In 1983 Francis Ford Coppola directed two films based on S.E. Hinton novels. Everybody seems to remember The Outsiders, 25 years later it's considered a minor classic. "Stay golden Ponyboy." But I don't think I've ever heard anyone mention Rumble Fish, and after seeing it for the first time, I'm incredibly surprised it isn't better remembered.

I think what everybody remembers about The Outsiders is the incredible cast, featuring very early performances by C. Thomas Howell, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, Diane Lane and a few more recognizable faces in there. But the cast for Rumble Fish is nearly as impressive, with an all-star cast, including Mickey Rourke, Nicholas Cage, Lawrence Fishburn, Dennis Hopper, Chris Penn, with Matt Dillon and Diane Lane, being the only repeats from The Outsiders. Both films are expertly crafted, top notch filmmaking by Coppola and his crew.

Where they differ is in the style and execution. The Outsiders is very straight-forward, made in a classic style of filmmaking. While Rumble Fish is very avant-garde. The entire film is shot is stark black & white, with the only touches of colors showing up in the Siamese Fighting Fish the boys admire, and briefly in one key scene towards the end. Shadows are extremely prevelant throughout the film, they often fortell who's coming and what's going to happen. Clouds sped up by stop-motion often drift by in the background. The fight scenes are choreographed more like dances, than anything resembling a gang fight. The score is like nothing I've ever heard before, it's almost like somebody playing chimes with a pair of metal spoons. And those offbeat choices are probably why the film isn't as well remembered.

While I was reading the book a month back, the film I was directing in my head, was similar to the way that The Outsiders was made. It would have been easy for Coppola to do the same thing a second time around. But being a filmmaker that's never played by the rules, that would have been boring for him. I went in expecting that same style, so I was jarred by what I was seeing, it took me at least 15 minutes to adjust to this very different style of filmmaking. So I can imagine that when these films came out six months of each other in 1983, that audiences were thrown for a serious loop. And it shows in the box office numbers from the time, The Outsiders made over 25 million, a tidy sum for that time, while Rumble Fish made around 2 million.

Rusty James, played nicely by Matt Dillon, is a young ruffian, who wants nothing more than to be like his big brother Motorcycle Boy. He hangs around with his low class friends, gets into fights, cheats his girlfriend, gets suspended from school, is basically up to no good. But it's nothing like the good old days, when his brother ran the gangs and ruled the streets. Rusty James talks endlessly about becoming the great leader his brother once was, but he doesn't have the smarts or charisma to do so. When his brother comes back from a trip to California, he follows him around like a lost puppy, wishing and hoping for his idol to bring him into the big time. But Motorcyle Boy has changed, he's done with those days. He's endlessly talented at anything he puts his mind to, but nothing in life interests him. As the story progesses, we learn more about why these kids are the way they are, they don't tell us everything, leaving a lot to read between the lines.

Rumble Fish is a film that deserves to be better remembered. While not as easily accessible as The Outsiders, I think it is the more interesting film of the two. If you appreciate B&W photography, this film is a must see. Coppola uses a lot of techniques from the classic film noir days, with gorgeous lighting and compositions for nearly every shot in the film. The look has a purpose, it shows us how the color blind Motorcylce Boy sees the world. It's a wonderful character study of these two lost boys, a story that speaks to any age or time. There are great performances from a batch of burgeoning young actors, some who went on to become the biggest names in the business. The film might be considered a little strange for those weened on Hollywood blockbusters, but there is a lot here worth seeing. Rumble Fish is a true work of art. - Grade: B+

Eighties teen comedies are right up there with sex and ice cream as things that I will enjoy till the day I die. Movies like Revenge of the Nerds, Just One of the Guys, Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller's Day Off made me who I am today. However, I've never been that big of a fan of the Porky's series, most likely because I didn't see any of them till I was over 18, they weren't part of my formative years. The first one is a decent example of an 80's teen comedy, it's full of sex, nudity and grotesque jokes. But I never connected with the characters, they never seemed real to me, nothing more than stock characters. That had a lot to do with their limited development, but another problems was all the actors are all in their late 20's, early 30's, trying to play teenagers. It never worked for me.

