Cinema of the Absurd: Teen Witch

TEEN WITCH
1989, dir. Dorian Walker

So, I watched this last night.


No, not just some random awful white rap musical sequence from 1989 teen fantasy Teen Witch, but the actual entire movie! All 93 bizarre, weird and somewhat wonderful minutes of Dorian Walker's cultish flick that can lay claim to some of the worst musical numbers ever put to film. It's like Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, but with less talking cats that only ever look real when curiously running away from the camera and more dance sequences involving women with big hair wearing lavender leotards. I mean, if Sabrina had one of those then I sure don't remember it (so it might've been during the "Sabrina goes to college with Punky Brewster no it's true I'm not making that up!" years.

Beginning with an opening credits sequence that looks a lot like my Saturday mornings watching Video Hits, Teen Witch stars Robyn Lively as "Louise Miller", a dowdy and unpopular high school student who, upon her 16th birthday, discovers she's a witch. Isn't that always the way? Louise wants to look and be as popular as fictional freestyle pop musician Shana, a singer that sounds an awful lot like Brenda K Starr and looks a bit like Stacie Q meets Robin Sparkles (it's the bedazzled jacket, I think.)


Eventually she gets too popular and wants things to be the same again, except when she does she's still kinda popular? I dunno. Who knows what anything in Teen Witch is trying to be. The entire movie is filled with these completely random musical sequences that at once don't feel real and yet aren't ever presented as elaborate fantasies. They do nothing to propel the plot ("the plot"), but instead act as a less-than-stealth effort to ship ancillary soundtracks. It didn't work.


My favourite part of this particular scene, set to the song "Most Popular Girl", is the white boy rap (yet again rearing its ugly, bloated head) from the car window as Louise walks around awkwardly trying to be "sexy". Let's remember that Robyn was only 16 years old at the time and she carries the sequence off with as much confidence as a cat in a clothes dryer. Still, the actress went on to appear on six episodes of Twin Peaks so I'm gonna cut her some slack.

Of course, there is a hottie football playing jock that she is just totally in love with who's dating the sexy cheerleader bimbo. His name is "Mark" and is played by Dan Gauthier as some sort of Jake Ryan of 1989. I will give them this: Gauthier is a handsome man. And, yes, even more handsome without a shirt one, which is something we get to discover early on.


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It's my understanding that he got even more, ahem, handsome throughout the rest of his career, if you know what I mean. Especially Illegal in Blue. Ahem. Yes, very handsome. Naked handsome.

Oh, damn! I was trying to not be so obvious!


"Geez Louise!"*
We also discover that the cheerleaders at this frightening school (I'd certainly believe that the town Teen Witch is set in is actually Sunnydale and that the hellmouth is directly below them) are even more impressive than Nomi "Showgirl" Malone or Ali "Burlesque" No-Last-Name at learning choreographed dance moves; these cheerleaders can memorise them before they've even been shown!


So fab! Except not.

It seems silly to poke holes in the logic of a film such as Teen Witch, but there I was doing just that. Whether it's cheerleaders knowing dance routines through freaky mental telekinesis, Louise suddenly becoming a cheerleader or the increasingly perplexing manner in which Louise's witch powers work. Apparently she needs to be wearing a secret amulet, and yet if her teacher hadn't have found it in the school costume department (?!?) then her witchery would never occur. Furthermore, at first Louise just has to say "I wish..." for something to happen and then later she needs to do a spell, and then make a potion, and then use a voodoo doll (a particularly terrifying sequence involving a paedophile teacher walking into a car wash to get a "hot wax" *shudder*) and then... and then... it doesn't make a lick of sense. Louise is seen riding a broom stick on the cover (left) and this DOESN'T EVER HAPPEN ONCE! Very disappointing if you ask me. It also features a witches hat that also never appears. The makers of Teen Witch were clearly not very hip to the Wiccan ways.

The moment at film's end (OMG SPOILERS!!!) where Louise attends the prom and throws her magical amulet away in order to bring her old life back (except it doesn't, it just means she's no longer a witch? because her popularity seems to remain in check!) actually features the movie's best song. And from such a glorious soundtrack, it sure was hard to pick!!!


It's called "Finest Hour" and it's amazing in that '80s teen movie kinda way. I still don't understand why the creepy fortune teller played by Zelda Rubenstein is at a high school prom, but let's just leave that be, shall we?

