Reflections On How the 1980s Ran Together

Not literally... well maybe that happened too, but it really doesn't matter to me right now. Believe me, if I can figure out how to exploit that for a couple of cheap laughs, I'll do it. Right now I'm talking about how things in 1980s movies ran together. Or rather, how movie makers ran them together.

What do the movies Footloose, Better Off Dead, Real Genius, and Scarface all have in common? Copious amounts of violence? No. The footage of Kevin Bacon as a dancing teenager being chained to a bathtub and silenced by a chainsaw was (regrettably) left on the cutting room floor. Also most of the cocaine trade in Miami was pulled from Real Genius.

Footnote: I don't think the Real Genius clip is real. The Better Off Dead clip isn't actually the montage, but its a claymation hamburger playing Van Halen on a guitar that is almost correct - it doesn't get any better than this.
Footnote 2: I miss claymation. Someday I'll write about The California Raisins, The Noid, and something else. The way I remember it, all of 1986 was claymated, but those are all I can remember right now.
Footnote 3: Adam West beating The Noid to death was one of the greatest moments in television history.

What these movies all have in common is the 1980s style montage. This is where about two-thirds of the way through a ninety minute movie, music would play while we watched a collage of the good guy characters doing whatever they needed to do to achieve their goal, which always involved winning the girl, who was always Molly Ringwald. Lately, these have been spoofed in current television shows. For example, here is Family Guy's "1980s Style Fixin' Stuff Up Montage". I'm not sure it is necessary to include here, but it took me hours to find it, so it goes in.
Footnote 1: In the case of Scarface replace "good guy characters doing whatever they needed to do to achieve their goal, which always involved winning the girl" with "bad guys who were the main characters achieving their goal, which was selling large quantities of drugs". It ended poorly for them. Well the montage ended fine, but the movie itself ended badly.

These were everywhere in the 1980s. Inexplicably, they went away in somewhere early in the 1990s. I suppose it is because most art took a "deeper" turn in the 1990s. Out were movies like Footloose and Better Off Dead, in were deeper, more serious films like BASEketball and Booty Call. The same thing happened in music.

I'm no student of film, but it seems the montage served two basic purposes:

1. To show time passing while somebody is learning how to dance, in order to woo Molly Ringwald
2. To actually pass some time when a ninety-one minute script falls two minutes short because the whole film can be explained in a paragraph.

This begs the following question: Why did Scarface have one of these scenes? The movie nearly happens in real-time. The extended DVD version is nine and a half days long. I should know, I own it. But it is a little difficult to watch when you have to little kids and rarely have nine and a half days free after they go to bed.

I can't end this without mentioning Barney being chained to a bathtub in a Scarface-esque drug-deal-gone-wrong scene. Ever since I wrote the last paragraph I can't let it go. Is it dark? Sure. But its "funny dark".

Think this was funny? Email me here. Didn't think it was funny? Use the same link.