Cranky Lesbian

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Tag: Bad Movies

Kenny Rogers is Everyone’s Dad in Six Pack

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On April 20, 2022

In Kenny Rogers

Kenny Rogers has a pint-sized pit crew in Six Pack.

The ’80s were a cinematically magical time, when tenderhearted country music superstars couldn’t stop adopting ragtag groups of orphans. Dolly Parton did so to memorably trippy effect in A Smoky Mountain Christmas (1986), but her “Islands in the Stream” duet partner Kenny Rogers beat her to the punch four years earlier, in Six Pack.

Eyes twinkling with mischief, majestic beard shining proudly, Rogers stars as washed-up racer Brewster Baker. Sabotaged and sold out to sponsors by his former head mechanic, Terk (Terry Kiser), Brewster’s career is circling the drain. He’s stranded in the john of a dilapidated gas station in Texas when thieves make off with his race car’s new engine, which he can’t afford to replace.

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Rent-a-Cop: Burt and Liza’s Forgotten Masterpiece

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On March 12, 2022

In Burt Reynolds

Burt and Liza are under attack by critics, and a crazed killer, in Rent-a-Cop.

The ’80s were a rough decade for Burt Reynolds and Liza Minnelli, with 1988 proving something of a nadir for them both. Not only was Rent-a-Cop a critical and commercial flop, Reynolds had a second bomb with Switching Channels less than two months later. Minnelli’s year was arguably more disastrous, resulting in a Worst Actress Razzie win for her work in Cop and Arthur 2: On the Rocks. All of this makes Rent-a-Cop sound somewhat better, and worse, than it actually is.

Before we get into the plot, let’s take a moment to remember a bit of ’80s movie trivia. Just weeks before Rent-a-Cop was given its ignominious January theatrical release, Nuts received a prestige December debut. Barbra Streisand played a hooker on trial for murder in that Martin Ritt film, an unsatisfying mess that nevertheless garnered a few Golden Globe nominations. I would argue that in the battle of prostitution movies starring non-competitive EGOT honorees, Minnelli made the more enjoyable picture.

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Love Note, an ’80s Teen Romance Costarring Jesus

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On March 8, 2022

In Bad Movies

Screen shot from the film Love Note (1987).
Craig Bierko and Sally Murphy fall for each other, and Jesus, in Love Note.

Watching Love Note, a 1987 Christian movie for teens that plays like an episode of Highway to Heaven, you see hints of things to come for lead actor Craig Bierko. Craig Johnson, his fast-talking salesman of a high school student, isn’t so different than Harold Hill, the slick Music Man role for which Bierko was Tony-nominated 13 years later. In Love Note, he’s simply peddling a different product than Hill—salvation.

Our introduction to this precocious teen gives us a lot to digest. Standing before his classmates for a speech assignment, he recites a well-oiled (but still squeaky) spiel that sounds like the work of a middle-aged “How do you do, fellow kids?” youth pastor. It kicks off with a knee-slapper of an anti-choice joke:

Craig: Good morning, and welcome to the morning edition of Point of View. My name is Craig Johnson and I’ll be your host for this morning’s controversy. I was gonna talk about abortion, but, uh, homicide seems like a real ugly way to start the day.

[Classmates laugh appreciatively]

Love Note (1987)

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In Her Defense: A Dreary Canadian Neo-Noir with a Joe Eszterhas Twist

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On January 5, 2022

In Bad Movies

“The hell? Who knew broads could scheme?!”

As Felix Unger taught us lo those many years ago, when you assume you make an ass out of you and me. Reader, here I confess that I made an ass out of us all with this one. After watching Susan Lucci in The Woman Who Sinned, I noticed In Her Defense, another title with a similar plot (adultery, murder, legal jeopardy). It starred Marlee Matlin and Michael Dudikoff, who played the schmuck with whom Lucci sinned, and I thought maybe the films would make a decent double feature.

How wrong I was! By the time I realized this was not a campy TV movie of the week but dreary Canadian direct-to-cable-or-video dreck, I’d invested enough time in watching it that I didn’t want to scrap the whole thing. Gird your loins if you plan to continue reading, because this was brutally bad. Its saving grace was a half-baked lesbian twist that, despite feeling somewhat random, was less than surprising to anyone who has seen Basic Instinct.

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