Oh yeah, and that is Zelda Rubenstein as "Madame Serena", riding that late career Poltergeist spike into the ground with yet another mystical psychic person whatever. She even got on the poster! She wears a wicked shawl and funny hat, which is basically all the character she has.

And don't even get me started on Louise's obnoxious brother, "Ritchie", played by Joshua Miller. The worst movie character I've had the displeasure of watching since Josh Gad in Love & Other Drugs.


But, really, in the end, it all comes down to whether one finds hilarity gold within Teen Witch's most famous ("most"? Only!) sequence: the "Top That!" white boy/white girl rap number. Let's watch it again.


And again.


There really isn't anything about this clip that doesn't ring my bell of fantastic. How about the truly epic fugness of that Hawaiian shirt/blue singlet/capri jeans combo worn by "Rhet"? Actor Noah Blake went on to become kinda cute in a douchey sorta way (he starred on Harry and the Hendersons!), but I'd love to know what he thinks of this. Hell, I'd love to know what Amanda Ingber things especially. She's the actress playing "Polly". You know, the girl who's rapping and yet her lips and the vocals don't seem to quite sync up. Yeah. Wow.


Indeed, Polly. Indeed.

Just as an aside, I love that somebody tried to create links for each individual song on the "Teen Witch" soundtrack! Either they did exist at some point and Wikipedia took them down, or whoever did the editing on this movie's page had a lot of faith in its fandom. "Surely there must be a Wikipedia page for 'Top That!', right?"


Unfortunately it appears that no soundtrack was ever made and yet The Foo Fighters continue to get their music released? What kind of a world is this?

Of course, white boy rap was actually pretty common around 1989, but it's as if everything that could possibly go wrong(/amazing) did. The clothes! The bad singing! The homoerotic vibe! The bicycles! The Vine recently labelled it the third worst musical number of all time, higher than Vanilla Ice in Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze, another all time classic white boy rap moment.

To paraphrase Polly in Teen Witch: Look how funky they are!!


It's impossible to resist the funk.

Teen Witch was apparently intended as a female version of Teen Wolf (why is it that the words "female version of" are almost always associated with really bad movies?), but got changed around and ultimately became the Teen Witch not many of us know and sorta love, but not really.

I particularly like this little factoid from the movie's Wikipedia page:

The production budget for Teen Witch was $2,500,000. The film was released in the US on April 23, 1989 and grossed $3,875 in its opening weekend at the box office, and only $27,843 total in its entire run.

Well done to everyone involved, I say! I imagine the box office would have been better if it had more studded denim jackets, robots and lines like "I'm gonna rock your body like it's Canada Day". Now, see, earlier I mentioned that a character in Teen Witch reminded me of Robin Sparkles. Little did I know that somebody out there in this magical world that we know as "the internet" had actually mashed the two of them together and made the fabulous video below entitled "Teen Witch Goes to the Mall". Amazing.


I can't think of anything better to end this entry on than that. Can you? Actually, not true... watch the video below for the final word on Teen Witch.

Teen Witch is certainly an absurd movie, just one look at Louise's denim jacket with leopard print panels will tell you that! It actually has a charm about it though that will remind many viewers of a certain age of a time of film and TV made for young adults. It's harmless, so it's absurdity ranking is lowered somewhat, but how can one watch "Top That!" and not think it is an eye-popping WTF moment? I give it a ranking of 3.5/5 on the scale of 1-5 thrusting showgirls.


*actual dialogue :|

Cinema of the Absurd: The Mirror Has Two Faces

THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES
1996, dir. Barbra Streisand
Aah yes, the mirror does indeed have two faces, and if Barbra Streisand has anything to say about it they will both be reflecting her. And hopefully there will be several mirrors and they'll all reflect off of each other there by making it appear as if the mirror has thirty eight faces, all reflecting Streisand.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some Barbra Streisand, especially in front of camera where I think she has incredible presence and the same can be said for this, her third effort as director after Yentl in 1983 and The Prince of Tides in 1991. All three of those titles are wildly different and that is to be applauded, but one just has to watch The Mirror Has Two Faces to realise how absurd it all it. While it's true that the film is clearly an ego booster for Streisand, something that was noted by almost ever critic at the time, it's also so far removed from anything close to reality that it's hard to believe how Streisand ever thought this was flattering to herself.