It had been quite a while since I'd seen part 2 and 3, and I believe I'd only seen both of them once each during my college years. They were both playing on the Fox Movie Channel in widescreen, so I figured I'd check them out again, as they're easy and brainless to watch late at night. But now that it's been a month since I watched them, I'm having a very hard time separating the two. I believe that in The Next Day, they're trying to put together a Shakespeare production, but are getting resistance from the local church for indecency and the KKK because a Seminole Indian is playing Romeo. Pee Wee, the boys and Wendy Williams decide to fight back. In Revenge, Porky has rebuilt his club, and is forcing the boys basketball team to throw the championship game.

One of the problems with the films is there are too many characters, not letting any of them really stand out, the only two guys that stuck with me were Pee Wee, because he's the lead, and Meat, because he's big and has a memorable name. The four or five other guys always kind of blend in together as soon as the movie ends. Overall they're pretty funny, but you never feel like you get to actually know any of them, as they're always together in a group, bagging on each other in the same way. Pee Wee is the only character that has any sort of growth, and it's not much. Wendy, the lead girl, has a couple of good moments, especially at the end of the second film, when she's dressed up as an elaborate showgirl, trashing a local politician's reputation at a fancy restaurant. That scene and the scene where the boys take a prostitute to the cemetery, to double cross one another, and Pee Wee ends up running down the highway nude are the highlights of the film. The Romeo & Juliet stuff doesn't work well, it feels like writer/director Bob Clark trying to cram ideals about censorship and racism into a lighthearted film.

Porky's Revenge is the slightly better film of the two. They get back to basics, they're not trying to ram any messages down our throats, Porky is back as the main villain and Pee Wee and Wendy are no longer a couple. In The Next Day, they get a bit mushy with their relationship. In part 3, Pee Wee's back to being the horny bastard, chasing after the Swedish exchange student, with Wendy and the boys busting his balls. The Porky's universe has returned to normal. These very filled out teenagers, with receding hairlines are about to graduate, they play basketball in some of the most awkwardly filmed sports scenes in history, and try to scam girls into taking their clothes off. The film opens with a fun dream sequence where Pee Wee gets flashed by the Swedish girl and then his robed is ripped off, exposing his erection to the entire crowd. It seems all the best scenes in these films end with Pee Wee naked.

Both these films are pretty sub-par compared to the original Porky's, and I've already stated that I don't hold the first film in very high regard. So as 80's teen-sex comedies go, they rank pretty low on the scale. But if you're desperate for a laugh, you could do worse, as the films are at least fairly well produced, with a 1950's setting, and decent photography and acting. The actors, despite being 10 - 15 years beyond their teens, have good comic timing, keep the film entertaining. I probably won't bother with these sequels again, beyond maybe catching a scene or two on cable. If I want to see some 80's boobs and hear some 80's jokes, I'll check out the far superior Revenge of the Nerds. - Grade: C

This was a film I'd never heard of before, but when I ran across it on IFC, it sounded like my kind of movie. A dark-comedy about an alien invasion, made during the 80's. Unfortunately it's one of those "almost" films, where it's almost a good film, almost a cult-classic, but something is missing. Strange Invaders has a lot of the right ingredients, but it was thrown together a little sloppily, cooked at too high a temperature, so the final product isn't totally appealing.

The film starts in 1955, in a small town in Illinois. There's a young couple making out in a truck, when unseen to them a large spaceship lands near town. When the boy goes home, there are some strange lights, a creepy shadow of a hand, a scream, and the film cuts to 1983, New York City. Charles is hanging out at home, when his ex-wife and daughter show up. His ex asks him to watch their kid, while she goes home for a few days to help her mother. When she doesn't come back for a couple of weeks, and he can't get a hold of her, he begins to seriously worry. He leaves his daughter with grandma, and drives out to the same small town we saw at the beginning of the film.

