Commando
Hi All,
[CAUTION: the following post contains vast amounts of 80's movie trivia, quotes, and ephemera. If you aren't boned up on your 80s action flicks, well, this is likely not for you]
As anyone with Internet access and too much time on his hands I oftentimes find myself clicking, clicking, linking on and on until I find myself in some version of Internet Siberia, the swirling cyber-snow having already obscured my footsteps leaving me to wonder how the hell I got here. In some instances, this has been a strange and somewhat terrifying journey---one mouse click you're safe, the next you're peering at some unspeakable horrors---but sometimes it leads to hilarious (to me) backwoods outpost or shantytown which, in this case (and is often the case in today's quickly-shifting Internet landscape) is already a ghost town by the time I get there: once thriving, its time has passed and its devotees have begun congregating at some other cyber watering hole.
Anyway, I suppose I found myself at this particular site for several reasons. #1: that aforementioned free time. #2: a love of 80's action movies. #3: a profound understanding of how AWFUL most of those movies are, which somehow doesn't diminish my memory or continued enjoyment of them.
So. The first r-rated action movie I ever watched was COMMANDO. Ah-nuld and Alyssa Milano and Rae Dawn Chong and Dan Hedaya and, most memorably, Vernon Wells as Bennett the somewhat odd, fey, and altogether unconvincing villian. I recall little of the plot other than: Carla Tortelli's husband from CHEERS kidnaps Tony Micelli's daughter 'Sam-anta' from WHO'S THE BOSS, which compels the now-congressman from California---named 'Matrix' in this movie---to go find her. Along the way he utters his usual bon mots like:
ARNOLD: "I said I'd kill you last Sully."
SULLY: "Yeah, that's right Matrix! You did!"
ARNOLD: "I lied."
[Kills Sully]
For more wonderful quotes, look here!:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088944/quotes
It was written by the guys who wrote TEEN WOLF and the highly superior followup TEEN WOLF TOO.
Anyway, in the end Matrix meets up with Bennett. They had apparently been 'in the shit' together as 'mercs' in some ghastly undemocratic backwater, but evidently Bennett 'liked killing too much.' Bennett is, as I said, memorably played by Vernon Wells---who you may also recall as the svelter, red-mohawked nutbar WEZ in THE ROAD WARRIOR. He's the one who wore assless chaps and rode around on a motorbike with a longhaired boyfellow---until Emil Minty, The Feral Kid, threw a razor-sharp boomerang into the longhaired chaps' head, causing WEZ to really flake out, which caused THE LORD HUMONGOUS to put him into a pretty stern headlock until WEZ passed out.
Truthfully, Vernon Wells was a lot scarier in THE ROAD WARRIOR than in COMMANDO. Partially this has to do with him being younger and significantly more limber in the earlier film, and largely nonverbal, and his opponent was a beat-up Mel Gibson; whereas in COMMANDO he's clearly eaten a few too many shrimps off the barby, grew a Selleck-worthy mustache, developed a penchant for knife-licking (which is something a lot of 80's villains did: lick that knife. The 'Night Slasher' character in Stallone's unparalleled COBRA [tagline: Crime's a disease. He's the Cure!] did a lot of knife-licking) ... but most importantly, Bennett spends most of his time walking around in a chain mail vest. In the tropics! Anyway, in the end Bennett and Matrix get into a scrap and Bennett gets impaled on a steam pipe and Samantha Micelli's fine and Matrix and her and Rae Dawn Chong fly off in a pontoon plane.
Now, I saw this movie on TV the other week. AMC. It started with two fake-o garbagemen pulling uzis out of their garbage truck and shooting a hapless homeowner. This is how a lot of 80s actioneers started---I mean to say, implausibly. And then today I was on DEADSPIN, a sports site, and saw a link leading to this:
http://commandofans.proboards.com/index.cgi
Holy hosannas! Nirvana! Valhalla! I can only urge you, if you grew up like I did and still nurse an odd love/hate relationship with 80's action movies to check this board out. I didn't read it all, as it would simply take even more time than I can dedicate to such a singlemindedly obscure topic, but it would be well worth your while. It is a virtual cornucopia of 80s flashbacks and funniness. Take this thread:
http://commandofans.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=Bennett&action=display&thread=528
First of all, the question makes me laugh. Was Bennett the hero of Commando? There is some interesting evidence presented to show that yes---yes, he was. Also, look at the screen shots: you've got avatars of Charles Bronson, the immortal Screwface (the twins!) from Steven Segal's MARKED FOR DEATH shooting laser beams out his eyes, Macho Man Randy Savage, and Bill Duke (Cooke in Commando, as well as Captain Earl Armbruster in Carl Weather's fantastic ACTION JACKSON) looking like the terminator. In all, a very entertaining thread. Other threads are devoted entirely to Bennett's chain mail vest and mustache.
A hideous waste of time? Surely. Am I conpounding that waste by spending 45 minutes writing a blog about it? Indubitably. Yet I am glad there are sites out there like this. They make me laugh my ass off some days, in a weirdly nostalgic way, and I'm always happy to stumble across them.
Very best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 04.24.09 @ 03:32 PM EST [link]