The laughs start early as Streisand's name appears, appears and appears again in the opening credits. She directs! She stars! She produces! She even writes the love theme!





phew!
The Mirror Has Two Faces is about a shleppy Jewish gal, played by Streisand, whose live-in mother (Lauren Bacall) ridicules her for never going out on dates - this is based on a French film called Le Miroir a Deux Faces and not The Golden Girls - until one day her sister responds to an ad placed by a fellow Columbia University professor (played by an admittedly dishy Jeff Bridges, why have I never noticed that before?) requesting a woman whose looks are not important because he's fed up with purely sexual relationships with vacuous women like Elle Macpherson. Yeah, I know. He must have it tough!

From there these two continue on the most baffling of relationships. They go on dates to the symphony during which Bridges' Gregory brings along a device that presents the music in graphics. It's like those iTunes or Real Player visualisers, but... ya know, incredibly lame.


Don't worry though, it's apparently great fun!


Just look how much fun they're having! It's like it's 1984 and everyone's invited! How can you deny them their fun? You're mean.

I just found video of the scene! It's dubbed, but you still get the pure, unbridled joy that is present in Barbra and Jeff as they watch red dots fly about on screen to the tune of "Carol of the Bells".


Of course, that joy was not meant to last and eventually their relationships hits a snag. They get married, but still don't begin to have sex. They sleep in separate beds and basically just act like friends. She leaves him and runs away (to her mothers Central Park West apartment, naturally). What follows next is one of the few remaining joys left in a world filled with terrorism, war, famine and Ana Kokkinos: THE MONTAGE! And not just any montage, but a mixing of three of the greatest kinds of montages - the fitness montage, the make over montage and the shopping montage. Yes, The Mirror Has Two Faces features a hat-trick of montages. This is very amazing, folks! Just watch as Barbra's character trains in the gym to blossom like her character name, Rose.

Watch as Barbra attends a class and can't stay in time!


Watch as Barbra ride an exercycle in a room all by herself AND MIRRORS!!!


Watch as Barbra pushes herself to the physical limit!


Watch as Barbra eats a carrot omg!!


Of course, all of this leads to the big reveal during a romantic dinner with her husband. And here is where the "wow, she has a big ego" comes in since after seeing the New and Improved Jeff Bridges thinks she's too good looking! Too sexy! Too vivacious! I can imagine Streisand reading the screenplay by Richard LaGravenese and thinking there should be a "Hello gorgeous!" put in just for kicks.


From there Streisand continues to make scenes in which characters mention how beautiful she looks now. My favourite moment is the cafeteria scene between her and Brenda Vaccaro in which she wears the snappy power skirt/suit ensemble seen below second from the left. And that hair. THAT HAIR!


That scene features another memorable slice of dialogue between Streisand and Vaccaro in which Brenda is portrayed as a disgusting fat pig. No, I'm completely serious!

Rose Morgan: I just can't eat a greasy cheesburger in the middle of the day anymore. Doesn't it bloat you?
Doris: Bloat me? No, it doesn't bloat me! Actually I thought it went real well with the spare ribs I had for breakfast.

Hah! That's amazing. Streisand's Rose is being blinded by her new clothes and hair and not realising she's becoming a total bitch!

However, my favourite post-makeover moment is most definitely the classroom sequence in which her students are positively agog with expressing their astonishment at their hideously festering frumpy teacher's upheaval.



"Yes, I have breasts. They cannot, however, be the subject of one of your papers."

That is actual dialogue from The Mirror Has Two Faces! Does that not amaze you? I find it hilarious that these kids have clearly been alive for at least 18 years and yet they have apparently never met anyone who decided to change their hair.

These students, however, bring me to the raison d'être for the Cinema of the Absurd entry. Yes, the rest of the movie completely bat shit bonkers for a romantic comedy, but nothing else in the movie quite accomplishes the levels of absurdity needed than the lecture scene early in the film during which Streisand's character gives, quite literally, a stand-up routine to a lecture hall full of university students on the nature of romance, sex and love in novels. I feel the only way I can truly let you experience the glory of this sequence is by showing it to you in full. But, be warned, anybody who has ever stepped foot on a university campus may very well fall out of their chairs laughing.


Did you not love it?

Let's watch it again!



Honestly, words can ALMOST not express the feelings I experienced whilst watching this scene for the first time (and then the second and third and fourth and fifth, no kidding!) Despite the fact that Barbra posits herself as very much the centre of the universe (screencap below), but also that the levels of fantasy in these brief few minutes are just so outlandish that people who have never seen the movie fail to believe such a scene even exists.


