Xanadu (1980)

“I’ve been known to twinkle a toe or two.” – Danny McGuire, Xanadu

The year was 1980.  Disco was reaching the end of its life cycle.  People were lashing out against it.  Roller skating was also big.  Roller derby was a sport that was growing in popularity, but would never truly find a mainstream success in the way that other sports did.  Roller rinks were a popular pastime.  Like disco, they would eventually fade out of culture and become a timestamp of the late 1970s and early 1980s.  That doesn’t mean that Hollywood couldn’t capitalize on them when they were big.

Roller skating has been used in many movies.  A few focused on them in a big way, such as 1975’s Rollerball.  The movie took the sport to an extreme, making a futuristic violent game that involved roller skating in circles while trying to throw a ball at a target.  Disco was also used in movies such as 1977’s Saturday Night Fever, where John Travolta disco danced his way to super stardom.  The two fads burned bright and burned quick, creating some memorable movies and some not so memorable.

1980 saw the release of three disco infused musicals.  One that I have previously covered was a disco/rock/folk musical called The Apple.  Then there was Can’t Stop the Music, a fictionalized biography of the Village People.  Finally, there was Xanadu.  All three movies used disco as a way to bring music to the audience.  The thing about Xanadu is that it wanted to bring roller skating to audiences too.  A best of both fads sort of thing was going on.

Xanadu followed Sonny Malone (Michael Beck), a struggling yet talented painter, working for a record company.  He was the guy who painted giant-sized album covers to hang outside record stores.  While painting, he recognized the woman on one of the covers.  He searched her out.  Sonny and Kira (Olivia Newton-John) began a relationship, and their love inspired him to team up with Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly) to open up a roller dance club called Xanadu.

There’s so much crazy in this movie that I don’t know where I can possibly go with this post.  Why don’t I start at the beginning?  That might be the easiest way to get into it.  The opening credits started up and something flashed onto the screen that was unexpected.  There was music in Xanadu by the band Electric Light Orchestra.  It took a few minutes for the first song to kick in, but the music was coming.  There are actually a few talented people behind portions of Xanadu.  Electric Light Orchestra worked on the music.  Don Bluth of The Secret of NIMH and The Land Before Time fame worked on an animated sequence.  There was even a dance number featuring Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John that felt like it came out of a classic Gene Kelly movie.  The sum was not equal to all of its parts, however.

The song by Electric Light Orchestra at the start of the movie was called I’m Alive.  It played over a scene in which Kira came to life from a painting on the wall of a building.  The painting showed a group of women.  Each one was given life and flew into the sky.  Kira went up then came back down and roller skated around.  That’s how she bumped into Sonny in the park, and inspired him to take his life in a new direction.  The song sounded very ELO, which was nice.  But the scene going on under the music was a strange way to begin the movie.  I didn’t know what to expect from Xanadu.  In my mind, there would be more science fiction and less light fantasy, but I got what I got.

Enter Danny McGuire.  He’s basically Gene Kelly if Gene Kelly had only ever made it big for a short time.  He’s talented both in music and dance.  Yet, Sonny found him sitting on the beach playing a clarinet.  There wasn’t much of a connection at first.  The connection came when Sonny ran into Danny again while looking for Kira.  They talked about music and their influences.  Danny played an album and pointed out his own instrumentals.  This led into that great classic dance scene featuring Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John.  I haven’t seen too many Gene Kelly films, but I have seen and loved Singin’ in the Rain.  This felt like a dance number that could have been in that movie, if it were a little more comedic.  It was nice to see an older Gene Kelly busting out the moves that made him famous.  It was nice to see Danny McGuire be an unsuccessful Gene Kelly because it felt like a “what if” for his career.  This was my favourite scene.

My second favourite scene was another dance scene that Danny was involved in.  After Sonny and Danny had decided to open a nightclub named Xanadu, Sonny and Kira decided to give Danny a wardrobe makeover.  It was like an 80s fashion montage, but at the beginning of the 1980s, before anyone was making those montages.  It showcased Gene Kelly dancing through a clothing store while trying on outfits.  It was a fun little diversion from the lackluster story.

Another interesting distraction was the animated sequence created by Don Bluth.  From what I found online, this was added later to bring one more song into the production.  Instead of bringing the actors back, they had an animated sequence made up.  It was a dreamlike sequence that highlighted the romance of the movie.  It involved Sonny and Kira in nature, becoming animals, and walking through scenery.  It didn’t really fit though.  So much of the movie was soaked in the fads of the time.  The scene that led into the animated sequence involved Sonny and Kira roller skating around a studio’s sets.  This was a timeless romantic animation scene that wasn’t held back by specific moments in time.  It could be played at any time and have the same effect.  It’s a great scene that doesn’t mix well with the rest of the movie.

