The Lost Boys (1987)

 "Read the TV guide, you don't need a TV!"

I know: where have I been all these years, ten years old in 1987 yet the first time I saw The Lost Boys was last night. At least I've seen it now,

As a story... the film is good. I wouldn't use a stronger word than "good": this is a fairly bog standard Hollywood blockbuster plot, but it's done well enough. And, given the youth of much of the cast, it's well performed. Dianne Wiest particularly excels as the sweet, overstressed Lucy, a character who feels very real, And Barnard Hughes is superb as Grandpa, Greek chorus and by far the coolest character in spite of all the very cool youth culture stuff.

And there's a lot of the latter. The main theme song is a banger in its own right: yes, Marilyn Manson's cover is better- his covers invariably are- but we don't talk about him nowadays. We get Echo and the Bunnymen covering People Are Strange. The vampires live in an abandoned underground hotel with a massive poster of Jim Morrison on the wall. All this stuff has a lot to do with why this film became such a cult classic, I feel.

And yet, I think, despite the rather satisfying resolution, the film is raised above its good-but-not-great script by its visuals. It has a very late '80s goth aesthetic. The vampires and the scenes surrounding them look great. And you can never go wrong with showing amusement rides at night to evoke a sense of the eerie.

A film with a merely decent script, then, but one elevated above that by visuals and coolness. And this is also a fascinating glimpse of vampires in pop culture in the '80s- a possible influence on both Anne Rice and Joss Whedon?

Sonic Youth- Sister (1987)

 I was in the mood for some Sonic Youth, so Sister it is. This, oddly enough, is arguably one of their more well-known and liked long players, yet it doesn't boast many, possibly any, well-known singles. It is, of course, excellent.

Perhaps it's the fact that I listened to this album not long after hearing Marquee Moon again, but Sonic Youth are very New York, aren't they? We think of them as '80s-90s American indie rock or alternative and badge them alongside the Butthole Surfers, R.E.M, the Replacements. Yet their sound owes an awful lot to Television, doesn't it? You could even look forward and say that the sound, if not so strongly the songwriting, of the Strokes has that same ineffably New York sound too.

Yet Sonic Youth are more than just that. They are a seminal part of that New York tradition while also feeding into so many other traditions. There's so much going on with Sonic Youth. They have perfect pop sensibilities, yet every album is a soundscape. Hence the fact that I never pay much attention to the lyrics. I'm aware this album is largely about both Philip K. Dick and Thiurston Moore's dead twin sister, but these things don't really register while listening.

Regardless, this is Sonic Youth at their peak and a superb album.

G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987)

 "I hope you both get fleas!"

The previous year, the creators of thisfilm gave us Transformers: The Movie. It was, for a great big toy advert, genuinely quite good for what it was. The script and the dialogue were genuinely good for trhe kind of thing it was. I loved it as a kid. I appreciate it now, load of old tosh that it is.

Ten year old me also loved this. Forty-five year old me, while being regularly hit by blasts of nostalgia, can appreciate that this film, which went straight to video, just isn't very good.

I'm British, so therefore we have the complex Action Force/G.I. Joe thing. Let's not go there. Instread, let us acjnowledge that G.I. Joe belongs to Larry Hama. His superb and lengthy run on the comic book is THE true version. The cartoon was rubbish, full of silly fantasy elements. Yeah, like this. I mean, the baddies are a hidden civilisation with some silly Graham Hancock origin, with a science based on organics, who plot to use space spores to reduce humanity to mindless snakes. This is not the sort of gritty, witty stuff that the esteemed Mr Hama would write.

Also, the focus on Lt Falcon is unmerited- given the stakes, what does he matter? Also, the new trainee Joes I barely remember, hinting that the film must have come out when the toys were experiencing a drop in sales. 

The animation is superb, very anime, very active camera angles. But the characterisation, dialogue and most of the voice acting are shocking. Compared to Transformers: The Movie, this is very poor. Yes, there's a good set piece with Pythona. Yes, Burgess Meredith is always charismatic. But this is a tragic misfire, whatever ten year old me may think.

Deathstalker II (1987)

 "Ordinarily, I don't mind seeing a woman get a good beating, if she deserves it..."

Well, then. This line is said by the hero five minutes in. And there's plenty more of this little light outtrageous sexism throughout. 1987, much though it may seem like yesterday to some of us, was a longer time ago than we think.

