The Screengrab : john belushi

The Screengrab's Top Ten Worst...Movies...Ever!!!! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Under normal circumstances, with Mother’s Day just around the corner, I’d probably be introducing a list of the Top Ten Best and Worst Movie Mothers of all time (hello, Stella Dallas, Edna Turnblad, Mrs. Robinson, Mrs. Bates and, uh, Mothra)!

But, sadly, these are not normal circumstances, and as your doomed pals here at the Screengrab kick off the first of our Final Four Lists of All Time, we figured we’d better get down to brass tacks with some big-time definitive statements.

And so, this week, we’ve all joined our esteemed colleague Scott Von Doviak down in the deepest depths of the cinematic junk heap to compile our own list of Cinematic Unwatchables. And judging from our picks, it seems Tolstoy was correct when he said, “Happy audiences are all alike; every miserable audience is miserable in its own way.”

In other words, our picks were all over the map, but thanks to the cutting edge calculating powers of the state-of-the-art Screengrabulator 5000, we hereby present our ultimate, irrefutable list of THE TOP TEN WORST MOVIES EVER MADE!!!!!!

10. BREAKING THE WAVES (1996)

I don't know if Lars Von Trier thinks there's something "real" buried in the contrivances and gimmicks and grabs to the crotch that he calls movies, and I don't want to know. I do know that they can do real damage when he persuades talented people who are susceptible to really bad ideas to take part in them. Unlike the auteur, his leading lady, Emily Watson, has since done enough good work to redeem herself for whatever the hell it is she thinks she was doing in this, but at the time, her performance seemed to call less for an award than an intervention, if not an exorcism. (PN)

9. THEY’RE JUST MY FRIENDS (2006)

Bad movies come in all shapes and sizes, but few approach the sheer, wholesale incompetence and awfulness of They’re Just My Friends, an autobiographical indie co-written by and starring World Super Cruiserweight boxing champ “Punchin’” Pat Nwamu that, in terms of aesthetics, narrative, and performance, redefines the very notion of a cinematic failure. It’s a master class in how not to make a movie, made all the more distasteful by the fact that, after two excruciating hours, it abruptly, randomly ends with a cliffhanger that portends a sequel. (NS)

8. WIRED (1989)

John Belushi was a funny, talented guy and a lot of people loved him and enjoyed his work, but Bob Woodward mostly accentuated the negative as he chronicled every drug the late comedian ever ingested in his 1984 exposé Wired, prompting Belushi’s brother Jim to call the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist a cocksucker a few years later in the SNL oral history Live From New York, adding that “Woodward did a really nice job of making John look like a Bluto junkie. I don’t think Woodward’s capable of understanding what love is, or compassion, or relationships,” while Dan Ackroyd noted that Woodward “painted a portrait of John that was really inaccurate.” So I can only imagine what they must have thought of Larry Peerce’s godawful adaptation of Woodward’s book, which begins with Michael Chiklis (whose career somehow survived one of the most catastrophic debuts of all time) emerging from a body bag as Belushi, post-overdose...a concept so jaw-droppingly tasteless it belongs in the Cinema Wing of the Bad Idea Hall of Fame on a shelf with The Day The Clown Cried. And then, remarkably, the maudlin, humorless fiasco gets even worse, as Chicklis’ Belushi revisits scenes from his life, like a faux-SNL skit even more endlessly, painfully unfunny than anything Charles Rocket ever cooked up, and a Second City improv class weirdly depicted as some harrowing cross between primal scream therapy and a Khmer Rouge boot camp. Like HBO’s weirdly overpraised 2004 hack job The Life and Times of Peter Sellers, Wired seems to actively despise its own main character...but not nearly as much as I fucking despise Wired. (AO)