One last thing to touch on is the opening of the club.  In order to properly discuss this, I need to go back to the moment where Sonny convinced Danny to join the venture.  The two of them had different visions for the venue.  Sonny was picturing a late 70s glam rock vibe, while Danny was imagining a 40s swing pop type of club.  When they ran the ideas by each other, they decided that a mixture would be perfect.  Now, that’s not what we got.  Xanadu was a late 70s pop and roller skating nightclub.  Gone was the glam rock.  Gone was the classic 40s swing pop.  The club was a place for Olivia Newton-John to do her thing.  This was not the club that they had agreed upon.

The final scene was a mixture of a few songs and dance sequences.  None of these fit the original vision of the club.    It began with roller skating and clapping while people shouted “Xanadu!”  That part had a Stomp like feel.  Soon after, Electric Light Orchestra came back into the movie with the song Xanadu, with vocals from Olivia Newton-John.  After about three minutes of that, the genres changed pretty quickly.  Tap dance, a harder rock song, country, and a return to the ELO Xanadu.  It was a series of different music genres, rather than the blend that inspired the club.

Xanadu was a crazy movie with many good parts that didn’t fit together.  It was a square peg in a round hole situation.  Perhaps it was a case of trying to find anything popular and throwing it into the movie.  The basis of a roller disco is something that was popular for a short time and hasn’t been popular since.  But that doesn’t mean the movie isn’t worth watching.  It is a perfect encapsulation of the late 70s while also harkening slightly back to the 40s era popularity of performers like Gene Kelly.  There are a few different story threads that could have been their own interesting movies, but Xanadu put them all together and it lessened the whole.  Perhaps I should journey back to its inspiration, a movie called Down to Earth from the 1940s.  Maybe that movie is closer to what I wanted.  I don’t know.  What I got was Xanadu.  It was interesting, at least.

Now it’s time to finish off with a few notes:

• I mentioned a movie named The Apple in this post, which I’ve covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• Joe Mantegna was credited for his work in Xanadu, though he was deleted out of the final cut.  He has also worked on Baby’s Day Out, and Valentine’s Day.
• Jack Lindine appeared in Xanadu.  He would go on to appear in Jack Frost.
• Bebe Drake showed up in Xanadu.  She was also in a movie called Leprechaun in the Hood.
• Xanadu featured Aharon Ipale, who was in a little movie named Ishtar.
• Finally, one of the actresses in Xanadu was Sandahl Bergman.  You might recognize her from Hell Comes to Frogtown.
• Have you seen Xanadu?  What were your thoughts about it?  What other movies have captured fads in the same way?  You can share any thoughts that you have in the comments below.
• Whenever I’m putting together the schedule for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, I use suggestions to get some of the movies.  If you have any suggestions, let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• Sometimes when I’m watching bad movies, I share clips on Snapchat.  If this interests you, you can add me on there.  Jurassicgriffin.
• Next week’s movie is going to be I, Frankenstein.  There’s no importance to it being included in the Sunday “Bad” Movies right now.  I just threw it in there, and now I’m getting to it.  It’s a first time watch.  That’s surprising because it seems like something I would have watched by now.  I’ll let you know how I feel about it next week.

Double Down (2005)

“I can't go on with this. I can't go on with this! I'm an American! I'm an American, I love this country! My country.” – Aaron Brand, Double Down

The growth of the internet over the past two decades has led to major changes in movies.  The most notable change is video streaming, which has brought about YouTube, Amazon Streaming, Netflix, and Shudder as ways to see movies from the comfort of your own home.  But the change that is most relevant to this week’s movie has to do with how connected people are.  The internet has allowed people from around the world to communicate quickly and easily in ways that they never could before.  This has allowed fans of lesser known movies to reach out and find other fans.  Cult movies have amassed bigger followings than ever before.

Neil Breen is one filmmaker who has benefited from the internet.  His reputation for making bad movies has spread through the internet like lice in a kindergarten class.  He is slowly becoming a bad movie god like Tommy Wiseau and Ed Wood before him.  People share his movies and share their love of how bad they are.  From Fateful Findings all the way back to Double Down, the internet has let people seek and discuss his movies, allowing him to become a cult icon.

Double Down, which was written, directed, edited, and catered by Neil Breen, starred Mr. Breen as Aaron Brand, a man who was the best at everything.  He was top of his class in computer science.  He was the best spy in the academy.  He was a great hacker and the most dangerous biological terrorist in the world.  His newest mission was to temporarily shut down the Las Vegas strip.  The only thing standing in his way was the memory of his wife/girlfriend who was killed by a government sniper.

