Stranded at the Drive-In

by Garry Mulholland

  From there, plot comes thick and fast. Cinder tells Randy that he was just part of a bet so he hits on her out of revenge. Gary is in big trouble for obvious reasons. When Angel confesses all to Randy and sends him packing, she says, ‘I’ll never forget you. Ever.’ And we think about our own first lovers and realise how true that is.

  Angel and Ferris confess all to each other and bond, and Ms McNichol is so wracked with shame, loss and delayed trauma in this scene that you see the end of Tatum O’Neal’s acting career right there. Cinder gets her comeuppance as the other girls bond against her in a feminist show of all having lied about their sexual experience, which is, now I think about it, a weird thing to be all high moral ground about. Peace-loving Sunshine gets the satisfaction of actually punching the mean girl on our behalf. Ferris tells the truth to the camp authorities so Gary isn’t sacked, despite the chest hair. He tells her she’s ‘quite a woman’, which I suspect isn’t necessarily what you’d say to someone who’d come close to getting you put on the Sex Offenders Register. When they all leave the camp and get back to the car park full of doting parents – not before Angel and Ferris have flirted outrageously with each other on the bus – Angel informs her slutty Mom and Ferris’s cuckolded Dad that Ferris is her best friend. It’s corny as all hell . . . but you really feel the pair have earned their moment of hands-across-the-classes feel-good.

  You also really feel you’ve just watched a brilliantly written but badly made film, with one stand-out performance, that implies that sex with men is rubbish and that every girl should just hold out for the right girl. I think I get what my friend saw in it.

  TAPS

  1981

  Starring: Timothy Hutton, George C. Scott, Sean Penn, Ronny Cox, Tom Cruise

  Dir.: Harold Becker

  Plot: Why we’re against the war, but for the soldiers.

  Key line: ‘You go to the movies. You read books. A military leader is always portrayed as slightly insane.’

  Taps is a fascinating early ’80s curio, subverting many teen movie conventions by aligning rebellion with conservatism. It’s an allegory – if you’re not good at suspending disbelief, then this movie’s plot and scenario will drive you nuts – about duty, authority and the chaos of human interaction, which also works as a tragic adventure story about teens under siege. Its also a Vietnam hangover film which asks what place militarism might still hold in American society, and whether we can still admire the courage and self-sacrifice of the soldier, and at what point those apparently selfless attributes might become self-serving and dangerous. It is held together by remarkable acting by a young ensemble cast and one living legend who is asked to revive his most successful character and make him into a modern equivalent of Powell and Pressburger’s Colonel Blimp: a man out of time, unable to survive new values that are entirely alien to him.

  It begins with the sounds of men singing the hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, a song of worship it is impossible to hear without wincing at its militaristic imagery, and the sound of a man’s voice lifelessly intoning chapter 13, verse 11 of Corinthians . . . ‘I put away childish things’, and so forth. A long tracking shot edges warily down the aisle of a church, taking in the uniformed males filling the pews, the choirboys in white tunics, the visual order of shining floor and humans arranged in straight lines. This is already an unlikely ’80s teen film, kicking off with a slow tempo and a set of sounds and images designed to make your average teenager run for hills full of tit gags and rock action. Taps is over two hours long and takes its own sweet time to reach the nub of the crux. It is fascinated by what the Bunker Hill Military Academy looks and feels like, and attempts, successfully, to make the viewer understand the intimidating grandeur of this Pennsylvania school for soldiers, and why a set of boys may feel enough loyalty to an institution to put themselves at risk to defend it.

  In church we get our first glimpse of George C. Scott and are unavoidably and deliberately reminded of his portrayal of an American military legend in Patton: Lust For Glory, for which Scott won an Oscar which he refused to accept. He is addressing a group of young cadets in archaic uniform, and a bugler plays ‘Taps’, or ‘The Last Post’ as we call it in Britain, a lone bugle lament for those who have fallen in action, while Scott’s General Harlan Bache reads a list of school graduates who never returned from the great wars of the 20th century. This is a film that foreshadows death at every turn.