7. FIELD OF DREAMS (1989)

The stench of aging-Boomer anxiety rises thickly from this gross hunk of whimsy. Why did national menace Kevin Costner fall out with his dad? For all Field of Dreams tells you, dad might have been a war criminal and a serial killer and a fan of Black Oak Arkansas, but of course the movie doesn't want to get into any specifics that might interfere with the effectiveness of its guilt trip warning that you must mind your elders so they'll always be there to play catch with you. (Of course, Costner, like a lot of people in the audience, just happens to start regretting how he treated his daddy once he's become a daddy himself. This is self-critical regret as a form of narcissism.) The smarmy smugness taints all that it touches: baseball, Burt Lancaster, James Earl Jones. Check out the scene where Shoeless Joe Jackson (a miscast Ray Liotta) drops Ty Cobb's name just so he can have a laugh about how much he hates the Georgia Peach for a taste of how Costner became, for a while, the movie's poster boy for politically correct claptrap. (PN)

6. CANNONBALL RUN II (1984)

I hate to even mention this one so soon after the death of Dom DeLuise, but not even Captain Chaos could salvage a fiasco of such awe-inspiring ineptitude. The first Cannonball Run was no award-winner either – even longtime Burt Reynolds pal Johnny Carson described it as “an industrial-strength laxative” – but it doesn’t come close to the pure, unadulterated shamelessness of the sequel. Once again featuring enough Burt buddies, big name cameos and Grade Z celebrities to sink The Love Boat, Cannonball Run II takes the coast-to-coast genre into daring new territory by eliminating the race altogether. A few seconds worth of squiggly Ralph Bakshi animation stands in for the actual racing, leaving plenty of time for Jamie Farr to mug in a burnoose, Shirley Maclaine to frolic around in a nun’s habit, and Frank Sinatra to phone in a sleepy cameo, looking like he couldn’t be bothered to cross the street to appear in the same frame as Reynolds and the gang. Who could blame him? (SVD)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: April 18-24, 2009

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

What’s happening, Screengrabbers? My buddy here and I decided to take this opportunity to clear up a few misconceptions about our forthcoming summer blockbuster, which you all will love very much. We were very disturbed to read Screengrab Predicts Summer 2009 (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six), particularly the part where Land of the Lost was predicted to be the biggest bomb of the summer! Sure, the previews may have given some people the impression that our movie is just another big budget crapfest of a cash-in, but believe you me, nothing could be further from the truth! We have the utmost respect for the original piece. We’re simply reimagining it in contemporary terms, as you might, say, with a modern-dress version of Hamlet. Or Bewitched!

While we’re here, we might as well check out some other stuff that looks interesting, like The Great Netflix-"Crash" Mystery (never saw it), Mia Farrow Plans to Fast for Darfur (looks like she already is, am I right?) and Angelina Jolie Plays Doctor (I’d like to turn my head and cough, if you know what I mean).

That’s all I’ve got time for, but my pal the Sleestak is gonna stick around and read:

Reviews: Tyson, Treeless Mountain, Il Divo, Infestation

Screengrab Q&A: James Toback

Charlie Kaufman Would You Like to Know That He Really Does Care About @#$%ing Structure!

Reviews By Request: Juliet of the Spirits (1965, Federico Fellini)

Forgotten Films: "The Daytrippers" (1987)

Marathon Day Special: The Longest Movies of All Time

The Screengrab Library of Unproduced Screenplays: John Belushi's "Noble Rot"

The Screengrab Library of Unproduced Screenplays: John Belushi's "Noble Rot"

Phil Nugent — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:00:00 GMT

It was twenty-seven years ago last month that John Belushi died, at the age of 33. At the time, Belushi's movie career was approaching a crossroads. At the end of 1981, he had released two films, Continental Divide, and Neighbors, that had an important place in the trajectory of his career--they were the first features he'd done in which he played a clearly defined starring role, rather than as a standout member of an ensemble cast (as in National Lampoon's Animal House and 1941), in a movie that (unlike The Blues Brothers) wasn't a pretested spin-off of something he'd done on Saturday Night Live. Taken individually, Continental Divide was a tepid comedy for which Belushi tried to stretch himself to play a romantic lead, and a flop, whereas Neighbors was a misplayed, sloppy travesty of Thomas Berger's darkly comic novel, which Belushi came to hate, and which actually made some money. Neither film capitalized on what Belushi might have been able to bring to movies, but between them, they seemed to sum up what Belushi (perhaps ill-advisedly) wanted to do, and what the studios, to his horror, thought he was good for.

