play. As written, Lana is essentially a male fantasy figure. (And there’s still a part of me that suspect the entire film was meant to be Joel’s daydream.) But, as played by De Mornay, Lana actually becomes a real human being and someone who definitely has something important to say. If Cruise gives the film its energy and its heart, De Mornay gives the film a brain. It’s no coincidence that Joel is the one who dances in the living room while Lana is the one who sets up business deals. With her no-nonsense approach to life and her love of money, she comes to symbolize the film’s own conflicted views of wealth and success. It’s not by chance that the American flag appears on TV while Joel and Lana are fucking in the living room. Together, Joel and Lana are the perfect American success story.
Through the Shattered Lens 