I watched WALKING THE EDGE because it came out on blu-ray from Fun City Editions – who seem to have an eye for ‘80s urban crime movies with a bit of an arty edge – and because it stars Robert Forster. I had just enjoyed him in ALLIGATOR, which is a much better movie to me, but it almost doesn’t matter. This is another one that for all its good qualities is about 85% running on the fuel of Forster’s charisma and acting choices.
It’s a simple story. He plays put-upon L.A. cab driver Jason Walk, who reluctantly picks up a fare one day (the cab is kind of a front – he really working for a mobster called “the Fat Man” [Bernard Erhard, voice of Cy-Kill on GoBots] and tries to avoid actual work), not knowing she’s on a revenge spree. At her first stop Christine (Nancy Kwan, THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG) splatters a guy’s chunky blood across a window while Jason sits in the cab obliviously grooving out to jazz. At the second stop he sees her get in a shootout with some guys at a garage and while the two of them are driving away yelling at each other he realizes she’s been injured (not from a bullet – from a hubcap thrown at her like a Frisbee!), feels bad and brings her to hide out at his apartment. (read the rest of this shit…)
Earlier this year I did a week of rock ’n roll related animated features, including Don Bluth’s 
Meanwhile, Disney was finally getting their shit together, in a way that reinvigorated the entire American animation industry. It kicked off in the summer of ’88, when Robert Zemeckis and Richard Williams’ love letter to animation history WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT was a giant hit with adults as much as kids. Then in ’89 THE LITTLE MERMAID perfected the musical fairy tale formula that Disney and its rivals would attempt to recapture for the rest of the decade. (A similar thing was happening on TV, with every network trying to make prime time cartoons in the wake of The Simpsons. Even the cartoons made for younger audiences were beginning to be more creative and less disposable: Nickelodeon debuted Doug, Rugrats and The Ren & Stimpy Show on August 11th.) 
THE SUICIDE SQUAD, from writer/director James Gunn (
In my study of Summer of 1991 and especially it’s part 2s, I didn’t think I could skip RETURN TO THE BLUE LAGOON. But I had never seen the first film – 1980’s THE BLUE LAGOON – so I had to watch that first.
“All right, you want some real action, tough guys? Let’s do it.”
“Fuck you and all your bullshit! I WANT THIS FUCKING ARM OFF!”
August 2, 1991
TAKE BACK (2021) is a halfway decent DTV action movie, not a great one. The main thing holding it back, I’d say, is an approach to action similar to a Liam Neeson movie; Gillian White (whose name is listed last on the cover, but she’s the actual star) seems like a badass and has a couple good head kicks and stuff, but they move the camera around like they got something to hide. In one scene she actually turns off the lights and then kills a bunch of guys in the dark, which would be a good gag if there were more parts where we actually did get to see her.
Before I start one of these retrospectives I research the movies that came out during that summer and put together a schedule. But in the course of doing 1991 I keep stumbling across movies that seem worthy of looking at that I missed because they were limited releases, TV movies or DTV and didn’t show up on any of the release date lists I looked at. So when I realized Adam Rifkin’s THE DARK BACKWARD played on one screen starting July 26, 1991 I thought I should backtrack a little to cover it.