That tug-of-war was going on as Belushi spent his last days mulling his choice of projects: a comedy based on (or at least yoked to the title of) The Joy of Sex that was being pushed on by the studio, and Moon Over Miami, which the director Louis Malle and the playwright John Guare, fresh from their upscale success with Atlantic City, wanted to tailor to Belushi and Akroyd's talents. (It would have starred Belushi as a small-time con artist employed to help Akroyd, as an uptight FBI agent, cook up an Abscam-like sting operation.) This time, though, Belushi had his own pet idea, a script called Noble Rot that he and Don Novello were adapting from a screenplay by Jay Sandrich called Sweet Deception. If Belushi was disgusted by what the bosses were offering him but nervous about jumping into the art-movie deep end with Malle and Guare, it must have made sense to him to try and work with Novello, a colleague from the SNL days (where Novello, a staff writer, used to pop up in the guise of Father Guido Sarducci), to shape something specifically to what he saw as the true nature of his gifts. Of course, it must have also seemed like a good idea one night to check into the Chateau Marmont hotel and send out for speedballs.

Noble Rot is about Johnny Glorioso, the 30-year-old son of a Northern California winemaker whose wastrel tendencies have made him the despair of his family, though even the cops who hand him over to his father in the opening scenes can't do enough to stress how well-liked he is by everyone and what a lovable rapscallion he is. (They pay tribute to the fighting prowess that made it necessary for four cops to bring him down.) Dad has his own problems. The big wine contest is coming up, and his other son, the responsible one, can't board the plane because he's had an allergic reaction to some seafood. "I can't believe it," he laments. "I got on son who can't eat lobster, and one son that can't drink." He sits Johnny down and tells him that he has to take his brother's place, explaining the importance of the occasion in a speech that also serves as an explanation for the script's less-than-selling title. It seems that every once in a great while, a special grey fungus known as Botrytis cinerea infects grapes which, if they are picked at just the right point, can in turn yield a spectacular wine. Just to make sure we get it, the old man tells Johnny, the black sheep, that he has undying faith in him because he is "my noble rot--my blessing in disguise."

Johnny heads out for the East Coast and finds himself sitting next to Christine on the plane. She is a looker, but when she fails to be dazzled by his line of patter--she asks the flight attendant to find him another seat while he's sneaking a joint in the can--the viewer is clearly supposed to think, "What's her problem?" instead of, "Jesus, if the attendant hadn't found another corner to shove him into, I'd have jumped out in mid-air and taken my chances." Right away, one may pick up on a certain disconnect between how charming Belushi thinks his alter ego would have come across and what's on the page, because Johnny's supposedly funny, seductive conversation peaks with his testimonial in praise of the scintillating quality of the in-flight magazine (he's disappointed to learn that he has to catch a plane whenever he wants to check out the latest issue) and then levels out when he discovers that the movie they're showing is The Deer Hunter. (He's seen it before and thought there'd be more deer hunting in it.)

