Well, that's nice

[thedeadlyhook]

Talk about handy for research purposes! I just realized that all of BtVS is available on streaming Netflix. As well as the Buffy movie, which I'm rewatching right now.

Wow, I'd forgotten that Hillary Swank was one of Buffy's valley-girl crew in this movie. She does disdainful like a champ. (She seems to be the proto-Cordelia character.) And whoa, David Arquette is Luke Perry's best friend!

I do love me some Rutger Hauer, but Paul Reubens really stole this film.

It's funny; Buffy in the movie was a character I'd quite liked, although she is different from the TV series. Part of it is simply that Kristy Swanson comes off as less vulnerable and fragile than Sarah Michelle Gellar; this is Buffy as ass-kicker even without knowing about her powers. Likewise, the YouTube clip of the promo reel for the Buffy Animated Series that never quite materialized is also quite instructive in that that Buffy is more unapologetically superhero-ish and has a kinda Gothic-looking character design, which makes her... well, a bit more like Faith or something. Interesting.

ETA: Huh. I'd note that in the movie, vampires can't just waltz into the high school gym. Buffy has to come outside to deal with them. And I'm strangely enchanted by the bit where Luke Perry gives Buffy his leather jacket so she doesn't have to fight them at a full prom-dress disadvantage. There's a lot of things the movie does right.

Then again, there's also a lot of rip-off sources in clear view: Valley Girl, Salem's Lot and Carrie, most obviously. The film plays as a parody of these sources, so it isn't what you'd call a problem, but it doesn't much count as a display of originality, either - only Buffy herself feels fresh, and that's only if you haven't seen Nightmare on Elm Street 4. (Seriously, all the pieces are there: the horror-movie final girl, the gymnastics, the special powers, the blonde...)

ETA 2: Not that I'd, like, recommend Nightmare on Elm Street 4. It's honestly not the best of the NoES sequels (that would probably be the one in 3D, IMHO - 6, I think - which plays a bit like a dry run for Freddy vs. Jason; it's not perfect, but gets points for cool ideas), but there is this one moment with a training sequence where you go, whoa, this chick is like a proto-Buffy or something.

Comments

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched the movie since it first came out, but I distinctly remember that Pee Wee Paul Reubens was the best thing about it. Which — what with Donald Sutherland and Rutger Hauer also on board — was a bit of a surprise. Also, I was surprised at not hating Luke Perry, since I had Formed Opinions from 90210 (which I never watched, so there you go). I've had it on the Netflix streaming queue for a month, so one of these days I'll rewatch.

Also, one of my favorite fanfic Easter eggs is when Pike makes an appearance in the "real" Buffyverse...

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I'd had the same reactions: I'd expected to be way more impressed by Sutherland and Hauer, but Sutherland came off as tired and phoning it in, and Hauer was campy in a way that was hard to enjoy completely. It was just... you kind of expected him to be cooler. Maybe that's why Pee Wee worked so well - you didn't expect "cool" from him and yet, he sort of was. Neat.

I never watched 90210 either, and hadn't heard much about it, so I had a completely blank slate for Perry. Which I'm sure helped in this context. : )

Agreed on the Pike appearances! I remember there was a comic back in the pre-Joss days that had a Pike appearance too, and he and Buffy took a trip to Vegas to slay vamps there. That was a fun one!

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

I saw the movie when it came out and liked it a lot, so whenever people talk about what a "failure" it was, I kind of want to slap them. Sure, it was different from the TV show--less tender, more slapstick--but Kristy Swanson as Tougher Buffy still got me choked up when I realized how little her parents knew or cared about her. Also, I believe that movie originated the phrase "so ten minutes ago." And yes, Luke Perry and the proto-mean girls rocked.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's true! You really got the uncaring-parents thing right from the start. The pathos was always there, with the glamorous girl who had the not-so-glamorous home life.

I think the saying in the movie was "so five minutes ago," but it wouldn't surprise me if that was upped to ten minutes at some point later as a way to make the diss even more extreme. : )

[tabaqui]

Uh, but.
Nightmare 4 came out.....after Buffy, didn't it? I mean.....that movie was out and gone for a while, as far as i know.
*checks the 'net*

Yeah, Buffy - '82, Nightmare 4, '88. So they were riffing on Buffy in Nightmare, heh.

I loved the movie. I thought Kristy Swanson was awesome, totally more believable as a girl who could kick-ass, and much less whiney. Now, don't get me wrong - Buffy-on-tv was awesome, and fun, and i loved it for most of it's run ,but the movie is not *nearly* as 'awful* as some people seem to want to make it out. It was neat! And hilarious, and apparently Donald Sutherland drove Whedon nuts, which makes me smile. :)

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Er, no, actually, the Buffy movie came out in 1992. I saw it in theater in San Francisco, and I hadn't moved out here until '88. So yeah, the Nightmare stuff came first. But that was hardly the only place where you could find tough girls in the '80s - it was a real trend for awhile, especially in horror and sci fi. Would that it still was.

I really enjoyed the movie when it came out, although I remember sitting in the car afterwards and talking it over with my friend, and we both agreed that it didn't quite work perfectly, there was some really good stuff in there that spoke to us as, well, young women. That's still the part of Buffy that will stick with me, even after all the other cultural memories are long gone.

I'd heard about the Donald Sutherland thing. Apparently, Rutger Hauer was a total sweetie, though. (One does wonder about the other sides of those stories!)

[tabaqui]

Oh, i read it wrong! Heh. Sorry.

I never saw any 'Nightmare' movie past the first one, i think. I saw part of one where there was a nun in an insane asylum? No clue.

I think it worked on a lot of levels, yes. It was silly and campy and riffed on a lot of other movies, but in the same way that 'Buffy' did on other things. The 'Scoobies' made Giles despair, but a lot of the offhand comments that Xander made - and Buffy, too, sometimes - actually showed a really broad knowledge of more than pop culture, and more than of just 'their' time in it, you know? Not a *deep* knowledge, a lot more surface stuff, but still - they weren't quite as clueless as we were led to believe.

Same with the movie. A lot more was going on under the surface, it just kind of got hazed out *by* the surface.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I think they added to Freddy's origin story in 3, where you get the ghost of his mom, a nun, who was sexually attacked by the inmates in an insane asylum so Freddy could be the son of a hundred maniacs! I don't think they actually enacted that scene until...5, I think, so that might've been the one you saw.

I do think that the Nightmare movies, along with a lot of popular '80s films, had an interesting vibe of glib, snarky, cynical "cool" teenage stuff mixed with situations that tended to be about everything they didn't know and didn't feel comfortable with. Stuff like Lost Boys and Night of the Creeps even has the Buffy-esque humor and horror combination, and it is kind of neat to go back and time and see all those cultural building blocks already in place before Buffy ever arrived.

But Buffy did far more with the characters, agreed. They became real people with layers. I loved that about the show, and haven't found it in too many places since. Boy, is it ever missed.