It's rare, although not so rare as often thought, for a sequel to be better than the original. Some, wrongly, put the admittedly superlative The Godfather: Part II in this category, but The Godfather is superior by some considerable margin. So Deathstalker II, I suppose, manages to be better than The Godfather: Part II in one sense, on a technicality. Yes, I did indeed actually say that.

This really is superior to the original, though, despite the entirely new cast and the fact it could very easily just have been an original film. Much more than the original, it knows it's rubbish, and characters constantly break the fourth wall to say so. Conan gets a mention, cheerfully accepting this is a total rip-off. There's a pointless tribute to Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum and Goldfinger simultaneously. There's a very silly boxing match. There are massive historical inaccuracies (apparently, Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible are alive at the same time...) which are cheerfully lampshaded. 

The whole thing is so very, very silly, and played with just the right tone by a cast who know exactly what sort of movie they're in. This is high camp, not low camp. And I love it.

Creepshow 2 (1987)

 "I feel the need, the need for weed!"

It's getting close to Halloween which, I think, is as good an excuse to watch only fun, cheesy horror films for the rest of October. This is a particularly fine example, with three nice little Stephen King stories (he gets an amusing cameo) adapted, but not directed, by George A. Romero in another entertaining little '80s Hollywood version of those old Amicus anthologies. It's nice to see that the cast, while short of star wattage, is full of character actors with familiar faces who are getting prominent roles and nailing them.

The first segment, uncharcteristically, happens in some western state that isn't Maine, which is very un-Stephen King. It's a simple tale of a kindly old couple who are nice to the local native tribe and try to support their dying community, only to be cruelly murdered by a young psychopathic thug and his underlings, who are all then slain in increasingly fun ways by a wooden carving of a Native American  chief. It is, I suppose, vaguely racist in its stereotypes, but the killings are clever and fun. The axe in the back, in shadow but with a splattering of blood, is nicely done in particular.

The second segment, about four teenagers on a raft being menaced and killed off one by one by some kind of sentient oil slick, is superb. The straightforward plot doesn't really reflect the cleverness of how events play out for maimum tension. I love how all but one of the kids smoke some weed, making one expect a "drugs are bad, m'kay" undercurrent with the one girl surviving... but they are all doomed regardless. I love how the slick is inexorable and can't be outrun. There's no logic or reason to cling to, only fear and death.

The third and final segment is outstanding, as a very rich woman leaves the home of an expensive male prostitute(!), is late, and in her panic fatally runs over a hitchhiker who pursues her inexorably to her death after she drives off and tries to avoid the consequences. The horror and tension are nicely juxtaposed with her musings on the guilt she feels. On a mundane note, I smiled at the beginning when the digital alarm clock failed to go off and flashed "12:00" after a power cut. That exact situation made me late a couple of times back in the days before we all just used our phones...

This film isn't big, it doesn't claim to be clever, but it's enormous fun and gave me quite a feeling of warmth.

The Princess Bride (1987)

"Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?"

"Yes."

"Morons."

It's a genuine mystery: This Is Spinal Tap is one of the funniest films ever. How, then, can pretty much the same team- Rob Reiner directs, Christopher Guest has a major role- produce something so unfunny as this.

I can see what it’s trying to do- play with the silliness of the tropes and cliches. Hence we have exaggerated tropes such as a princess with absurd faith that her ridiculously heroic man will save her, and a Spanish swordsman who lives to avenge his father’s death. But none of this is addressed with any real wit, and it’s obly the names (Prince Humperdinck) and cameos from the likes of Peter Cook and Mel Smith that tell us this is intended to be a comedy.

All this is narrated by Columbo to his annoying, sport-obsessed grandson for no apparent reason, in a framing sequence that has no obvious reason to be there. It describes a weird mediaeval word where fictional countries mix with real ones and people seem to have heard of Australia. And where there are, er, “rodents of unusual size” which look awfully like a man in a suit. It’s clearly meant to be funny. It isn’t. An odd misfire.

I very strongly suspect, mind, that the “battle of wits” scene strongly influenced the first episode of Sherlock.

Evil Dead 2 (1987)

"You bastards! You dirty bastards!"

Well then. This is quite the most splendidly disgusting film I've ever seen, knocking its predecessor into a cocked hat. Outrageously cheeky, too: it blatantly retcons the events of the first film within the first few minutes, making it very clear that Ash is the hero here. And Bruce Campbell is magnificent: simultaneously camp and macho, the Adam West of the slasher film.