Everything still looks very 1950's. But that's the least of Charles worries, when he starts to ask around town, nobody has ever heard of his wife or her family. This seems extremely strange in a town so small. He's about to leave town, when his car breaks down. He stops for a bite to eat, when suddenly there's a laser blast and his car is blown up, and there's a mob outside the restaurant looking very menacing. He does the sensible thing and jumps out the back window, stealing a car from the lot, and begins to tear out of town. On his way out, he catches a glimpse of what looks like an alien, who shoots some kind of death ray, from his face no less, at him as he speeds away, only catching the tail of his car. This is one of the best scenes in the film, and a good set-up for what I hoped would be a fun flick the rest of the way.

When Charles gets back to New York, he tries to get the government involved, but of course nobody believes him, writing him off as a nut-case. That's when he sees a photo in a cheesy tabloid of an alien that looks very much like the one he saw. He visits the paper, where he meets Betty, played by 80's hottie Nancy Allen, who after her own run-in with some weird alien activity believes Chuck's story. Soon they have a gaggle of aliens chasing them through the city, trying to stop their story from getting out any further. Mostly the aliens keep their human disguises, but when they do reveal themselves, the effects are pretty well done.

When the film takes a turn towards a more modern, alien-action-chase, the movie kind of falls apart. They lose most of the comedy that was keeping the film lively, and the filmmaking isn't exciting enough to keep you on the edge of your seat, the way they intended. By this point it's pretty obvious what truly happened to Charles ex-wife, so the film loses the mystery long before the truth is revealed, leaving the ending fairly anti-climatic.

The first half of the film is a throw back to the old sci-fi films of the 1950's. A nice tone is set between loving tribute and straight-up spoof. I thought I was getting into a forgotten cult-classic, but the second half ruins it. It's not terrible, mostly it's the tonal change from spoof to "intense" chase thriller, that didn't work for me. I liked the lead actors; Nancy Allen is always cute on the run. And it was cool to see Paul Le Mat, best known as John Milner from American Graffiti, get a lead role, he has some good leading-man charisma. The sci-fi effects for a low-budget 80's film are fairly well done, the filmmakers knew what they could and couldn't do, so they use them effectively. Strange Invaders might be worth seeing if you're into dark-comedies and/or 1950's alien invasion films. - Grade: C (Seen on 6/4/08)

The Osterman Weekend was legendary director Sam Peckinpah's last film; and sadly it shows. It's messy and underwhelming, and most unfortunate of all, boring; with none of the action-fireworks or visceral-punch of his classic films: The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs or The Getaway.

The film is about a CIA agent played by John Hurt, convincing Rutger Hauer's character, a journalist, that his group of long-time friends are in fact traitors, selling secrets to the Russians. And that he can best capture them by getting them all together at Rutger's house for a weekend.

But everything isn't as it seems; with characters playing each other with all kinds of double crosses, everyone has their own agenda. I honestly lost track of what all was going on; only because I was so bored that my mind didn't want to do the work of connecting everything. I tried to enjoy it for the few action scenes, but none of them were very exciting, so I truly lost all interest before the twists started revealing themselves.

That's about all I have to say about this film, it doesn't deserve a full review; I'll let the two film clips below speak for me. - Grade: C-

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A very underwhelming car chase, as Rutger goes after his family's station wagon, the kind with the fake wood paneling on the side, in a beat up old F-150. I guess Peckinpah was going for an everyday kind of car feel, but it's honestly just boring. There is one good crash, as some pipes impale another driver's car.

It's Rutger Hauer vs. Craig T. Nelson (and his ultra-sweet mustache) in a slow-motion fight, featuring all kinds of breaking glass, a theme that runs deep in The Osterman Weekend.