Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Welcome back. Class is still in session here at the Criterion Challenge, albeit not for much longer.

Now that we got class elections out of the way (give or take a disgraced educator), it seemed fitting to find a movie that would cover the rest of the school year.

Okay, not my sharpest transition, but deal with it, we're here to talk about Amy Heckerling's seminal high school comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

This was a first for me - I knew the angle I wanted to dig into as soon as the movie was done, but it took a while to figure out how to put it.

Which is even more fitting because I wanted to focus on the movie's surprisingly sharp sense of awkwardness.

Yes, this is a good thing.

It's something I'd been kind of aware of before, but this is the first time that I really appreciated how much this movie is willing to let its teenage characters be, well, teenagers.

I'm impressed with how it's willing to have that awkwardness while also never quite feeling like a cringe comedy (and I'm a sucker for a good cringe comedy, so don't take that as a dig.) The movie is able to have an arc like Sean Penn's surfer burnout Jeff Spicoli and at the same time Jennifer Jason Leigh's Stacy Hamilton navigating dating and the significance of losing one's virginity, and the shifts never feel jarring.

Part of what helps is that it never leans too heavily to either side of that line. To use them as examples again: as goofy as Spicoli is, the wildest his stunts get is having a pizza ordered into school or having to bluff out of getting a car wrecked. Stacy, meanwhile, has moments like her less than romantic first time - in a baseball dugout (a great detail being her being distracted by the obscene graffiti on the ceiling above her) and for as weird as it gets, it never feels like the movie is trying to heap abuse on her for it.

The movie is more than Stacy and Jeff, of course. We also have the similarly young and inexperienced Mark (Brian Backer), the increasingly unlucky Brad (Judge Reinhold) and the older, presumably wiser Linda and Mike (Phoebe Cates and Robert Romanus respectively.)

If there's a word that sums up the larger arc of all of these characters, it's 'unromantic.' Not in the sense of relationships, though there is some of that as shown by scenes like the above-mentioned dugout. In this case, unromantic being with regards to the idea of a rose-tinted high school experience. It's surprising to remember two years after this would see the rise of John Hughes's teen comedies ,given how differently Heckerling tackles things by comparison.

There's something that feels more, for lack of a better term, human in the way Heckerling presents her teens. They can be messy. They can make mistakes with consequences that aren't simply written off the very next day. As cool and experienced as an older kid may be, they may not have all the answers they want you to believe they do (as the movie shows from both Linda and Mike.) They are flawed, but ultimately likable individuals in a way that it feels like many later mainstream high school comedies are reluctant to show.

To bring this full circle, the culmination of Stacy's story is one that feels strange to see in a modern mainstream high school film - after an awkward hook-up with Mike, she finds herself pregnant and in need of an abortion (that alone being a risky prospect.) The resolution of the arc isn't a big dramatic beat, but a few smaller ones - an attempt to get a ride from her older brother (Brad) which he figures out, but ultimately still supports without asking too many questions, and an act of revenge by Linda in the form of graffiti. Despite being smaller beats, they still feel like a satisfying resolution narratively and thematically.

Also, it's not part of my main point, but I do feel like
I need to give a shout out to the late, great Ray Walston
as the put-upon Mr. Hand. Another great showcasing
of that crotchety snark that he could play so very, very well.

I don't want to say 'they couldn't make this movie anymore', because that is a phrase that feels like it's been misused too often for misguided commentary on culture. At the same time, this is a movie it's hard to picture being made now because of how frank, if funny, it is about the messier sides of teenage life. I wouldn't say it can't be made, but it would definitely not be on the level of a studio release quite like this one.

Which makes me appreciate that this happened at the level it did even more.

I could take this as a moment to add my vote to the larger sentiment that we as a society never really gave Heckerling her due as a director, but that would be a whole other topic, and the fact is, I'm running out of September.

October is right around the corner, and, as I promised, I'll be doing another franchise this time out.

And at the risk of laying it on too thick, this one's gonna be a real monster.

Till then

The Thing (1982) - Reason #1 I Can't Completely Spit on All Remakes

Yeah, this year's theme doesn't really have a title. I considered 'The Octoberlypse' but it just...I don't know.

Anyway, as promised, it's time to dive right in on the opening round of Carpenter's trilogy – his 1982 remake/re-envisioning of The Thing From Another World.

I have to say up front – this is probably the hardest entry to write for this particular series, simply because so much has already been said for the movie that it's hard to find something new to add.

And with that disclaimer out of the way, Hell with it, I'll just come out and say it – it's not an especially hot take, but I count myself among the ranks of those who consider The Thing to be John Carpenter's best movie, an opinion that rewatching it for this run further cements.