Let’s be honest; this film doesn’t have so much a plot as a series of set pieces, but who cares when you’re having this much fun? I laughed out loud several times. I jumped several times. I loved the it with the late Lisa’s head and sharp teeth in Ash’s crotch- ouch. I loved the entire sequence with Ash’s hand turning evil. I loved all the blood, the cheerful bad taste, the Grand Guignol silliness. And best of all this is 1987, and CGI doesn’t really exist yet. It’s all done by stop motion, and if the monsters look like Muppets, frankly who cares? Any film in which a severed eye can fly across the room and end up in someone’s mouth is fine by me. Never before has a horror film been quite so much unadulterated fun.

And then there’s the delightfully random and sequel-hunting mediaeval ending, just when you things can’t get any more fun. Ok, this may not be the best film I’ve seen this year. But it’s easiky the most fun.

Hellraiser (1987)

"Come to Daddy!”

I've never, aside from the Motorhead song, had any previous experience of the Hellraiser franchise. I haven’t read the novels, nothing. I’ve been missing out; this is right up there with the best horror films of the decade.

One big surprise is how good the camerawork is, the film being not only written but also directed- very well indeed- by Clive Barker himself. And the S&M torture demon aesthetic is very visual, translating well to film and effectively realised. It reminds me of a cross between Nurgle and Slaanesh in Warhammer, a contemporary phenomenon. What was in the zeitgeist on 1987?

And the very Eightiesness of not only the hair and clothes but also the choice of shots has aged in a good way; this is a horror film shot like a Siouxie and the Banshees video.

The performances are generally very good, as they needed to be, but I’d single out Andrew Robinson in particular (later Garak in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) for a subtle and nuanced performance. The characterisation is both unusually strong and unusually central for a horror film. It’s a film, I think, about sex, pain and the terrors of temptation. Our two adulterers both face bad ends, although Frank’s is as hellish as his initial stop motion awakening. And all because of a kind of Rubik’s Cube. Why did it take me so long to discover this film?

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

"The bastard son of a hundred maniacs."

Well then. You can tell from the staggering number of years since I blogged the second film in this series that, as I said at the time, I was less than enthused by. I'm now far less likely to wait so long until the next one. This was bloody good.

We get lots of splendid visual horror from the start, well directed and making you jump, and this continues all the way through. But what really makes the film work is a solid plot based around a mental institution and fear of sleep and, in a film where Freddy Krueger is ever-present but appears surprisingly little- a successful formula- but the only disappointment here is that nasty Dr Simms doesn't die. And likeable characters do.

So what are my highlights? A very young Patricia Arquette? An early appearance by a young Laurence Fishburne? A rare Hollywood example of D&D being played? The delightfully '80s metal soundtrack by Dokken? The skeleton of Freddy Krueger resisting burial by means of stop motion? Probably the latter, but there are many. And the plot is actually quite gripping, and as twisty-turny as it is suspenseful.

Fellow Doctor Who fans: I believe that this is the earliest Hollywood film credit of one Rachel Talalay...?

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

"No pain, no gain..."

 You know those "bad" films that are actually fun to watch and sort of entertain you in spite of everything? Well...

I mean, I can see why this was the last Superman film of its series. The special effects are endearingly crap. The script is cartoonish. The whole thing is very silly. And yet the whole thing remains eminently watchable.

It helps that the characters are well-established, and that Reeve,
Kidder and Hackman are as excellent as always; this film isn’t big, it isn’t clever, it isn’t particularly well made. But it’s fun. So let’s ignore the silliness and the plot holes, including the one where the superpowers don’t seem to resent Superman for throwing billions worth of expensive nukes into the Sun in a scene which harms back to the left-wing wish fulfilment scenes of the early comic books. Let’s not study the political message of the film too closely, though; this is not exactly a detailed philosophical examination of nuclear disarmament.

So, yes. The film is silly, shoddily made and killed the franchise. But it’s also perfect light viewing after a two hundred mile round trip.

The Living Daylights (1987)

"We've nothing to declare!"

Before I go on to praise this splendid film... I may get one last blog post out tomorrow on the train- we will see- but after that there won't be anything more until after my big exam on Tuesday 3rd May. It's a week of hardcore revision for me to look forward to. Still, expect a flurry of new blog posts in the couple of days after the exam, probably.

