The Night Before (Thom Eberhardt, 1988)

This movie doesn't know how close it came to being shunned. And by "shunned," I mean not reviewed... by me. While most film critics show their disdain for the movies they don't like by writing a "bad review." I, on the other hand, show my disdain by not writing a review at all. I know, some of the most entertaining/enlightening film reviews can be the ones for so-called "bad movies," but I have less important things to do than waste my time writing about them. And that's what almost happened to The Night Before (a.k.a. Eine verrückte Reise durch die Nacht), another in a long line of "all night movies." When word gets out that Lori Loughlin's character has been sold to a pimp named Tito (for a measly 1500 bucks), I thought to myself: I like where this going. However, I quickly followed up that thought we this thought: If I don't see Lori Loughlin (The New Kids) in hooker clothes by the time the end credits start to role, I ain't reviewing it. I don't care if Keanu Reeves (Flying) wears black and white monk vamp buckle creepers during the film's final third. I'm not typing a word unless I see Lori Loughlin dressed like a floozy.

Now, given that I'm currently typing words about The Night Before, it's obvious that Lori Loughlin donned hooker clothes that met with my approval. But I have to say, it was touch and go for awhile there. I mean, I nearly had a heart attack when Lori Loughlin dismisses the tube top and black vinyl mini-skirt she's given to wear as unsuitable. I know, you're thinking, "unsuitable"? Call me crazy, but that outfit sounds pretty fucking suitable. In other words, stop making sounds with your mouth hole, Lori, and put those skanky ass clothes on.

The reasons as to why Lori Loughlin doesn't want to wear a tube top and black vinyl skirt are too complicated to get into at the moment. But she does eventually put them on. Oh, and the cool thing about her sleazy ensemble is that it comes with a pair of handcuffs and an iron headboard. I know, you're thinking, huh? Well, I told you it was complicated.

You could say it's convoluted as well, but I think complicated and convoluted pretty much mean the same thing. I know the word I'm looking for. It's absurd! In fact, the movie on the whole is pretty absurd. And a little racist, too.

In the middle of the night, a dark-haired teen from–I'm assuming–the suburbs named Winston Connelly (Keanu Reeves) wakes up in an alleyway in East Los Angeles. Unaware of where he is or how he got there, Winston, who is wearing a white blazer with a pink carnation on the lapel, tries desperately to piece together the events of his, as we'll soon find out, wild and crazy night.

Told via flashbacks, the film employs an unusual storytelling style in the early going. Jumping back and forth between different times frames, Winston slowly learns how he ended up in this particular part of Los Angeles.

Yeah, I know, an owl fridge magnet is what caused the read-out on his dashboard compass to say that he was going west. But that still doesn't explain how he ended up in that alleyway.

Staggering to a nearby coffee shop, Winston, after ordering a coffee and a donut, asks the waitress where he is. Since informing half-wits from The Valley where they are is not part of her job description, the waitress (Pamela Gordon) instructs him to dial 411.

After burning his lip on the coffee, a flood of memories come rushing into Winston's head. The prom!, he shouts. It would seem that Winston had a prom date with Tara Mitchell (Lori Loughlin). I know, you're probably wondering, how did the vice president of astronomy club manage to get a date with a girl who was recently voted Galleria Teen Model of the Month? If I told you, you wouldn't believe me. Actually, you might. Yeah, of course you might. You see, there was this bet Tara had with her friend Lisa (Suzanne Snyder). While I don't recall the exact details of the bet, I do know this, the loser has to go to the junior/senior prom with Winston.
  

Just as they're about to leave, Tara's father, Capt. Mitchell (Michael Greene, Rubin and Ed), tells Winston that grave bodily harm will come to him if anything happens to his little girl. If that wasn't enough, Tara warns Winston that she will bail on him the moment things get weird.

Excuse me, honey. But women in white lace fingerless opera gloves have no right to accuse others being weird.

What's that? Interesting. I've just been informed that women in white lace fingerless opera gloves do in fact have the right to accuse others of being weird.

As we're being brought up to speed as to how flashback Winston got to where he is now, the other Winston, the one currently lost in L.A., has just learned that he owes a lot of money to a man named Tito (Trinidad Silva). Of course, when he's told this, Winston yells, "I don't even know anyone named Tito!"
 

In a strange twist, both Winstons end up at the Rat's Nest bar at the same time. Let me rephrase that. The way the scene is edited makes it seem like they're there at the same time. In reality, however, they're there at different times. Flashback Winston is there with Tara when it's packed with people, and the other Winston is there when it's closed. To be honest, I think I'm making this seem more tangled that it has to be. I actually liked the way the film jumped all over the place, as it gave the proceedings a disorienting quality that mirrored what the protagonist was going through.