It turns out that Christine is involved in a diamond smuggling operation. (Her boss is one of those guys whose lines--"I won't involve your young friend anymore. He's served his purposes."--that you can't read without hearing the "MWAAHAHA!" at the end.) She involves Johnny in an elaborate push-pull relationship that is designed to throw off the people on her trail but also seems to speak volumes about the star and co-writer's woman issues. It's also around this point that you begin to notice that, for what's largely a con-game comedy with a character who's supposed to be a wild man in the role of the fall guy, Noble Rot is very short on narrative invention; not a hell of a lot actually happens. Christine keeps pulling Johnny close to her to keep his distracting presence in the game, then pushing him away and vanishing only to reappear, while he stands around with a big question mark over his head. Belushi must have thought that he was making Jay Sandrich's material "his" and making it edgier by making his character cruddier and ruder, and maybe he also sensed that Novello, with his gentle satiric wit, was the right person to reign him back from the going too far over the top and lending the movie some charm. But neither Novello (who would go on to publish the Laszlo Letters series, write and produce for SCTV, and lend his affable presence to many film, TV, and radio roles, but never did get a real screenplay credit or publish anything else with a real plot) nor he had the story sense to replace the scaffolding they were tearing down with a workable replacement.

In place of a story developing, there are several moments where Belushi would have gotten to assert what a wild and crazy guy he was (such as a throwaway moment in which he shows off his idea of a promotional gimmick for his long-suffering dad's winery: T-shirts with the words "GLORIOSO VINEYARDS" surrounded by a skull and lightning bolts). And how hip he is: Christine may be smart and sexy and better able to function smoothly in society than this coarse brute, but she says things like, "This is the 1980s--all you need is money," and she needs reminding who Keith Richards is. ("Yes, of course. Of the music group?") Considering that the Rolling Stones once hosted SNL, and that Robert De Niro, the star of The Deer Hunter, was a friend of Belushi's on the L.A. party scene--he dropped by Belushi's hotel room the night he died--some of the cultural references come across as bits of name-dropping trying to pass for inside jokes. (There are also scripted appearances by Orson Welles and Marvin Hamlisch, who gets to tickle the ivories in a party scene while some lucky bit player tells another, "He wrote The Sting, you know.") As in much of The Blues Brothers, Belushi seemed to be trying to fit into the '80s by claiming to be keeping the spirit of the '60s alive while making something that felt a little as if he and his buddies were trying to become the new Rat Pack.

Noble Rot ends with a final twist that leaves Johnny on top and Christine out in the cold. It's a looking-out-for-number-one conclusion that betrays audience expectations that Johnny will either get something real going with the girl (or any girl) or that he'll come through and win his family's wine the recognition that it deserves, and the fact that Belushi apparently saw it as a crowd-pleasing happy ending shows that he actually fit into the "all you need is money" 1980s better than he wanted to admit to himself. In the whole picture, there's one climactic scene where he gets to really Belushi it up: at the wine-testing, where a French judge overrules the impressed reactions of his fellow judges and bad mouths the Glorioso wine. ("Perhaps 'skunky' isn't the right word. Actually, it tastes more like the fur of a wet dog.") Johnny, of course, goes nuts--you can bet that a glass of wine gets emptied over somebody's head--and delivering a detailed condemnation of the judge that does not neglect to mention France's outstanding war debt. This rhymes with an earlier scene in which Johnny delivers a lengthy monologue describing the horrors of a visit he once made to France, where wandered into an eatery in hopes of getting a hamburger and was grossed out with an offer of head cheese. I don't know what would have happened with John Belushi's movie career if he'd lived longer, but if he'd made Noble Rot, I'm pretty sure that he never would have won a Légion d'honneur medal to clink against Jerry Lewis's.

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Nov. 8-14, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Lazenby. George Lazenby. You know, I like to think I’m a good sport. I played James Bond once forty years ago, and I’ve never heard the end of it. How would you like to wake up at 3 a.m. to answer a ringing phone and hear “You suck, Lazenby!” Not just once, but many, many times. And just this week, the Screengrab abounds with Bond material. James Bond’s Top 007 Cocktails. Quantum of Solace review. Bondage Bloggage. And the Best and Worst James Bond Movies of All Time (Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five). And in all of that, I get only one mention – where I’m referred to as “an Australian underwear model.”

