'80's Snavely Classics, The Teenage Years': 'Foxes', 'Valley Girl' and 'My Bodyguard'

'80's Snavely Classics: The Teenage Years'

Growing up in the 80's, going to movies with my father was the biggest treat. I remember going to the Plitt Hawthorn Theatres for $1 Tuesdays where all the big releases were $1. A lot of my wanting to become a movie director came from these movies. I also remember first getting cable and wanting to stay up all night and trying to in the summer of 1981 when I was 13. I stayed up all night the first evening we received cable but didn't make it the second when I woke up and found that I was watching the third Omen movie and got scared. Though I did end up watching a lot of obscure movies that would become my favorites, movies that a lot of people haven't seen but I loved. a third of my movie loving experiences were found on cable late at night and I am not talking Skinamax. With the recent passing of John Hughes I picked two of my favorite 80's high school movie classics. Two of them I found on cable and they blew me away, the third I saw with my father at the Hawthorn theatres and it is now my favorite high school movie of all time.

'Foxes' (80) (R) 3 1/2 stars)

Writer: Gerald Ayres
Director: Adrian Lyne
Starring: Jodie Foster, Cherie Currie, Sally Kellerman, Randy Quaid, Lois Smith, Kandice Stroh, Marilyn Kagan, Scott Baio, Richard Romanus, Adam Faith, Laura Dern

In 1981 I was watching Cinemax and I decided to check out a movie that was scheduled at midnight. It starred a young Jodie Foster and it started what would become a very long crush on what I consider the best actress ever. Jodie Foster was coming from a powerful performance in Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" and was now an adult actress who was making very bold choices. She was in one of my favorite horror thrillers of all time in "The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane" and the extremely fun comedy "Bugsy Malone". This was right before Foster went to college and what we had here was an extremely brilliant and daring new actress. "Foxes" deals with four teenage girls in Hollywood who share an apartment where they can get together when home life is bad. Foster plays one of the girls and two newcomers in Kandice Stroh and Marilyn Kagan played two other girls. Stroh and Kagan weren't the best actors but the fourth girl was played by a rock star making her debut and she had raw acting talent and great screen presence. Little did I know that 30 years later I would find out she was the lead singer of a rock group called "The Runaways" with Joan Jett. Cherie Currie was tall, blond, very sexy and her performance is one of those you can't take your eyes off of and where you know something magical is happening. Part of my love of this movie is based on Foster and Currie and boy did I have major crushes on both. I have seen "Foxes" so many times because of them but also because the movie is deceptively dark and powerful. This is not light John Hughes material but that is good because Hughes's comedies are set in the suburbs and "Foxes" is set in Hollywood where I believe I am right in saying it is not a safe place to grow up in. There is real and raw growing pains here including a father who beats his daughter up, a house party that turns deadly, a teenage runaway who might not have any chance to become an adult.

The main power of the film though deals with a mother and daughter in Foster andSally Kellerman (Kellerman is so good here she could have received an Oscar nomination). The mother is divorced and there are struggles with making ends meet and the daughter is becoming rebellious. The scenes where they fight and make up are real and intense and with these scenes Foster was proving that she was going to be building an iconic career. The acting in these scenes is very strong and amazing. Some of "Foxes" is dated and corny and some of the acting is a little weak even though Scott Baio and Randy Quaid are outstanding. The movie might elicit some giggles but it still holds up as one of the most powerful movies about teenagers ever made. It has a dark and scary feel to it and it doesn't sugarcoat life growing up in Hollywood at all. When I was 11 I was blown away by it and actually thanked God I had a home life and didn't live in Hollywood. In "Foxes" I found something special in a movie that gave me one of my favorite actresses growing up and a feeling that I wanted to make movies about my years as a child growing up. All I know now is back in 1981 I saw a movie that touched me, gave me a lot of wonderful new discoveries and blew me away. I have seen it recently and it still holds up.