There were a lot of issues with Double Down.  It was a mess of a boring slog.  The first problem was the voiceover.  Neil Breen, at least during this first movie of his, could not properly write voiceover.  There was too much repetition and contradiction.  The entire first twenty minutes consisted of Aaron Brand constantly saying how great he was by repeating what he was good at.  He said he was a great hacker about five or ten times.  The contradictions came when he said things like “I am so alone… But I’m not lonely.”  It might seem picky of me to say this, but adding the “so” implies that you are lonely.  “I am alone” is a statement.  “I am so alone” is a feeling.  It changes the statement to reflect how the person feels about being alone.  Having “But I am not lonely” follow it contradicts that feeling.  This kind of stuff occurred throughout the movie.

Also scattered throughout Double Down were random inserts of B-roll footage.  These inserts didn’t help the story.  The voiceover would be about Aaron Brand feeling betrayed, and then there would be a shot of an eagle looking around that looked like professional nature documentary footage.  When a terrorist attack went down, news footage of a forest fire was inserted.  These unrelated clips were baffling.  They rarely related to the topic of discussion and were glaring runtime padders.

Aaron Brand spent large amounts of time in the Nevada desert as he did his hacker/spy/terrorist stuff.  He climbed rocks to find caches of laptops and cell phones, which he then used to hack into things.  He ran through the desert screaming when his mind began to break.  There were many happenings in the desert for Aaron Brand.  The hacking was a strangely elaborate, yet simple setup.  He would sit in the back seat of his car, or on a bunch of rocks, with laptops spread around him.  He would type on the keyboards without really typing.  At the same time, he would be playing around with flip phones.  This does not seem like an ideal situation.  To keep people from sneaking up on him, Aaron Brand would set up two satellite dishes on the back of his car.  The programming that he put into the dishes would kill anyone who came within a certain range of them.  Except for Aaron Brand, himself.  His top notch hacking skills could factor his own body chemistry into the programming.  That’s the power of a Neil Breen character.

Speaking of powers, no Neil Breen character is complete without some sort of supernatural power.  Aaron Brand believed himself to be a miracle man.  He thought that he could bequeath miracles upon other people, helping them with their problems.  There was a girl with cancer.  He touched her on the forehead and believed that her disease was cured.  He also thought he had miraculously healed a man’s head wound after the man fell down some rocks in the desert.  Sure, in the case of Double Down, Aaron Brand ended up not having special powers.  But the fact that he believed he had them fits into his filmography like it did in Fateful Findings.  Neil Breen loves putting supernatural powers into his movies.

Double Down was the debut film of Neil Breen.  It put him on the map.  It’s tough to find, but people have found a way to obtain a copy and those people have spread the gospel of Breen.  He has become one of the newer big names in bad movie making.  It all began here, with this movie.  Neil Breen switched from being a real estate agent to being a filmmaker and gave the world his vision.  It was a bad vision.  It was an excruciating vision.  It was a vision that could be replaced by paint drying and be more entertaining.  Neil Breen, in his four directed efforts, has left a lasting legacy on the film world.  His cult status is only going to grow as more people find his work.  Neil Breen is a legend.  He is a living legend.  All thanks to the internet.

Thanks to the internet, I can share these notes:

• Double Down was suggested by @MarceloJPico, who has also suggested Chicks Dig Gay Guys, and Die Another Day.
• I have covered the movie Fateful Findings, which was mentioned throughout this post.
• Tommy Wiseau was also mentioned in this post.  He directed The Room.
• Neil Breen directed and starred in both Double Down and Fateful Findings.
• Have you seen Double Down?  Have you seen anything by Neil Breen?  What do you think of his filmography?  You can share any of your thoughts in the comments below.
• The schedule for the Sunday “Bad” Movies could always use suggestions.  If you have any movies that you think I should watch for the blog, go ahead and let me know about them.  You can tell me in the comments or let me know on Twitter.
• When I’m watching movies for this blog, I sometimes share clips of them on snapchat.  If you want to see that kind of stuff, add me.  Jurassicgriffin.
• Next week, we move from unpolished bad movies into the world of science fiction musicals that didn’t do so well.  That’s right.  The same year that The Apple came out saw another musical fantasy.  It was called Xanadu.  I’ll get back to you with my thoughts on that one when you return in seven days’ time.

Antisocial (2013)

Every year, we get to the end and think “Everything will be better next year.”  It’s something that always happens.  The last year of everyone’s life seems like a disappointment and we all want to do better.  That is especially true this year, as 2016 seems to have been the least favourite year of the entire world.  This post isn’t about 2016 though.  It’s about a movie that takes the idea of a new year bringing a new world to the extreme.

Antisocial came out in 2013.  Sam (Michelle Mylett) was a recently single college student who stopped at a party hosted by her friend Mark (Cody Ray Thompson).  Their friends Jed (Adam Christie), Steve (Romaine Waite), Kaitlin (Ana Alic), and Chad (Ry Barrett) were also there.  It was the pre-party to the big New Year’s Eve bash that night.  When Chad went to hand out flyers for the party, news broke that some sort of sickness was spreading across the world.  People were advised to lock up their homes and stay inside to avoid the rage filled people terrorizing the streets.  It was up to the five people still in the house to work together to survive as the world was changing into a zombie apocalypse.