  We meet our three principal boys in the bustle of the school. Brian Moreland (Hutton) is the head boy and star of his class who is set to begin the next graduating year as Cadet Major. A future military career is his life. Sean Penn, in his movie debut, is Alex Dwyer, Brian’s best friend. He is academically superior and funny but doesn’t take the school’s calls to duty as seriously as Brian. We are told, almost in passing, that he is without parents for reasons never explained, so he is therefore closer to adulthood by virtue of forced independence. He is the ‘normal’ teen with an independent point of view, the voice of reason who becomes the audience representative by taking the sensible stances we hope we would emulate in a similar situation. His mirror image and rival is David Shawn, played by Tom Cruise, a bullish, macho, born sergeant-major type whose severe skinhead crop immediately marks him out as a quasi-fascist.

  US critic Roger Ebert, in his review of Taps for the Chicago Sun-Times (www.webcitation.org), compares the film to William Golding’s classic study of boys without adult guidance Lord Of The Flies. If that comparison holds, then Brian is Ralph, Alex is Simon and David is Jack. The charismatic leader, the thinker, the thug. Taps is as much about the uneasy interaction between these archetypes as it is about militarism under threat or boys attempting to be men, but also suggests that every army – or teen gang – needs all three to function successfully. The trick is finding the balance.

  The school’s grand look, crusty military attitude and rigid hierarchies also put the viewer in mind of Lindsay Anderson’s public school revolution classic If . . . (see here). But here, the older kids have power but rarely abuse it. Bunker Hill is not dysfunctional. Everyone accepts their roles, and Brian is loved and admired for his privileged position. Taps is not concerned with youth rebellion against institution. It’s more interested in a sheltered, self-contained society’s rebellion against the real world.

  Brian’s promotion means that he is granted the ultimate end-of-term privilege; dinner and brandy with the outgoing Cadet Major and General Bache. As Bache (pronounced ‘Baysh’, but if you prefer to think of it as ‘Bash’ go right ahead) regales the boys with war stories in the gentlemen’s club atmosphere of his study, you can imagine Alex, like any normal teenage boy, stifling giggles while watching the clock. But the two boys are rapt, and Brian looks at General Bache with an expression that combines shock, awe, gratitude and undying love. You can’t help but wonder, at this point, why Brian is in such dire need of a father figure when his own dad is also a military man.

  We are then treated to several minutes of parade-ground pageantry full of boys marching with stiff and bullish pride, images designed to sort viewers immediately into those who admire the discipline and strength of fit young boys in uniform, and those who want to hide behind the sofa until the Hitler Youth go away.

  But the show of strength is ironic. Bache, suddenly looking old and weary of battle, takes the mic to announce that Bunker Hill is to be closed in a year’s time. The trustees intend to sell it to a real estate company who want to build that ultimate symbol of rootless civilian yuppieness – condominiums.

  The school is at such odds with the civilian world that its only meeting with it takes away both adult leadership and the year’s grace. A gang of local teens park up outside the Academy’s graduation dance and commence with the mocking. These military men do not inspire respect or fear among teens in post-’50s jeans. They’re just alien teens, ripe for the same macho, homophobic taunting as any gang of others. A fight breaks out. When Bache rushes out to restore order, he’s attacked just like his boys.
The kid tries to pull the gun from his pocket (I know . . . why has a guy brought a loaded pistol to a formal dance? As I said, suspend that disbelief) and Bache accidentally kills the leader of the gang. He is arrested, and bang goes Bunker Hill’s 12-month reprieve.

  But the now-absent Bache, who also suffers a stress-related heart attack, commands his boys by proxy. When he waxed defiant and said that he intended to fight to get the school’s closure reversed, Brian Moreland had taken the sentiment literally. Brian convinces the boys to occupy the school, arm up and refuse to leave the building until Bunker Hill is saved to provide future generations of cannon fodder. Parents, police and, inevitably, the military itself are called in to talk the battalion of children down and protect the real American way of life . . . the relentless march of capitalism. Taps becomes a fiendishly provocative subversion of rebellious anti-military students occupying American colleges to protest against the Vietnam War.

