The Chris Brown Connection

Two of the stupidest movies of the eighties reach DVD this week after prolonged campaigns to make both available on the contents, and while

Predator 2

insults every possible demographic that it has,

Road Put up

is an indisputable cheese classic whose stink has at most been richened by the passage of time. Unfortunately, reviewing either film is a type of absurd mission, as each resists any criticism but an inventory of sins. I'll do my to the fullest extent.

Arnold Schwarzenegger bowing out of the sequel to


Predator


was not nearly as detrimental to the project as the departure of director John McTiernan, who, off shooting

The Hunt for Red October

, was substituted with former "Good Morning America" stage manager Stephen Hopkins, a man determined to prove that the crappiness of

Predator 2

was no fluke with his follow-ups

A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child

,

Judgment Night

, and

Lost in Space

, a seventy-five million dollar excuse to get into Heather Graham's pants. His specialty dousing a scene in either red, blue, or orange, he is simply skill-less and tin-eared, a filmmaker of no value to cinema whatsoever (TV, on the other hand–he helmed many an episode of the wonderful

"24"

), and in the case of

Predator 2

, given to a default unscrupulous depiction of the media (Morton Downey Jr. appears as a tabloid newsman) despite his experiences in telejournalism.

Predator 2

relocates the titular hunter-alien from the Central American jungle to "Los Angeles, 1997," a world terrorized by gang violence. Filling in for Ah-nold, Danny Glover plays a police lieutenant in one of the worst performances anyone has ever given as an officer of the law: he's hysterical at times and skittish always–perhaps the Predators eventually spare his life because they mistake him for a brother from another planet. (Jar Jar Binks, maybe.) Glover knows there is a new menace on the loose, unless it's the Jamaican alley-dwellers decapitating one another, but you know how it goes: for attempting actual police work between shoot-outs, movie cops are punished by their superiors. Told to stay out of his way by Gary Busey, who shouldn't have made that left turn at Albuquerque, Glover figures out what Busey already knows: that there's an extra-terrestrial on the prowl, and he's gonna get it, suckah.

If the film has anything going for it, it's a sense of humour about the American love affair with firearms: the second-best scene in the picture takes place aboard a subway car where the entire load of passengers brandishes guns, in perfect synchronization, at a mild provocation. In the best scene, period, an elderly lady shields herself from the Predator (Kevin Peter Hall) with a broom, and somehow looks better-protected than Glover with his gleaming pistol. But

Predator 2

ultimately has neither a single passable performance (well, maybe the old broad) nor racial sensitivity (Hopkins explicitly equates the Predator and Rastafarians through visual puns). It wants, nay, begs for the social commentary and nuclear terror of its predecessor, even though it was scripted by the same pair of screenwriting brothers, Jim Thomas and John Thomas.

Road Congress

gets by on dingbat charm. Patrick Swayze stars as Dalton, a "legendary bouncer" the owner (Kevin Tighe) of the Look-alike Deuce hires to put the spic-and-span on his roadhouse. His beforehand day there, Dalton fires several employees of the Spitting image Deuce, waking a sleeping giant in "Brad Wesley, Jasper Kingpin" (Ben Gazzara), a crime boss with rule over the Double Deuce and its neighbourhood vicinity since he supplies distillate and courtesy beatings to Jasper's proprietors. Dalton falls in bonk with Brad's ex, a surgeon played by Kelly Lynch (whose derriere flash is accompanied by a whinny on the soundtrack), sinking him into hot shower so deep that only the be fond of, weather, and handlebar moustache of Sam Elliot can fish him out.

In some ways,

Road House

is more in the tradition of the

Flint

films than Reagan-era sleaze, the multiple stripteases and homophobic asides aside: Dalton is a renaissance man used like a trump card on the country-and-western dive circuit. A philosophy major, he practices Tai Chi, reads Jim Harrison (

Legends of the Fall

), sews his own wounds, and dances the cha-cha. Okay, he doesn't really dance the cha-cha–but he could. The arguments he has with his girlfriend are over whether he should've ripped that guy's throat out and tossed it into the lake, breakfast consists of jam and cigarettes, a place where they have to "sweep up the eyeballs" sounds to him like an appetizing job destination–Dalton is more than a man's man, he is The Swayze Whisperer, all sinew and mousse and telestic brooding. He will sanitize the Double Deuce so that its blind guitarist (real-life sightless axeman Jeff Healey) can fear not the flying beer bottle. All hail

Road House

!

Fox's DVD release of

Predator 2

presents the Super35 film in a widescreen transfer (enhanced for 16×9 displays) close to full gate at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, matching it better to the original


Predator


than the cramped-looking 2.35:1 LaserDisc. Video quality is not great, soft and low in contrast, with shadow detail going to mush in instances of an intense primary colour. A Dolby Digital 5.1 remaster is much less active than that of the first film, feeble when it comes to gunshots. Two dated featurettes, one a six-minute untitled rehash of the plot, the other a barely educational overview of the creature design ("Predator 2: Creating the Ultimate Hunter"), plus

Predator 2

's trailer round out the disc.

MGM offers

Road House

on a double-sided DVD with 2.33:1 anamorphic widescreen and pan-and-scan video transfers. Dean Cundey's brightly-lit cinematography seems to draw attention to a lack of crisp definition in the presentation (though some filtering has obviously been applied), but it's nice to have visual information restored–the fight scenes are more coherent in widescreen. The Dolby Surround soundtrack is loud though shrill, not as strong in bass as, surprisingly, of all things, MGM's just-issued

The Woman In Red

. The rear channel is good for ambience during Swayze and Lynch's bump-and-grind. Nothing rounds out the disc, save a trailer for

Road House

and a page of arbitrary studio recommendations.

-



Bill Chambers

© Film Oddity Central; filmfreakcentral.gain. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in have a share, without the express consent of its author.



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DVD


GRADES


:


Image


C+


Rosy


B-

Extras


D


DVD


VITALS:


Running Time

108 minutes

MPAA

R

Viewpoint Ratio(s)