I’ll have you know I have a distinguished acting resume that extends far beyond Bond. I played Jor-El in the short-lived 1990 Superboy series, and a burglar on an episode of BJ and the Bear. I starred in The Man from Hong Kong, coming soon to Ozsploitation! And I’ll almost certainly appear in one of The Top 50 Movies of 2009.

Ah well, no sour grapes on my part. Just to show what a good sport I am, let me direct you to a few of my favorite Screengrab posts of the week:

John Belushi’s Screen Test

John Cusack: Political Poet

Unwatchable #62: “Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie”

Take 5: Character Actors Who Take The Lead

Russell Crowe Will Not Wear Tights

Yesterday's Hits, Veteran's Day Edition: The Best Years of Our Lives

Star Trek Showdown III: The Search for Shatner’s Sanity

Video of the Day: John Belushi's Screen Test

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:45:00 GMT

Closing in on what would have been John Belushi's 60th birthday, debates rage about whether he was really a brilliant comic whose career was cut tragically short before he had time to become great, or just a talented comedian who died before he had a chance to embarrass himself. We lean towards the former argument, and this clip gives you an idea why.

By the time this brief clip for what was then being called The Saturday Night Show was recorded, the then 26-year-old Belushi didn't have to try out for anything -- he was already a lock to make the cast. But it still captures him at the pinnacle of his clowning, mocking the whole idea of screen tests: he starts out doing a few absurd "warm-up" exercises, then goes on to riff a gross improvisation on live television, and heads into a goofy parody of Marlon Brandon's own screen test for The Godfather -- a movie that was then only a few years old.

Screengrab's Back To School Round-Up: The Top 15 College Movies (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Two weeks ago, in the spirit of the season, your overeducated friends at The Screengrab kicked off a two-part Back To School tribute with a list of the 18+ Top High School Films. The second part of our salute to readin’, writin’ and massive student loan debt was postponed so we could honor the memory of fallen voice-over king Don LaFontaine with a celebration of the Greatest Coming Attractions Trailers...mini-masterpieces of marketing that make even the worst movies seem like must-see events.

On further reflection, though, I realized the Coming Attractions list maybe wasn’t such a detour from our Back To School tribute after all. For me, at least, the College Movies I saw growing up were a vivid advertisement for all the wild ‘n crazy fun and (more importantly) SEX I’d be having in the hallowed halls of higher education.

But, like any number of flashy preview trailers, those cinematic depictions of frat party free love turned out to be VERY misleading, and I soon learned a liberal arts degree ain’t nothin’ but a one-way ticket to the Blogosphere of Broken Dreams...

...not that I’m bitter, like so many of the characters in the College Movie’s sister genres of Post-Graduate Malaise and Faculty Feuds...all of which await your approbation (it'll be on the SAT...look it up!) as we count down the Top 15 College Movies Of All Time!

ANIMAL HOUSE (1978)

I read an article recently about the way the success of Animal House led to a pernicious slob culture (or something like that...anyone who knows the article I’m talking about can probably correct me in the Comments section). But the gist, if I remember correctly, was the way the “misfits” of Delta House became the obnoxious norm in American society, in the same way that hip-hop and “alternative” music became all-pervasive and, in so doing, lost most of what made it good in the first place. The argument has some merit, I suppose...but in the same way Grandmaster Flash and Nirvana can’t be entirely blamed for all the crapulosity they inadvertently spawned, John Landis’ modern classic at least earns a high spot on this list as the template-setting granddaddy of the modern college film. It's also, it should be noted, much smarter than many people remember, neatly bridging the gap between Baby Boomer self-indulgence and Gen-X ironic detachment. Sure, Tim Matheson’s Otter is a smarmy asshole...but at least he’s an asshole with a sense of humor and a modicum of perspective (unlike those Omega House choads). John Belushi’s Bluto may be a monster of destructive Id...but the movie wisely uses him as a spice, perfect for those moments when revenge and treacley acoustic guitar smashing really ARE the best options. And the ever-delightful Peter Riegert and Karen Allen ground the movie with just enough brains, heart and maturity to remind us that villainous Dean Wormer has an actual point when he notes, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.”