  But Brian is fighting to prove himself to two very different father figures as much as he is for principle, tradition and loyalty and against what he perceives as a world of gutless and hostile civilians. The cadets, some of whom are as young as 12, move gradually from willing participants in an exciting, adult-baiting game to terrified children who understand that their lives are in danger as Brian digs himself and his ‘men’ into a deeper and darker trench. He is isolated, old enough to ape Bache’s notions of duty and honour, but deprived of the old man himself, and therefore the wise counsel of the only adult he appears to trust. By the time he realises that he is not man enough to understand the complexities of leadership, and that part of a leader’s responsibility might lie in knowing when to surrender, it’s too late. Tragedy ensues.

  Before the inevitably violent climax to the tale, we learn that Brian has issues with Bad Dad over his mother’s death. The soldier had ordered the then 12-year-old to cry out his grief for 15 minutes . . . and then never cry over her again. The scene where Pop Moreland leads the parents’ delegation and attempts to persuade his son to relent is key, and testament to Hutton’s excellence. He is the essence of a being trapped between that grieving, frightened 12-year-old and his extreme attempt to prove that he is now more of a man than his father. Dad orders the gaggle of parents around like dumbass privates on parade, neatly suggesting that the world Brian is fighting to preserve is not worth preserving. ‘A leader who loses his humanity becomes a tyrant,’ Bache has already told Brian, and that was the clue to what Brian loves about Bache and despises about his own father. When Brian refuses to accept his father’s authority over him (the son potentially outranks the father, in strict military terms), Dad changes the tone from father to mocking militarist bully, ranting about his son’s strategic errors, informing his son that he could ‘break his neck’ if he felt like it. When Brian evokes the example of his beloved General Bache, Dad is sent into rage, not because he is concerned for Brian or the other cadets, but because Bache and his son are of the officer class, and he isn’t. He finally just hits Brian. It is Dad’s final defeat, as he loses all control of himself and the situation, while Brian maintains his dignity. Hutton’s repressed tears and accusatory stare remind you that, a few years ago, Brian was forbidden to cry by this same monster. From this point on, you just can’t stop yourself wanting the boy to somehow obliterate his father’s influence and win this thing.

  But one of his father’s accusations has hit home. The outside world believes that he is holding other cadets hostage. To be a good and just leader – a better man than Bad Dad – Brian has to confront this head on and encourage reluctant recruits to leave. This parade-ground scene is where the film proves its good intentions. Because, in a bad film, every cadet would make one of those weird gung-ho bellows that macho American males are fond of, and conform. They don’t. Some stay. Some leave. Brian has made the fair choice, but it has left him weakened. It sows the seeds of future desertion, rather than leaving the remaining cadets more committed.

  The movie’s last act finally strides confidently into action movie territory, and it does so with the same sure-footed mastery of storytelling with which it leads us through Bunker Hill’s insular bunker mentality, its rain-soaked parade-ground scenes and the differing viewpoints of its teen characters and Ronny Cox’s military negotiator Colonel Kerby, who is the strong but sympathetic father figure that Brian really needs. When the besieged boys are finally confronted by the full might of the real military-industrial complex, you’re immediately reminded of traditional against-all-odds cinematic images, particularly Michael Caine’s gritty Brits in Zulu and the doomed German trench rats in All Quiet On The Western Front. Taps becomes a strange kind of war film about an outnumbered and outgunned army fighting a battle they can’t win for ultimately futile reasons. Actually, not so strange, now I think about either World War One or Vietnam.

