On Mount Olympus, “ages ago” according to a title card, Zeus (John Rhys Davies) is displeased with his daughter Aphrodite (Wheel of Fortune letter turner Vanna White). Aphrodite, who insists on being called Venus, has refused to marry every man or God that Zeus has found for her and she even started the Trojan War. Zeus says that Venus must learn what love means before she can rejoin the Gods. He then turns her into a statue (!) and sends her down to Earth.
How is she going to learn what love means as a statue? It’s obviously a pertinent question because, thousands of years later, she’s still set in marble and standing in a museum. Two thieves wheel her out to a courtyard and leave her there so they can pick her up later. Before the thieves return, Ted Beckman (David Naughton) and his womanizing friend, Jimmy (David Leisure), wander by. For some reason, Ted slides an engagement ring on Venus’s finger. Venus comes to life. She and Ted must now fall in love for real in order for Venus to return to Mount Olympus. The only problem is that Ted is a hairdresser and he’s already engaged to marry Cathy (Amanda Bearse).
A made-for-TV movie that unsuccessfully tried to revive the acting career that Vanna White abandoned for Wheel of Fortune, Goddess of Love is a spectacularly stupid movie that attempts to disguises its threadbare plot by being extremely busy. Not only do Ted and Venus have to overcome a lack of romantic chemistry and fall in love but the two thieves are also still looking for Venus and even Little Richard shows up as one of Ted’s employees. Venus not only accidentally burns down Ted’s business but also maxes out his credit cards. Philip Baker Hall plays the detective investigating the theft of the statue and gives a performance reminiscent of his classic Bookman turn from Seinfeld. It’s dumb but Vanna herself gives a far more engaging performance than the material requires or deserves. Some of her line deliveries are a little wooden but she still radiates the natural likability that made her an unlikely celebrity in the 80s. Goddess of Love should have cast Pat Sajak as Ted. Then it would have been a classic.
The future looks a lot like a cheap music video. Due to repeated earthquakes, California is now an island and Los Angeles has been left in ruins. The city has been renamed New Angeles, even though the correct name would have been Nuevos Angeles but whatever. The important thing is that city is now a mess. The police allow the gangs to run rampant at night in return for not running rampant during the day. The nightly news, which is anchored by George Hamilton and Vanna White, is full of stories about the federal government refusing to send any more aid to California, despite the fact that Jerry Brown is the Vice President. For some reason, Andy Dick plays the weatherman and gives continual updates on the smog and rain.
Despite the fact that the city is the most dangerous place on Earth, Satori Imada (Julia Nickson) still makes the time to drive her teenage sons, Billy (Scott Wolf) and and Jimmy Lee (Mark Dacascos, who was clearly not a teenager when this film was shot) to and from their karate tournaments. However, that might all end because Sartori possesses half of a magic medallion and the evil Koga Shuko (Robert Patrick, looking oddly like Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath) has the other half. Satori gives her half of the medallion to Billy and tells him that he and his brother must keep it out of the hands of Shuko.
That’s not going to be easy because Shuko not only has control of the local gangs but also the police. Fortunately, rebel leader Marian Delario (Alyssa Milano) is willing to help out the Lee brothers. It all leads to a lot of fights, a lot of running, some campy humor, and stiffly delivered dialogue. For whatever reason, the filmmakers decided that the way to make this marital arts film a success would be to push accomplished martial artist Mark Dacascos into the background and instead focus on Scott Wolf, who spends most of the movie looking like he’s either confused by the plot or terrified as to what Double Dragon might do to his career.
Yeah, this movie is pretty stupid and the plot is pretty much impossible to follow. And yet, it is oddly entertaining in its own weird way. If you ignore the story and just focus on the visuals, it can actually be kind of fun. Look at all the bright colors. Look at Robert Patrick, with his goat-tee and his 90s pop star hair. Look at Alyssa Milano, who, surprisingly, seems to actually be in on the joke. Look at all of the Mad Max-inspired fashion choices. From a purely visual point of view, New Angeles is a huge improvement on Los Angeles. Along with the film visuals, the film is also worth watching just so one can witness just how over-the-top Robert Patrick goes in his performance. I don’t normally think of Patrick as being someone who chews the scenery but, in this film, he gives into every cartoonish impulse that he has and it’s actually a lot of fun to watch. There’s not a moment of subtlety to be found in either his performance or Alyssa Milano’s and thank the Angels for that. Finally, I have to appreciate the fact that the film’s main message appears to be that the government and all other forms of civil authority are basically useless. Not even Vice President Jerry Brown can be bothered to help out the people of New Angeles. That pretty much tells you all that you need to know.
In the end, Double Dragon is not a particularly good film but it’s fun in its own deeply dumb way.
For the past week, we’ve been doing Back T0 School here at the Shattered Lens: 76 high school and teen film reviews, all posted in chronological order. We started with two films released in 1946 and now, we’ve finally reached the golden age of teen films: the 1980s.
