All posts by Louis Fowler

Documentary

The Man Who Saw Tomorrow (1981)

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Of all the outré mysteries of the unknowable, the prophecies of 16th-century mystic seer Michel de Nostredame — or, as we now call him, Nostradamus — fascinate me. Mostly, I was a weird kid about him. 

In sixth grade. I wrote a book report on the translated The Prophecies in Nostradamus’ lauded quatrain style. Getting an A- on it did me no favors in the “cool” department of my class, making it longer even until I got a kiss from a girl or a 1500s prognosticator.

I got into Nostradamus after seeing the “documentary” The Man Who Saw Tomorrow at 3 a.m. on cable, only to rediscover it on VHS at my local library, like a sign from a prognosticator’s divine divining bowl. With tensions overflowing in Iran and the Middle East at this very moment, it’s been reintroduced into my life by YouTube. Bloatedly narrated by Orson Welles and four decades later, it’s pretty terrible. How did this movie scare me for so long?

Much like those unexplained docs from Rod Serling and the Schick Sunn Classics people, Tomorrow starts with three 1700s “skeptics” drinking from Nostradamus’s skull, which apparently was cursed. Fair enough, but it’s not brought up again. Drunk on wine and smoking a cigar, Welles says Nostradamus “mystified scholars” as he studied the intrinsic  kabbalah, braved the plague and, in his spare time, wrote the prophecies that are kind of vague, but in context, also totally accurate … right?

Most people know Nostradamus’s prophecies about Napoleon, Hitler (also called “Hister” in the movie) and the JFK assassination. But what about those of the future in 1981? Well, here’s the highlight reel:
• 1986: Worldwide Famine!
• 1988: Earthquake Will Decimate Los Angeles!
• 1994: World War III Begins!
• 1999: The King of the Mongols Is Revealed to Be the Third Antichrist!

When that final date passed over us, a small discharge of prophetic relief came over me, letting me know it was going to be okay. The Man Who Saw Tomorrow movie is a cultural oddity, when lots were cast and such things were left to the passing of time and phew, it’s all hokem.

Except it’s not anymore. It’s now playing out like Nostradamus and Welles said it would, with one exception: The Antichrist wears a blue suit and red tie. Or maybe this movie was a quick and easy way to make money by making people scared. I guess we’ll soon find out. Or maybe we won’t. —Louis Fowler

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Comedy

Vamp (1986)

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Before Sinners was picking undead chords and From Dusk Till Dawn strummed along to a scantily clad Salma Hayek, 1986’s Vamp busted out massively bombed in empty theaters. With the statuesque domme Grace Jones bringing New Wave androgyny to the neck-biting role as a vampire demigod, Vamp set up the whole blueprint of the “vampiric whores” mythology. It’s a blood-caked piece of dark erotica with a pulsating electronic beat sequenced with shrill screams, grimy alleys and an artistic flair for the supernatural. 

On the other side of the churched-up coin, Vamp is a long-forgotten piece of semi-demonic trash that implies a much better movie, a conceit of both vampire lore and semi-nude ladies, one I still enjoy in all its low-budget, badly edited, completely rushed grandeur.

Released when horror-comedies were trying to get their foot (and other extremities) through the door, the movie starts with a trio of ’80s movie teens, Keith (Chris Makepeace, Meatballs), A.J. (Robert Rusler, Thrashin’) and Duncan (Gedde Watanabe, countless Asian stereotypes), trying to find strippers for their frat party. Craigslist hadn’t been invented yet, so they drive to the big bad city with a soundalike copy of Robert Palmer’s “Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)” blaring.

They enter the After Dark Club, a rough but serene establishment where white women with jiggly asses in spandex dance onstage. Then Katrina (Jones) performs a very arty, very kabuki, very unerotic striptease; think David Bowie meets Keith Haring at a downtown art show with fusion tapas and no lube, and you’ll get the vibe. Being a hungry vampire, she eats A.J.’s heart, drains him and, sadly, is put on ice for most of the movie.

That’s okay, though, because Keith meets a ditsy waitress (Dedee Pfeiffer, Michelle’s sister), eats some cockroaches and wars with an albino punk (Billy Drago). Eventually, the undead A.J. helps him save the day (night?). In the climax, Katrina flips the bird from beyond the grave.