Anyway, I loved The Living Daylights even if it didn't feel much like a Bond film when watched in context. It's a strange thing to say for a series of spy films, but Bond hadn't done a proper Cold War thriller before and only now, in 1987, the very last opportunity there would ever be, do we get one. And yes, I know we have an American chief baddie as a fig leaf so they can deny that this is a straight ahead Cold War spy film with the Russians as the baddies so as not to offend the real world USSR but, well, they're fooling nobody.

And so we have a tale of defections, crappy police cars, secret police arresting pretty girls in the exotic surroundings of, er, Bratislava, and that classically Cold War locale that is Vienna and a Ferris Wheel that immediately evokes The Third Man. Mind you, nothing has dated quite as much as showing the Afghan Mujahideen as the good guys. I'm no useful idiot, far from it, but Najibullah (not a nice man but no one deserves to die like that) was much better for Afghanistan than what came after.

Timothy Dalton... let's actually mention him, shall we? He's obviously a fine actor, easily the best so far, far more technically competent and nuanced in his portrayal than Connery or Moore. I like him. And yet... he's genuinely charismatic, yes, but less so than either of the two aforementioned, both of whom oozed it, and for me he doesn't quite convince as a ladies' man- well, womaniser. He's too sensitive. Still, a promising debut. 

Maryam d'Abo makes a good, and refreshing Bon-bimboesque, Bond girl, and we get good performances from John Rhys-Davies, Art Malik and the ever-reliable Desmond Llewelyn, in a good film for the gadgets.

This is the best film of the '80s so far, let down only by a mildly disappointing theme song from a-Ha, even if it isn't as awful as Shirley Manson of Garbage notoriously said it is. After the problems of A View to a Kill we now have a younger Bond and a witty script, and as a result there's not a lot wrong.

Predator (1987)

"If it bleeds, we can kill it!"

The fact that this film is so good didn't surprise me; I knew that, ever since I hired out the video in the late '80s. I haven't seen it for, well, twenty years, though. And this time I was flabbergasted by Arnold Schwarzenegger's performance. As a departure from the norm he's actually called upon to act rather than just be Arnie. And he pulls it off superbly, anchoring the film successfully through his acting, not just through his physical presence. It's a shame he hasn't been called upon to do that more often.

The film is excellent all-round, though. The suspense; the brilliant design of the creature, its face being revealed towards the end to great effect; a claustrophobic rainforest setting; and most of all a credible and nuanced set of three-dimensional characters to get picked off one by one.

The film is fairly long, but justifies its running time through characterisation, suspense and a superb final duel between Dutch and the creature. The fact that we have only vague glimpses of the creature in the first part of the film makes the reveal so much more effective. What a shame the film doesn't have too happy an ending: after that mushroom cloud Dutch will end up with cancer, methinks.

The Running Man (1987)

"I told you I'd be back."

It would be easy to praise this film for its prescience about such things as reality TV cruelty, ratings cynicism and the use of television to politically dumb down the populace. But (with a nod to The Year of the Sex Olympics) this was all done much more intelligently, and with much more metatextual wit, in a 1985 Doctor Who story called Vengeance on Varos. Unfortunately this has probably caused me to underrate The Running Man which is, to be fair, a rather good film of hilariously '80s at times.

It's that far-flung future year of 2017 when a tyrannical government has removed all civil liberties and political rights, replacing them with arbitrary rule and brainless television to whip up the reactionary fervour of the masses- a bit like Fox News but not as evil. 

It's a problem to believe in the future they present, unfortunately, because of the film's sheer Eightiesness. The hairstyles and computer screens date it instantly, and even the opening titles are uncannily like the video to M.A.R.R.S.'s "Pump Up the Volume". It's also a very cyberpunk, dystopian future, which was very much in the zeitgeist at the time, as was this particular sort of scenario, as shown by the above mentioned Doctor Who story. One thing was prescient, though: a stalker called Sub-Zero decades before Mortal Kombat.

Arnie is, well, Arnie, not so much acting as doing his stuff, and Jessie Ventura hand it up delightfully as Captain Freedom. It's a surprise to see Mick Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa as members of the resistance but they acquit themselves well. 

It's s good film, I admit. It's just that it's hard to entangle from much of the other stuff that was in the zeitgeist at the time and it just doesn't come across as being very original. Worth watching, though.

