Invasion U.S.A. (1985)

INVASION U.S.A. (1985) *
Joseph Zito made a logical progression from directing mad slasher films The Prowler and The Final Chapter (Jason Voorhees’ third screen entry) to Chuck Norris action spectaculars Missing in Action and Invasion U.S.A for the Cannon Films Group, one of the ultimate purveyors of schlock all through the ’80s.

Their schlock includes Ninja III: The Domination and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, both from 1984 and directed by Sam Firstenberg.

Anyway, I digress, which is something that I will invariably do whenever discussing Invasion U.S.A. Yes, I admit upfront this review will be filled with digressions.

The plot: Multinationals with guns (sometimes with subtitles, sometimes without) invade the United States, actually Florida but Invasion Florida doesn’t quite ring the same liberty bell, and one-man army Chuck Norris stops them with bloody ballyhoo. Named Matt Hunter in a fit of poetic fancy, perhaps by one of the writers of this garbage, Norris could have killed ’em all with denim.

Basically, Invasion U.S.A is Red Dawn dumbed down even more and it substitutes teeny bopper Commie scum killers Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Grey, and Lea Thompson for Norris, who laughably tells us that he works alone. No joke, we know this after ’bout 50 Norris films where his character informs us that he kills scumbags all on his lonesome. I mean, wasn’t one of Norris’ better movies even called Lone Wolf McQuade for crying out loud?

The best Norris pictures have strong supporting characters and casts, who make up for the sometimes personality deficient Norris. Alas, Invasion U.S.A gives us one of the worst characters in not only a Norris movie but all movies in general — an apparent photojournalist named McGuire (Melissa Prophet) who probably should have been named Molly Magsnarl instead. She’s not the least bit grateful for Hunter saving her, and I would have let her meet her ultimate demise after the first time she snarls at me Cowboy. She blows out the tires on Invasion U.S.A every time she’s on screen.

Seeing her camera made me laugh, though, because I thought about how it was John Rambo’s assignment to only take photos of the POWs — not to rescue them — in Rambo: First Blood Part 2.

Speaking of First Blood Part 2, released a few months before Invasion U.S.A, it and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando (released just after Invasion U.S.A) both blow away Invasion U.S.A in the great 1985 One-Man Army Movie Sweepstakes.

I also found a worse movie than Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that includes characters singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

Howard the Duck (1986)

HOWARD THE DUCK (1986) One star

KODE-TV in Joplin once aired movies on Saturday nights and I recall watching THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, WOLFEN, and HOWARD THE DUCK in my impetuous youth.

Sometimes movies that we liked during our childhood and teenage years do not hold up during later viewings. Unfortunately, I do not remember how I reacted to HOWARD THE DUCK upon first viewing it some 30 years ago.

I do know that I caught up with HOWARD THE DUCK in 2009, though, wrote a negative review centered around the question “What were they thinking?” when Universal Pictures made HOWARD THE DUCK, and listed it as one of the worst movies of the 1980s, right down there with such “classics” as LEONARD PART 6 and THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS.

That’s when I first encountered online defenders of bad movies. They’re vehement, and will leave you digital pleasantries like, for example, “Opinions are like assholes. …” Genius, pure genius, never heard that one before, Internet tough guy. I mean, how dare somebody think both HOWARD THE DUCK and LEONARD PART 6 stink it up. HOWARD THE DUCK and LEONARD PART 6 are both not so bad they’re good, they’re both so bad that they’re really really really bad. Every once in a great while, I dust them off just to remember what a bad movie plays like.

HOWARD THE DUCK is one of the great cinematic follies of all-time.

It wanted dearly to be like GHOSTBUSTERS, a combination of dazzling special effects and wisecracking comedy.

It fails in both departments and it starts with that live action duck, the biggest special effect mistake and comedic failure.

Howard’s a creepy little duck, a rather fowl protagonist despite the fact that director Willard Huyck (Huyck rhyme with duck?) and producer Gloria Katz toned him down and tried making him a nicer duck from his comic book origins.

