Director: Allan Moyle
Year: 1980
Rating: 6.0
I have always meant to see this film and finally got around to it. I recall
it getting a lot of publicity when it was released with the two young female
leads getting all sorts of press but the film didn't do that well - too youth
oriented for many and perhaps too New York City centric for the rest. But
over time it has become a bit of a cult film and I can sort of see why it
might - mainly for the soundtrack but also for just how corny and yet female
bonding/power it is.
I had just moved to NYC a year before this film and for the first two months
I had to live in the Times Square Motel on 43 and 8th avenue. A room where
you could hear the cockroaches march across the linoleum every night in battle
formation to scatter like a busted rave party when the lights went on. On
the elevators I was often accompanied by a male and a female that I am sure
his mother would not approve of. I lived on Arthur Treachers Fish and Chips
across the street because it was all I could afford and it was always fun
to watch the denizens of the neighborhood conducting business at the next
table. The neighborhood was an organism of supply and demand for the darkest
of our desires especially when the night came out to play.
Though the film was shot in NYC and parts of it clearly in Time Square, it
just doesn't capture the sense of sleaze and desperation that hung in the
air like dirty laundry. It hits on bits of it such as three card monte, the
squeegee guys, the peep shows and porn theaters and the movies playing on
42nd street with Bruce Lee or that great classic Nurse Sherry on the marquee
- but there is no menace, no sense of derangement - the girls act like they
are traipsing around a mall in New Jersey and all the pimps and shady characters
are the neighborhood watch. It is way too clean - and the two teenage girls
do some weird stuff but in the real Times Square these two runaways living
on the streets would likely have been drugged up, strung out and hit on by
every pimp in town. In the original cut apparently it was a bit more on the
wild side - with a lesbian slant but this was removed as were other seedier
aspects. We need a Director's Cut! The director being Allan Moyle of Pump
Up the Volume fame.
Nicky (Robin Johnson - 15 years old and discovered on the streets of Brooklyn
for this role) is an anarchist punk mildly psychotic girl with bad attitude
hanging out in Times Square when the cops pick her up and put her in a mental
hospital for a stay. At the same time Pamela (Trini Alvarado - 12 years old
at the time) who is the squeaky clean repressed daughter of the Commissioner
is also admitted to the hospital for depression and placed in the same room
as Nicky. They bond over Nicky eating flowers and being a general pain in
the ass and they escape and begin to live in a decrepit building by the waterfront
that looks like a strong wind will blow it across the river. They get up
to mischief as Pamela comes out of her shell and begins dancing in some topless
dive but she gets to keep her clothes on to the crowds delight. They also
begin to drop TVs from rooftops as a statement of nonconformity and they
become a teenage craze once a radio DJ (Tim Curry) begins publicizing them
- sort of a juvenile Thelma and Louise crash into Cindy Lauper and Girls
Just Want to Have Fun. In a note, the Commissioner wants to clean up Times
Square - but that of course wasn't done until Giuliani became Mayor in 1994
before he went off his medication and went nuts.
Very little of this is compelling - they set it in Sleaze City and then compromise
so much on the sleaze - but now that it has actually been cleaned up it is
still a small peek back to the good old days. What really kept me engaged
was the soundtrack. This is produced by Robert Stigwood who at one time managed
Cream, the Bee Gees, produced Saturday Night Live and Grease so you know
you are going to get some contemporary music and whoever made the choices
did a great job of punk and New Wave with songs from The Cars, The Cure,
Joe Jackson, Suzi Quatro, Lou Reed, The Ramones, The Pretenders, Roxy Music,
Patty Smith and XTC. The film runs around 110 minutes - probably 20 minutes
too long and you wonder if that was just to fit in more songs for the soundtrack.
Neither actress went on to much - Trini stayed around for a few decades but
appeared in nothing of note and sadly Robin was signed by Stigwood to both
act and sing (she sings two numbers in the movie) but he did nothing with
her. I saw one report that she is a traffic reporter in LA.