How about all that canned sitcom laughter? I've had some humourous teachers in my time, but none made me guffaw at the end of every single line. They all but give her a standing ovation at the end of her skit lecture. I also can't imagine that many students studying literature cramming themselves into a lecture hall to hear such "academic" words as "when we fall in love we hear Puccini in our heads". Oh my. Of course that line of dialogue itself brings about the film's crowning achievement. A single solitary shot. Puccini? Yeah!


I don't know about you, but mentions of Puccini no doubt bring on a bout of pumping my fist into the air and nodding my head in approval. Yeah! Puccuni! Mad props to Puccini, if you like. And, yes, that is indeed an uncredited Eli Roth sitting behind the fist-pumping, moustachiod, knitted tennis sweater wearing douche with early-onset balding who looks like the lead singer of Ultravox. I think even Barbra would be horrified!


Yes, thank you Barbra for agreeing with me!

There's another scene later in which Jeff Bridges' character, a boring fuddy duddy of a teacher, has taken lessons from Streisand on how to get a class interested in what you're teaching and apparently all it takes is to wear jeans and a polo shirt and make baseball analogies. Doing so results in wild hysteria!


I mean, look at the black woman who found his joke ("I'll have to ask my wife", hilarious) so funny that she has to flail her hands about over her face. Or what about the Asian woman two rows back. And, personally, I find the out-of-place old man in the third row to be really creepy and off-putting. He looks like a mummified corpse with a bad toupee.

In conclusion, The Mirror Has Two Faces" (or maybe it should be called Barbra Streisand's The Mirror Has Two Faces: Barbra Streisand) is definitely absurd. It's hard to fathom what exactly Streisand was thinking when she made this movie. It's just an incredibly bizarre experience to watch this movie. It's over two hours long - I even tweeted at the one-hour mark that "I seriously dunno how it will fill another hour!" - and it sure feels like it, but there's enough absurdity to almost make it worth it. Although if you're not quite sure you can make through the entire 126 minute running time (she doesn't stop even when the end credits start to role, although I do admit to guiltily really liking "I Finally Found Someone". Oh my) then simple watch up until the infamous lecture sequence and be done with it. I give it a rating of 4/5 on the scientifically-proven Absurdity Scale.


I just want to end with this image because, really, why not?


Oh Barbra!

Cinema of the Absurd: Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE
1985, dir. Jack Sholder
Or as I like to call it; Gaymare on Camp Street Part 2: Freddy's Queer. In this, the first of many sequels to Wes Craven's 1984 original Nightmare on Elm Street, is an odd affair. It takes a much different thought process to the mythology of Freddy Krueger. Instead of the burnt child molester haunting and murdering people in their sleep, in Freddy's Revenge he actually takes over the body of a high school student called Jesse who then goes around unsure as to whether he is killing people or just dreaming it. To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not even sure I followed the storyline or whether that description I just gave is correct. That didn't stop me, however, from thinking it was ridiculousness of the highest order. Freddy even appears in the real world for the second half the film, something that strains credibility even in a movie such as this. Nevertheless, I'm not here to talk about this movies shortcomings, I'm here to discuss how incredible it is.

Before I get going into this movie I need to question something. So, in then original Heather Langenkamp starred as Nancy along with others like Johnny Depp. They were the first set of kids to be tormented by Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) in their dreams. However, nobody from that movie returns for the sequel. So how is it "Freddy's Revenge", exactly? It's not exactly revenge if you're targeting people who don't even know about the events from the first film, is it? "Freddy's a Bastard", perhaps? And then there's the little issue that this sequel is set five years after the first... five years! And yet the fashions haven't changed a bit. The '80s must have felt like an eternity in this town!

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge actually starts off quite well, with a nicely done opening sequence involving a runaway yellow school bus (that is such an American thing, isn't it?) and three teenagers. It has a wonderful edge of "whose nightmare is this?" and then it ends with this, which is the sort of imagery that the series has become known for.


Unfortunately after this it descends into idiocy. I think it's fair to say that Freddy's Revenge is the campest slasher movie ever made. The pièce de résistance comes early when the lead character, Jesse (played by - as revealed years later - gay actor Mark Patton), is told to go clean his room. Now, normally, when a teenager gets told to clean their room they get angry and put on some loud music and make a big scene. What does Jesse do? Well, he sort of does that. Except instead of a big heavy metal track like you might expect (remember when Dokken made the theme song for A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warrior? I was expecting that) he pops a cassette in the tape player and on comes...


