What Were We Renting? 11/28/85

The New Music Friday offerings tend to get a bit thin between Thanksgiving and the end of the year, and today's playlist was no exception to that rule. I've got eight songs I feel like recommending, but I think I'll hold off until tomorrow; in the meantime, this feels like a Friday night that might be better spent reliving the Domino's-and-VCR era. Let's be kind and rewind together:

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment
The first few spots on this week's rental chart are impossible to argue with; after that, the slide is steep and fast. Coming in at No. 7, right behind The Killing Fields, we have the first of many disposable sequels to what was already a very disposable (albeit admittedly fairly charming) T&A comedy about inept rookie cops bumbling their way through training.

The original, released in 1984, grossed roughly $150 million against a budget that came in just under $5 million, so a sequel was a foregone conclusion — and given that the movie in question followed a pack of doofuses through the police academy, it couldn't have taken more than a few minutes to come up with the idea for Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment. Like Friday the 13th, the Police Academy series proved an annual fixture at the box office for much of the '80s, with each installment subject to the law of (extreme) diminishing returns; in retrospect, there's really nothing wrong with either of them, as long as you know what you're getting yourself into and lower your expectations accordingly. For hardcore fans of the franchise — I assume they must exist — Their First Assignment is notable for serving as the introduction of Bobcat Goldthwait's character, Zed McGlunk; for everyone else, it was a safe-looking fallback if you were at the video store on a Friday night in 1985 and they were all out of Beverly Hills Cop or Ghostbusters.

The Sure Thing
Between the stone cold classics This Is Spın̈al Tap and Stand by Me, Rob Reiner detoured into teen comedy with The Sure Thing, which sort of crept through theaters in 1985 despite a talented cast and largely positive reviews.

This movie's relative overperformance on the home video market might go some way toward explaining why leading man John Cusack kept getting chances to prove himself throughout the mid-to-late '80s despite whiffing pretty much every time out. As a supporting player, he tended to find his way into top-flight stuff (Class, Stand by Me), but anytime anyone asked him to carry a picture, the results were commercially disappointing: After The Sure Thing, he starred in Better Off Dead, One Crazy Summer, Tapeheads, and Say Anything..., all of which underperformed at the box office. Of course, most of those movies are now cult favorites, and the last one's a classic, so this isn't to say Cusack was making shitty movies, just that he was granted a pretty long leash early in his career.

Anyway, The Sure Thing is basically an '80s spring break update on It Happened One Night, with Cusack enduring a bickering road trip with the object of his affection (Daphne Zuniga) while traveling a great distance to be with a "sure thing" his buddy has lined up for him (Nicollette Sheridan). Reiner has said any similarities between the two are accidental, but come on; the only thing this movie's missing in order to be considered a loose remake is a reference to the walls of Jericho. That being said, like just about everything Reiner touched up 'til North, it's sweet anc charming, and well worth your few bucks in 1985 rental money.

Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend
Poor William Katt. He and his agents must have thought his early breakout role in Carrie would lead to bigger and better things, but it did not; a handful of years later, his starring role in the TV series The Greatest American Hero helped spawn a hit single, but really did absolutely nothing for his career. I mean, that isn't entirely true — it did get him back on the big screen, but not in anything that did him any real favors.

Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend was his first post-Hero picture, and through no fault of Katt's own, it was one of the bigger bombs of the year. The main problem was that Baby was a kids' flick that was really too intense for a lot of its target demographic, but not cool or exciting enough for anyone else — and it was also pretty expensive, due to the special effects associated with a picture about a paleontologist (Sean Young) and her husband (Katt) traveling to Africa and coming across a freaking brontosaurus. After Baby lumbered to extinction at the box office, Katt returned to theaters later in '85 with the similarly underperforming House; by the turn of the decade, he was starring in straight-to-video softcore stuff like Last Call.

Rustlers' Rhapsody
Remember how we were just talking about Police Academy making a ton of money in 1984? Well, that film's director, Hugh Wilson, parlayed his sudden success into Rustlers' Rhapsody, a comedic spin on the well-established conventions of the Western. If that sounds like Blazing Saddles to you, well, you aren't alone — but Hugh Wilson was no Mel Gibson, and Rhapsody star Tom Berenger is no Gene Wilder. There's nothing really wrong with Wilson's basic concept here — there's plenty to send up in the Western world — but where Brooks opted for pointed social commentary couched in scatological humor, Wilson took a much gentler, more affectionate approach to the material, to the point that the movie, rather than provoking belly laughs, just sort of ambles along. It's good-natured enough, but never makes a convincing enough case for 88 minutes of your attention.

On the other hand, it does feature co-starring performances from Andy Griffith and Marilu Henner (who earned one of her two Razzie nominations for the year with this film). The sight of those two sharing the screen might be worth a watch.

9 Deaths of the Ninja
VHS rentals started out as a way to experience (or re-experience) theatrical titles, but before too long, the rental market shifted toward an equal emphasis on stuff that would either never attract wide theatrical distribution or people would feel actively embarrassed about purchasing a ticket to see. 9 Deaths of the Ninja is probably a little of both — this type of grindhouse-indebted genre fare had largely receded to the fringes by the mid-'80s, replaced by slasher flicks and jiggle comedies, so it's hard to imagine a major studio placing a bet on it. But with female characters named Honey Hump and Woo Pee, it's also easy to imagine this thing being shipped straight to the same shelves that would soon be occupied by Shannon Tweed movies (like, for instance, the aforementioned Last Call).