One Good Movie Part 6

Hey,

A childhood friend died.

A heart attack.

I have many unhealthy friends. He wasn't one of them.

It happened last week.

He was 47.

When we were young, Woodstock had a population of 13,000 people. No longer a tiny farm town, but not yet a true suburb.

The Square had a hardware store, a toy store, a pharmacy, a bicycle shop, a news depot, and a movie theater.* You could walk the four-block journey from your house to the Square by yourself.

You never needed a car unless you wanted to go to Spring Hill Mall.

And most days weren't your birthday, so you weren't going to the mall.

The pharmacy let you buy items on credit. They kept detailed accounts in a spiral college-ruled notebook. Besides medications and enemas, they sold manufactured sugar. Candy cigarettes and five-cent Laughy Taffy were essential.

The toy store was in the basement of the hardware store. If you didn't have enough money to buy a plastic novelty, you could browse the vast shelves of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books.

The old man who owned the hardware and toy store lived in the basement. He was perpetually grouchy. How could you be surrounded by toys and be cranky?

I guess he had seen some things. I was too shy to ask.

I remember the arrival of Fisher-Price's video camera. The toy store had one for sale. It was capable of recording video on a compact audio cassette.

Oh, how I lusted after this camera! Even with my paper route money, the retail price of $179 was well beyond my nine-year-old budget.

Around this time I befriended Tom.

He was four years older. Which means he was a grown man.

Tom was good with women.** He knew how to spit proper, always had M-80s to share, and delighted in the excesses of 80's action and horror cinema.

Tom became my de facto babysitter. On a Friday night, we'd hope to score a violent Clint Eastwood movie or Friday the 13th sequel on HBO.

If not, we headed down to the small convenience store at the end of my street. There they had a binder full of flattened VHS boxes encased in plastic sleeves. You could browse and select the latest art from the likes of The Cannon Group or Carolco.

That's why this week's movie is A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

A classic boyhood film that's as fun today.

After an unsuccessful sequel that's become known for its queer subtext, Freddy returns more powerful and terrorizes a group of teens in a psychiatric hospital.

Wes Craven came back to the series as a co-writer, and Frank Darabont, The Shawshank Redemption, is credited on the script.

Imaginative kills. Practical effects. A score by Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti. And Body Double's Craig Wasson.

At 96 minutes it's the longest film I've recommended. Yes, I prefer movies under 90 minutes, but you need the extra time for Patricia Arquette, "Larry" Fishburne, and Dick Cavett.

Thirty-plus years later, I still love a good horror movie.

And I still look up to Tom.

-Guy

*Yes, I saw Leonard Part 6 in this theater. **In retrospect, these "women" were eighth-grade girls.

Corrections & Epilogue

Here's the corrected link where you can buy your own A-frame for under $200.

Cinema of Excess

I watched Babylon this week. Robbie is great. She is a movie star.

The movie has some magnificent set pieces and humor. But I wanted more humor and more outrageousness. Other parts were less compelling.

Though I'm happy I saw it on the big screen.

Often it felt that the director was pulling from previous works without heightening or adding to cinematic moments we've seen before. I loved the tension-building/disgusting gag of a henchman spitting throughout a sequence, but does it top an Asian kid throwing firecrackers?