Sex, Rock, and Confusion

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

Music, comedy, drama, and tarantulas.

EMPIRE RECORDS (1995)

The coming-of-age comedy drama Empire Records was released with two different Portuguese titles in Brazil, one of them being reasonably close to its original title and the tone of the film. It translates to Empire of Records: A Very Crazy Store. The other Brazilian title is more random, translating to Sex, Rock, and Confusion – which almost makes it seem like a companion piece to the 1993 comedy drama Dazed and Confused, which was released as (in Portuguese) Young, Crazy, and Rebellious in Brazil. This inadvertent connection is somewhat fitting, since Empire Records and Dazed and Confused both happen to be music-fuelled coming-of-age stories with Rory Cochrane and Renee Zellweger in the cast.

They’re also both deeply nostalgic movies. Dazed and Confused was nostalgic from the start, a ‘93 release that was set in 1976. Empire Records has become nostalgic over time. When it was released, it was a reflection of the present day. Now, more than thirty years later, it’s a cinematic time capsule. It’s a film that is thoroughly of its time, and therefore can mentally transport viewers back to that time for 90 minutes. If you want to experience the ‘90s, Empire Records is a great representation of what was going on with the youth at that time, along with other things like Scream and the early works of Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy). That was it. I was there and can confirm. I spent the years of 6 to 16 in the ‘90s. Oddly, I don’t have nostalgia for the ‘90s, as I didn’t like that decade very much when I was experiencing it. Instead, my focus is on the decade I spent the first six years of my life in, the ‘80s. But if you like the ‘90s, these movies can take you there. Of course, the movies are the idealized version of the decade. We didn’t really have Jay and Silent Bob causing mischief at our local mall, we didn’t have Rex Manning Day or epic block parties that saved endangered record stores... but we wanted to.

Directed by Allan Moyle from a script by Carol Heikkinen (a former Tower Records / Tower Video employee), Empire Records is set almost entirely in and around the title location, a record store somewhere in Delaware (although the filming location was in North Carolina). At this store, we meet store manager Joe (Anthony LaPaglia), who is trying to save his store from a corporate takeover that will turn it into another link in the Music Town chain, and his employees: Lucas (Rory Cochrane), who blows $9000 of the store’s money by trying to quadruple it in Atlantic City; Debra (Robin Tunney), who is severely depressed; brooding nice guy A.J. (Johnny Whitworth); stoner Mark (Ethan Embry, then Ethan Randall); laid-back Eddie (James ‘Kimo’ Wills); musician Berko (Coyote Shivers); the uninhibited Gina (Renee Zellweger); and overachieving high schooler Corey (Liv Tyler, who was then the stepdaughter of Coyote Shivers), who has decided that today is going to be the day she loses her virginity.

That’s because it’s Rex Manning Day. Cheeseball musician Rex Manning (Maxwell Caulfield) is coming to Empire Records for an autograph session, and Corey plans to offer herself to him during his lunch break. 

But nothing goes as expected on Rex Manning Day. Secrets are revealed, love is confessed, there’s a shoplifter (Brenda Sexton), there’s a block party, tears are shed, fun is had, and viewers are left to wonder why exactly this store needs so many employees and how it could have brought in $9000 (the money Lucas lost) in one average day.

Made on a budget of $10 million, Empire Records was a box office failure when it was released in ‘95, earning just $303,841 during its theatrical run. It found its audience on video, though, and has come to be known as a cult classic. These days, there are even frequent public screenings of the film held at its filming location in North Carolina. Fans have been celebrating Rex Manning Day every year for decades.

TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO (1977)

The TV movie Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo first aired on CBS on December 28, 1977, so it had been around for well over forty years by the time I crossed paths with it, broadcast on an episode of the horror host show Svengoolie. I was hyped going into this one, as I tend to enjoy “nature run amok” movies like this... but it didn’t go as well as I hoped it would.

Things get off to a promising start, with Tom Atkins and Howard Hesseman playing a pair of pilots who are flying out of Ecuador with a large load of coffee beans. But that’s not the cargo they’re really getting paid to transport; those beans have been rotting in a warehouse for two years. The real cargo is a trip of illegal aliens they’re smuggling into the United States. Unfortunately for everyone on board, the coffee beans are infested with spiders. And even though the title tells us they’re tarantulas, the movie itself will reveal that they’re banana spiders, “the most aggressive and venomous spider in the world.” Everyone on the plane finds out that’s the truth, and they have a crash-landing on the outskirts of the orange-producing town of Finleyville, California.

The sequence on the plane went on a bit too long, but things really get bumpy after the crash, as director Stuart Hagmann and writers John Groves and Guerdon Trueblood decided to show us, in excruciating detail, exactly how the citizens and authority figures of Finleyville deal with having a downed plane in their field. This stretch of the movie feels like it goes on forever. Thankfully, we eventually do get out of that field and away from the plane wreckage, as the deadly spiders spread out across Finleyville.

Some of the residents get bitten and killed along the way, but don’t expect those scenes to be very exciting. And when a woman on a picnic is gleefully running her fingers and bare feet through the dirt and fallen leaves around the blanket, how does she think that’s not going to end with her getting bitten by something? 