COLLEGE (1927) & HORSE FEATHERS (1932)

The greatest film comedian of the silent era, Buster Keaton, and the greatest comedy team of the early talkies, the Marx Brothers, both brought off classics with collegiate settings, and both zeroed in on the same aspect of college life: sports. In Keaton's gentle-spirited slapstick romance, he plays a brainiac who abandons his books in hopes of proving himself on the athletic field so he can win the girl of his dreams. Less interested in fitting in or plucking heartstrings (though they do all takes turns throwing themselves at "the college widow", Thelma Todd), the Marxes head straight for the wheels of power, with Groucho installing himself as the head of Huxley College and devoting his time to trying to staff the university football team with ringers hired out of the local speakeasy. A more inspiring vision of the American higher education system is hard to imagine, though you might find one in Groucho laying out his administrative plan and philosophy of life in the introductory anthem, "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It."

RE-ANIMATOR (1985)

Future adaptations – of which there are many coming down the pike – may one day prove us wrong, but for our money here at the Screengrab, the most successful film adaptation to date of an H.P. Lovecraft story is the one that refused to take the material completely seriously. There’s no doubt that Stuart Gordon loves Lovecraft; one look at his oeuvre proves it. But when he made Re-Animator in 1985, he served it up with a wicked dose of black humor that’s entirely invisible in the source material. Of course, Lovecraft’s stories were rife with collegiate atmosphere; the legendary Miskatonic University plays a major role in almost all his Cthulhu-mythos tales. But Gordon updates it to the modern day, making his protagonist a medical-school everyman, his major villain a scheming blowhard with tenure, and his female lead’s father an ineffectual – and ultimately doomed – school administrator. Only the role of mad scientist Herbert West – played by a deliciously over-the-top Jeffrey Combs – seems like a throwback to classic movie horror. The rest of the movie, from its ultra-gory fright scenes to one of the most repulsively memorable sex scenes in modern cinema, plays like a filmed treatise on how to successfully screw with horror conventions. Like Night of the Creeps, it does more than set its action on campus; it takes a decidedly academic (and often sophomoric) approach to its subject, and the result is a modern-day classic.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)

There’s nary a student to be seen in one of the greatest college movies of all time. In fact, there’s hardly anyone in it at all: two college professors at a small-town university – one an older history professor, the other a young chemistry professor – and their wives (and, briefly, an ancient couple who run a roadhouse on the edge of town). The history teacher, played by a quietly vicious Richard Burton, and his wife – whose father is the president of the university – despise each other, and over the course of the evening, they will attempt to destroy each other, stopping just short for the strangest of reasons. For Burton and his wife – a poisonous, unstoppable Elizabeth Taylor – the young professor and his agreeable nothing of a wife are nothing more than weapons to be deployed against one another; over the course of a single late night, which begins at a faculty party, and quickly moves on from campus politics to what has been memorably termed ‘the politics of personal destruction’, they will fully understand their status as knives waiting to be unsheathed. Featuring some of Edward Albee’s sharpest dialogue, and Burton and Taylor at the peak of their powers, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has survived countless parodies (it’s virtually shorthand for hateful feuding couples) and the rising and falling stars of its actors, director, and author, and it’s remained one of the most riveting pieces of cinema of the 1960s.

