Crossroads (1986)

Looking up the details for this film on IMDb, I couldn’t help but notice that there are more than one film titled Crossroads that concern musicians. The other is a 2002 film featuring Britney Spears. It’s unlikely I shall ever cover that film here; even the Morbid Curiosity Files have limits.

This 1986 film was directed by Walter Hill, and is built largely around the legend of blues man Robert Johnson, and his mythical “deal with the devil” to learn the blues. Ralph Macchio, in between Karate Kid movies, plays Eugene Martone, a 17-year-old guitar prodigy who is studying at Juilliard but has become fascinated with the blues and with Robert Johnson in particular. Wanting to know the secret of Johnson’s 30th song (Robert Johnson famously recorded only 29 songs before his early death), he tracks down a man who he believes was Johnson’s friend and co-musician, Willie Brown, also known as “Blind Dog” Fulton (Joe Seneca).

Solarbabies

Every so often, you come across a movie where it seems like the only participants who weren’t putting in a serious effort were the ones in charge. 1986′s sci-fi flick Solarbabies is such a film, where it seems like the director, producers, and screenwriters just didn’t care enough to put any polish on it. It’s too bad, because the actors — led by Jami Gertz and Jason Patric, who would pair up again a year later in the cult classic vampire film The Lost Boys — all seem to be taking the film reasonably seriously, putting in honest efforts at making their characters believable when the script isn’t actively working against them.

Clearly inspired by Mad Max and Rollerball, but aimed more at the teenaged crowd, Solarbabies is actually a pretty fun (albeit intrinsically goofy) film if one can overlook the flaws. Had those flaws actually been addressed, it could have even been a good film, though likely not a stellar one.

The Lost Boys

Happy Halloween, everybody! It’s October 31st, and we’ve got one last Halloween Haunter to discuss before November rolls around and the blog returns to some semblance of normalcy, at least for a few weeks. While this month has been filled with an awful lot of pain and agony — on the part of your friendly neighborhood blogger more than the characters in these horror movies — for the big day I’m finishing on a relatively strong note, the 1987 vampire movie, The Lost Boys.

The Lost Boys is the story of brothers Michael and Sam (Jason Patric and Corey Haim), who are moving with their mother, Lucy (Dianne Wiest) to their grandfather’s home in Santa Carla after she has divorced their father. Lucy insists they’re going to love Santa Carla, but Sam can’t help but notice the welcome sign has been graffiti’d to add “Murder Capital of the World”. Not an encouraging sign. They get to their grandfather’s place, and after a brief freakout at his taxidermy shop, they settle in and get ready to adjust to their new lives and the eccentricities of their grandpa (Barnard Hughes).

Soon they begin to explore the boardwalk of Santa Carla, and all three transplanted family members find something that will become important to their immediate futures.