The main theme of Antisocial is that social media is turning people into zombies.  A social media website called Social Redroom was the cause of the epidemic.  An update to the site early on New Year’s Eve caused tumors to grow in the users’ brains, which then turned them into rage filled monsters.  But the movie could also be seen as an allegory for how social media is taking over people’s lives.  There isn’t a time when you are in public where you don’t see someone staring at their phone because they’re updating their online profiles.  People don’t have as much time for face-to-face interactions because they’re sharing their thoughts and life moments through sites like Twitter and Facebook.  Online has become the new life for modern civilization.

I’ve been prone to living off social media.  If you’re reading this post, you probably know me from Twitter.  I’ve been a frequent user of that site for the past five years.  Some good friends have come from my presence there, though I have yet to meet any in the offline world.  Then there’s Facebook.  I’m not as frequent a user of Facebook outside of their messaging app.  But that brings me to how my reality is similar to that of Antisocial’s, aside from the whole zombie part.  When I went back to school a few months ago, the time block of classes that I’m in made a group chat on Facebook so that we could be in contact with each other if we needed anything.  After that moment, whenever we were in a setting together, the group was talking as much face-to-face as they were talking through the chat.  That’s a fifty-fifty split while sitting in the same room.  Snapchat is the same way.  People would be putting videos and pictures up on snapchat all the time, when they could just as easily be talking to each other.  Social media has taken over people’s lives.

Antisocial wants people to look beyond their social media interfaces and see the world around them.  It wants people to know what is happening nearby.  It’s very fitting of today’s society where the world is such a mess and bad things are always happening.  We’re in our little bubbles of social media where we learn about things happening in different parts of the world, but we don’t know as much of the world immediately around us.  Everyone is busy complaining on social media about every little thing that Donald Trump does.  They don’t notice the stuff happening in their local area.  There could be a disaster in their city, and many people wouldn’t know about it because their Twitter feed is blowing up with Trump saying that America should be making more nukes to win the arms race (something he actually said right before Christmas).  There could be a school that needs funding or else it will shut down.  Someone could have been murdered two blocks away from you.  But your nose is in social media and these things don’t get as much attention anymore.  We’re so focused on the global issues that we don’t realize what will directly affect us.

The trouble going on right outside the door of the party was the rage zombie outbreak.  The outbreak was happening around the world, but the story was about the people trapped in the house.  It was about them communicating with one another.  They had to put down their phones and stay off of social media.  They needed to discuss things face-to-face to keep the terror out of the house.  Social media was the problem.  The more that they were on social media, the more likely they were to be infected.

Bringing it back to the new year, new world idea, the movie took place on New Year’s Eve.  The main character experienced one of the worst moments of her life earlier in the day.  She found out that she was pregnant, and when she tried to tell her boyfriend, he broke up with her before she could give him the news.  It was a low point.  The day would continue to get lower as the outbreak happened and her friends died.  That’s the year being horrible.  But in the new year, she found the strength to go on and survive.  She was the only friend still alive.  She did what needed to be done to make it through the night.  She was in a new world where rage zombies roamed, but she knew that she could make it.  She knew that she would be okay.  She knew how tough she was.  It took the disaster year to make her realize that.

Antisocial is the perfect New Year’s fantasy.  Sure, it’s not the romanticised version that we’re used to.  There was no drinking or kisses at midnight.  The movie was about an outbreak on New Year’s Eve.  But it perfectly encapsulated, through horror, what we all hope will happen come the new year.  We want to be stronger people.  We want to find a better version of ourselves.  We want to leave our problems behind and start fresh.  I hope that we can, since 2016 has taken a toll on all of us.  Have a Happy New Year everyone!  Here’s to a better 2017!

And here are some notes to start off the new year:

• The other movies I’ve watched for New Year’s were New Year’s Eve, Money Train, and 200 Cigarettes.  I also watched Baby’s Day Out as a sort of New Year’s Baby type of thing, but it had nothing to do with New Year’s.
• Have you seen Antisocial?  Have you heard of Antisocial?  If you want to discuss this movie or the post, there is a comments section below for all of that fun stuff.
• I’m always open to suggestions for things to watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  If you know a movie that I should watch for the blog, let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• Sometimes when I’m watching bad movies, I share clips of them on my snapchat.  If you want to see them, add me.  Jurassicgriffin.
• Next week’s movie will see me dive back into the world of Neil Breen.  I’ve already seen his movie Fateful Findings.  Now I go back to the first movie he made, Double Down.  It’s a doozy.  I’ll tell you all about it next week.