Why yes, "Touch Me (All Night Long)" by Wish featuring Fonda Rae. That'll get that adolescent anger brimming. FONDA RAE, people! He handles the fact that he's not allowed to go to his girlfriend's house and swim in her pool rather well, actually.


What follows is, most definitely, the gayest thing I have ever seen in a horror movie (excluding stuff like Otto. Actually, no, let's include it, my statement still stands). He proceeds to dance around his bedroom in Elton John gold glitter glasses, while bumping and grinding to a mid-80s freestyle dance track. I feel like a reel of Footloose got misplaced and inserted in here. There is masturbation simulation, oh yes.


Watch it below on YouTube. It is amazing. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G-!



The film's quite incredible amount of homo-erotic tendencies isn't just relegated to impromptu dance numbers. Oh no! One of the stranger aspects of Freddy's Revenge is the gym coach, played by Randy Quaid lookalike Marshall Bell. When he's not watching his students wrestle in their jock straps and short shorts...


or watching them after a hot shower...


he's going to S&M bars!


This particular development is especially strange since when the underage Jesse is caught - *gasp* - drinking beer at a bar, Coach Schneider then takes the young kid back to the school gymnasium (in the middle of the night?) and makes him do laps before the camera watches him slowly clean himself off in the showers. All of this while in the very next room the coach is getting pummeled by balls. I don't mean that as a euphemism, but balls do actually fly at his face. He is then strung up by his wrists like in a scene from a porn movie before getting whipped by magical flying towels.





I seriously couldn't make this stuff up if I tried!

There is, indeed, more male nudity in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge than there is female nudity. In fact, there is NONE of the latter whatsoever, and yet we see multiple male arses plus quite a few close-ups of barely-covered genitalia. The closest a straight male viewer gets to any titillation is at the pool party sequence when the girls where their bikinis. I must say, that pre-Baywatch number is quite sporty, don't you think?


Then, of course, we get to the other big scene that sends off rainbow-coloured fireworks. Having left his girlfriend's cabana pool party midway through a breast-tonguing (I believe that is the technical term for it) because he was "worried" that something was trying to "come out" of him (oh dear, poor gal was oblivious to it all) he runs away. Runs away to where?


The bedroom of the high school jock who he got into a wrestling match with and bonded with during detention with Coach Schneider in the locker rooms, of course. Oh yes, that high school jock. What follows are these fantastic dialogue exchanges. Words cannot express how hilarious they are. Really, honestly, truly.



"Tonight with Lisa in the cabana it started happening again... Something is trying to get inside my body."


"Yeah, she's female and she's waiting for you in the cabana and you wanna sleep with me."


"No! I don't... know. I'm all messed up. What difference does it make? I'm in trouble."


"Alright man, what do you want me to do?"


"Just watch me."
Ooh, scintillating. For a brief moment I thought he was going to go into a Naomi Watts slapper routine. Did I mention that Grady has a Limahl poster in his room? Somebody's an awfully big fan of German fantasy films with Giorgio Moroder soundtracks. This is perhaps the best part of the movie, for reasons that should be easy to figure out.


I haven't shown any caps involving the lead actress who looks so much like a young Meryl Streep at times that it occasionally took me out of the movie. Well, took me out of the movie as much as you can with a movie like this, I suppose. It was quite scary at times watching this Kim Myers chick (hey, her surname has four letter from Meryl's first name - what a scary coincidence!!!) but let us just say that Myers' talents lie in resembling Meryl Streep more than actually acting like her. Even today she still looks like her quite a bit.


I will finish this entry with one bit from the movie that I don't understand at all. Not sure where it comes from, but it's there and it's weird and... well, you'll see.


In conclusion, this is probably the most absurd entry in the Nightmare on Elm Street canon. The entire franchise could probably count as being absurd, but the overriding fantasy element and it's place in the storyline makes it acceptable and the films are better of for it. Part two, Freddy's Revenge, on the other hand, is absurd for completely different reasons. Homoerotica, Meryl Streep lookalikes and crazy camp dance numbers specifically. I'm honestly not sure what the makers of this movie were doing. On the Scale of Absurdity I give it a 4/5. The series' over-riding strangeness diminishes some of the absurdity, but - in all fairness - this movie is extremely bloody absurd. Bravo!