SHORT CIRCUIT (1986)

"Number 5 is alive!"

True story: Did you know, that in the original script for Short Circuit, Johnny 5 had the line "Stephanie, do not disassemble my cock ring!"?  Yeah, that's not even remotely true.  I just made that up.

An American robotic laboratory is working on making robots for the military.  As the film opens, we see some of the prototype robots being used in a live demonstration for the military.  Blowing up vehicles with lasers and stuff like that.  Afterward, as the five robots are being moved back into the lab, a lightning bolt strikes one of the robots and brings him to life.  Kinda like Frankenstein's monster.  But instead of tossing a kid in a lake, Number 5 goes on a sightseeing adventure.  He eventually falls off a bridge and into the life of the free-spirited, Stephanie (Ally Sheedy).  Stephanie originally thinks that Number 5 is an alien, so she's more than happy to tell him all about life on Earth.  Number 5 loves all of this "input" and quickly becomes an expert on stuff like imitating The Three Stooges, making a huge mess while trying to to cook breakfast, disco dancing and falling off the porch.  At the same time, while Number 5 is busy perfecting his George Raft impersonation, the people from the robotics lab are frantically looking for him...so they can kill him!

SHORT CIRCUIT isn't an all-time 1980's family classic like THE PRINCESS BRIDE, LABYRINTH or BACK TO THE FUTURE, but it's still a fun ride.  The entire story is super silly, the pace moves along quickly enough and the old 80's tech is fun to check out.  Definitely worth a watch for anybody interested in 1980's Cinema.  Recommended. 

This is not part of the review, but I am curious what would have happened, if instead of Stephanie being a normal human being, she was some kind of deviant with nothing but old worn out Hustler magazines laying around instead of encyclopedias.  Johnny 5 would have ended up a goddamn freak!!!  He'd be saying all kinds of nasty shit that don't even make sense and the last word of each sentence would be really, really loud and high-pitched: "Stephanie, you have a big ol' cock I like to kiss, you...BITCH!!!"; "Suck my mechanical dick, Newton Crosby, you...WHORE!!!";  "Stephanie, eat my metal butthole, you...SLUT!!!";  "Newton Crosby, your pussy smells like the floor of a shrimp...BOAT!!!"; "Who da fuck doest thou think thou...ART!!!"; "Somebody please tongue-punch me in my brown...HOLE!!!" "I'm a sailor with the sea air in my...PUSS!!!"  You know, stuff like that.

Part 2 - Short Circuit 2 (1988)

THE DAY AFTER (1983)

"What's going on? Do you understand what's going on in this world?"

"Yeah. Stupidity...has a habit of getting it's way."

As the story goes, THE DAY AFTER was a huge cultural TV event when it was originally broadcast (on ABC) just a few days before Thanksgiving on November 20, 1983.  It was reportedly watched by over 100 million Americans.  Which, considering there was only 233 million Americans around back then, is pretty goddamn impressive!

Opening with some documentary style footage of American military guys talking really super serious while onboard an Strategic Air Command aircraft, the story then shifts to the lives of various simple Americans living their lives in the towns along the border of Kansas and Missouri.  You got Jason Robards as doctor with a loving family; Steve Guttenberg as a student; JoBeth Williams as a nurse; John Cullum as the head of a family that lives on a large farm and John Lithgow as a professor.  For 45 minutes or so, we're brought up to speed on these people's lives.  The whole time there's various news reports playing in the background talking about the growing tensions with Russia.  People are scared, but they go about their normal lives and then...BOOM!  Nuclear missiles start flying out of the nearby silos and all Hell breaks loose.  People start rioting and trying to get out of town, but before you can say "radioactive baboon testicles" the Russian missiles reach their targets and it's "Goodbye, Kansas."

Everything blows the fuck up and the people that are left after the smoke clears are all fucked up.  Not as fucked up as the survivors in the next year's THREADS, but still screwed all the same.  Radiation sickness, lack of food, lawlessness, no shelter from the elements, no more Netflix.  It's Hell on Earth, but unfortunately since this is a made-for-network-TV movie we never see much more than a mass grave and unwashed people with their hair falling out.  The story is dark, but the events shown on-screen are tame.

Still, it's a good movie and a very interesting glimpse into early 1980's American culture.  Especially, if you go online and look for videos of all of the original commercial breaks shown during the original broadcast and then watch the ABC News special that showed immediately after the movie.  Hosted by Ted Koppel and featuring Carl Sagan, then current Secretary of State George Shultz,  former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, William F. Buckley, Jr., former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, General Brent Scowcroft  and Elie Wiesel.  It's a fascinating watch and the one female audience members question (around the 45 minute mark) is even more important today than it was in 1983.

Above average acting (even by Steve Guttenberg), restrained script, mediocre direction, an unwed woman arguing with her teenage sister about her diaphragm, bland camerawork, cool explosion scenes (I loved the skeleton effects), disappointing ending.  THE DAY AFTER isn't the best nuclear war movie ever, but it does play an interesting part in world history in that it helped bring attention to the subjects of nuclear war and nuclear winter.  Definitely worth watching.

If you need me, I'll be in my fallout shelter wearing my Church of the Children of Atom robes and praying to Atom that HBO will make a high-budget, CHERNOBYL-level miniseries based on the Robert McCammon masterpiece, "Swan Song".

Maybe I'm giving the filmmakers too much credit, but when the silo doors opened up and the nuclear missiles started blasting off, they showed this white horse and it brought to mind how in the Bible, Revelation 6:1-2 says: "And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.  And I saw, and behold a white horse..."