Click Here for Part Two & Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

The 12 Greatest Movies Based on TV Shows, Part II

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 08 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

THE FUGITIVE (1993)

The Fugitive might not have been the first TV series remade for the big screen, but it was almost certainly the one that proved how bankable- and even respectable- such adaptations could be. The film took as its inspiration one of the most influential series of its day, a four-season cat-and-mouse story of an escaped, convicted killer out to clear his name. While The Fugitive remains true to the spirit of the series, director Andrew Davis and his screenwriters do so in a way that reconfigures the formula for the big screen, beginning with a famous, still-impressive bus crash. The film also benefits from placing nearly equal emphasis on the pursued Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) as it does on pursuer, U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerrard (Tommy Lee Jones, who in a rare display of Academy affection for a genre performance won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar). The Fugitive also has a sense of place that’s rare for a big-budget thriller, utilizing Chicago so perfectly that the story becomes unimaginable in any other setting. But the best scenes in the film are the ones that remain truest to their television inspirations, specifically the near-miss suspense sequences in which Kimble barely manages to evade capture through a combination of luck and formidable intelligence. Of all the TV adaptations up to that time, it was The Fugitive that showed that films of this kind, when done right, could be much more than a simple grab for nostalgia-driven box office, and in doing so became more or less the standard by which big-budget TV-to-film translations are judged.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996)

Yes, really. A huge hit on its original release, Mission: Impossible was mostly dismissed by critics as a dopey Tom Cruise action movie, while being criticized by many viewers for having too much plot, not enough stuff blowing up. But a second look at the film reveals what a gripping suspense movie it really is, translating the formula of the TV series- gadgets, undercover missions, realistic masks, and the like- into the form of a summer tentpole release. Mission: Impossible contains at least three or four wonderfully tense scenes- the opening operation gone fatally wrong, the tête-à-tête at Prague’s Akvarium, that awesome Rififi-esque break-in at Langley- more than most Hollywood thrillers can claim. In addition, the film represents the most successful attempt by director Brian DePalma to fuse the silky-smooth cinema-saturated style of his most characteristic work with a big-budget blockbuster, and in the process becomes a surprisingly lean and satisfying thriller. If nothing else, Mission: Impossible deserves respect as the only film in the series to date that’s remained true to the team-centric nature of the show, with subsequent efforts becoming increasingly focused on Tom Cruise saving the world. Supporting players like Jon Voight, Vanessa Redgrave and Henry Czerny make such a strong impression here that it’s a shame that Cruise has become so intent on hogging the spotlight in later films in the franchise.

THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980)

Netflix, video stores and pay cable movie channels are littered with the toxic waste spew of that very special category of cinematic detritus: the SNL movie. Sure, the never-as-funny-as-it-should-be/ never-as-bad-as-its-rep Saturday Night Live has produced more than its share of legitimate comedy stars and second bananas over the years, from Chevy Chase and Bill Murray to Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. But one-dimensional SNL characters, barely tolerable in five minute doses, can be downright unbearable in full-length features (i.e., It’s Pat, A Night At the Roxbury, Coneheads, etc.). Wayne’s World is one notable exception, but to my way of thinking, The Blues Brothers is far and away the best of the SNL films (and, for the purposes of this list, one of my favorite TV-to-movie adaptations), transforming a recurring, ego-driven musical duo (whose routine and appeal I never really understood) into iconic figures in a John Landis/John Belushi/Dan Akroyd phantasmagoria that bends over backwards in its efforts to entertain: car crashes! cast-of-thousands musical numbers! more car crashes! Illinois Nazis! country and western! rhythm and blues! John Candy! Aretha Franklin! Carrie Fisher with a machine gun! (And did I mention the car crashes?) I mean, fuck! The endless, mind-boggling demolition-derby pile-up of police cars in the climactic car chase alone is worth the price of admission (take that, CGI!), but the musical numbers (by Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown, Cab Calloway, John Lee Hooker, et. al.) are even better, and introduced me and countless other white people to a whole bunch of talented black people we’d never fully appreciated before. And if all that weren’t enough, The Blues Brothers is endlessly quotable (“We’re on a mission from God,” “Three orange whips,” etc.) and spawned a pretty damn tasty jambalaya at the late-lamented Cambridge House of Blues...and how many movies can you say that about? True, The Blues Brothers also spawned the execrable Blues Brothers 2000...but the original, indispensable 1980 version will forever stand as the Cadillac Ranch of movies, a bizarre, fascinating, coke-fueled white elephant at the crossroads of cracked genius and howling oblivion.