It does not help the character that the film trots out every duck pun for 111 minutes, a running time a few minutes longer than GHOSTBUSTERS. Every single character must get at least one and I got tired of all the puns by the 5-minute mark.

Eight actors are credited as having some role in playing Howard the Duck: Ed Gale, Chip Zien, Tim Rose, Steve Sleap, Peter Baird, Mary Wells, Lisa Sturz, and Jordan Prentice. Six of the actors and actresses inside the duck suit (at different times) won the Razzie for Worst Performance in a Motion Picture. This is almost as impressive as the fact Harvey Stephens began his career as the Antichrist in THE OMEN. Where does one go from the Antichrist and where does one go from Howard the Duck? These are tough questions, and I have some more.

Do those actors and actresses put Howard the Duck on their resume? Or brag down at the pub “Oh yeah, man, you better not fuck with Howard the Duck” and “I played a talking duck from another planet in the movies. How about you, asshole, what the fuck have you done that’s so great?” Have any of these actors exploited their playing Howard the Duck to pick up women? Stranger lines have been spouted.

Howard’s not a funny duck and he must try a thousand jokes. He’s a lame duck, instead, that wishes he could have been the Groucho Marx or Bill Murray of ducks.

The last 40-45 minutes surrender to chase scenes and special effect showcases with lame duck pun interludes, then we’re treated to a thrilling grand finale of the “Howard the Duck” song, written by Thomas “She Blinded Me with Science” Dolby and George “Atomic Dog” Clinton.

The last 40-45 minutes feel like they run on as long as BEN-HUR and GONE WITH THE WIND combined.

Every time I see Lea Thompson, it brings me back to the strange trajectory of her early screen career: attacked by shark in JAWS 3-D, a creepy love affair with a married police officer who should have arrested himself for sex crimes in THE WILD LIFE, and unknowingly lusting after her own future son in BACK TO THE FUTURE. In HOWARD THE DUCK, the fetching Thompson smooches Howard all while she’s in her skimpies. It’s bad enough that her hairdo attacked the ozone layer, but she has to go the extra mile in HOWARD THE DUCK.

(We believe that Thompson’s hairdo in HOWARD THE DUCK contributed to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer that became effective in August 1989.)

Every time I watch HOWARD THE DUCK, I marvel at the fact that Tim Robbins somehow survived his performance and managed to sustain a career in such high-quality films as BULL DURHAM, JACOB’S LADDER, and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. His performance in HOWARD THE DUCK ranks among the most annoying supporting performances in history. Believe it or not, this was his fifth credited screen performance … and we have one more believe it or not.

HOWARD THE DUCK is the first feature-length Marvel Comics adaptation. When will Disney take a crack at remaking this remedial GHOSTBUSTERS?

Back to the Future Trilogy (1985-90)

BACK TO THE FUTURE TRILOGY (1985-1990)
The BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy stands up better now than when the films were originally released.

That’s partly because we’ve not seen any more sequels or remakes, retcons, reboots, and ripoffs.

The three films have been allowed to stand on their own.

They stand up tall and straight.

Once upon a time, I wrote that DAWN OF THE DEAD, THE TERMINATOR, and THE FLY are great films because they not only succeed at giving audiences satisfaction on genre terms but they also work on additional levels. For example, the satire that equates mall shoppers with zombies (DAWN OF THE DEAD), the romance between Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor (THE TERMINATOR), and the romance between Seth Brundle and Veronica (THE FLY). All three films have a lot going on for and in them.

The same greatness principle holds true for all three BACK TO THE FUTURE films: They’re all successful comedies that work on a deeper level, mostly thanks to time travel.

Speaking of time travel, I’m definitely a fan because I love THE TERMINATOR, TIME AFTER TIME, X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, and MEN IN BLACK 3 and enjoy BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME, and FREQUENCY, for example.

The BACK TO THE FUTURE films — especially PART II — play around with the paradoxes of time travel, both for comedic and dramatic effect. It allows certain actors to play multiple roles in different times — 1885, 1955, 1985, alternate 1985, and 2015.

