Static (Mark Romanek, 1986)

Every time I think that the greatest decade in the history of humankind has unveiled every last electrifying piece of entertainment it has to offer, along comes another slab of fantastical oddness just itching to prove that the 1980s wellspring is deeper than a bottomless cavern. Staggering before me like an overly earnest butterfly selling defective dildos door-to-door, Static is the most current film from the boxy blazer decade to capture my sweaty imagination. However, unlike its vacuous brethren–you know, pornographic flights of fancy and mentally challenged horror flicks–this undertaking, by writer-director Mark Romanek ("Closer") and co-writer Keith Gordon (A Midnight Clear), isn't really that interested in titillating or shocking its audience. Though, I somehow managed to be titillated by it. (What can I say? I'm a brash deviant who's turned on by untied shoelaces and improperly applied make-up.) Whatever. It's got something that the majority of films from this particular era seem to lack: an underlying sense of disquietude. Of course, that doesn't mean it's a weighty examination of the afterlife. On the contrary, the sight of two young Amerasian twins dancing to new wave in lizard masks solidifies that it is not a highbrow crumpet jamboree. Yet it does cause one to contemplate the existence of some kind of celestial temple. Well, not really. But you truly get the feeling that the terribly sincere protagonist in this film really believes the malarkey he's peddling.

Stating off with the image of Julia Purcell (Amanda Plummer), a clearly dissatisfied keyboard player for a punk-new wave band made up members of The Plugz, walking off stage in the middle of performing "In The Wait," the film follows her as she makes her way to the small Arizona town where she grew up. While this is taking place, Ernie Blick (Keith Gordon) has just been fired from his job at the local crucifix factory. (He had the nerve to pocket all the defect crosses for himself and hang them on his wall as a part some outre art project.) Tying both sequences together is the sound of "This is the Day" by The The blaring its unsubtle message on the soundtrack.

If you don't count the song Amanda Plummer's band perform, not a word of dialogue is uttered for the first ten minutes; which is mildly prophetic since Mr. Romanek would become mostly known as a music video director in the coming years. Anyway, Ernie losing his job at the cross factory couldn't have come at a better time, as the invention he's been working on for the past two years is just about ready to go public.

Normally confiding in Patty (Lily Knight), a cute waitress who works at a diner shaped like a giant fish, Julia's sudden arrival in town usurps her role as Ernie's go to gal. As you'd expect, Patty ain't too pleased about this turn of events. I mean, if anyone deserves the undying attention of the ex-crucifix factory worker/kooky inventor in the trench coat (did I mention the film takes place in Arizona?), it's her. Either way, both are anxious to find out what it is that Ernie has been working on for so long.

Also hankering to know Ernie's been up to is his cousin Frank (Bob Gunton), a doomsday preacher/father of two who we first meet sermonizing on top of a dumpster behind Ernie's motel; he spots Julia in the crowd (six or seven people) and accuses of her being a CIA agent (he's a tad paranoid). The scenes that feature Bob (complete with apocalyptic moustache) and his family were definitely the wackiest. Radiation suits, Tang, walls covered in firearms, military saluting in a living room setting; they're super ready for World War III.

The way Static builds up Ernie's invention is the film's strongest plot-based element. Revealed in a slow and deliberate manner, the anticipation over his apparently life changing gizmo increases in a way that keeps the townsfolk buzzing with excitement.

Sure, a large segment of the population thinks he's completely meshugganah, but they all seem to respect his dedication. I also liked how both the women in Ernie's life were similar, not just in appearance but in the way they carried themselves with a quiet dignity.

The lovely Amanda Plummer (Freeway), the dream girl of demented losers the world over, is amazing usual as Julia, Ernie's long lost love. Giving a performance that oozes tranquility, Amanda is a master when it comes to trying to decipher the fragility of a tormented man and his wounded psyche. Her best scene is when she attempts to comfort Ernie after one particularly arduous experience involving his newfangled gadget.

Even quieter in terms of stillness, Lily Knight (she played the woman who listens to Maggie Gyllenhaal's character masturbate in Secretary) does an excellent job of portraying restrained jealously. I loved how she tried to spice up her image at the unveiling of Ernie's invention. Casting aside her drab waitress uniform, Lily's Patty attempts to "out new wave" her revival by wearing a shirt without sleeves and applying a bit of make-up were adorable...in a "Please stop paying attention to Amanda Plummer and feast your eyes on me" kinda way.