The Rat's Nest sequence is by far the film's strongest. For starters, the band is lead by George Clinton and Bootsy Collins. And the bartender is played by Tommy 'Tiny' Lister. If that wasn't enough... Oh, and the band's female keytar player was wearing a pair of four buckle (western-style) winklepickers/pikes. As I was saying, if that wasn't enough, Winston and Tara perform an extended dancer number.
  

It's some time after this dance number that Winston accidentally sells Tara to a pimp named Tito for 1500. Enlisting the help of a hooker named Rhonda (Theresa Saldana) and an unnamed gardener (Clifton Wells), Winston must act fast or else Tara is going to be shipped off to Morocco.

Personally, I would have cut the scene with the toys thieves (these guys reminded me of Cheech and Chong from After Hours - a film I plan on reviewing one of these days). I don't know, but the film seemed to drag to a halt during this sequence. However, since the film would have only been seventy-something minutes without it, I would have added more scenes that featured Lori Loughlin handcuffed to a bed in her bra and panties. When in doubt, add more Lori Loughlin tied up in her underwear is what I always say.
   

I loved, by the way, the fact Lori Loughlin refuses to remove her bra when she eventually agrees to wear the tube top. Sure, wearing a bra with a tube top is basically one of the worst fashion crimes you can commit. But Lori Loughlin makes it abundantly clear that she doesn't like tube tops. In other words, she isn't going to be pushed around by some funnel-shaped piece of fabric. And, at the end of the day, that's the message I took away from this film. Stay true to yourself. And also that, according to this film, people of colour are mainly pimps, criminals and prostitutes.

Rubin and Ed (Trent Harris, 1991)

It is written somewhere that living in an inside world is different than living in an outside world. In the former, the events that take place mainly occur within the spacious confines of your own head. In other words, not much happens beyond the odd hallucination and the occasional parental disruption. Well, the complete opposite happens when faced with an outdoor existence, as your weather-beaten psyche is literally inundated with all kinds of newfangled stimuli. Sure, the hallucinations remain, but you will probably notice that they have expanded not only in scope, but also in terms of intensity (if you wear platform shoes, for example, they will seem larger than they really are). One particular individual meets this inside-outside culture shock criteria perfectly, and that is, Rubin in the delightfully off-kilter Rubin and Ed, a little film with big ideas about a man with a watermelon-eating cat named Simon and another man with substitute hair. Encompassing a wide birth of deep and meaningful topics, the film, written and directed by Trent Harris (Plan 10 from Outer Space), somehow manages to successfully bridge the gap between the absurd and the deranged. Announcing its charm almost immediately with the introduction of its playful music score (Fred Myrow), we learn that even a set of thick blue curtains, a stack of old newspapers and a boombox (one that sports the coveted "auto reverse" feature) can't shield you from the real world forever.

We all know what it's like to mourn the loss of a furry loved one. My black cat died at the ripe old age of seventeen and recall being quite shaken by the experience. It's true, I kept their remains unburied for longer than I should have, but my situation never got to the point where I found myself drinking the sweat that had accumulated in my platform shoe's insole after walking for hours in the arid, extra dry wilderness of Utah, a state located in the United States of America with the kind of skies that would even impress a fluffy cloud expert like Rickie Lee Jones.

The advantage the person mourning his dead kitty in this film has is refrigeration. In that, he can hold on to the idea that his four-legged pal is still around without having to worry about decomposition. Unfortunately, Rubin (Crispin Glover), the dead kitty person, is confronted by outside forces who unwittingly compel him to bury the deceased animal. It begins with his mother, who tells Rubin that he can't listen to Gustav Mahler (his late cat's favourite) and squeak the yellow rubber mouse (his late cat's favourite) until he leaves the house (or in this case, his hotel room) and makes a friend ("No friend, no music!"). However, it's ultimately a fella named Ed (Howard Hesseman) who puts the unorthodox burial adventure in motion after he knocks Simon out of the freezer ("Why don't you keep you hands off other people's refrigerators").

