Back To The Past – Total Recall

It’s been a while since I’ve done this piece but I told myself I had to get round to doing this column again because I have so much fun writing them.  There are so many great films for me to talk about, so choosing the right one is essential.  These films to me offer great memories, these are the films I grew up on.  Total Recall, for me is one of the greatest science fiction films, one of the greatest action films and one of my favourite films of all time.

Total Recall came out in 1990 and is directed by Paul Verhoeven and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The film is based on legendary science fiction novelist Phillip K. Dick short story entitled “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.”  Though the film is very loosely based on the story. 

I honestly can’t say what age I was when I first saw the film but like all my favourite movies, the film was recorded on VHS by my parents and they didn’t object me to watching it.  Back then it was just an awesome sci-fi, action movie with lots of everything a young boy wants from a movie.  It was through time that I found my appreciation for TR, when I got older I understood what the movie was really about.

The true theme of this film is posed through a question.  Are the events in Total Recall real or just part of the memory implant?  It’s this question that makes this film so great, it’s a brilliant question but one which can never be answered and I’ll tell you why.  Basically the moment Quaid goes into the Rekall chair is the point in which that question can be asked.  Throughout the film there are many clues to answering the question.

Back To The Past – Commando

Commando, one might say the greatest, pure, action movie of all time.  Forget Rambo or Die Hard, this is a film that delivers the action and also delivers something else, something which is quite common with action films nowadays, humour.  The year was 1985 and Arnold Schwarzenegger was in high demand, it was only a year previous that the world got to see The Terminator and the world stood up and took notice of the might of Mr Schwarzenegger.  Now I wouldn’t remember any of this as 1985 was the year I was born, so I cannot recall my memories of that time but I do have memories of what Schwarzenegger meant to film, he was an icon for well over a decade, he still is but in a very different form.

Commando was the perfect role for Arnold, it seemed the role of John Matrix was destined to be played by Schwarzenegger.  The role of a special forces soldier who the audience had to believe could be capable of the things he does in the movie and hell did we believe.  Commando is a huge favourite of mine, it’s a true definition of a cult favourite.  The film didn’t do spectacular on it’s release but found fans throughout the years and still finds them to this day.  There cannot be a single guy out there who has seen this and found it crap, this is a true guys movie.  The film is full of fantastic action scenes, great deaths, hilarious dialogue and tremendous characters, this is an example of the golden age of 80′s cinema.

What cements this film as a favourite among many is mostly due to Arnold.  Here he created a fully, formed character and one which was extremely funny.  This was the first time that everyone got to see Schwarzenegger’s ability for comedy.  This was the start of what Schwarzenegger would bring to his film roles of the future.  The filmmakers could have just had the character as a human version of The Terminator, just going round killing with nothing else to offer but this wasn’t the case.  Arnold would come out with great, humourous one liners, something which would become a trademark of his work.

Though to be really honest and true, Commando is rightly one of the silliest and stupidest movies ever devised.  The thing is know, is that the whole film is played for laughs, if it wasn’t for the many hilarious lines of dialogue and certain laugh out loud scenes, this would just be another boring, unimaginative, generic action movie.  I really wonder if certain things in the film were not created for laughs but were intended to not be funny at all; for example, Matrix and his daughter feeding the deer at the start of the movie or Matrix picking up a phone box with Sully inside and throwing it like it was a chair.  It is entirely stupid but it’s so endearing, action films today are CGI filled, uninteresting main leads, 12A (PG-13) shitfests.  Commando is something special, it’s extremely violent but it has the true soul of what an action film is supposed to be.

A fun trivia fact for some of you, Die Hard was originally going to be Commando 2.  John McTiernan, the director of Die Hard was going to make Commando 2 but Arnold turned down the role so the script got changed into Die Hard.  Arnold was offered the role of John McClane but turned it down.  So all action fans out there have to appreciate what effect Commando had on the genre.  We all know how Die Hard reinvented the action film but without Commando, there would be no Die Hard.

With every great action film comes a great villain and Bennett is one of the most memorable and gayest looking villains to ever grace our screens.  He’s the Freddie Mercury lookalike who likes to shoot between the balls rather than the eyes.  He wears leather trousers and a chainmail vest, you’d expect him to be chained by a leash and on all fours, doing whatever his master tells him.  He might be one of the campest villains ever but it’s just another element that adds to the craziness of the film.  The final fight scene between him and Matrix is full of homosexual connotations, it’s unbelievable, intentional or not, it’s extremely funny.