  The film earns the right to make its images of dead boys as haunting and emotional as any in conventional war films. Penn is the accomplished naturalist actor we come to know in later years, but shorn of some his more scenery-chewing elements. Cruise is fascinating because he isn’t Tom Cruise yet. Cast in a thanklessly ugly role, he is chubby of face and thick of neck, a ball of redneck mindlessness. The one glimpse of his future persona occurs early, when he has to fire a gun into the air and makes it look like he’s fucking the entire planet and making us like it. But it does feel inevitable that Penn’s Alex is the one character who can bring a sane solution to the problem, and that David should be able to destroy that solution and tip the world into war with one Cruise missile. Cruise can’t resist making it kind of gonzo funny, too. You can understand exactly why Paul Brickman’s original choice for the lead in Risky Business (see here) was Hutton rather than Cruise. There’s no evidence here that this ugly skinhead could do anything onscreen other than die like a maniac.

  One of the many unusual things about Taps is that the film lingers after leaving, but you struggle to decide exactly what it’s trying to say. Teen movies usually write their base message large, but Taps is neither entirely liberal nor conservative, neither pro-military nor anti-military, neither moral nor amoral. It’s a strong story with an insane ending that leaves you feeling that you’ve been shown something true and disturbing about the military mindset, and about boys’ relationship to violence, but without the usual route map to guide you to the makers’ intentions. One thing’s for sure, though: if the cops, parents and armies of Pennsylvania are truly as hapless as they are in Taps, I’d rather take my chances in Beirut.

  CLASS OF 1984

  1982

  Starring: Perry King, Timothy Van Patten, Roddy McDowall, Michael J. Fox, Merrie Lynn Ross, Lisa Langlois

  Dir.: Mark L. Lester

  Plot: The punk rock Blackboard Jungle.

  Key line(s): Mr Norris: ‘I think Stegman’s actually a brilliant kid.’

  Mr Corrigan: ‘So was the Marquis de Sade.’

  Class of 1984 proudly presents its tongue-in-cheek exploitation credentials from the get-go. It begins with a trick pulled straight from the The Blackboard Jungle (see here) box of fake social concern: a caption that informs us that there were 280,000 instances of classroom violence last year, apparently, and, therefore, this movie is based on real events. Where any of these figures and real events come from is anyone’s guess.

  Then, as we watch beardy, pointy-chinned music teacher Andrew Norris (King) drive to his new job at Abraham Lincoln High School, we hear a song. A truly, spectacularly terrible song, which begins with gnarly John Carpenter synth before flattening into the kind of techno-rock power balladry that could only mean the 1980s. With halting melodrama, over a melody that barely qualifies as melody, the singer sings the words: ‘When does a dream/Become a nightmare?/When do we do what must be done?’ By this point, Mark L. Lester has lost interest in Mr Norris, and who can blame him? In the urban jungle that lies beyond his four wheels, The Kids are runnin’ wild. A teen thief is chased down a busy street by a shopowner. Punky looking types are graffiti-ing on walls. A
young couple are snogging enthusiastically outside school gates. A boy hitches a ride to school by jumping on the back of the school bus at high speed and hanging on for grim death. There’s a scrap in the school playground. Because Nazi punks informed by the comic-book hyper-realism of The Warriors (see here) are on a crazy rampage, Dude, and we’re going to watch them and laugh for 90 minutes while going along with the pretence that we’re actually sharing the film-makers’ faux-sincere concern for the future of Western civilisation.

  By 1982, the B-movie had become an aesthetic choice rather than a film industry necessity. Gigantic blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars had further established that filmgoers were happy to go to the cinema to watch one movie; there was no need any more to fund low-budget films to play as support features. But the tacky look, sly subtexts and exploitative feel of cheap movies had claimed a place in the heart of budding genre directors and a generation of trash-loving movie fans. It would take until the 1990s for smart-acres like Quentin Tarantino to intellectualise the B-movie so completely that self-conscious irony and big budgets overwhelmed the joys of sincerely delivered schlock. A movie like Class Of 1984 is still perfectly balanced between providing tight and unpretentious slam-bang entertainment, and knowingly winking at an audience who have spent many an hour chortling ironically at bad (and good) high school movies from the ’50s and ’60s.