The Yuletide Yamaha Takedown (1982)

D. Ted Kileke
Colour

Let’s check if this has all the requisites of an early Eighties raucous comedy. 

• Does it give every impression of being written by an over-excitable 14 year old boy? Check.
• Is it shot in an overly well-lit and broad style? Check.
• Does it concern supposed wild men who are essentially loveable and meek? Check.
• Do they look a little bit too clean cut to be riding the motorbikes they use? Check.
• Does a pair of breasts jiggle at the forefront of the screen at one point? Check.
• Is Steve Guttenberg in it? Check.
• Is Adrian Zmed in it? Check.
• Is Tom Hanks in it? Check.

Yes, that’s right, the two time Oscar winning actor Tom Hanks used to make his crust from bawdy comedies. We may now remember ‘Splash’ and ‘Big’, but there was also this and ‘The Bachelor Party’. He may have turned himself into the new James Stewart, but there aren’t many Jimmy Stewart films where he sees a busty woman stood in front of some mountains and comments that he’d “like to do more than just climb those foothills!” As for Steve Guttenberg, well of course he made films like this. There he is debuting next to Lord Olivier in ‘The Boys From Brazil’, but before long he’s kneedeep in Police Academy movies. He has a certain amount of charm and will try to make a joke fly no matter how poor it is, and so I suppose the real question for him is: why isn’t he still in these movies? Surely he should have a part as an uncle/father figure in a Judd Apatow film, or else one of those Friedberg/Seltzer films? (He might actually be a bit over-qualified for the latter). What’s happening, Steve? You should really talk to your agent; or get The Stonecutters to do their thing. As for Adrian Zmed, who knows? There was a brief period at the start of the 1980s – with a few films and T.J. Hooker – where he must have thought life was really fucking wonderful. Since then, I guess that feeling has dissipated somewhat. These days he’s probably so short of paying work that if I wanted him to come over and perform at my birthday party, I’m sure he’d take my call.


The film itself clearly had a great deal of assistance from the Yamaha corporation, featuring as it does heroes on Yamaha motorcycles liberating Yamaha Synthesisers from a warehouse to give to the local orphanage for Christmas. (The evil owner has brought them to be museum pieces in the future, rather than use them.) So it’s sentimental and it’s cloying, but around that is wrapped a great deal of lewdness and bawdiness and jokes that 14 year old boys would find incredibly funny. Curiously, given that star power is already apparent here, it’s Guttenberg who is the lead rather than Hanks. Guttenberg gets to romance teacher, Kirstie Alley, while Hanks hangs around at the side making wisecracks. (Zmed is the more loose-cannon character, and the best that can be said about his performance is that his hair looks nice). Maybe Hanks was bothered at playing second fiddle at the time, but I’m sure he’s got over it now.


Any film that purports to be a comedy should be funnier than this, every film should be smarter than this, and really there is a certain quality threshold that all films should aspire to. But if you want a Christmas film that screams the early 80s direct into your face - then sling your synth around your shoulders, get on your motorcycle, and go out and find a copy, dude!

Shakin’ Around the Christmas Tree (1984)

D. Davey Rice
Colour


Shakin Stevens, the leading Welsh Elvis throwback entertainer of the 1980s (or indeed, if we’re fair, any decade), is a good man. We can see that in the opening shots of this film, where on Christmas Eve, Shaky – as he’s known to his fans – is seen carrying his guitar into the children’s ward of the local hospital and serenading angelic blonde haired, sick kids with carols. There is a sincerity to his performance, a caring in his eyes, which shows what a decent person is. Yes, like a proto-Noel Edmonds (or a latter day Jesus, take your pick), Shaky is determined to give up his Christmas pleasure to help out people less fortunate than himself. And he just keeps on giving, as after visiting the hospital, his manager calls him to tell him that he will be playing a gig for veterans that very evening – right until the chimes of midnight themselves. The problem is that Shaky is currently in Cardiff, while the gig is hundreds of miles away in Newcastle. The race is on.


History is a distorting lens. Just because they were cool we remember bands of the 1980s who achieved moderate commercial success, but don’t recall the biggest selling British male star of that decade with the same clarity. Shakin Stevens was that man, for a few years a never ending hit factory which made him much bigger than say The Clash, The Specials or The Human League. You would never believe that from the amount which is written about them these days, but the chart placings don’t lie. You’ll also find it difficult to believe from this film, released at the height of his commercial success, designed to cement his place in the pantheon and reap the rewards, but maybe starting his soon to be unstoppable downward slide. Essentially it should have been a perfect vehicle, string together specially filmed footage of Shaky singing his greatest hits – ‘This Old House’; ‘Green Door’, ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ (which actually came from this film’s soundtrack) – wrap it up in a bit of plot and the money should just roll in. The problem is that the songs are ones we’ve heard before and, in the MTV/Top of the Pops age, have seen before too. And in Shakin Stevens we really do not have any kind of leading man. Much like Clint Eastwood, Shaky seems to have decided that he’s much better at staring than at dialogue. That however is the only comparison it’s ever going to be possible to make between Shaky and Clint. Shaky has no charisma, clearly hates every line he’s given and moves through the film as if waiting for it to end. It’s a sensation the audience well knows.


And that’s before we get to the comic relief.


If we take The Krankies at face value, then for some reason Shaky’s Scottish tour manager, Ian, has decided to bring along his young son, Jimmy, to help organise the gig. Even though it’s Christmas Eve, Jimmy is still inexplicably dressed in his school uniform. More detrimental is that Jimmy clearly does not know how to behave and cheeks everyone he comes in contact with and causes a great deal of mischief. Obviously Jimmy is an asbo waiting to happen, but in 1984 terms that translates to Jimmy needs a clip around the ear. Of course, if we take them as what they actually are, then Ian has brought his wife, Jeanette, along and she has decided to pretend to be one of the naughtiest ten year old boys in the world. Why she is doing this is never explained. What’s clear though is that their broad comic slapstick provides some of the most excruciating moments ever seen in cinema. Yes, even more excruciating than watching Shaky act.