I’ve had many conversations with friends about what this movie truly means.  We’ve discussed at lengths what the greatest aspects this film offers.  We love repeating the many one liners spoken throughout.  The love I have for this cannot be truly spoken through typed words, though there will be many people out there who feel the same way I do.  I could possibly speak forever about what I adore about Commando but I think I’ve gone on long enough.  It’s a masterpiece of 80′s cinema, it will probably maintain it’s legendary status for many years to come.

Actually, when really thinking about it, Commando sucks balls.

“You know when I said Commando sucked balls?”

“I lied.”

Back To The Past – Ghostbusters

This will be a regular column that I’ll be doing on my blog.  It’s basically me going on about those certain films which I saw as a child in which I loved and will love forever.  I’ll only be focusing on 80′s films as mostly all of my childhood favourite films were from the 80′s.  This will be me sharing what I love about a certain film and what memories I associate with it.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do writing it.

So I thought I would start of strong and probably talk about one of my favourite films of all time, Ghostbusters.  Now before I go on about my love for that, I want to give you an idea of how I watched movies when I was a child.  Now my parents never took me to the cinema when I was little, it would be a surprise if I even got to go to see a film at a cinema once a year.  The only way I saw movies was through TV and tapes that my parents used to record movies from TV.  Now I had many recordable tapes in my house, with two or even three films recorded on them, this was the thing that created my love for films that I have.  On those tapes were films that I consider to be me favourite films of all time, a huge range of different genres, it was like a video store but this was free.  So this was how I saw films and one of these tapes had Ghostbusters on it.

Now Ghostbusters came out in 1984, that’s a year before I was born but it somehow took on an everlasting presence because as kids we would pretend to catch ghosts, I even collected the toys.  I had that plastic proton pack which really was the greatest thing in history.  The film for me is timeless, there are new generations enjoying it to this day.  I plan on even showing this to my own kids as I think they’ll enjoy it as much as I did when I was their age.

I couldn’t honestly say how many times I’ve seen the movie but I know it’s well over a hundred and I never get bored of it and I never will.  Probably after finishing writing this, I’ll go put the DVD in and start watching it.  My memory is terrible so I cannot say what year I actually saw Ghostbusters, my memory before I was ten is patchy at best, all I really remember is the good times and watching fantastic films, those were great memories.  Though I remember what I felt when I first saw Ghostbusters – I was fucking terrified.  The library ghost and the arms coming out of the chair to grab Dana haunted my dreams and turned them into nightmares.  That would scare the shit out of any child and it probably did.  Though other than that I loved every other bit of the film.  The icons of Slimer and The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man were brilliantly thought out, any kid would go apeshit over the sight of either one of them.  As much as I enjoyed it when I was a little runt, I found a whole new appreciation for it when I was a little older.

I cannot remember what age I was when I saw it again (terrible memory) but I know I was probably about 10 or so.  Now I was a bit older and wiser I could pick up on stuff in the film that I missed when I was younger, mainly the swear words.  I found when I watched it again in my teens that I understood more things and appreciated it more.  You would probably consider it a kid’s film, it’s a PG, it appealed to kids, it spawned a cartoon series and created a fantastic toy line but I don’t see it as a film for children.  Some of the content really isn’t suitable for younger children, Ghostbusters probably appeals to adults more than children.  Though that’s the wonderful thing about the film, both children and adults can watch it and enjoy it in completely different ways.

Probably what I love most about Ghostbusters are the characters.  Each one of them unique and intriguing, my favourite being Peter Venkman.  Bill Murray is a legend and will always be a legend.  The character of Venkman is inspired, he’s such a likeable, funny and charming individual.  He’s someone who at first is skeptical about ghosts, he sometimes doesn’t understand the science behind it all as much as Ray and Egon do and that’s what’s endearing about him.  Plus the dick line alone makes him legendary.

What I really love about the film is the journey that the three go on throughout the film.  I loved seeing them start up the business from scratch.  Seeing them buy the firehouse and the car are wonderful little moments.  These were ordinary guys trying to start up a business.  The audience could relate to that and I think it was important seeing them transcend from working for the University to working for themselves.

Ghostbusters is a comedy with heart, one of the best comedies ever made, a truly fantastic piece of work.  I cannot imagine a time when Ghostbusters is not part of pop culture.  It’s a timeless piece of art which will hopefully be around longer than I will.  Hopefully bringing joy to more people throughout the years.