Tag Archives: 1987

RoboCop (1987) | Paul Verhoeven

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RoboCop is set in near-future Detroit, where the city streets are just about completely dominated by the criminal element, while the police are neither respected nor welcome; they are virtually walking targets out there.  Desperate to clean up the crime-ridden community and build a gleaming new one in its place, the government officials turn to OCP, Omni Consumer Products, to build and manufacture the future of law enforcement, robotic police that are more powerful and well-armed than anything anyone has ever seen.  However, when the first prototypes prove inconsistent, the city officials balk at the idea, so an upstart faction within the OCP comes up with a newer, more “human” cop, a cyborg built using the remnant body of downed officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller), and dubbed simply as “RoboCop”.Things proceed splendidly for the RoboCop program, that is, until the human side of the cyborg begins to recollect his past life as Murphy, plagued with flashbacks to the family he lost and the psychopathic criminals who all but ended his life as he knew it.  Determined to bring the bad guys that did him in to justice, RoboCop sets out on a mission of his own, not realizing that the gang in question is actually in cahoots with a rogue entity within the OCP, who for all intents and purposes, also own the city, the police department, and the machine side of Murphy. Paul Verhoeven directs this scathing and potent satire on American commercialism and privatization.

Overboard (1987) | Garry Marshall

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Goldie Hawn plays the ultra-disdainful Joanna Slayton, who hires a carpenter, Dean Proffitt (Kurt Russell), while stopping off for repairs in their luxury yacht off the coast of the small town of Elk Cove, Oregon, with her snobby hubby Grant (Edward Herrmann), in order to remodel her closet space for her extensive designer clothing collection. The two don’t see eye to eye on his work, and Joanna refuses payment, leaving him walking away miffed, especially as she also tosses him and his pricey tools overboard. When Joanna ends up falling off the yacht, she ends up drifting ashore with amnesia. Grant sees this as his opportunity to sow some wild oats, while Dean, seeing her story on the news, sees a way to get payback by claiming she is his wife Annie and making her do all of the household chores for him and his four bratty boys. Annie knows nothing about such matters but soon settles into the role Dean tells her she has always had, but as the two grow feelings for one another, there will be a reckoning should she ever remember where she actually came from. Garry Marshall directs.

Batteries Not Included (1987) | Matthew Robbins

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Real-life married couple Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy star as Frank and Faye Riley, the owners of a small diner in a dilapidated building that also houses their apartment in the slums of Manhattan.  The rest of the tenants of the building are being paid off to evacuate ASAP, so that greedy land developers can take over and demolish the building in order to erect some high-rise corporate edifices.  Those that refuse are being threatened with injury “or worse” by some local thugs that are also on the corporate payroll to scare the bejesus out of the remaining tenants.  Without anyone to turn to, a desperate plea may have saved the day, as a couple of miniature flying saucers arrive, consuming metal materials and then fixing up damaged parts of the building.  The saucers befriend the remaining tenants, although the thugs and land developers are determined to put an end to this new development even if it costs lives in the process.  Steven Spielberg produced this quaint sci-fi fairy tale.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) | Chuck Russell

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The third time was certainly the charm in the Nightmare on Elm Street” series with DREAM WARRIORS, which put together a team of adept but troubled teenagers in taking on the fiercely powerful (and growing more so by the day, Freddy Krueger, who is out to kill these kids in their nightmares.  Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) is back to show them how to defeat the evil rascal, but they need to work as a team to do it.  The debut role for Patricia Arquette, plus an early appearance from Laurence Fishburne, make it a highlight, along with, of course, Robert Englund in his most iconic of roles.  Chuck Russell directs from a screenplay whose talent includes Frank Darabont and Wes Craven himself.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) | Sidney J. Furie

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Although he had claimed to be done putting on the red cape after SUPERMAN III, Reeve is lured back to make a fourth entry with a different studio from an idea he had written himself to bring back the series to respectability.  Alas, it didn’t quite work out that way in the end. Superman makes a decision to meddle in Earth’s affairs by getting rid of all of the nuclear missiles, but Lex Luthor has his own super-powered being to take the Man of Steel down before he interrupts the business of war that Lex relies upon for his riches. In addition to Reeve, Margot Kidder returns to a sizable role, and Gene Hackman returns to the series as Luthor.  Where did it all go so wrong when so much seems so right?  Vince takes a closer examination on this episode.