Spaceballs (1987)

"There is only one man who would dare give me the raspberry: Lone Star!"

There was bound to be a proper Star Wars spoof sooner or later, and always a fair chance that it would be Mel Brooks who did it. It's a fairly straight spoof, really, with counterparts for every major character aside from Luke Skywalker. But then Luke Skywalker is incredibly boring, so who cares?

The characters generally pass muster; Bill Pullman makes a good Harrison Ford and a good star. It's fun to see Rick Moranis as the Darth Vader character, and even more eyebrow-raising to see Joan Rivers, of all people, as the C-3PO equivalent. There are lots of amusing digs at the original movies, of course- we get a gangster called Pizza the Hut and an amusing sight gag at the start as the camera pans across a long, long, long Star Destroyer. Still, these things are funny, but this is no Airplane.

I liked the metatextual bits, mind: Barf comments on a "nice dissolve" at one pont, and I love the moment where the Spaceballs reach into their home video collection (all Mel Brooks movies, naturally) to play the movie they're currently making, in real time. There are loads of little touches like this (I love the moment where Dark Helmet accidentally kills a cameraman during the lightsabre fight!), and they're my favourite thing about the film. There are some nice pop culture references, too, including a Transformer(!) and a cameo from John Hurt reprising that scene from Alien. And I loved the name "Prince Valium". Although not as much as "Colonel Sanders"…

I was perpetually amused at how similar to Earth this far, far, far, far away galaxy was; on Druidia they even conduct their weddings to a blast of Wagner's Wedding March, apparently. They have bumper stickers in the future. The telephones, videotapes and headphones are all very '80s, and characters are heard playing Bon Jovi and Berlin. They even have Jewish humour and loads of it- the Schwarz is Yiddish slang for, well, er, what gets implied at the start of the lightsabre fight. And we get lines about a "Druish princes" and how "she doesn't look Druish". Still, I'm sure there was a lot more of this that went right over my head.

Spaceballs might not be the greatest comedy ever made, but it's a fun way to spend an hour and a half. It's a deceptively clever spoof with a lot to say about the media and how merchandising is taking over popular cinema, to the point of Dark Helmet playing with Kenner action figures. I enjoyed it a lot, and I intend to do some more Mel Brooks stuff soon. I haven't seen any for ages.

RoboCop (1987)

"Best way to steal money is free enterprise."

Right. The next five Saturdays will be Doctor Who nights. That means no movie reviews until after then, probably. So here's one last review slipped in while I can…

This is a very unusual film, far more so than it appears at first glance. It's an '80s macho action film with loads of posturing, gore and violence, a genre we all know well. Thing is, though, we all vaguely assume, correctly, there's something intrinsically right wing about genre. Interesting, then, that RoboCop should be so centred around a central message. Because this is a film about the excesses of privatisation. OCP has already run prisons and hospitals and now, with inevitable corruption, it runs the police. I look at this film, I look at the creeping privatisation of the police under the UK's Coalition government, and I'm scared.

Not that the film, with its vague near-future setting, is prescient in all things, of course. "Old Detroit" seems rather more populated than the Detroit of 2012. Characters are seen smoking indoors. The fashions are irredeemably '80s. But the political satire is frighteningly accurate; a privatised police force leads, inevitably to corruption. Even before we find out that Clarence Boddicker is working for Dick Jones we're clearly shown that there's a moral equivalence: that quote up there comes from Boddicker. In Old Detroit there's no public service, only profit. And no one at OCP displays and moral sense at any point whatsoever. The difference between Bob Morton and the other executives is pure hubris; they're no more moral than he is. We're given constant contrasts between the violent world of the overtly criminal and the no less disgusting world of the corporate, a world of cocaine, hookers, ruthless competition and (literally, with ED-209!) blood on the carpet. The corporate world is completely unglamorous: Wall Street this ain't. There's a good symbolic reason why we get so many scenes set in the toilet.

All this is further shown by the hilarious news broadcasts, which eerily foreshadow The Day Today but are gloriously dark, with an aggressively nuclear apartheid South Africa and the Star Wars "Peace" platform. This is also a nice narrative device for moving the plot along. RoboCop is a very pacey film. It's also a very violent, gory film, of course (especially Emil and the chemicals!!!), which is the main thing noticed by my eleven year old self when I first saw the film, hired from the local video shop. It feels a long time ago.