'Valley Girl' (83) (R) 3 1/2 stars)

Writers: Wayne Crawford and Andrew Lane
Director: Martha Coolidge
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Deborah Foreman, Coleen Camp, Frederic Forrest, Cameron Dye, Elizabeth Daily, Michelle Meyrink

When I saw the previews for "Valley Girl" on television I thought it looked really stupid. It was Rated R so I wasn't going to see it on my own and I know my father wouldn't want to take me (He was more interested in movies like "Porky's" to take me to). I caught it on cable a year later and what I discovered was 1.) an interesting actor who would later become one of our biggest stars. 2.) a very cute and charming actress and 3.) a very funny high school movie with one of the best soundtracks a movie has ever given us. "Valley Girl" is a real head trip, funny, charming, raunchy and finally a movie with a lot of heart. This is actually, and I am not joking here, one of my favorite love stories of all time. I saw this movie a lot the month it debuted on cable and I bought the soundtrack, wore it out and still wear it out to this day. There is some special alternative music on here including songs by "The Waitresses", "Sparks", "The English Beat" and "The Psychedelic Furs". Deborah Foreman, who had one of the best smiles on film, played a valley girl who spent a lot of time with her valley friends at the mall. She sets her eyes on a very strange boy who is decked out in punk clothes and definitely not looking like her friends. He is from the other side of the tracks in Hollywood and he is played by Nicolas Cage. Now at that point Cage had small roles in movies like "Fast Times at Ridgemont HIgh" but watching "Valley Girl" and his performance you just knew he would become one of our finest actors. The performances by the two leads are wonderful and you find yourself rooting for these two different kids to get together.

This was a low budget movie that was supposed to be a dumb, raunchy teenage comedy but turned out to be a critcal darling and it deserved it. The movie has a lot of laughs but it turns into a touching love story with a legendary rock soundtrack. It also gave us an actor who would hit it big and would develop eccentric tastes in movies. With his choice of "Valley Girl" to break out in we should have seen it coming.

'My Bodyguard' (80) 4 stars (Highest Rating)

Writer: Alan Ormsby
Director: Tony Bill
Starring: Chris Makepeace, Matt Dillon, Adam Baldwin, Ruth Gordon, Martin Mull, Joan Cusack, Paul Quandt, John Houseman, Tim Kazurinski, George Wendt

"My Bodyguard" is my favorite movie about high school ever made with "Lucas" (86) right behind it. It is also one of my ten favorite movies filmed in Chicago and one of my all time favorite movies(maybe in my top 50). I saw "My Bodyguard" with my father at Hawthorn theatres for $1 and this is my choice of the movie that made me want to become a film maker for real. This is also one of the best uses of Chicago locations ever captured on film. "My Bodyguard" tells the story of Clifford, a teenager whose father manages a big, fancy hotel in Chicago. He also lives with his crazy grandmother played by Ruth Gordon. Before Clifford was enrolled in a private school but now he is going to a city school that is a little more rough. There he is confronted by a bully named Moody wonderfully played by Matt Dillon. Dillon really makes you hate this character and what I said about Jodie Foster in "Foxes" goes for Dillon here also. This was the period I thought Matt Dillon was was very cool and I wanted to be him. Along with Jodie Foster I consider Matt Dillon my favorite actor growing up. I hated Moody in this movie but I also felt sympathy for him because Dillon was so cool! After being bullied for too long he tries to recruit a hulking kid who is falsely rumored to have killed a kid and maimed a bunch also. Clifford can't get to this kid until he finally explodes in a very powerful and funny scene and convinces the big kid to help. The big kid Ricky was played by Chicago actor Adam Baldwin. No he is not one of the Baldwin brothers but he is really good here. Baldwin quietly has become one of my favorite actors over the years and he is equal to Jeff Bridges in being unfairly ignored by Hollywood. Catch him also in "Full Metal Jacket" where he is in the most powerful scene in that movie. Ricky confronts Moody and at that point a lesser movie would end predictably with the aftermath. What surprises us is that Ricky and Clifford become great and close friends.

The reason this is my favorite movie about high school is that it doesn't go in all the predictable directions. It gives us a powerful and uplifting story of friendship that has heart and great poignancy. At the end, this movie had us all cheering in the theatre loudly with a great closing scene. Of all the movies I saw in the 80's this movie, "The Karate Kid", "Rocky III", and "Aliens" had the loudest cheers of any audience I saw a movie with. This movie makes Chicago look so real, vibrant, cool and majestic and it is one of the ten best filmed in Chicago. The characters are real and the movie makes us want to cheer for them. There is a very funny performance by Paul Quandt as one of Clifford's friends and it is sad we never saw Quandt again in any movie. There is a very young Joan Cusack who is very good in a very small part (this was before her brother John started acting). Along with "Lucas" six years later this movie captures teenage life better than any movie from the 70's or 80's and even the 90's. It also inspired a very bad movie many years later called "Drillbit Taylor". It also gave us Matt Dillon who has been a joy to watch for me ever since. "My Bodyguard is a classic and it is one of the best crowd pleasing movies of all time. I wish movies about teenagers these days were half as good and yes it is better than any John Hughes movie.