The odd pairing both have ulterior motives: Rubin wants Ed to come over and meet his mother (proving to her that he has in fact made a friend). Ed wants Rubin to attend a seminar run by the mysterious "The Organization," a self-help group (run by Michael Greene from To Live and Die in L.A.) for successful salespeople, in order to show Rula (Karen Black), his smoking hot wife, that he is not a total failure. With his mother awol, Ed agrees to help Rubin bury his cat in the desert. Sounds simple enough (lay cat to rest, swing on by the seminar), but things get a tad weird when Rubin decides that the spot they chosen isn't quite right. The high-strung Ed, lounging in the dirt by a smallish hole that, thanks to Rubin's indecisiveness, bares not a single dead cat, even direly points out the impending weirdness that is about to transpire. While some may not appreciate this sort of self-aware candor, I found it to be refreshing, as most films of this nature seem to shy away from acknowledging their own strangeness.

The scene where a sexier-than-usual Karen Black (Mirror Mirror), sheathed in an alluring red dress (the camera even slowly pans up her supple frame as if she were a curvy pin-up model circa 1949), can be seen screaming while entangled in the fender Ed's company car is just the first of many outlandish dream sequences peppered throughout Rubin and Ed, a film that isn't afraid to show a cat water-skiing. And even though Crispin Glover can be seen at one point wearing a hubcap on his head, the film isn't completely enamoured with its own kookiness. On the contrary, the way the film deftly mixed unexplained nuttiness ("Andy Warhol sucks a big one") with moments of pure pathos was elegant and smooth; like droplets of liquid slowly oozing out of a recently discarded can of beer. I mean, call me a nonsensical sack of deformed hammers, but I thought the scene in the cave where Ed bonds with Rubin to be quite touching. You really got the sense that Ed genuinely cared about Rubin's loss.

In a flash, your mind immediately stops thinking about the exquisite paleness of the legs sprouting out from the torso of that woman Rubin harasses by the hotel's pool–Rubin inadvertently utters one of the worst pick-up lines ever ("You wanna meet my mom?")–and the film starts making you ponder the meaning of life. Okay, maybe I wouldn't go that far (her legs were crossed after all). But it does capture what it must feel like to inhabit the specific skin of two men on the cusp of scoring an existential breakthrough.

Employing the word "asswipe" like it were a badge of honour, Howard Hesseman, an actor best known as the iconic Dr. Johnny Fever (his slacker diskjockey character from WKRP in Cincinnati), gives a complex performance as the beaten down Ed, a man reduced to repeating corporate nonsense in the presence of others. Affixed with a questionable wig (hair substitute), Howard, whether displaying his cringe-worthy habit of adding an unnecessary Spanish flair to everyday Anglo phrases (I know for a fact I heard him say, "el weirdo" at least twice) or extolling the virtues of Cat Ballou, imbues the defeated Ed with an unhinged tenderness.

While it doesn't seem to get thrown around that much nowadays, I've always preferred "asswipe" over "asshole," its more popular cousin in the high stakes realm of anal-based insults. I don't know, "asshole" just seems to sit there like a lump of coarse nothingness. On the other hand, "asswipe" seems to glide off the tongue with a gentle grace.

The phantom-like Brittney Lewis appears every now and then as Rubin's nameless dream girl. Usually dressed in swimwear–the kind that was fashionable during the late 1980s, Brittney helps Rubin when he is lost–this comes in handy when he finds himself aimlessly drifting amongst the desert's penis-shaped rock formations (similar to ones found in the music video for 2 Unlimited's "Magic Friend"), and builds up his self-esteem when he is down. You could say: The magic friend is what she is.

A demented humanitarian who almost kicked David Letterman in the head, Crispin "I'm making my lunch!" Glover is an awkward revelation as the platform shoe-wearing Rubin. Unafraid to rock a pair of gaudy bellbottom trousers in a desert setting, Crispin captures the despair of a desolate pet owner in a way that only an actor of his unique reputation could summon. And while the ridiculousness of appearance may at times dampen the weightiness of his predicament, the eccentric actor always manages to advance his character's spiritual cause.

The year may be 1991, but the black and blue ensemble Karen Black wears while talking on the phone in her kitchen was definitely purchased in 1986.*

Why my viewing expanse (the eyeball-centric area I use to watch things with) and this wacky adventure have never got around to molesting each other until now will probably remain a mystery. I love movies where mismatched oddballs wander the desert in search of themselves. Wait a minute, no I don't. But I did love this one. We all need someone to help us let go of the coolers that contain the partially frozen remains of our dead pets.

video uploaded by dtnehring

* Just because the film was released in 1991, doesn't mean it was shot in 1991; Miss Black's outfit could have been only a couple of years old.

Anyway, thanks to Tenebrous Kate over at Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire for making me more aware of this film than I already was.

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