Earth Girls are Easy

Earth Girls are Easy.
De Laurentiis Entertainment Group 1988.

Before watching the movie

How did I never know, or at least never have it sink in, that Jeff Goldblum is in this? Jim Carrey playing a weird alien, okay. Jeff Goldblum playing a weird alien, the potential to really let him run wild with it has massively piqued my interest.

I stayed away from this movie for a long time because I was expecting a raunchy comedy that hasn’t aged well. But now I find that it was inspired by a song by and co-written by Julie Brown, of songs like “Cause I’m A Blonde” and “The Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun”, so it has the potential to at least not be tasteless in the way I was expecting. It’s still over 30 years old.

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Invasion of the Body Snatchers. United Artists 1979.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. United Artists 1978.

Before watching the movie:

I don’t normally like to see remakes before the original. When I do see the 1956 version, hopefully this won’t color it too much. However, the reason this is line-jumping is because I wanted to respect the death of Leonard Nimoy and this has turned out to be pretty much the only work he was involved in available to me that I haven’t seen and is a movie.

At any rate, this is billed as a “reimagining”, and appears to do a decent job at making the story relevant to the late 70s, which is always a problem when remaking science fiction decades later. I take it from the recommendation that brought this to my attention that Nimoy’s role is fairly significant, though I don’t know much about his star capital between Star Trek leaving television and entering theaters to judge whether he was a big enough name to get on the poster for minor roles.

I don’t want to make this post all about Nimoy, but it occurs to me that I may never have seen him play an onscreen role besides Spock.

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Transylvania 6-5000

Transylvania 6-5000. Jadran Film 1985.

Before watching the movie:

I’ve heard mixed reviews about this movie. Everything from “it was awful” to “it’s not so good”. When Leonard Maltin famously reviews a film with “it stunk. I’m Leonard Maltin”, it gives me pause, but I’m hoping some of the other reviews that lean toward “it’s okay if you’re expecting a dumb comedy” are more accurate. Mismanaged expectations are one of the biggest killers of film reputations.

Also, I tend to rate more favorably than many, or at least I think I do. I’ve recently had opportunity to compare how I rate films on a five-point scale to others, and found that on such a scale, the really good movies tend to get fours unless I was especially wowed by them, which is a higher bar for me than for others. Maybe doing this blog for three years has made me harder to please.

More on-topic, I can’t imagine Jeff Goldblum turning in a bad performance. I guess I don’t really know much about Begley other than this seems to be out of the general type I put him in.

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The Fly

The Fly. Brooksfilms 1986.

Before watching the movie:

Oh. Another horror film. Even though I’m not fond of horror. I’m more interested in this because it seems more like “creepy sci-fi” than horror, though. It’s hard to even place a good handle on what “horror” is, and that’s probably because I never get as scared as I’m told I’m supposed to by horror.

It occurs to me that Jeff Goldblum is an odd choice for horror. I thought for a while that he’d actually be rather good as a victim protagonist, but then he still has to act as the human/fly monster as well. So, it should be good to see him act out of type?

I really hope I get a good, safe scare out of this. But then, can a scare really be safe and still scary?

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