BACK TO THE FUTURE starts with the inspiration of containing a time machine in a DeLorean and the movie revs up when that baby moves 88 mph because, as Christopher Lloyd’s Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown says, “If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious shit.”

We do.

Anyway, our teenage protagonist Marty McFly (played by a 23-year-old Michael J. Fox), he’s bummed out by his parents George (Crispin Glover) and Lorraine (Lea Thompson), a hopeless nerd picked on by eternal bully Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) for one parent and a drunk for the other.

Sitting at the dinner table with his family, Marty’s not too interested in how his parents met: Lorraine’s father hit George with his car and Lorraine nursed George back to health. Lorraine experienced a real Florence Nightingale effect.

However, no kid’s ever all that interested in how their parents met. Especially parents like George and Lorraine.

The DeLorean hits 88 mph and Marty ends up back in 1955 — Nov. 5, 1955, stuck there, without any plutonium to return.

BACK TO THE FUTURE then becomes an even greater movie when it takes on the premise of a teenager meeting their parents when they’re teenagers. Marty’s a lot more interested in how his parents met, that’s for sure.

Not long after their first meeting in 1955, Marty saves George from being hit by that fateful car. Marty’s knocked unconscious instead and Nurse Lorraine grows “amorously infatuated” (Doc’s words) with her future son rather than her future husband. She’s in hot pursuit, and we remember her 1985 self warning her teenaged son about girls that chase after boys.

Just be glad that Marty finds a younger Doc to sort it all out and get him “back to the future.”

We especially need Doc around for PART II to explain the movie’s convoluted plot.

PART II gives us a version of 2015 highlighted by technological advancements. It was great fun watching the 2015 scenes in 1989 based on future speculation and it’s still great fun watching them 30 years later as we reflect what they got right and what they got wrong. The Royals, not the Cubs though, won the World Series and Universal mercifully stopped at four JAWS films.

(The Cubs ended the longest world championship drought in North American professional sports history — only 108 years — by winning the 2016 World Series.)

Futurepedia even provided a list of the new technology: Air traffic control; auto-adjusting and auto-drying jacket; automatic dog walker; automated Texaco service station; barcode license plate; binocular card; bionic implants; Compu-Fax; Compu-Serve; computerized breastplate; cosmetic factory; data-court; dehydrated pizza; dust-repellent paper; flying circuits; fruit dispenser; hands free video games; holobillboard; holofilms a la JAWS 19; hoverboards; hovercam; hover conversion; hydrator; Identa-pad; Internet; Kirk Gibson Jr. Slugger 2000 adjustable bat; Litter Bugs; Master-cook; Mr. Fusion; multi-channel video screen; neon curbing; Ortho-lev; Pac Fax; portable thumb unit; power-lacing shoes; rejuvenation clinic; scene screen; skyway; slam ball; sleeping device; soda bottles with built-in straws; flying cars; tablet computer; thumb pad; tranquilization; transponder; U.S. Weather Service; video glasses and video telephone glasses; video simulacrum; video telephone.

PART II ends up back in Nov. 12, 1955 (Marty’s final day in 1955 in BACK TO THE FUTURE), so we have two Martys and two Docs running breathlessly around Hill Valley.

Given all the plot convolutions and time permutations in PART II, it’s fitting that the 1955 Doc faints during a scene late in the movie.

Lightning strikes the DeLorean and sends Doc back to 1885 near the end of PART II … and Marty tracks him down in PART III.

We get a Western comedy in a year that included Best Picture winner DANCES WITH WOLVES and QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER.

PART III finds employment for veteran character actors Pat Buttram (1915-94), Harry Carey Jr. (1921-2012), and Dub Taylor (1907-94) in the 1885 scenes. It’s nice to see and hear them codgers.

Their presence lets us know that PART III is a different kind of Western than DANCES WITH WOLVES and QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER, more like a TV Western.

Marty takes Clint Eastwood for his 1885 name.