I get why the film wasn't well received when it first came out (and it's easy to take for granted from 2019, but seriously – E.T. cast one Hell of a large shadow in 1982) so I won't drag the audiences and critics of the past for their take at the time, much as I disagree with it. It's saying something that, on this watch, I actively tried to find points in this film to have an issue with, and not only came away with nothing, but found some new good elements I had never caught before.

As much as the hug is appreciated here,
it was just too little too late for reaching the family crowds.

And for the number of times I've seen this movie, that is saying something.

So in singing this movie's praises, I'll have to start with one of the most obvious places, particularly as it's something we'll come back to in the next entries – the visual effects.

As of this writing, this movie is now a little shy of three years of turning 40. That's a window of time that can be downright ruthless in the field of visual effects. With that said, Rob Bottin's creature work in this movie has stood the test of time beautifully. In terms of the execution, the movie's effects hold up well under scrutiny, with some designs still looking good enough to be standalone art. As of this writing, I've seen the movie in a theater on several occasions, and rather than having flaws enhanced on the large screen, Bottin's monsters yield up a new level of detail that is both more impressive and more disturbing.

It speaks to Bottin's skill that this isn't
even an active monster in the movie, but it's still an enduring visual.

Beyond the technical skill, the idea driving the creation is a larger part of why the movie's endured. First for the obvious and unsettling idea that it can, in theory, be anyone at any time with almost no means of detection, and then for the additional level of horror that comes when its cover is blown and it no longer needs to hide. Many is the monster in horror that has lost its sting as a result of overexposure leading to diminished returns (as much as I love the first two movies in the series, Alien comes to mind here.) By comparison, Carpenter and Bottin give us a creature whose form changes vastly in each iteration. You're never given a chance within the film to get used to its appearance because it never takes the same shape twice and even when revealed is still an unpredictable threat.

Pitted against this mercurial alien, the cast assembled for the ill-fated team at Outpost 31 have just as much as the effects crew on their plate in terms of carrying the movie – a task they all live up to admirably under the circumstances. For a story steeped in the idea of paranoia, the ability of the cast to sell first their general level of teamwork before as well as their growing distrust in one another is vital to making the movie work. If anyone had come up short, the movie would suffer for it. Instead, everyone plays well off of each other – the general good-natured moments as well as the antagonism that flows anywhere from sarcastic barbs to open hostility. The ensemble nature makes it hard to really say there's any one person who stands out over the others, as each is ultimately strengthened by how they play off of the others, both in terms of being likable as well as making the viewers question who might be all they appear to be at any given time.

Okay, I had actually written quite a few drafts praising the work of Russel, David, and Brimley.
That said, I do want to give a quick shout out to David Clennon as the base's comic relief - it's a character where a little could go a long way, and rather than lay it on thick, it's played with a light touch that still delivers some laughs as well as one damn good jolt.

That element of uncertainty is even reflected in how the film is written and shot, where both Bill Lancaster and John Carpenter in their respective roles use it to its fullest. One aspect I find myself becoming more impressed with here is with regards to what questions the movie chooses to answer or not. The nature of the titular creature is an area where balance is necessary in what's revealed – too much information and the movie becomes mired in exposition that saps the tension, not enough and it feels like it's taking advantage of the creature's fluid nature to cut corners for its own convenience. As it's laid out, the movie gives a fairly solid set of 'rules' for its monster that it also plays by consistently. The trade being that the movie then uses a lack of information to raise questions of who may have been infected and when – such as an in early scene when the Thing, in the form of a dog, walks in on a member of the team who we only see as a vague silhouette – we can speculate to their identity based on who is revealed later, but we never find out who exactly that was. The end result is a film that leaves many mysteries to ponder, but also still has its core story come together so that it never feels like any of those questions are put in there to cheat the audience.

I said it at the start and I'll repeat it here – arguably, The Thing may be John Carpenter's best movie. This isn't to throw any of his other work under the bus, because overall much of his filmography is pretty strong, but even with that overall high bar to clear, it stands out. The tense story and direction, the cast that all mesh well, the claustrophobic set design, and the eerie score by the legendary Ennio Morricone (in a rare occurrence of someone else scoring a Carpenter movie) all work together beautifully, ironically enough in the service of a story where, to quote MacReady himself “nobody trusts anybody.”

"...and we're all very tired." --
AKA, the scene that came to describe the last few years for a LOT of people.

This marks the end for this movie, but not for the creature it spawned. Before we move on to the second installment of the trilogy in Prince of Darkness, we're going to be taking a dive into not one, but two separate attempts to build an expand the world of Outpost 31. Before we get to the 2011 prequel movie, we're digging back into a lesser known piece of lore from the age of comic book movie tie ins.

Keep an eye out for that real soon.

Till next time.