You really can’t take a look at 80s teen films without reviewing at least one slasher film. With the twin box office successes of Halloween in 1978 and Friday the 13th in 1980, there were literally hundreds of slasher films released in the early 80s. Since those films were specifically targeted towards a teen audience, it’s not surprising that quite a few of them took place in high school. And, since the majority of these films were also low-budget affairs, we also should not be surprised that the majority of them were filmed in Canada. In other words, this would appear to be the perfect opportunity for me to review my favorite Canadian slasher film, Prom Night! However, I’ve already reviewed that film so, instead, let’s take a look at the next best thing.
First released in 1981, Graduation Day has a great opening. Various good-looking teenagers compete in athletic activities. One guy throws the shot put. Another one does the pole vault. A dark-haired girl does gymnastics. In the stands, other teenagers cheer and smile because apparently, they’re really into the shot put. Standing on the sidelines, Coach Michaels (Christopher George) shouts things like, “GO! GO! GO!” Laura Ramstead (Ruth Ann Llorens) runs the 100 meter race. “GO, LAURA, GO! 30 SECONDS LAURA!” Coach Michaels shouts. We get a close-up of a stop watch. Then we get a close-up of Laura running. Then we get a close-up of everyone in the stands cheering insanely. And then a close-up of …. well, let’s just say there’s a lot of close-ups. Laura crosses the finish line and then collapses dead of a heart attack. What makes this montage of competition, cheering, and death all the more fascinating is that there’s a wonderfully bad song playing in the background. “Everybody wants to be a winner!” the singer tells us. And I guess that’s true…
Anyway, jump forward a few months and now, mere days before high school graduation, somebody with a stop watch is killing the members of the track team! What’s interesting about this is, despite the fact that they’re the only targets of this killer, we really don’t get to know much about any of the members of the team. By that I mean that most of them are only really seen three times in the movie: during the opening credits, when they die, and then at the end of the movie when their bodies are discovered. One of them — a blonde girl — is only seen twice, reportedly because the actress playing her got mad and walked off the movie before her death scene was filmed. Hence, we only see her at the start of the film and then at the end of the film when another character stumbles over her head. (In a move that would be copied by Tommy Wiseau in The Room, director Herb Freed gave all of her lines and her death scene to a totally new character, played by future horror mainstay Linnea Quigley.) The end result may be the only slasher film where the victims themselves are all largely red herrings.
Instead, Graduation Day spends the majority of its time with the possible suspects. Graduation Day came out at a time when the North American slasher film was still largely influenced by Italian giallo films and, as a result, the film is structured like a whodunit. When we see the killer, all we see are the black gloves that he or she wears whenever committing murder. So, who could the killer be?
Could it be Laura’s grieving and bitter boyfriend, Kevin (E. Danny Murray), who appears to be in his 40s but is apparently a high school student?
Could it be the grieving and bitter Coach Michaels, who is being forced to retire as a result of Laura’s death?
Could it be Laura’s sister, Anne (Patch McKenzie), who knows karate and always seems to pop up right before anyone is murdered?
Could it be the principal (Michael Pataki), who is automatically a suspect just because he’s played by Michael Pataki?
Or maybe it’s the school’s music teacher, who is fat, balding and wears a powder blue leisure suit?
Or maybe it’s the school security guard, MacGregor (Virgil Frye), who says stuff like, “I could hurt you bad if I put my mind to it!”
Or maybe it’s Felony, the band that shows up to play at some sort of weird pre-graduation roller skating party? Felony — which was an actual band that apparently had one hit in the early 80s — plays a 10-minute song called Gangster Rock. Now, personally, I happen to really like the song so I’m going to include it below. Be warned that, while Felony was performing, the unseen killer managed to kill both Linnea Quigley and her boyfriend, so watch at your own discretion.
How much you enjoy Graduation Day is going to depend on who you see it with. Like most of the early 80s slasher films, Graduation Day is a film that’s best viewed with a group of your most snarky friends. As a group, you can consider such oddities as the fact that, though the film takes place in a large high school, it appears that there’s only about 40 students in the graduating class. You can point out that every single character in the film appears to be a potential homicidal maniac. You can enjoy the nonstop bitterness of Christopher George’s performance. You can talk about different your graduation day was from the one shown in this film. You can argue about who the killer is and then, at the end of the film, you can wonder how someone that stupid could have managed to kill 7 people in one day without anyone ever noticing. Even better, you can all get up and dance to Gangster Rock, just like the doomed characters in the film.
On Mount Olympus, “ages ago” according to a title card, Zeus (John Rhys Davies) is displeased with his daughter Aphrodite (Wheel of Fortune letter turner Vanna White). Aphrodite, who insists on being called Venus, has refused to marry every man or God that Zeus has found for her and she even started the Trojan War. Zeus says that Venus must learn what love means before she can rejoin the Gods. He then turns her into a statue (!) and sends her down to Earth.
Through the Shattered Lens 