LISTS… My Three Fave Films with Body Parts in the Title

#1980s #AllPosts

 

Dissecting three 1980s movies with three different body parts in their titles…

 

The first of my Wandering Through the Shelves for March posts with another three favourites.

 

Footloose (1984)

Jaws 4: The Revenge

 

This is the first of my 2022 posts for this weekly entertainment themed challenge from Wandering Through the Shelves. For my first post for March, the challenge was to pick three of my favourite films with body parts in the title. This topic was chosen by the blogger, Brittani of Rambling Film.

More about this blog’s 2022 blogging challenge is found HERE… and this page also includes the blogger’s challenges for this month and the rest of the year, if you are now keen to join this fun collaboration. The Thursday Movie Picks challenge is described below;

…. a weekly series where you share your movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them.

All my weekly contributions for 2022 are found HERE…  and my and others’ contributions for this particular topic are HERE. 

The three films I’ve selected to illustrate this topic are This is Spinal Tap (1984), Footloose (1984) and Jaws 4 aka Jaws the Revenge (1987).

My list of those films with body parts in the title that have already been reviewed includes honourable mentions in this topic as listed below, and in alphabetical order as… Back to the Future (1985), Backtrack (1990), Brainstorm (1983), The Flesh and Blood Show (1972), The Hand (1981), Little Voice (1998), The Man With Two Brains (1983), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) and Young at Heart (1954).

Now onto today’s three new picks…

 

This is Spinal Tap (1984)…

This is Spinal Tap (1984) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers, Movieclips Classic Trailers

This is one of my favourite mockumentaries, where Martin “Marty” Di Bergi – played by Rob Reiner, the director of  When Harry Met Sally (1989) – follows the English Rock band, Spinal Tap on tour as they promote their new album, Smell the Glove. This film is a laugh a minute and I found it a well-written and faithful parody of musical documentaries with those band members talking this and that and with musical numbers aplenty. 

I was introduced to this film by my Darlin Husband, and this soundtrack is more his kinda music. So he was able to point out and explain just some of those movies’ in-jokes and references to other more legitimate musical acts that are littered throughout the film. Anyway, this is a fun tongue-in-cheek mockumentary and I loved its sly digs at the music industry.

This was despite my knowledge of rock music, starting with Rock of Ages (2012) and ending with the current Pam and Tommy (2022) series. And not much in between. Many musicians have commended this film as being close to the truth, and IMDB also adds a certain Rock musician actually believed it was based on a real-life band. 

It stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer as the members of this fictional band. These cast members both sing and play their own instruments throughout this movie. Many of their scenes were improvised, with the actors given outlines of the plot and their character’s characteristics to be covered in the scene. Then the first take of those scenes was used in the final film to capture a more natural ambience and show more natural responses to these plots.

This “band” and the film now have a cult following despite performing modestly at the box office. This film also has some cameo appearances from familiar acting faces such as Billy Crystal, Bruno Kirby, Angelica Huston, Patrick McNee and Fran Drescher.  Just to name a few… Critic Roger Ebert adds this after-credits story tells that;

One of the loveliest ironies of “This Is Spinal Tap” is that the band took on a life of its own after the movie came out, and actually toured and released albums. Spinal Tap lives still. And they haven’t gotten any better.

 

Footloose (1984)…

Footloose (1984) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers, Movieclips Classic Trailers

Another film from 1984, which boasts a fabulous 1980s soundtrack, is Footloose (1984). I defy anyone who hasn’t danced at this film’s title track of the same name as it’s one of the catchiest and most remembered 1980s title tracks. Footloose was remade – for no apparent reason – in 2011 – but so far I’ve avoided it – as this, the original film is one of the definitive, must watch, feel-good 1980s movies. 

It stars Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer (Julie from Fame (1982-87) and Kassandra from Warlock (1989)) and even Sarah Jessica Parker – just before she made Girls Just Want Have Fun (1984) – in the young cast. Others include the definitive 80s movie Mum, Dianne Wiest and John Lithgow.

It’s a film where I’d bought the soundtrack, yet hadn’t seen the film until my Darlin Husband insisted I watch it. The song, Let’s Hear It for the Boy by Deniece Williams was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The title track as sung by Kenny Loggins was also nominated for this award.

It has Bacon as a teenage kid, Ren who moves to a small town with his mum after living in Chicago. In this town, there is a law that all the kids are banned from dancing and rock and roll. Needless to say, this new “bad” boy gets them all dancing to this kinda music, albeit in secret. Ren even has time to have a bromance with Willard (Chris Penn) and fall in love with the minister’s daughter, Ariel (Singer). This minister, Shaw (Lithgow) is totally against dancing and created this ban after his eldest son had died after an accident, after drinking and dancing.

Roger Ebert with his tongue clearly in his cheek review adds that;

His (Ren) assignment, should he choose to accept it, is to (1) win the approval of the preacher and the town council to allow dancing, (2) beat up the bully, and (3) star in at least three segments of the movie that can be used as TV music videos.

Others who could have been in those leading young roles included Meg Ryan, Tatum O’Neal and Heather Locklear as Ariel and Rob Lowe or Tom Cruise as Ren. If you haven’t seen the film you will have probably seen those parodies for this film in Family Guy (1999-) with Peter Griffin as Bacon’s character as seen in his dance scene in a warehouse. And it seems that Bacon had some smoking hot dance doubles in many of the dance scenes…

 

Jaws 4: The Revenge (1987)…

Jaws the Revenge (1987) – Modernized Trailer, MFMT

The Jaws film franchise had to have a mention, as this film series is possibly the first film you’ll think of with body parts in the title and in the movie. Years after the Steven Spielberg classic, that composition from John Williams and you’d been warned not to get back into the water, Jaws the Revenge (1987) aka Jaws 4 was released to the public.

And at first glance, it’s one for every Michael Caine fan, but once you’ve seen it you’d only recommend it to those Michael Caine or Jaws completists. It’s not to be confused with part 3 which was 3-D and boasted Dennis Quaid and Lea Thomson. In fact, this film is ignored in this storyline as Jaws the Revenge is a direct sequel to the superior, Jaws 2…

Borrowing a plotline from Orca (1977) – which starred another acting great, Richard Harris – it’s a nature vs man horror film. Caine stars as Hoagy, a love interest for Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody, aka Martin Brody’s (Roy Scheider) now a widow. He meets her as this shark vows revenge on this family and this shark swims from Amity Island to the Bahamas after he tracks this family down with a private eye and kills Ellen’s son…

The critics called it one of the worst movies of all time and it’s more guilty pleasure than so bad it’s good. Although to be fair the tagline, “This time, it’s personal!” makes it sound much less like the horror film it was advertised as and more like a Steven Seagal revenge film. And if it had been a parody of the revenge genre, it might just have worked. As Roger Ebert so succinctly puts it;

The screenplay is simply a series of meaningless episodes of human behavior, punctuated by shark attacks.

Interestingly Lorraine Gary took this film purely for this Cockney love interest, and I guess not a lot of people know that (unless they read the entry for this film on Wikipedia)…

And now it’s time to check out all my weekly contributions for 2022 which are all found HERE… 

 

---

Don’t forget to read the other contributions for this topic on Wandering Through the Shelves link up HERE.

Tune in for my post for the 31st March for a post on my three favourite movies in a special television edition with a post on Three Family Comedies.

---

 

 

Related