Who knew Danesploitation was a genre?

In the "yet another of those 1980s films I was too young to have seen in the theater growing up" series, some months back TCM surprisingly ran Red Sonja. To be fair, it was part of a night on movies based on pulp-fiction sci-fi and fantasy novels, and the movie is 40 years old now. In any case, I recorded it and recently got around to watching it.

A group of priestesses is doing a ritual involing the Talisman, a glowing green orb that only woman can touch and that mostly has to be kept in darkness lest its horrendous power destroy the world. While only women may touch it (we see it kill a man who touches it), it's the menfolk, or at least those in the lineage of Lord Kalidor (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who have the duty of making certain that the power of the Talisman does not destroy the world, with the capacity to destroy the Talisman if necessary to prevent its power from being used from serious harm. Kalidor is, in fact, on his way to the current rites since there are serious plans afoot to destroy the Talisman since its power is getting too great for mere mortals to handle.

Unfortunately, he doesn't make it on time, being beaten by Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman) and her forces. They murder the priestesses while Gedren takes the Talisman with her to her castle at Berkubane. There, Gedren puts the Talisman in a room of lights specifically so that the Talisman will grow in power that Gedren believes she will be able to control. In fact, she won't, and in two weeks' time its power will be sufficient to destory the world. In one bit of bright news, Gedren's soldiers didn't succeed in killing all of the priestesses. One of them, Varna, escapes, running into Kalidor before dying of the arrow wound she received trying to escape.

Varna is the sister of Princess Sonja (Brigitte Nielsen), known as Red Sonja for her flaming red hair, and Varna wants Kalidor to find Sonja and warn her that the Talisman has been stolen. After all, it's going to take both men and women to deal with the Talisman since only women may touch the thing. Sonja is currently taking swordsmanship lessons from the Grandmaster, and he's the only man Sonja trusts. She thinks all other men are evil, and she's going to show them what a badass she is. So when Kalidor finds her and tells her about the talisman, she sets off by herself, ignoring the fact that in the real world men have much more physical strength than women (sorry, ladies) and would be able to dispatch Sonja easily if they weren't portrayed as preternaturally stupid.

Well, not just stupid, but fat or obnoxiously hubristic. Along the way to Berkubane, Sonja goes through the kingdom of Hablock, where the child king Tarn, who is a spoiled brat, refused to surrender. He and is court jester Falkon are the only two who survived, and they follow Sonja, providing help at key points along the way. It's a journey of redemption for the two of them two. Eventually, Kalidor finds Sonja again and the four make their way to Gedren's palace to try to find the Talisman before Gedren can kill them all.

Red Sonja was savaged by the critics, and it's easy to see why. The acting is terrible, as is the dialogue. The girl-boss trope is unrealistic, but as with blaxploitation icon Pam Greer, people watch the girl-bosses for the vicarious thrills and the skimpy outfits that show off the women's fit figures to good effect. (Sorry, but I don't think very many people want to see Misery-era Kathy Bates as a girl-boss.) But all the things that make Red Sonja a critical failure combine to make the movie a cult classic, and there's a reason why it's remembered well enough that somebody came up with the brilliant idea to do a remake that got a limited release earlier this year.

Kindergarten Cop

I brought up the recently-deceased Ivan Reitman in my briefs post yesterday, and mentioned that I had Kindergarten Cop, which Reitman directed, on my DVR. So last night I sat down to watch it and do post on here.

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays John Kimble, the titular cop. At the start of the movie he's in a Los Angeles-area mall tailing Cullen Crisp (Richard Tyson). Crisp is a drug dealer well known to Kimble, and Kimble has been trying to get the goods on Kimble for some time. Crisp goes into a section of the mall that apparently generally shouldn't be accessible to regular people, but he and some other guy are able to get into it and have a meeting where they won't be seen, except by the other guy's girlfriend. This other guy tries to sell Crisp information on Crisp's ex-wife and kid, who fled with a whole bunch of drug money, which is why Crisp is offering a substantial reward for information that will help him find the wife and kid.

Except that Crisp is a nasty man who has no intention of paying out. When the informant tries to press Crisp for the money, Crisp responds by shooting him dead, which obviously gets Kimble's attention. Crisp is arrested, but it's going to be tough to put him behind bars, as the informant's girlfriend isn't much of a witness, being a drug addict; also, Crisp was able to dispose of the murder weapon.

However, Kimble is able to get the same information that the informant gave, which is that the possible sighting of the ex-wife occurred up in Astoria, OR. So the authorities send both Kimble and another detective, Phoebe (Pamela Reed) up to Oregon to try to find the ex-Mrs. Crisp before he can find her, and hopefully get her to testify against him. Since the Crisps' son is kindergarten age, the plan is to have Phoebe pose as a kindergarten teacher in order to do some surreptitious intelligence work with the trusting kids.

Things don't quite work that way, though. On the way up to Oregon, Phoebe gets a pretty severe case of food poisoning, forcing the two of them to switch roles, with Phoebe doing legwork like checking into bank records, and Kimble being the teacher. Not that the principal, Miss Schlowski (Linda Hunt), believes Kimble can possibly make a good teacher.