G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987) | Don Jurwich

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Rounding out this trio of Hasbro toy-based films put out by Marvel/Sunbow in the mid-1980s, “GI Joe: The Movie” has the dishonorable distinction of being funneled straight to video and subsequently syndicated on television due to the lack of success for the “Transformers” and “My Little Pony” movies at the box office the year before.  But does that mean it’s a bad film?  Well, some might argue yes, others hell no, and many more fall under the category of loving it because it embraces its flaws and plays them up to maximum entertainment.  Don Johnson and Burgess Meredith provide voices for this completely off-the-hook action-adventure-science fiction extravaganza that serves as a precursor to the dumb-but-fun action blockbusters people either love or love to hate from the 1990s.

Masters of the Universe (1987) | Gary Goddard

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The Cannon Group took a bath with the failure of MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE in 1987, a film that had gone over budget and well beyond schedule.

The film starts off in the mythical land of Eternia, where the ruthless villain Skeletor (Frank Langella) has managed, with the help of a powerful musical cosmic key, to capture Castle Grayskull, the source for a wealth of magic and power in the region.  Skeletor has taken the powerful good Sorceress (Christina Pickles) prisoner and has been draining her of her essence to channel into his own, making him more powerful as time goes on.  However, the great hero of Eternia, He-Man (Dolph Lundgren), is still free, and with his cronies, the faithful Man-at-War (Jon Cypher) and his daughter Teela (Chelsea Field), he seeks to thwart Skeletor’s plans for dominion over Eternia and restore Castle Grayskull back to its original state.

Their plans go awry when the cosmic key’s creator, the dwarven creature known as Gwildor (Billy Barty), opens up a portal to modern Earth with a prototype of the same key for them to escape Skeletor’s clutches.  The key is lost on arrival to Earth, soon found by a couple of high school aged teens named Julie (Courteney Cox) and Kevin (Robert Duncan McNeill), who activate it thinking it must be some newfangled musical device.  However, using the device alerts Skeletor as to its whereabouts, and once he has pinpointed its location, he sends a band of mercenaries to recover the key and ensnare He-Man, of whom he plans to make an example of in custody to break the will of any would-be heroes left in Eternia.

Mannequin (1987) | Michael Gottlieb

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Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall star in this smash hit bubblegum romance about a struggling artist who falls in love with a mannequin possessed by a lovelorn ancient Egyptian spirit who turns his life around.  James Spader, Estell Getty, and Meshach Taylor have supporting roles in this quintessential 80s fantasy-romance.  Does it hold up?

Innerspace (1987) | Joe Dante

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In this episode, Vince takes a look at “Innerspace” from director Joe Dante, starring Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, and Meg Ryan.  produced by Steven Spielberg, this sci-fi based comedy riffs on “Fantastic Voyage” where an unassuming supermarket clerk is injected with the microscopic vessel containing an ace test pilot who is wanted by hi-tech thieves looking to score.

The Princess Bride (1987) | Rob Reiner

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A sick young boy gets a visit from his grandfather, who reads the young lad one of his favorite books, ‘The Princess Bride’. The book is of a princess named Buttercup, who has a romance with her stable boy, Westley but the evil Prince Humperdinck has plans to marry the beautiful young woman so he kidnaps her, leaving Buttercup to think Westley dead. Westley assumes the role of the Dread Pirate Roberts and makes his return to save the princess before the marriage, but the task appears a bit more difficult than he planned.