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There's a certain tragedy to watching the 1989 comedy Weekend at Bernie's, and it's not the fate that befalls the titular Bernie Lomax as his corpse is trucked all over the coke-streaked Hamptons of yore.
The tragedy here is that Bernie's seems the kind of movie that was meant to say something really deep amid all the rampant corpse defilement.
That's not immediately apparent in the film, which features two dipshit finance bros who roll down to the Hampty Hamps to visit their boss. They find him dead, but to protect themselves from the mobsters who murdered Bernie, and to keep the party going because it's the fuckin' '80s in the Hamptons, the pair staples Bernie's toupee to his head and pretends he's still alive. The joke is, nobody notices he's dead. They're too high, self-involved and into those bitchin' synth beats on their Walkmans. It's a recipe for a standard bullshit '80s romp, like Ski School.
Things get fascinating though, when you realize the man behind the camera is Ted Kotcheff, an auteur turned journeyman who cut his teeth on the long-lost existential Australian classic Wake in Fright but is best known to U.S. audiences as the man behind the surprisingly empathetic First Blood. It was Kotcheff who first introduced audiences to John Rambo when he was a PTSD-afflicted vet looking for peace rather than a one-man death squad. He's also behind Uncommon Valor, the 1983 war film that starred Gene Hackman and a young Patrick Swayze.
You don't get to be a working director of crap unless you play ball. Kotcheff probably thought there was a lot more to say in a film that takes place at the apex of Wall Street greed and focused on perhaps the most arrogant and narcissistic generation of all time. I like to think he thought he was taking the Trouble With Harry template to make this his Wall Street, a satire of greed that starred a goofy corpse that had a shitload of blow lying around in his luxury beach house. But that kind of existential shit doesn't put butts in seats, dammit.
Instead, we got a movie about a water-skiing corpse that two idiots use to get free drugs and party and get laid. Weekend at Bernie's became exactly what the script called for, nothing deeper. Naturally, it was a hit that spawned a sequel to the zany adventures of America's favorite remarkably preserved corpse, and Kotcheff schlepped off to make episodes of Red Shoe Diaries.
The Bernie's sequel and subsequent loss of Kotcheff as a voice are tragedies far greater than the late Bernie Lomax's demise.
GO: Weekend at Bernie's is showing at Cartopia. 9 pm Sunday, July 17. Free.
Also Showing:
Raising Arizona—one of the Coen Brothers' most infinitely pleasurable creations—makes a welcome return to Portland screens, hopefully resulting in a shortage of pomade and diapers. Pix Patisserie. Dusk, Wednesday, July 13.
Church of Film's Queer Cinema series goes to Tokyo for Funeral Parade of Roses, a film that traverses the queer social scene of the bustling city while blurring the line between documentary and fiction. North Star Ballroom. 8 pm Wednesday, July 13.
1958's The Screaming Skull warned audiences of an opening so terrifying, anyone who died during it would be treated to a free funeral. Nobody redeemed it. Or the film. Joy Cinema. 9:15 pm Wednesday, July 13.
Fashion in Film does its theater/runway thing with The Fifth Element, which includes a screening of the film and the unveiling of a line of hopefully Chris Tucker-inspired clothing from West Daily's Jason Calderon. Hollywood Theatre. 6:45 pm Thursday, July 14.
OMSI's incredible Sci Fi Film Fest continues its quest to present classics on the biggest, loudest screen possible. Remaining films include Alien (July 14), Inception (July 14), The Terminator (July 15) and Robocop (July 15). OMSI. Through July 15. For full listings, visit OMSI.edu.
The Hollywood's 90th anniversary kicks of its retrospective of films starring 90-year-old Harry Dean Stanton with the punk classic Repo Man. Hollywood Theatre. 9:30 pm Thursday, July 14.
The NW Film Center pays tribute to the late schlockmeister Edward D. Wood Jr. with a screening of the granddaddy of "so bad it's good" cinema Plan 9 From Outer Space ( 7pm Thursday, July 14 at the Hotel Deluxe) and Tim Burton's outstanding, loving biopic Ed Wood (7 pm Friday, July 15 at NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium).
The classic Jets vs. Sharks musical West Side Story gets the 70mm treatment, bringing Robert Wise's classic golden-age masterpiece to screens the way it was meant to be seen. Hollywood Theatre. Friday-Sunday, July 15-17.
The 1982 dystopian freakout Kamikaze '89 looked deep into the future (about seven years) to discover a world where leopard-print was king, drugs had no side effects, and movies were extremely hypnotic and difficult to like. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Friday-Sunday, July 15-17.
If Jim Henson's magical, hysterical road-trip mainstay The Muppet Movie doesn't hold a special spot in your heart, that's fine. Sad, but fine. But if hearing Kermit the Frog belt out "The Rainbow Connection"—perhaps the greatest single cinematic composition of its era, and among the biggest Oscar snubs of all time (it lost to the song from Norma Rae)—doesn't stir something in you, well, you're missing a soul, my friend. Academy Theater. Friday-Thursday, July 15-21.
James Cameron's bombastic, terrifying, cinema-changing Aliens screens in Portland all the time. This weekend, it's in glorious, detail-rich 70mm. Which is to say: Game over, man. Hollywood Theatre. Friday-Sunday, July 15-17.
One of the finest assassination tangos ever put to film, 1973's The Day of the Jackal is the standard against which all white-knuckle political thrillers should be judged, with its terrifyingly relevant plot (the titular Jackal is trying to assassinate real president Charles de Gaulle) and enough tension to fill a hundred sub-standard Clancy knockoffs. Laurelhurst Theater. Friday-Thursday, July 15-21.
The NW Film Center's Bette Davis/Joan Crawford retrospective continues with 1938's Davis-starring southern romance Jezebel. NW Film Center's WHitsell Auditorium. 4:30 pm Sunday, July 17.
For those of you who follow this column (hi Mom!), you probably know that I happen to revere Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break as one of the greatest action films of all time… a feminist deconstruction of male machismo and a fantastic entry in the surfing/bank-robbing/car chasing/sky-diving/zen/buddy-cop genre. It never screens here. Well, here's your chance to hork down some meatball subs and have your adrenaline gland pumped by the sight of a Swayze emerging from the deep and descending from the heavens. Mission Theater. Opens Sunday, July 17. Hopefully closes never.
In the pleasantly wholesome 1987 comedy Baby Boom, Diane Keaton plays a high-powered ad exec who inherits a baby, moves to Vermont and starts an organic baby-food empire. Nowadays, she'd be in tech and moving to North Portland to sell biodegradable high chairs. Clinton Street Theater. 6 pm Monday, July 18.
The Roger Corman trash classic Death Race 2000—in which Stallone may have donned his first on-screen fedora and David Carradine plays a cat named Frankenstein—is resurrected by repressed cinema in all its gratuitous, senior-citizen-slaying glory. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Tuesday, July 19.
Willamette Week