Welcome to the School of Trailers, lesson 1: how to make a proper badass trailer.
It’s simple, really. You take a bunch of badass actors. You show them one at a time on black background, wearing badass, military clothes. You put badass weapons in their hands, and make them strike a really badass pose. And you get a badass voiceover introducing them with some badass facts about them. If you don’t have time to hire an orchestra, or even a guy with a synth, you can steal the soundtrack right from Rambo: First Blood Part II. You can, I swear to Colonel Trautman. Then you top everything with the main star. If you can’t have Sly, Arnie or Chuck, you go with the next best thing: Nick Nolte. I know the man also made some pathetic chick flicks with Barbra Streisand and Julia Roberts, but trust me: when he does his job, he’s up with the best of them. Still not sure? Add mirror shades and moustaches, and les jeux sont faits. Want more??? Fuck off, you cheeky greedy bastard…
I only just got hit over the head with a shovel with the understanding that subconsciously (or not), Streets of Fire is responsible for atleast 80% of my sentimental education. I tend to attribute the remaining 20% to Roxanne and Some Kind of Wonderful, depending on the mood. If my idea of romance is - to this day - imagining someone walking around wearing a sullen (or mopey, or brooding) expression and suddenly bursting into song trying to lure in their humble abode beautiful strangers as sullen mopey and brooding, that’s its fault. Not Romance & Cigarettes’. No.
On a side note - how cute and totally adorable were these trailers? How totally clueless were we, the viewers? In that these things were 2 and a half minutes long on average and were basically *the* movie, the whole story condensed, often with full fledged spoilers and all that jazz. Little did we knew, at the time: we could have kept our 7000 lire, or whatever the ticket cost, and waited it out until a BluRay edition came out, twenty five years later. What? No BluRay edition? Bummer.
So, we’re here, twenty five years later. I still love how this movie has it all. A desperate marketing move or just the Reagan-induced hallucinations of a whole nation, it is difficult to say. But do follow me when I point out that Streets of Fire is
- Purple Rain, with a lot more pussy
- The Warriors, with a love story
- The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with a lot less make-up (hello, Willem Defoe!)
- Gremlins, without the Gremlins
plus,
- For unknown reasons Rick Moranis seems taller for at least half of the movie (the second ever case of cinematography payola, everybody. The first being Humphrey Bogart’s in The Big Sleep. For everything in between, hell I was distracted by the Looney Tunes. Now shut up)
- This is the first lesbian flick I ever saw where lesbians are completely absent (Amy Madigan: you don’t call, you don’t write and you certainly are not preserved in carbonite. Couldn’t you just do what Diane Lane did? or Han Solo?)
- For years I believed Dan Hartman was an African-American. The real Millo Vanillo!
- And just how priceless is the evoking of Stevie Nicks throughout the movie - not just the musical numbers? Although she did write “Sorcerer”, and just the title was in retrospect a dead giveaway, Stevie seems to have inspired the costumes, the hairdos, even the Lindsay Buckingham lookalikes (yes Willem Defoe, I’m still talking to you. but also Michael Pare).
- Still speaking of soundtracks: a wall of shame for Ry Cooder. Or maybe not? Doh, there’s even Lee Hazlewood! Turns out this is an indie flick and we didn’t realize ‘til it was already too late and it infected our DNAs. Epic win, as they say.
Good times… Red Heat is notorious for being the first US movie shot on the Red Square, and it shows.
It’s 1988, Perestrojka just kicked in, so it’s time to capitalise on it and show Americans that Russians can be good guys - even heroes. So the trailer starts with a list of the most basic stereotypes about Russian cops, perfectly summed up in a big guy from Austria doing his second best robot impression (Arnie).
Then you get to the mandatory buddy movie theme, and surprise: it’s Jim Belushi! He was a funny man once. Or at least, there was a time when people would give him a chance in a big budget movie. As you can guess, that time ended pretty fast. Still, it’s kinda weird to see him as the Axel Foley-ish motormouth white cop with moderate belly and no rules.
So you’re basically forced to have your faith in Walter Hill. After all, he’s one of the best action directors of all times, and kind of started the whole buddy genre with 48 Hours. He’s probably working on commission here, which is the case with a lot of his movies from the late eighties, but he manages to deliver a solid job anyway.
To top it off, you get a hint of the AWESOME bus chase. I remember being at the theater with my dad who was absolutely blown away by it, asking me if I’d ever seen a bus chase before. Nope, and neither since.
All in all, the Red Heat trailer is a perfect souvenir of a very specific time in history. A few months later Rambo 3 came out. Russians were still the baddies in that one, so it tanked.