The best part of Vamp is the casting. Even though she’s barely part of the movie and has no discernible dialogue, fresh off Conan the Destroyer and A View to a Kill, Jones casts an intimating shadow over the comedic proceedings, made all the stranger by the club managers who look like they came out of a Goodfellas casting call. What’s her story, I wonder …

The guys are also well cast. As the hero , once-a-nerd Makepeace holds his own, with ’80s mainstay Rusler doing his preppy-punk thing that, kudos, he does well. The biggest surprise is Watanabe, doing an Asian take on a W.A.S.P. that’s kind of groundbreaking when you think about the time.

What hurts Vamp is that it’s half-baked. It has a real storyline and some great characters, but does nothing with them. I could see someone wanting to remake this in the Sinners/From Dusk Till Dawn vein, but I guess that ship has been burned, most likely with a raised finger. Oh, well, at least Jones’s end-credits song, “Vamp”, is actually pretty darn good. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Predator: Badlands (2025)

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The Predator franchise has always worked for me. Sure, there are a few clunkers in there — Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, I’m looking at you — but from the original Predator to the Robert Rodriguez-produced Predators to the gloriously Indigenous-heavy Prey, every film in this roster has been a true popcorn movie.

Add the latest installment, Predator: Badlands, to the ever-growing list of more-than-watchable sequels, because this film not only delves deep into the Predator mythos, but, in the end, it takes the Predator and turns him into a real stand-up guy lonesome scion of alien revenge.

No, really.

The Predators — or, as they’re called now, the Yautja — are in this clan that a little guy named Dax is about to be initiated into. Challenged by his brutish father who, sadly, decapitates his older brother for being weak — Yikes! Are you sure that wasn’t my dad? — Dax crash-lands on the alien world of Ganna, where he’s going to become a man or, you know, die trying.

On the hostile planet — apparently, it’s a real hellscape — he immediately finds vine-like strangling creatures, exploding caterpillars and large plants that shoot out poisonous spikes and immediately paralyze the body. And that’s in the first 15 minutes.

Eventually, he finds an android survivor (Elle Fanning) from a Weyland-Yutani (shades of Alien’s Xenomorphs?) scouting party. Along with a cute rolling-ball creature they call Bud, they try to find the mythical Kalisk that Dax wants to kill to impress his father.

While that’s going on, the android’s identical twin sister and a bunch of space marines find Dax’s ship. They take all the weapons and, of course, want to capture and eviscerate him. They all engage, entangle and enrage with a round of alien psychoanalysis about grief and loss, as well as old-fashioned shoulder cannons and wrist-controlled atom bombs.

With sparse alien dialogue and the mannerisms of a hardened warrior, New Zealand actor Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi is more than serviceable as Dax, alternating between immature warrior to seasoned champion for whom, as the mid-credits scene teases, more adventures will come.

But if anything needs more credit, it is Dan Trachtenberg, directing his third entry in the franchise. Between Prey and the animated Predator: Killer of Killers, he is on a creative streak I am actually down with, giving Dax and all the Yautja actual characteristics that make than more than, well, Predators.

In the end, Predator: Badlands is just a wildly entertaining entry in a nine-movie series that is only picking up camouflaged steam, and I am here for it. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

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As the slightly sweet, slightly menacing bed of “chugga-chugga” piano music wildly encapsulates Tim Burton’s feature debut, you know something magical is going to take place from the first minute — no, scratch that — the first second of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.

Usually, when I review movies, they’re either new (or newish) or something I haven’t seen in eons and want to revisit. But in this case, I’ve watched Big Adventure an average of two or three times a year for the past 40. Safe to say, it attached itself to and in me. I still love this film and, even more, I want the generations after mine to enjoy this film. It’s a fantastic, wondrous and completely absurdist joyride on the vintage handlebars of Pee-wee’s treasured bicycle.

