Video

Rip It Up, Issue 94, 1 May 1985, Page 12

Video

RCA/Columbia have come up with an interesting batch of releases for this month, including ' Sydney Lumet's Daniel (starring Tim Hutton); Albert Finney in The Dresser ; Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove ; Richard Attenborough's Young Winston ; Woody Allen’s comment on commie paranoia, The Front: and Charles Bronson in The Evil That Men Do. From CEL comes: Pink Floyd's The Wall: Reckless, starring Darryl Hannah and featuring music by INXS, Bob Seger, Kim Wilde; the Marx Brothers’ At the Circus: Winter Kills, starring Jeff Bridges, Anthony Perkins; Pope John Paul 11, with Albert Finney as His Holiness; and Frankenstein (cast includes John Gielgud). Roadshow have; Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy in the much-praised Under Fire: Cher in Silkwood: the slightly

spoofy horror pic Alligator, and Heart of a Champion, the true story of the dying Terry Fox’s 5000 mile run across Canada with an artificial leg, to raise money for cancer research. The various Videocorp labels have releases including: The Rolling Stones compilation, Rewind: Racquel Welch in The Legend of Walks Far Woman; Richard Pryor, Fred Williamson and James Brown(!) in Adios Amigo, a western; Arnold Schwarznegger's Pumping Iron: A Quiet Day In Belfast, starring Margot Kidder; and the video nasty that became infamous in Britain, Driller Killer. CBS Fox Video offers an early Tom Cruise movie, released in the wake of his recent success, All the Right Moves: and, in its Cine range, Cary Grant and Tony Curtis in Operation Petticoat and John Wayne in The Fighting Seabees. Thompson Twins Into the Gap Live (Virgin Video) This 80-minute stereo videotape shows the end result of the Thompson Twins’ rags-to-riches story and it will either delight you or confirm your prejudices. Expatriate NZer Alannah Currie provides one of the tape's most illuminating moments when she breaks down on the tour bus and explains, through the tears, just what it’s like to be Alannah Currie, pop star and media personality.

The stage show, recorded outside at a California racetrack, is smothered in hi-tech lighting and visual effects. None of the three frontpeople can be called an outstanding musician, as is apparent, nor are they any great shakes as vocalists. What they have is an ability to write catchy songs which are a suitable backdrop to their visual image they are an animated cartoon brought to life. At their best, they sustain the fine line between fantasy and reality. The danger, as this clever video shows, is that reality will someday catch up with them. Meanwhile, Into the Gap Live is available for purchase for $49. Duncan Campbell The Outsiders (RCA/Columbia) One thing is immediately apparent on watching The Outsiders it wasn’t made for video. Francis Ford Coppola has framed his shots with the action stretched to the edges of the widescreen. The result is more than a few scenes featuring half a face to the left and right of the telly screen and an expanse of space in the middle. It would be interesting to see if the director’s intended images were framed in sympathy with the deliberate speech-bubble dialogue. Y’see, Susie Hinton’s orginal novel was a very adolescent work that drew its characters with the broadest of strokes and didn’t waste time on niceties like scene-setting and character development. So Coppola (after a nice little nod to Hinton to open) jumps straight into a backdrop that just is and proceeds to hurtle his characters through the plot at

breakneck speed. It’s fully 40 minutes into the film before there’s even slight respite from the action. Even then the philosophical dialogue takes place in the midst of an overpowering Zoetrope Studios indoor "sunset" In another quiet scene it’s the score that renders things wildly melodramatic. C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon and Ralph Macchio are suitably confused and growing up, confused and tough and confused and waiflike respectively, but, as usual, it’s Coppola’s movie. I’m looking forward to sometime seeing Coppola’s second (and reportedly better) Hinton adaptation, Rumblefish and to The Outsiders coming back to the big screen. RB Unfaithfully Yours (CBS/Fox) In which our Dud hits an all-time low; playing a wealthy orchestra conductor married to a beautiful young woman (Natassja Kinski). He mistakenly believes she is being unfaithful, gets drunk and fantasises about doing away with wife and lover. There are few genuinely funny, let alone original moments in this movie. Dudley Moore has found his niche in life typecast as a misunderstood, spoilt, rich drunkard (10, Arthur, etc.) It was funny one now it’s hackneyed and trite. The things some people will do for money! PR The Right Stuff (Warner) The Day After (Roadshow) Two sides of the technology joke. The Right Stuff has a snappy punchline that send you away grinning. It seems to say that the function of man is to ride increasingly sophisticated and thrilling machines to increasingly unbelieveable heights, speeds and places, while their womenfolk proudly watch ’em die. Director and writer Paul Kaufman skillfully and wittily shows us the circumstances around the beginnings of US manned spaceflight and the humanity of the first Americans into space (dogs, chimps and the Reds beat ’em to it).He does almost everything right, with only the opening half hour being less than entertaining, but something doesn’t quite gell. The astronauts look just like they used to and make very believeable heroes, but Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager (famous test pilot who didn't accept the call

of Cape Canaveral and the real possessor of The Right Stuff) doesn’t convince as do few of the wives. Just niggling things, though, and not enough to deter you from hiring this 'un. At least it’s made me very curious to read Tom Wolfe’s book on which it is based.

Now the sick joke with no punchline, just a fade to black. The Day After is a nuclear aftermath movie along the lines of The War Game by Peter Watkins and Threads which screened on TV last year. This video is head and shoulders below the others but is wholly laudable purely as one more nail in the nuclear coffin. It’s American and was released both as a two-part TV mini-series and a theatrical film, so there’s a lot of compromise involved. Like there’s a bit too much plot and the total picture is one of Grapes Of Wrath scale tradgedy rather than the howling, writhing horror of nuclear reality. The closing credits actually include a quasi-apology for the lack of guts that didn’t trace the situation to its probable extreme. But again, it’s worth seeing and supporting, ‘cos there’s not much box-office success coming out of the States that has any integrity and this is at least saying something infinitely important.

So, two stories that couldn’t have been brought to us without rocket power. To the planets or oblivion? The choice isn’t ours. Chris Knox