THE MOVIE OF MY LIFE PHASE ONE: Candidates for 1980

Welcome to the 80‘s!  I’m pretty sure I’m going almost to the ends of Queens, as I was expelled from Benjamin Cardoza and transferred to Springfield Gardens--a school that was primarily black.  This, oddly enough, resulted in me not getting into as many fights as I made friends with one of the members of the Wrestling Squad.  I also got mugged for the first time; the mugger only made away with a package of Trident.  I am pretty deep into my community theater phase, and discovered my love of musicals.  I’m also watching a lot of movies...

...which is why I might put stuff on here I did see in its original run.  Some of them I have only hazy memories of, and some I have forgotten entirely except I know I saw them.  So keep that in mind from this time out.

THE APPLE

I’ve already established that I love musicals, and 1980 is usually associated with Xanadu, the roller disco musical that featured Olivia Newton-John as a Greek muse and Michael Beck as a man killing his career.  But true weird musical fanatics know about this, a Canon Films joint that tells a...Biblical Creation Myth? with strange disco music, hippies and people walking around with this triangular prismatic sticker on their forehead.  I want to experience it with the more educated eyes I now possess.

THE NINTH CONFIGURATION

I watched Exorcist III: Legion for last year’s Halloween Horrorfest.  It was the other, more famous film directed by writer William Peter Blatty.  I was so impressed by that film, I want to see this, his first effort.  It’s supposedly a black comedy about a hospital after the Vietnam War which tries an unusual treatments towards its patients, all of whom are suffering from PTSD.  It’s also got an interesting cast for a lover of character actors like me, featuring Stacy Keach, Jason Miller, Neville Brand, Moses Gunn, Tom Atkins, and others.

THE STUNT MAN

Okay, this one I almost saw, as I tried to go to a revival screening of it at a theater in Times Square (it’s now a visitor center)...and was promptly told that the pass I received was no longer valid because the person who issued it had apparently ripped off the company that was operating the theater.  It’s supposedly a weird metaphysical thriller where Steve Railsback (he of the Most Punchable Face) is on the run and becomes a stunt man for Peter O’Toole’s maniacal director--who may be more than a director.  I have always been intrigued by this film and want to finally see it.


THE GONG SHOW MOVIE

This is a strange one--a TV tie-in based on a bizarrely cynical reboot of the classic talent show, and apparently focused primarily on its creator and host, Chuck Barris--who is a cynical and bizarre person himself, judging from his disputed autobiography(?) Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (which was turned into a great movie by George Clooney featuring Sam Rockwell as Barris).  Even though TV tie-ins were common in the 60‘s, they had died out by 1980...which makes this a strange outlier.  I loved The Gong Show (not enough to watch the neutered version featuring Mike Meyers playing an English stereotype), and I am super-curious what they managed to do to take up a feature film.

Please head over to my Twitter Page and vote on which film you’d like to see me view and review in the coming weeks.  This may be the strangest collection of candidates, so I’m curious as to what ends up the winner.

Oh...and if you’re wondering, I have seen Murder By Decree, the winner from last year, and will post my thoughts in the next few days.

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