As stated in past blogs I love the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. There's always a chance to catch a fun movie or two for a great price. The programming there is fresh, fun, and always unusual.
A few weeks back we stumbled in for a double feature of Matinee with John Goodman and Miracle Mile (written & dir. by Steve De Jarnatt) with Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham. It was part of a Joe Dante (the director) favorites week. For those who have never seen Matinee go rent it or suggest that your local art house show it. We were treated to a new print from the studio that was gorgeous! The story is loosely based on William Castle from the 1950's, sort of a poor man's Alfred Hitchcock. There are many wonderful 50's atomic bomb scare references and has a great supporting cast, including Cathy Moriarty who, in my opinion, steals the film.
Enough with the good, let's dive into the bad. There's nothing like a good WTF? movie to send you home with a smile on your face, and Miracle Mile is surely that. Released in 1988 it toys with the notion that "What if you knew a nuclear bomb was headed for your home town before anyone else did?" In this case your home town is the Miracle Mile/ La Brea area in Los Angeles and you've just met the girl of your dreams while perusing the skeletal remain of a woolly mammoth at the tar pits' museum. You choose to leave town but decide to go on one last late night date with your gal. However, a bird outside your apartment window grabs a cigarette you flicked off your balcony, and sets it's nest on fire. The nest happens to be on built on the electric wires to your building thus creating a power shortage. Therefore, you oversleep and miss your date with the waitress at the local diner. Your soon to be ex, gets discouraged, goes home and takes a sleeping pill after unsuccessfully trying to reach you. (Did I mention your phone doesn't work too?)
You wake up at 2am, head to the all night diner only to find your gal has gone home. The phone in the outside phone booth rings and of course you pick it up. On the other end you find a distraught man calling his dad to let him know the bomb is on the way and that he loves him, and " . . . he's sorry." You follow me so far? The set up sounds good right? Right. The rest is abysmal.
There are absolutely several WTF? moments in this film and if you're not into spoilers stop reading now, book mark this page, and return after you've NETFLIXed this movie. Let's start with Julie (Mare Winningham). She looked nothing short of a butch-femme in a red head crew cut and a dress that looked like a polyester tablecloth wrapped around her body like a corpse on delivery day. Harry (Anthony Edwards) thinks she's hot. I don't get it. Next take the fact that Harry travels all the way back to her apartment building to rescue her, as well as her separated grandparents, because he's caught wind through Landa (Denise Crosby), and her oversize 80's portable telephone at the diner, of a heliport pick up on the top of a local building. Harry races to her apartment to find her grandmother with a shotgun and Julie asleep in her room amidst a half dozen burning candles. Her grandmother tells Harry she slipped her an "upper" but she won't come to right away. Once Harry gets Julie and reunited the uncoupled grandparents instead of hopping in the car with them and driving with them, he chooses to push Julie in a broken down shopping cart across the park to the building.
They arrive only to find our lovelorn grandparents choosing not to fly off with them, but to die in each other's arms... at Canter's Deli. Yes folks, I said Canter's. Local LA folks know where I'm talking about. There food ain't worth dieing for that's for certain.
Not gonna give away the ending but just to tempt you this film also includes the following; a transvestite hooker, a frumpy stewardess (played by wonderful character actress Diane Delano), a rescued homeless guy, a gay muscle man helicopter pilot, anchormen getting blown up on the air, jars of mayonnaise and mustard for survival food, an insane list of people in the world the diner patrons want to save, bad-acting death scenes, more bad-acting, and a coyote... and lots more. Kudos to De Jarnatt for the use of Johnnie's Diner, a Miracle Mile landmark. It looks spectacular in this movie lit up and alive!
Perhaps if we were watching this in 1988 it might seem more relevant, but of course now it's down right fun and laughable. If I had Landa's phone I might even be able to deflect the n-bomb just by taking a Babe Ruth swing at it. De Jarnatt claims the script was written years before it was actually produced. It's also rumored this was originally written for The Twilight Zone movie but then cut. So why not update it when it was shot? This film was made at the tail end of the cold war and I wonder if it was just made too late. I'm also wondering if Edwards was thanking the stars that Northern Exposure and E.R. came along just 4-6 years later, because Miracle Mile could have sealed his fate as a film actor.
A lot of people that I discuss this flick with tell me how scared they were as kids when they first viewed it. I guess so but watching it now I ask myself, WTF? Definitely check it out though. It still is a lot of fun! See you at Canter's!