The best aspect about Keith Gordon's work in this film, aside from the fact that he co-wrote the screenplay, is credited as a producer, and freaking hottie, was how convinced he was about the greatness of his invention. When selling what he sells in this movie, you can't go half-assed, you have to attack the material with a unique brand of gusto (none of that weak, store bought gusto). Otherwise, you come off looking like some two bit charlatan.

Helping Keith in terms of creating an eccentric, almost surreal atmosphere was the film's terrific soundtrack. On top of the aforementioned The The song and performance by The Plugz, Static features tracks by OMD, Japan, Brian Eno, and Johnny Cash.

I don't really want to go into much detail about what Ernie's invention is actually intended to do; I found my not knowing to be quite invigorating. I will say that its germination came about after Ernie's parents died in a car accident and it's supposedly makes everyone who looks at it to behave in a manner that is the opposite of sad. Only problem for Ernie is trying to get people to look at it. And since social networking and reality television are still years away, a bus full of elderly women will have to do. Again, I don't want to comment on how a bunch of old ladies end up in the mix, but their arrival is a testament to what an unpredictable delight the film turned out to be. Highly recommended to those who like their '80s movies to be a tad off-kilter.

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(Warning: Embedded video clip contains spoilers after the two minute mark.)

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New Wave Hookers (Gregory Dark, 1985)

Supporting the spiritual trajectory of a decade's counterculture has never been the strong suit of mainstream Hollywood. Take, for instance, the cinematic output of the 1980s. You can scour the frames of countless motion pictures that were made during that particular period of time and still come up empty in terms of finding era specific examples of the fashion, music, sexuality, and interior design that helped shape the Zeitgeist. The people in charge of making these movies clearly had no real interest in the chromatic explosion that was happening all around them. It's true, there were a handful of directors, costumers, and production designers who understood the full magnitude of what was going down. But for the most part, the film's reek of misguided nostalgia and broken dreams. If the bland and the feckless amongst filmmaking elite weren't going to remove their collective heads from the gaping asshole known as "the sixties" and properly capture the essence of the fingerless glove decade, who would? Pornographers! That's fucking who. The unsavoury world of pornography may have a lot going against it: wanton drug abuse, suspect production values, wonky acting skills, and scene after scene of unappealing double penetration action to name slightly more than a few. But when it comes to crystallizing what it meant to be alive in the 1980s, you should look no further than your average adult film made between 1980 and 1989.

Unashamedly embracing everything that has made the 1980s the shining beacon to all those who desire to be a little less lame in their day-to-day life that is today, New Wave Hookers is the most audacious, most shameless, most stain-covered '80s movie ever made. Fearless when it comes depicting new wave culture gone awry, writer-director Gregory Dark and his crack team of perverts (including set designer Pez D. Spenser) have come up with a premise so simplistic, yet so mind-numbingly brilliant, that it's no wonder it has spawned a truckload of sequels and a remake.

It starts off with two slackers named Jimmy (Jamie Gillis) and Jamal (Jack Baker) sitting on their couch watching pornography – this act itself is groundbreaking in that it breaks the pornographic fourth wall rule, you know, the one that stipulates that there is no porn in porn. Wondering aloud about how great it would be if they were pimps and could control their "bitches" with the sound of that newfangled new wave music.

Drifting off (the television is now nothing but static), the pair awake to find themselves sitting at desks in an office setting. Jimmy, wearing a studded collar and a sleeveless t-shirt with word "anarchy" written on it, and Jamal, sporting a yellow jumpsuit with matching sunglasses, are now in charge of New Wave Hookers Inc., a pimping agency that supplies new wave obsessed women to those who need to be sexually serviced. (It should also be noted that Jimmy, on top of getting a funky new wardrobe, now speaks with a bad Japanese accent.)

Oozing coolness from start to finish, New Wave Hookers grabs you from the get-go with its super-terrific opening credits sequence set to "Electrify Me" by The Plugz (the band responsible for the majority of this film's amazing music). Introducing the female cast through a series of tantalizing clips that feature them posing seductively and pawing at their genitalia, this smokey sequence gently moistens our eyeballs for the gaudiness to come.