Mayor Douglas (Bert Remsen) is more concerned about the latest orange harvest than anything else, but some of the locals – like Claude Akins as Bert Springer and young couple Joe Harmon (Charles Frank) and Cindy Beck (Deborah Winters – realize there are dangerous spiders in town and start formulating a plan of how to deal with them. As it turns out, these spiders can be rendered immobile if they hear the sound of their predators, wasps. So the townspeople end up amplifying the sound of wasps buzzing for another sequence that goes on too long and gets highly irritating because we have to listen to this buzzing sound for many minutes straight.

Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo had me hooked instantly with its basic concept, but the execution of the idea was almost more deadly than the spiders are. Still, I can’t hate on it too hard, though. It’s a ‘70s horror TV movie and I have a recording of it being hosted by Svengoolie, so there’s a chance I’ll be watching it again someday. Next time, I’ll just know not to expect very much from it.

SCENES FROM THE GOLDMINE (1987)

It’s a tale as old as the music business: a musician tries to find success in the industry and discovers that it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. Scenes from a Goldmine tells a story that’s so familiar, you’d think it’s a biopic, but it just happens to a biopic about a group of musicians who never existed. 

Directed by Marc Rocco, who wrote the script with Danny Eisenberg and John Norvet, the film centers on a young woman named Debi DiAngelo (Catherine Mary Stewart), who gets the opportunity to audition as the keyboard player for a rock band headed up by Niles Dresden (Cameron Dye). One problem: Niles neglected to tell the current keyboard player, Stephanie (Pamela Springsteen), that she was being replaced, so she comes storming in during the middle of Debi’s audition. Niles doesn’t even acknowledge the upset young woman – and rather than taking that as a major red flag, Debi accepts the keyboard player gig when it’s offered to her.

Debi also makes the mistake of embarking on a romantic relationship with Niles. She wants to be a successful musician, but that’s not enough for Niles. He wants to achieve rock star status. A sleazy record executive (played by Joe Pantoliano) gives him the shot – and when that exec suggests, while snorting lines of cocaine, that Niles should ditch the rest of the band and sign as a solo artist, he gives it serious consideration. He even throws over his own brother, band manager Harry Spiros (Steve Railsback), for his chance at stardom.

And he screws over Debi by stealing some of the songs she has been writing. That, as you would expect, brings a lot of drama into their relationship. There are plenty of subplots going on in Scenes from a Goldmine – Debi has a pregnant friend (Jewel Shepard), a disapproving father (Alex Rocco, the real-life adoptive father of the film’s director), and a drug-addicted brother (Mark Michaels) – but the main gist of the film is that Niles is a scumbag. And if Debi couldn’t tell that from the way he treated Stephanie, she should have at least been able to tell from his awful hair-do.

The general consensus seems to be that Scenes from the Goldmine is a “decent watch,” and that’s a read I can go along with. It’s not great, but it is absolutely watchable. And you get to listen to some cool music along the way.

UP THE CREEK (1984)

Comedy movies can be tricky to put together. If a comedy has the wrong director at the helm, working with the wrong editor, jokes can land with a thud instead of stirring up laughs. There are a lot of comedies out there that just don’t work because of the director and/or the editor... and according to Jim Kouf, who crafted the story for the 1984 comedy Up the Creek with Jeff Sherman and Douglas Grossman, Robert Butler "was not a great comedy director; he missed a lot of jokes." This despite the fact that Butler had episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Hogan’s Heroes, and Batman on his résumé.

I can’t argue with Kouf, though, because I did find that most of the jokes in Up the Creek landed with a thud. Still, there was something charming about the movie that made it watchable for me. And, of course, it was helped out by the fact that it was made in the 1980s, and I have a soft spot for the ‘80s.

Tim Matheson and Stephen Furst have an Animal House reunion here, playing college students Bob McGraw and Gonzer. Along with Dan Monahan as Max and Sandy Helberg as Irwin, they attend the worst college in the United States, Lepetomane University, a.k.a. Lobotomy U. And they are the worst students there. These are the four worst students in the entire country, and Dean Burch (John Hillerman) recruits them to compete in a collegiate raft race in exchange for degrees in the major of their choice.

Most of the film’s 96 minutes follow their experiences in the raft race as they go up against a bunch of cheaters from a prep school, overzealous soldiers from a military school, and other opponents. Along the way, they also get mixed up with a group of female students that includes Julia Mongomery from Revenge of the Nerds, Romy Windsor from Howling IV, and Jennifer Runyon from Ghostbusters and The In Crowd. It’s Runyon’s character who winds up becoming a love interest for Matheson’s Bob and joining the Lobotomy U crew on their way to the finish line.

Another rafter who has to be mentioned is Bob’s dog Chuck the Wonder Dog, who’s played by Jake, a cool canine actor who racked up a lot of credits from 1984 into 1990. Jake may be best remembered as the dog who pisses fire in a nightmare sequence from A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, leading into the resurrection of dream-stalking slasher Freddy Krueger.

Somehow, this goofball movie had a budget of $7.5 million, which was the most that legendary producer Samuel Z. Arkoff – whose career stretched back to the start of the 1950s – had spent on a movie up to that point. That wasn’t a particularly good business decision, as Up the Creek only made $11 million at the box office... but people are still watching it more than 40 years later (and more than 20 years after Arkoff passed away), so isn’t that what really matters in the long run?

Up the Creek isn’t as funny as you might hope, but it’s a mildly entertaining trip back to the ‘80s.