It's not perfect; Peter Weller's acting is not unlike a plank of wood. There's also an embarrassing plot hole: why does OCP sent RoboCop to a precinct where he might be recognised as Murphy? But it's witty, brilliantly shot by Paul Verhoeven, and gloriously violent. RoboCop is a true '80s video classic. I hadn't seen it for about twenty years, which is shocking. Don't make the mistake I did!

The Monster Squad (1987)

"She's boring. And has an odd-shaped head."

I've never seen this film before today, but it's so similar to so many other films that I may as well have done. There's more than a hint of BMX Bandits in its kids versus baddies shtick. In fact, the bikes look a bit suspiciously Eighties. Also, there are plenty of old-style Pepsi cans on display. Ah, nostalgia…

Another thing this reminds me of is Good Omens, a splendid comedy novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, which also uses the whole kids versus supernatural baddies thing to hilarious effect, but I suppose it's a fairly common trope. It works well here, anyway. The child actors are, well, child actors, but they're pretty much ok as child actors go, and the whole thing is amusing enough to work without requiring more than competent performances. The kids are such great characters, though, especially Phoebe. I love their dialogue.

I'm not sure how realistic it is for a bunch of (mostly) twelve year old kids to be so interested in Universal horror movies, of course, but I think we can gloss over that. It's such a joy to see Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, Frankenstein's monster and, yes, even the Creature from the Black Lagoon, all together at last. There are some nice little subtle bits of homage, too, from the armadillo in the opening titles (evoking the original Dracula), to Frankenstein's monster ("Frank") befriending Phoebe, the little girl. And I'm sure there are plenty more that I've overlooked.

Probably the funniest bit of the film is where we cut to Scary German Guy brandishing a knife, ominously, and then using it to cut a tart for the kiddies because, as we all know, obviously you'd need a really sharp knife for that. Our impression of the character changes completely at the end of the scene, though, when we see those numbers tattooed on his arm. That's probably the only serious moment in the film.

It's all a bit light, perhaps, and it's a very short film, but it's definitely worth a look if you're fond of the many films like this being made at the time. There's even a montage scene with a soundtrack that's way beyond cheesy. It's not a particularly metatextual film, but there are lots of nice little subversions of tropes here. Where else could you see the Wolf Man being kicked in the bollocks?

Masters of the Universe (1987)

"I don't like adventures!"

This is one of my absolute favourite rubbish films. Oh, it's rubbish alright. Eternia looks like a cheap set indoors and like Southern California outdoors, but despite this they had to save money by setting it on Earth, which I imagine would be much cheaper. Skeletor's mask looks rubbish, and poor old Frank Langella gets hilariously clichéd lines such as "A curious quartet" and "Gildor, you minute minion". What's an actor to do but ham it up? As for Dolph Lundgren's performance as He-Man… well, the credits show that he needed both a speech coach and a drama coach. 'Nuff said.

I love it, though. It wears its rubbishness with pride, and is full of dialogue that can only be deliberately hammy. The music is so very, very '80s, and so are the hairstyles. It even has James Tolkan in it, the chap who plays Mr Strickland in the Back to the Future trilogy, and he's one of my favourite actors. In fact, he's probably the best thing about this film.

Still… this is a commercial tie-in to the Masters of the Universe cartoon and toys, so we'd best talk about those. It's all pretty much a formative part of my childhood since the age of five, and I can still remember a disturbingly large number of character names. One of them was called Fisto. Hur Hur. Although I'm not sure what the relevance of the phrase "Masters of the Universe" was. It was all just a load of cynical marketing, of course, but we '80s kids lapped it up. The cartoon, which mostly only featured the same few characters, was a good laugh in spite of the recycled animation and plots, partly because of the deeply silly moral homily at the end of each episode. The backgrounds always looked fantastic, almost as druggy as the plot, and set up a very specific visual aesthetic that anchored this odd mix of sci-fi and fantasy.

This film is not exactly a faithful representation, which should come as no surprise; why should Hollywood creative types slavishly adhere to the rules laid down by a range of toys? Anyway, lots of the characters would be impossible to render well in live action on an obviously limited budget; look how rubbish Skeletor looks. I'm sort of glad they didn't try to do an Orko.