The first scene involves a gal named Candy (Desiree Lane) roller-skating into the fledgling pimps' office in a pair of skimpy white denim shorts (she saw their ad in the Valley Gazette). The guys slap some headphones on her, no doubt blasting the latest new wave jam, and before you know it, Candy is feign consuming the cock of Jimmy and Jamal's dog (Steve Powers); yeah, their dog is a man (he also makes the ringing sound for the two phones in the office). Anyway, while the dog is getting his biscuit polished, Jimmy repeatedly slams his turpentine estrada into Candy's minimal compact, and Jamal can be seen masturbating off to the side.

Next up, Jimmy and Jamal send over Palace (Kimberly Carson) and Nora (Brooke Fields) to sexually gratify a fella named The Sheik (Peter North) in his indoor tent. Well, the ladies start off by gratifying each other: licking and groping the usual places. Now, don't get me wrong, the sheer amount of spunk produced by Mr. North was awe-inspiring (I thought their respective crevices were gonna overflow), but it was actually the irregular nature of Kimberly and Brooke's wardrobe and makeup that made the scene the worthwhile entity that it is.

With star quality written all over her, the sight of the angelic Ginger Lynn Allen standing between two nerds craving anal sex was the pinnacle of the film's off-kilter sex appeal. Sent over to satisfy the poop-shoot desires of two college students (Tom Byron and Steve Powers), Ginger plays Cherry, a forthright New Wave Hooker in a chi-chi retro number that was poodle rectum red, drive-in theatre blue, and covered in black polka dots. Even though both her southbound holes end up getting prodded with erect penises simultaneously, Ginger manages to maintain an air of dominance about her. Also, the industrial-sounding music that played during the scene was downright awesome and the assertiveness of Ginger's command for one of the dorks to lick her ankle was greatly appreciated.

The action returns to office where Jimmy, Jamal, and the dog expose Kammy (Kristara Barrington) to a three-pronged attack on a desk. All of them seem to love jabbing at Kristara's foxy organic structure with a profound vigour, yet I found Jack Baker's enthusiasm for her dainty curves to be the most pronounced when it came to heaving the contents of his mouth in her general direction.

This dedication to Kristara's ethically complex body continues over to the next scene. Moving to the storage facility of the New Wave Hooker offices, we find a trio of hookers languishing on a red spinning wheel (a.k.a. the "whoring machine"). The aforementioned Kristara is joined by Desiree Lane's Candy and an unnamed new face (the lovely Gina Carrera). When the wheel stops spinning, the dog ends up straddling Kristara's frequently visited undercarriage (Jimmy beats her softly with a belt), and two vice cops (Greg Rome and Steve Drake) busy themselves with Desiree and Gina. As usual, Jamal jerks off from a distance, shouting race-based encouragement ("Fuck those white bitches").

The coda of New Wave Hookers has a surprisingly surreal vibe about it. However, it shouldn't be that surprising; there is, after all, a giant Residents-style eyeball sitting on top of one of the desks and Jamal does go on this strange tangent about disembodied dicks in Borneo. At any rate, the sight of a recently awaken Jimmy driving through the neon-tinged city, reflecting on all the debauchery that has transpired, while the "New Wave Hookers" theme plays over the soundtrack, was the perfect way to wrap up this titillating masterpiece.

If archaeologists in the not-so distant future want to know what life was like during the 1980s, I say show them a copy of New Wave Hookers. In terms of fashion, crude stereotyping, politically incorrect humour, music, stylistic temperament, and sexual deviancy, you can't get a clearer picture than this. Hey, whatta you know, maybe the infamous scene featuring Traci Lords in devil horns and red lingerie will be included in this futuristic version.

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Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984)

Canoodling my subconscious like a gentle virus, Repo Man is a film that has lived with me for almost twenty years. From the days when I would tape snippets of dialogue from off the television and splice them with homemade industrial music to the time I used to be driven around the seedier parts of town in a large automobile made out of metal, this film has been a trusty companion. My thoughts on everything from friendship to employment, to youth culture and faith was shaped by the nonsensicality that transpires in this amorphous teaching tool masquerading as a ninety-minute movie produced by the wool-hatted member of The Monkees. I have even used the film to help boost my self-esteem whenever I've found myself cornered by those who have the gall to think they're hipper than me. Now, I know what you're thinking, and no, I don't use the fact I've seen the film well over thirty times to stymie their shifty, hipness-challenging advances. Nope. I tell them I own the soundtrack. However, this bit of information alone doesn't do the trick. Uh-uh. It's actually when tell them I own the soundtrack on vinyl that their hipster asses begin to crumple under the weight of my overwhelming coolness. The rush of smugness that courses through my retired porn star body as I over enunciate the word "vinyl" is downright exquisite. Educational and life affirming purposes aside, the wonderfully subversive film by Alex Cox still manages, after all these years, to exude the nourishment my undeveloped nerve endings crave so dearly just through the simple act of watching it. The fact that I have it memorized doesn't take anything away from the sheer nihilistic delight the film bestows upon me each time I look at it.