That bike starts the plot rolling, as one day, Pee-wee’s bike is stolen outside a shopping center. Everyone is a comical suspect until a fake psychic tells him his bike is currently in the basement of the Alamo in Texas. With this information, Pee-wee (Paul Reubens) sets out on a road trip with hardened criminals, lovelorn waitresses, a ghosty trucker and, of course, the Satan’s Helpers motorcycle gang. When he eventually finds his bike, Big Adventure becomes a madcap chase through a movie studio with Godzilla, Twister Sister’s Dee Snider and two handfuls of snakes.

I’d say it all makes sense, but you’ve seen this before, right? Instead, I implore all you well-read, mostly subversive, somewhat alternative culturists who grew up on Pee-wee Herman to dust off that VHS tape, bargain buy DVD or the gorgeous Criterion Blu-ray, and share it with the next generation of smart alecks, obnoxiously conceited and, really, the only people I want to be around in the future.

With its kitschy color scheme and surreal set design, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is a true love letter to all the weird kids, informing them of their life options as they go out into the world and make their own art, hopefully with an oddball bike and original persona to match. —Louis Fowler

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Action

Thrashin’ (1986)

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The 1980s had their “big” movies dedicated to the dawn of the most extreme of sports, little-seen mainstream product like Rad, North Shore, Body Slam or even The Dirt Bike Kid with Peter Billingsley and half the cast of HBO’s Not Necessarily the News.

But only one movie made me want to skateboard down a “freewheeling boogieman” on the 405, bounce off a “parallel shortbus” at the youth center and bust out with a “360 knapsack” on a “total doogie” — that’s the lingo, right? — and that movie was Thrashin’.

The whole skating craze was more my younger brother’s bag. I’d watch him and his friends doing “ollie-hopnoodles” and “jitterbuggin’ the manatee” in the neighborhood park while I sat in the shade of a tree and read my dystopian fiction novels above my reading level — a sad childhood, to be sure.

In that summer of 1986, though, Thrashin’ was advertised on the back of every Marvel comic book and, man, I was as pumped as a fat kid with no athletic ability could be pumped: I needed to see that movie!

Too bad there were no theaters in my small town. The next year, I rented it on VHS and thought it was okay, but my skating fandom already had died; by then I was obsessed with extreme bike-messengering, mostly because of Kevin Bacon’s Quicksilver.

Since that long-lost rental, I hadn’t revisited Thrashin’ until yesterday. A dated piece of analog flotsam, it’s from a more innocent time when all you needed to be a hero was your absolute will to be the best skater in the Valley.  

Corey (a baby-faced Josh Brolin) is the new kid in town and he’s got that will. Decked out in his loose Vision tee, stylin’ Jams shorts and parent-approved elbow and knee pads, he cruises in the wind toward PG-13 oblivion while a generic “punk” song by Meat Loaf, with lyrics about “achieving your dreams” and “flying high,” plays on the epic soundtrack,

With plenty of sick “flip-kicks,” “Mr. Coffees” and “Gorgonzola dunks,” Corey and his friends call themselves the “Ramp Locals” because, well, they made a ramp. Eventually, they run into the skater punks from the other part of town, led by swarthy Tommy (’80s mainstay Robert Rusler).

While the Red Hot Chili Peppers play a skate party — the band’s second movie of the year, alongside Tough Guys with Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster — the Romeo and Juliet vibes take precedence as Corey and Tommy’s sister, Chrissy (Pamela Gidley), spend time playing games at an outdoor carnival, as you do.

Even though the stakes are low, the punks are pretty mad and make a wager to control the whole skateboarding scene, as well as, um, a corporate sponsorship. As you can guess, after a rehabilitation montage, Corey soundly defeats them and you think the punks will be mad … but, instead, Tuff Tommy shakes Corey’s hand and says, “Good game, brah!” or something to that effect.

Aided by a bunch of ’80s skaters like Tony Hawk and Tony Alva, both Brolin and, to smaller effect, Rusler are pretty good in their melodramatic roles. But the real star is director David Winters, a longtime choreographer whose work on Linda Lovelace for President, Roller Boogie and the Star Wars Holiday Special make me think his life story would be a great movie.

In the end, Thrashin’ was a near-wipeout of the whole skateboard craze, schooling me on the fads and foibles that, as a young person in the ’80s, I could often find myself in. At least not until Gleaming the Cube … right, brah? —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.