The whole aesthetic is different from the cartoon- very much a mix of the standard Hollywood '80s sci-fi and standard Hollywood fantasy. The overall effect is something much darker and less trippy which makes you much more aware of the inherent silliness of names such as "He-Man and "Evil-Lyn" than would have otherwise been the case. Orko is replaced by Gwildor who, as a fairly standard '80s Hollywood fantasy dwarf, is far more budget friendly. And Billy Barty is the second best thing about this film.

Oddly enough, it seems the director, Gary Goddard, was heavily inspired by Jack Kirby's New Gods stuff for DC. I've not read much of that, but I can see how that would have affected the aesthetic and how Skeletor would presumably be a sort of Darkseid figure. More obvious, though, are the suspiciously large number of, er, "homages" to the Star Wars trilogy. Let's look at them, Shall we?

·         Skeletor is accompanied by a load of black, armoured troops that seem suspiciously close to being stormtroopers.

·         The scene with Skeletor inspecting the bounty hunters is suspiciously close to the similar scene in The Empire Strikes Back. Just using the word "mercenaries" instead of "bounty hunters" doesn't fool me, I'm afraid.

·         The final fight, with He-Man throwing Skeletor down a big hole and the camera following him down for a few feet, is suspiciously close to the climax of Return of the Jedi. Come to think of it, Skeletor looks an awful lot like the Emperor.

That's all coincidence, I'm sure. For the rest, though, we have a fairly standard adventure plot, with the Cosmic Key as our McGuffin. We have Julie (a young Courteney Cox with… interesting hair) and Kevin as our audience identification characters because, obviously, we couldn't possibly be expected to identify with aliens. We have a ridiculously square-jawed, goody-goody hero and a silly, moustache-twirling villain. We have a henchman being zapped to death for failure. We have a silly comedy dwarf. It's all very by-the-numbers, really, but fun, and crammed with action and adventure, up to and including an exploding microwave.

I'm not sure about the ending, though. If Julie and Kevin are a few months back in time, what happened to their earlier selves? Doesn't this create a time paradox so that none of this ever happened? Oh, and if the cosmic key can cause time travel then why didn't our heroes just go back in time and stop Skeletor from doing anything naughty in the first place? Probably best not to think too hard about such things…

Jane and the Lost City (1987)

"Do you mean... the Empire should rally to the flag?"

Blimey. This film is… a bit of an oddity. I borrowed the DVD from a mate after being told that it starred both Sam Jones, star of Flash Gordon, and Jasper Carrott. Any film starring that combination just has to be seen. And it is in fact rather amusing. But I'm somewhat bewildered at how a film like this ever came to be made!

The Jane in question is the star of an old comic strip from the Daily Mirror which ran during the Second World War and was exceedingly popular with the average Tommy, mainly because Jane's gimmick was that she kept accidentally losing her clothes. Yes, I know- political correctness gone mad. One wonders what Laura Mulvey would make of this film. So, naturally, there's an element of soft porn.

Except… there's not that much of it. Yes, Jane is reduced to her underwear about half a dozen times, but that's about it. This is essentially an H. Rider Haggard spoof in the style of 'Allo 'Allo, with a bunch of Brits (and Sam Jones) competing with some comedy Nazis to find a lost city in the middle of Africa which has loads of diamonds.

The script is by one Mervyn Haisman, known to us Doctor Who fans as, among other things, the co-scriptwriter of The Web of Fear- that is, the one who isn't well known for espousing silly conspiracy theories about the Holy Grail. That isn't the only Doctor Who connection, either: the programme's current production designer, Michael Pickwoad, was also production designer on this.

The film is essentially a farce, and a rather amusing one, with a few spoofs from other films. I never thought I'd see a version of the shower scene from Psycho involving Jasper Carrott as the baddie, but I just have. And there's a bit of a Casablanca spoof at the end. It also has more mildly racist, colonial era, African clichés and stereotypes than I could even keep track of; the first five minutes alone feature pith helmets, spear-wielding natives, a dying man whose last words are of a lost city, and a vast chasm to be crossed by swinging on a vine. This lost city (which is not named) was not, of course, built by Africans, heaven forbid. Still, at least the city's queen is an African, not a white woman as per She. Even if she did go to Roedean and Oxford.

It's all very Boys' Own, and there's an obvious Indiana Jones influence. There's a bit where they travel by map, which is a bit funny if you happen to have recently seen The Muppets at the cinema. I won't make any great claims, but this very silly film is rather fun if you can get hold of it.