A surreal tonic for the disaffected soul, Repo Man is one of the few films that can unify the members even the most adversarial of subcultures. Well, except Mods, they never seemed to "get it" (even though there are actual Mods in it). But for everyone else, it's like watching deranged poetry.

A punk rock-fueled opus that appeals to new wavers, rude boys, industrial freaks, astrochemists, car thieves, Stacey Q fans, and linguistics majors, the film teaches us that life can be intense sometimes and that excessive driving can cause brain damage.

Lacking the proper parental guidance necessary to survive in the city of Los Angeles circa 1984, the film follows the misadventures of Otto (Emilio Estevez), an aimless juvenile delinquent who finds the structure he needs under the guise of Bud (Harry Dean Stanton), a street smart fella who repossess cars from people who have fallen behind in their payments. Learning the ropes from Bud, and to a lesser extent, Lite (Sy Richardson), Otto finds the repo business to be tough yet lucrative (it sure beats stacking cans of beans). Things are complicated slightly for Otto when he meets Leila (Olivia Barash), a UFO enthusiast and a young lady who just happens to possess a severe form of cuteness. Anyway, she's looking for a Chevy Malibu with space aliens in the trunk, and asks the rooky repo man to help.

Called me jaded, but that sounds like an easy enough task. Only problem is a secret arm of the U.S. government (lead by a metal-handed, leg-tastic Susan Barnes), the Rodriguez Brothers (Del Zamora and Eddie Velez), Otto's repo co-workers, and Debbi (Jennifer Balgobin), Duke (Dick Rude) and Archie (Miguel Sandoval), a trio of crime-obsessed punks, are also looking for the much sought after Malibu. Which is being driven by J. Frank Parnell (Fox Harris), an unstable individual whose mind might already be starting to erode.

Despite many attempts to sully his status as a cult movie hero with multiple acts of out-and-out lameness since its release, Emilio Estevez manages retain an air of blank dignity as Otto (his wide-eyed defiance and hatred of authority still reverberate). However, this air is no doubt retained due to the fact he gets to rub shoulders with the legendary Harry Dean Stanton, whose Bud has the temperament of a sage. Extolling handy wisdom at the drop of a drink (none of the products in this film have names that go beyond what they actually are), Stanton is quietly brilliant as the gruff and weary car taker backer.

Speaking of quietly brilliant, my two favourite performances are just that, quietly brilliant. The dishevelled Fox Harris (Dr. Caligari) and the equally dishevelled Tracey Walter are tremendous at displaying calmness in this topsy-turvy world. As well reciting the films most memorable monologues: Mr. Harris' being the one about the wonders of the neutron bomb and his overall mental, while Tracy's focused on the origins of humanity.

Comedically, I'd say Dick Rude's Duke and Zander Schloss as Kevin (Otto's pre-repo friend and co-worker) are the funniest characters in Repo Man. Spewing some of the films most quotable lines ("Let's get sushi and not pay" and "There's room to move as a fry cook."), Dick and Zander prove themselves to be adept comics whenever they appear on-screen.

On a non-comedic level, nothing quite beats the image of mohawked Jennifer Balgobin (Dr. Caligari) pointing a gun while in a silver raincoat. The super-adorable Olivia Barash brings a playful femininity to her plucky fruitcake role. Vonetta McGee shines whilst kneeing one g-man in the crotch and chairing another in the face. ("Shut up, Plettschner.") And I was surprised to find myself drawn to the steely presence of Susan Barnes this time around, and just like Miss Balgobin, the sight of a leggy Susan pointing a gun was just as alluring. (On the film's DVD commentary track, Sy Richardson sanely points out Susan's great legs as well.)

Gliding though the cockeyed proceedings like a drunken research scientist is the dreamlike music score by The Plugz. Sure, the film features songs by the likes of Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Iggy Pop, but it's The Plugz that make the film literally soar into the stratosphere. Their surf tinged guitars and electronic knob twiddling create a terrific aura, especially during "Reel Ten."

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