Top Ten... Alternative 80s

Continuing our new (mini) series of Top Tens, we're looking over the alternative classic of the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. So, what do we mean by alternative? Well, alternative, for the purposes of these entries, means anything that is critically derided, overlooked by the public or just generally under-rated. Ultimately, though, it all comes down to how we argue it, so if you disagree, let us know!

FILMS - By The Writer

1. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Widely thought of as a weaker Scorsese effort (probably due to Judas’s curious New Yoik accent), The Last Temptation of Christ is, for my money at least, right up there with his finest works. Rather than Passion of the Christ-style unquestioning dogma, Scorsese made a deeply personal film (that’d explain the accents) which depicted Jesus not as a divine, untouchable deity, but an ordinary man tempted from his destiny by a normal life with Mary Magdelene. Naturally, the church complained, but this is urgent, heartfelt cinema, with a magnificent central performance from Willem Dafoe.

2. Supergirl (1984)
Supergirl scared me as a kid. Not the character herself, but the film in general. You may laugh, but how could it not scare kiddies? First, it’s got Faye Dunaway at her most insane as an evil witch who’s in cahoots with Peter Cook. Second, we see inside the Phantom Zone for the first and only time in a Super-film. And third, Supergirl bleeds. She bleeds actual, factual blood. Talk about no more heroes, I was flippin’ petrified. Gladly Helen Slater was on hand with her magical colour-changing hair and tiny Super-suit to ease the pain. It’s a shame the film flopped, because she has a natural charm which would have made her perfect for the numerous rom-coms which flooded our screens in the 90s.

3. Short Circuit (1986)
John Luc-Godard once said all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. He was wrong. All you really need to make a movie is a girl and a robot, as Short Circuit proves. The mechano man in question is Johnny 5, a clanking mess of metal and googly eyes designed by Steve Guttenberg and a comedy Asian fellow as a weapon of war. Gladly, he becomes intelligent and chooses to flirt with kindly animal lover Ally Sheedy instead (well, who wouldn‘t?). Hijinks, power ballads and child-friendly discussions on the nature of existence ensue. Screw Godard and his French New Wave. This is where the action’s at.

4. The Right Stuff (1983)
Looking back now, it’s amazing that Phillip Kaufman’s epic space-race drama has been lost in the sands of time. With its ground-breaking visuals, star performances and focus on a vital moment of American history, it should be remembered as one of the all-time biggest Oscar winners. But Kaufman has rarely been the kind of filmmaker to play things straight and while The Right Stuff is a respectful chronicle of the historic Mercury missions of the 50s and 60s, it retains a satirical edge which means it’s much, much more than a simple history lesson.

5. Day of the Dead (1985)
Although generally considered the weakest of George Romero's Dead films, Day is still a worthy and unusual addition to the cannon. Lacking the fear factor of Night and satirical brilliance of Dawn, this third entry into what is soon to be a five film franchise (Diary of the Dead is currently doing the festival rounds) is a surprisingly low key affair, with brightly lit malls and secluded cabins replaced by an underground bunker storing a host of frustrated scientists and irritable military men. It all ends with the zombies once more winning. For most this would be a downbeat finale. However, for Romero, ever the nihilistic social commentator, it’s a happy ending, with our heroes finding peace from society’s destruction on a secluded tropical island.

6. The Howling (1981)
In different hands, The Howling would have been just another dumb horror film, made at a time when the genre was becoming overly gory and more concerned with shock tactics than genuine scares. In Joe Dante's hands, however, it proves one of the wittiest and smartest horrors of the decade, thanks also to the script by indie god John Sayles. Sadly though, the film has become overshadowed both by the success of 82’s similarly-themed American Werewolf in London and the endless list of sequels, the first of which was called: The Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch. Sigh...

7. Empire of the Sun (1987)
This adaptation of JG Ballard's 1984 novel was Steven Spielberg's second stab at 'serious' filmmaking and still stands as one of his most underrated works. Set during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in the Second World War, it follows young English aristocrat Jim (an astonishing Christian Bale making his screen debut), as he is separated from his parents and winds up in an internment camp. While Colour Purple felt like Spielberg going out of his way to impress critics, Sun is a more natural transition which focuses on his usual father-son themes and, in the scene in which an awestruck Jim gazes up at a fighter plane, hands him an image as vital to his cannon as Elliot passing across the face of the moon in E.T.

8. 1984 (1984)
It's a shame the Eurhythmics were asked to make the music for this adaptation of George Orwell's reality-TV-spawning novel, because their pretentious Vangelis-lite warblings make Michael Radford's otherwise impressive film sound like a cut-price version of Blade Runner. Still, there's a lot to enjoy here, from John Hurt's magnificently decrepit turn as Winston Smith to the non-showy, special-effects-free depictions of totalitarian Britain. The film was Richard Burton's last and his creepy performance as Party member O'Brian is a fitting tribute to his immense talents.

9. The Company of Wolves (1984)
Based on the work of magical-realist writer Angela Carter, The Company of Wolves was always going to be a difficult work to put on screen, but director Neil Jordan does a commendable job in this unique fantasy film. Taking inspiration from the Grimm fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood especially), The Company of Wolves is an intoxicating and inventive story of puberty and maturation that makes up for its lack of Freudian subtlety with some groundbreaking effects and winning performances.