HEAD (1968)

It was 1968 and the studio chiefs were very confused. There was something called “youth culture” or “the counterculture” or whatever – you know, dirty smelly hippies who wanted to see weird shit at the movies! Hopelessly out of touch, these suits had to turn to the scruffy people for help. The kids seemed to like that TV show The Monkees, so Columbia Pictures hired the show’s producer Bob Rafelson, and he teamed with that really weird Jack Nicholson dude from the Corman pictures, and they smoked a bunch of weed and they came up with Head. Surreal, satirical, self-referential, psychedelic and pretty much plotless, the movie bore little resemblance to the kiddie show that spawned it and failed at the box office. In retrospect, it never had a chance; the heads wouldn’t be caught dead seeing a Monkees movie and the young fans of the show wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of it. But there’s enough inspired weirdness, bizarre cameos (Annette Funicello, Frank Zappa, Victor Mature and Sonny Liston) and good music (notably the Michael Nesmith-composed “Circle Sky”) to make it a worthy cult object, if not a great movie.

THE NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD! (1988)

The Naked Gun has very little competition as the least likely TV-to-movie transition of all time. It’s derived from a series that only yours truly and four other people watched, one that lasted six episodes and went off the air six years before the movie reached theaters. But Police Squad! had a pedigree; the Airplane! team of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker created it, star Leslie Nielsen was nominated for an Emmy for his deadpan turn as Lt. Frank Drebin, and the show became a cult favorite through reruns and home video. Even so, The Naked Gun was an unexpected smash hit, spawning two lousy sequels and an entire craptacular genre of Leslie Nielsen parodies. Don’t hold those sins against it, though. The Naked Gun is a well-oiled laugh machine – from the slapstick stylings of the always hilarious O.J. Simpson to the climactic baseball game honored in an earlier Screengrab list, it’s like a MAD magazine come to life, complete with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it marginalia crammed into every corner of the screen. It’s really the last time Nielsen was ever funny, and that goes triple for the ZAZ triumvirate, who have separately and together foisted the likes of Brain Donors, Rat Race and Scary Movie 4 on their once loyal fans.

TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992)

The second and final season of Twin Peaks ended in a flurry of bizarre cliffhangers, so when rumors of a movie began to circulate, those few of us who were still watching shared a brief moment of hope that at least some resolution would be forthcoming. Then we heard that Fire Walk with Me would be a prequel covering the last seven days of Laura Palmer’s life and, well, so much for that idea. Presumably the reasoning was that a reboot of the story would draw in a larger audience than a continuation, or at least that’s how we imagine David Lynch explained it to the suits at New Line. It’s a safe bet that 99% of any potential new audience fled the theater within the movie’s first 30 minutes, set in a deliberately alienating bizarro Twin Peaks called Deer Meadow, where the cops are unfriendly, the waitresses are hags and the FBI is represented by Chris Isaak as a pale echo of Kyle MacLachlan’s Special Agent Dale Cooper. (MacLachlan makes only fleeting appearances in the movie, unaware that his career is Showgirls-bound.) But those who left early missed out on one of Lynch’s most intense and emotionally charged fever dreams. Stripped of the quirky humor that had soured into tiresome shtick long before the series ended, Fire Walk with Me unwraps Laura Palmer from her plastic for a one-of-a-kind descent into hell. Sheryl Lee burns through the screen in a shoulda-been star-making performance and Lynch cooks up some of his most indelible set pieces, most notably the subtitled “Pink Room” sequence set in what appears to be Satan’s roadhouse. Just don’t ask us about the David Bowie cameo.

- Paul Clark, Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak

READ PART I