PART III casts Mary Steenburgen as Doc’s love interest and we remember Steenburgen as H.G. Wells’ love interest in TIME AFTER TIME (1979). Wells wrote “The Time Machine.” In TIME AFTER TIME, Jack the Ripper uses Wells’ time machine to travel to modern day San Francisco and Wells follows and pursues Jack the Ripper. During his pursuit, Wells meets bank clerk Amy (Steenburgen) and falls in love with her. (In real life, McDowell and Steenburgen became married in 1980, separated in 1989, and divorced in 1990. They met and began dating making TIME AFTER TIME.)

The BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy ends on a satisfying note.

More notes on BACK TO THE FUTURE:

— Michael J. Fox is one of the most likable actors of all-time. He was the first choice for Marty, but “Family Ties” producer Gary David Goldberg refused to allow Fox away from that show to make a movie. That’s why BACK TO THE FUTURE originally cast Eric Stoltz as Marty. Stoltz worked a few weeks on the film before director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Bob Gale realized there’s something wrong with Stoltz as Marty: He’s not the Marty they wanted. Stoltz lacked screwball energy and he played scenes more dramatically. They let Stoltz go and recast with Fox, who became free to make the movie. Fox did not have to reach very far to portray Marty, “All I did in high school was skateboard, chase girls, and play in bands. I even dreamed of becoming a rock star.”

For two months, Fox worked on “Family Ties” during the day and BACK TO THE FUTURE at night, giving him at most a few hours of sleep each day.

Re-shooting added $3 million to the film’s budget, a number more than made up for by grosses for all three films that have amassed nearly $1 billion in returns.

— Christopher Lloyd’s boundless madcap energy earns Doc a place in the annals of great mad scientists and nutty professors. He becomes more than that, though, over the course of three movies. We love Doc, perhaps more than any other character in the series.

— Thomas F. Wilson makes any variation on the bully, whether it’s Buford “Mad Dog,” Biff, or Griff Tannen and whether it’s 1885, 1955, 1985, alternate 1985, or 2015, a lovable asshole. We love to hate “Mad Dog,” Biff, and Griff, especially Biff. We love every time Biff screws up a phrase like “Make like a tree … and get out of here.” We love every time he’s doused in manure. We love every time he’s burned and showed up by our protagonists. How do you feel after learning Donald Trump inspired the Biff character?

— Crispin Glover proved to be the next evolution in screen nerd, taking off from Eddie Deezen and REVENGE OF THE NERDS. Glover stepped in that direction in FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER, but he gets a fuller character in BACK TO THE FUTURE.

— Lea Thompson is quite fetching in the 1955 scenes and her character unknowingly lusting after her future son fits into a career where she was attacked by The Great White Mother in JAWS 3-D, yelled at and embarrassed by her sexually frustrated and football obsessed boyfriend in ALL THE RIGHT MOVES, involved with a married police officer who should have arrested himself for his own sex crimes in THE WILD LIFE, and kissed by an animatronic duck in HOWARD THE DUCK. John Hughes at least gave her the name Amanda Jones in SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL, from the Rolling Stones song “Miss Amanda Jones.” What a career.

— Huey Lewis and the News’ “Power of Love” achieves being their only song that does not inspire my thoughts of giving the nearest person a pencil and having them stab my eardrums. For example, it seemed that for the longest time at the Pittsburg Subway I’d hear their hit song “The Heart of Rock & Roll.” Every damn single time. I survived by wisecracking, “If Huey Lewis is the heart of rock ’n’ roll, then rock ’n’ roll needs a defibrillator.” I suppose I think more positively of “Power of Love” from being in BACK TO THE FUTURE.

— Zemeckis produced some of the best mass entertainments for nearly a decade-and-a-half, everything from 1941 (directed by Steven Spielberg) and USED CARS to BACK TO THE FUTURE and WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT.

I just hope that Hollywood leaves those films alone and does not burden us with remakes, retcons, reboots, or any other ripoff.

Is that too much to ask?

BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985) Four stars; BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II (1989) Three-and-a-half stars; BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (1990) Four stars