And here we head into fish out of water comedy territory. Kimble, unsurprisingly, has no prior experience teaching, and doesn't know how to deal with the unruly children at first, children who will mercilessly take advantage of him if he lets them. But Kimble is able to use his physical presence, along with deciding he's going to play at being a sheriff in the classroom, with the children being mock deputies, with the proviso that they have to have the discipline that deputies would have. Surprisingly, it works more or less, at least enough to impress Schlowski, who has only been told there's some sort of investigation going on.

Kimble has a couple of possible candidates for which kid might be Crisp, but isn't certain at first. He's also able to make himself a respected member of the community, and even get a possible romantic interest in another of the teachers, Joyce (Penelope Ann Miller), who is the single mother of Dominic, one of the kids in Kimble's class. It's fairly obvious where this is going. It's also obvious that Crisp, aided by his mother (Carroll Baker), is going to make his way up to Astoria for the climax.

Kindergarten Cop is a moderately entertaining movie, although one that isn't breaking any new ground. Arnold Schwarzenegger is fairly limited in his range as an actor, and the script plays to his strengths in the form of his physical presence and an ability to be that fish out of water. Most of the kids in the kindergarten are written to be ridiculously obnoxious, but the twins playing Dominic are surprisingly not obnoxious. In fact, the children's use of language may make the movie a bit off-putting for some paretns. The adult supporting cast does reasonably well.

Kindergarten Cop is by no means the greatest movie made, and not even anything notably special, but it's worth a watch when it shows up on one or another of the cable channels if you haven't seen it before. (I believe its next airing here in the US is on March 1 on one of the StarzEncore channels.)

Twins

Going through the more recent movies I've been recording courtesy of the three-month free preview of the Showtime channels, I recently watched the 1980s buddy comedy Twins. It's scheduled to be on a couple of times this week, starting with Nov. 2 at 11:05 PM on Showtime Family. (At, least according to the DirecTV guide; Titan TV lists the channel in that slot as Showtime Women. In any case, it's got another airing on Nov. 4 and one on Nov. 8.)

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Julius Benedict, who at the start of the movie is celebrating his 35th birthday. He's been working all his life as a research assistant to some scientist who has a super-secret laboratory on a very isolated island in the South Pacific. The scientist tells the truth to Julius: Julius was the result of an experiment in which six "superior" beings were mated with an otherwise ordinary woman to try to produce a new super-intelligent physical specimen. The result was Julius.

However, Julius wasn't the only result. A minute after he was born came Vincent (Danny DeVito); after Vincent was born Mom died and Julius was placed with the scientist, while Vincent was sent to an orphanage. The explanation for how two actors as different in terms of appearance as Schwarzenegger and DeVito wound up twins isn't simply that they were fraternal twins, which would make sense if you consider that it wasn't uncommon in earlier days of IVF to put multiple fertilized egg cells into the uterus in the hopes that at least one would implant. Instead, it's claimed that Vincent somehow got "all the bad stuff" as though the embryo split and they're supposed to be identical twins.

At any rate, Julius sets off for the United States to try to find Vincent. We of course see Vincent first. He's an alleged agent in the Hollywood sense, except that he doesn't seem to have anybody to represent, leaving him horribly in debt to the Klanes. To try to pay off those debts, he's got a friend (David Caruso before NYPD Blue) at LAX who informs him when a nice car is put into long-term parking so that Vincent can steal them and sell them for quick cash. Vincent also has a girlfriend in Linda Mason (Chloe Webb) who just can't bring herself to dump Vincent despite her sister Marnie's (Kelly Preston) common sense in the matter).

Soon enough, the book-smart but naïve Julius -- he got all of his knolwedge from books but doesn't know things like slang or modern-day conveniences, having lived on that South Pacific island for 35 years -- shows up and finds Vincent, now in jail over unpaid parking tickets. Vincent doesn't believe it when Julius claims to be his brother, at least not at first. But eventually Julius is able to convince him. Besides, Julius is handy to have around, since he's able to put a whupping on the Klanes when they try to assault Vincent.

Julius is hoping to get out to Los Alamos, NM, to learn more about the experiment that created him and Vincent. Vincent, however, has more pressing concerns. The latest car he's stolen is a Cadillac with a valuable invention in the trunk. Beetroot McKinley (Trey Wilson), a businessman in Houston, wants that invention, and is willing to pay millions for it. Vincent stole the car from the courier who was supposed to deliver it, but when he learns that McKinley is willing to pay millions, not just thousands, he decides to drive off for Houston. Julius comes along, as do the Mason sisters, Marnie having fallen in love with Julius by this time.

Much of the humor in Twins is based on the utter implausibility of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito having come from the same parents, let alone being identical twins. But the movie eventually grows into something that, while fairly predictable, has some more heart than that. There's nothing new here, but Twins hits all the genre notes well enough, while at the same time being a bit of a nostalgic look back at the late 1980s. It's pleasant enough entertainment, and there's nothing wrong with not trying to be anything more than that.