1984 - Directed by Walter Hill
Starring Diane Lane, Michael Paré, Willem Dafoe, Deborah Van Valkenburgh,  Rick Moranis and Amy Madigan

 Not sure how I’d gone this long without seeing this film, especially when you consider how big a fan my friend Ellen Aim is, what with her interweb handle being taken from this film and all, but this had somehow fallen through the cracks for me until a few weeks back.  I mean, at the very least it features vintage Diane Lane, a stone fox who has aged like fine wine in my opinion, so what’s not to love?

 The film’s plot is almost as simple as Hill’s The Warriors, in that it’s about a guy rescuing a girl, then the bulk of the action is made up of them traversing hostile territory to get back home safe.  The opening tells us that the film is a rock n roll fable, set in ‘another time, another place’, which opens things up for the wild shenanigans that follow, which is a strange blend of retro-50’s Rockabilly and (then) modern day 80’s glam and neon.  The girl in question is Ellen Aim (Lane), who is kidnapped during a gig in her old neighborhood, taken by the leader of the biker gang The Bombers at the behest of their leader Raven Shaddock (Dafoe), who retreats with her the ‘The Battery’, their favored hangout and an evident no-fly zone for any form of law enforcement, because that’s never even an option in this world.

One of the many witnesses to the kidnapping is Reva Cody (Van Valkenburgh), who enlists the help of her brother Tom (Paré), an ex-soldier, now soldier of fortune type who has a past with Ellen.  He arrives in town, makes short work of a gang at his sister’s diner, then later gets hassled by the cops who refer to him as a ‘juvenile delinquent’ even though he looks to be pushing 30 and is the same age as the cop; maybe this guy was speaking of his past and I missed it?  His exploration of the old neighborhood brings him to a bar where we meet Clyde (Bill Paxton in a magnificently ridiculous Rock-A-Doodle pompadour), a bartender who gets his ass handed to him by McCoy (Madigan), a gruff ex-military type who Tom chats up.  McCoy asks Tom for a place to crash, who takes her back to his sister’s place where she bunks on the couch because Tom “isn’t her type”, which can be taken a number of ways I suppose, though she does reference an ex-husband at some point.

The next day Reva, McCoy and Tom meet with Ellen’s manager/boyfriend, club owner Billy Fish (Moranis, in hilariously odd casting), hammering out a deal that includes Tom being paid $10,000 for his troubles, Billy accompanying him in to the Battery, and McCoy cut in for 10% of Tom’s take.   They head to a place called Torchie’s, where they believe her to be held, and Tom dispatches Billy with the getaway vehicle and McCoy into the bar to implement the actual escape.  Once they free Ellen from the back room where she’s tied to a bed, still giving Raven no play, Tom stays behind to run interference with the angered Bombers, which is a good thing, as everything he shoots explodes and bursts into flame, an interesting visual to say the least.  He escapes afterward, though not before being spotted by Raven, who swears revenge.  Tom meets up with the others and they make their way back home though hostile territory, meeting up with an interesting array of locals on their journey, as well as cops who inexplicably want to arrest them rather than the kidnapping assholes they stole Ellen Aim back from, but whatever, I may be thinking about this one too much. 

 Oh, and I was ecstatic to see Elizabeth Daily in a small cameo role, she’s a cute face that I remember from lots of 80’s films, who a cursory web-search tells me has gone on do a ton of animated voicework, but she’ll always be Loryn from Valley Girl or the cute singer from Better Off Dead in my heart. 

 This film is an odd beast, mingling 50’s iconography easily with 80’s neon and bad fashions, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work for me. This thing has style to burn; everyone talks as though the just walked out of a noir thriller and the use of music throughout is fairly catchy as well.  Michael Paré’s delivery reminds me a bit of Stallone back in the day, a guttural drawl that lets you know he definitely has better things to be doing that fucking around with you.  The only casting I’d question is Moranis as the tough talking club-owner, he’s just a goofy little shrimp of a guy, I don’t buy Ellen Aim putting up with this guy in the same room, much less as a boyfriend, but it’s a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things.

 Well worth a rental, it’s a fun little film.

 7/10