So a lumped together film starring people who were starting to look stale in 1984 and which has very little in the way of redeeming features. Why then am I bothering with it? Well, because in the part of Neville, the Shaky super fan who uses every available form of public transport to follow his hero all the way from Cardiff to Newcastle, we have Daniel Day-Lewis. Yes, that Daniel Day-Lewis – only a year or two before he became a proper leading man himself. And he’s brilliant at it, carrying off the over-eager smile and the looks of slightly unhinged adoration - all adding up to full-on worship of his idol. it’s totally brilliant and totally unbalances the film to the point where it pretty much capsizes, but it’s a shining and distinctly creepy light in this otherwise turgid sea of crap and mediocrity.


Merry Christmas, Everyone indeed!

Sexy Goth Girls Take on the World (1999)

D. Otto Van De Mille
Colour

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”


Noted rock critic T.S.Eliot understood the path of the rebellious rock phenomenon. Be you Elvis Presley or The Rolling Stones or The Sex Pistols or Madonna or some sexy goth girls, you start your career as an affront to everything decent and good, but end up a respectable shadow of what you once were.  It’s a fixed and unalterable law – a rule which is true in nature, physics and life. Some processes are faster than others. Elvis was singing to an actual hound dog on The Steve Allen Show within a year of his breakthrough, and the Sexy Goth Girls were appearing in ‘Sexy Goth Girls Take on the World’ within two and a half years of the first film’s release.


Let’s begin at the beginning. The first Sexy Goth Girls film was a plucky little indie with the skimpiest of plots, that just revelled in hanging out with some really sexy goth girls. Yes, there was a murder at some point, but it wasn’t trying to be a crime drama, it was something totally different; a film that luxuriated in life, that was quirky, fun, alternative and – yes – sexy. The sequel arrived surprisingly quickly and already a change was noticeable. Suddenly murder plots were something the sexy goth girls did. In fact they were sanctioned to fight crime and help the innocent. They were super heroes now, there to save the world. It was all very strange. Clearly the sexy goth girls had lurched towards the mainstream, and the mainstream wasn’t a place that suited the sexy goth girls. So in the third film that lurch would be corrected, right? The sexy goth girls would return to the alternative, quirky style we all loved?


Well, the short answer is no. This is a film decidedly intent on the mainstream. Indeed it is knocking the mainstream over in the street and binding it with a leather muzzle and harness and making the mainstream its bitch. (Actually, no, that’s far too weird an image. It’s actually walking up to the mainstream and giving it a nice big  cuddle and saying that if you look past all that goth stuff, these girls are just as lovely as you – only a bit more sexy). This is a sexy goth girls film you could take your grandmother to see. This is a sexy goth girls film you could take your children to see. Do you have a maiden aunt and would like to show her some sexy goth girls without making her cover her eyes and issue frightened squeaks about what passes as decent entertainment these days? Well, come right this way.


Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the sexy goth girls Christmas movie.


Here’s the plot: the President of the United States (Robert Vaughan) is kidnapped by right-wing Christian fundamentalists (led by Randy Quaid) who are disturbed by the decline of morality in today’s America. Government agent Mr Lazarus (Quentin Tarantino, in what is little more than a cameo) gets his operatives, the sexy goth girls – led by Liddy D’Eath – on the case. They team up with the President’s twelve year old daughter to track down the President and rescue him using their sexy goth girl skills (which consist, as far as I can see, of black leather weapons and feminine wiles) and various adventures, escapades, and scrapes ensue. Suffice to say there is a lot of running about in dangerous looking heals. The President’s daughter is suspicious of her new companions at first, but eventually learns that the key lesson of being a sexy goth girl is (apparently) to be yourself. And by being herself she helps them rescue her father and they’re all together for Christmas. Hip-hip Hooray!


It’s hard to put into words how crushing a disappointment this film is. It’s hard to put into words how wrongheaded a film this is. It’s totally different in tone to the previous entries, with none of the slow-motion leering or perviness, but also none of the smart and sassy dialogue. Instead this is a full blown assault on the mainstream, and like all self-conscious attempts to get in good with the mainstream it aims for the lowest common denominator. It’s obvious, sentimental, silly and often quite boring. But it still in no way belongs in that sunny, bland locale they call the mainsteam. Who after all would make a family friendly film with the words ‘sexy goth girls’ in the title? Who would create a kid friendly bunch of superheroes and dress them in suspenders with their cleavages all a-go-go? (Although I suppose we’re inured to not seeing Batman and Superman as the fetishists they so obviously are when they wander around in their nice, shiny tights). Who would really imagine that ending a film with a bunch of goth girl stood in the oval office with their leader’s arm around the President’s daughter wishing the audience a very Merry Christmas was in anyway an appropriate or good idea? It’s not, instead it’s ever so weird, on many levels – and none of them good weird.


So overall this trilogy is a tale of a group of girls who were there to be sexy and perved over, to have funny and foul-mouthed conversations, to be the epitome of rebellion. They were stars for a group of fans who didn’t want to see normal types of films, who wanted to fall in love with a different type of heroine. But their decline was quick and before long that quirky, fuck you, independence had been totally blown away, and without changing their clothes or even altering their make-up, the sexy goth girls were smiling big American smiles as they appeared in anodyne crap designed supposedly for the whole family.


This film was as successful on video as the other two (sexy goth girls fans are clearly not very discerning), but – really - where did it all go wrong?