10. Tron (1982)
Alas, it seems Tron will forever be remembered as the film nobody in The Simpsons had heard of. It’s a shame too, because while it may be pitifully light on story and look tragically dated now, Tron was genuinely ground-breaking in its time and had a sense of geeky fun that kids films rarely do today. It also features light-cycles, which is enough to get it on this list on its own.

ALBUMS - By The Editor

1. Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II (1983)
An album that didn't really do much business when it came out, Meat Puppets II achieved more fame a decade later when Curt and Cris Kirkwood joined Nirvana for their MTV Unplugged in New York performance and helped them perform Oh, Me, Plateau and Lake Of Fire. After the raging white noise of their debut, the Meat Puppets invented cowpunk music by introducing some country influences into their music, and MP II is a simply stunning record and one of the best alt.rock albums, not just from the 80s, but ever.

2. Faith No More - Introduce Yourself (1987)
Two years later, Faith No More were on top of the rock world with their awesome The Real Thing album, but Introduce Yourself is almost as good, despite having Chuck Mosely on vocals instead of Mike Patton. Mosely wasn't a good singer by any stretch of the imagination, and it's easy to see why they only became famous after he left. However, Introduce Yourself is a great album, with twisted pop hooks, heavy guitars and psychedelic songs. They were moving towards legendary status and would only achieve it after they'd chucked Chuck, but this is still very good.

3. Mano Negra - Patchanka (1988)
Parisien anarchists Mano Negra started with this incredible debut album and lead singer Manu Chao is still pretty much ploughing the same furrow now and sounding innovative. That's how unusual their blend of Euro-rock and punk and rockabilly and reggae and skiffle and hip-hop and country and flamenco and it goes on and on. Their list of influences ran into the thousands almost, though none were as prominent as The Clash. The best way of summing up the diversity and genius of this album would be their version of Rock Island Line, which shifts genre three or four times in the space of a few minutes. Madness, utter, brilliant, madness.

4. Mick Fleetwood - The Visitor (1981)
Mick Fleetwood? The massive drummer from Fleetwood Mac? The guy who, along with Sam Fox, made bad awards show hosting look like an art form? Yep. He's not exactly well known for his solo work, hardly surprising as he's one of only two people to have been in Fleetwood Mac throughout the band's lengthy and turbulent history. However, in 1981, he made a solo album in Ghana, using traditional African rhythms alongside Western rock with help from the likes of George Harrison and Mac bandleaders Peter Green and Lindsay Buckingham. And it's really, really good.

5. Lindsay Buckingham - Go Insane (1984)
Speaking of Buckingham, here's another Fleetwood Mac solo album. His second release and the last before he left the band a couple of years later, Go Insane had an album cover that looks like a prototype for John Turturro in Barton Fink, while the contents were classic Buckingham tunes, full of hefty production values and quirky, catchy songs. The best bit though is the experimental D.W. Suite, where he takes his Brian Wilson fetish to a whole new level while paying tribute (hence the name) to the recently deceased Dennis Wilson.

6. Scientist - Scientist Rids The World Of The Evil Curse Of The Vampires (1981)
An acolyte of dub legend King Tubby, Scientist specialised in epic but minimalist dub albums with fantastic song titles and themes, from Space Invaders to the World Cup to this evil curse of the vampires. The songs all have horror movie titles and some 'spooky' effects, but the music is essential dub reggae and reached a whole new audience when used as the K-Jah radio station in Grand Theft Auto III.

7. Neil Young - Trans (1982)
The early 80s were hardly Neil Young's finest years, with a load of sub-standard albums being churned out as he put music on the backburner while caring for his son, who had been born with cerebral palsy. However, he hadn't given up trying, and Trans is his most experimental and daring release, as well as his strangest. If you've ever wondered what Neil Young songs would sound like performed by The Buggles, then things like Transformer Man, Computer Thing and Computer Cowboy show you exactly that. Amazingly, it works really well, with some more traditional songs through in there too.

8. Soul Asylum - Hang Time (1988)
And finally, we have Soul Asylum, caught halfway between wanting to be The Replacements and being massive superstars for five minutes with Runaway Train in the early 90s. Hang time sharpened up their sound and brought elements of a more radio-friendly sheen to their sloppy country-punk music, but keep things rocking and never loses its alt.rock credentials. Every song is great and it's just a shame that they couldn't always have maintained the balance between their two sides as well as they did here.

9. REO Speedwagon - Hi Infidelity (1980)
REO Speedwagon may be one of those arena rock 80s power ballad bands who everyone loves to laugh at, but Hi Infidelity is a classic album of that rather maligned genre. With the awesome Keep On Loving You at its heart, it's more than just soppy radio hits, because there's some cracking pop rock on here too while the lyrics aren't even as bad as you might expect. We've seen it called 'arena rock's Blood On The Tracks', which is pushing it a bit, but it's the perfect example of why 'guilty pleasures' can be really good as well as really cheesy.

10. Meat Loaf - Blind Before I Stop (1986)
His last release before reuniting with Jim Steinman for Bat Out Of Hell II, this album is generally considered to be Meat Loaf's weakest, and it's true that the very 80s production is certainly different to his best OTT rock music. However, as a pop rock album, it's full of fun songs like Rock n Roll Hero, Rock n Roll Mercenaries (they're pretty much the same song really), Special Girl and the title track, while One More Kiss (Night Of The Soft Parade) is a very nice ballad.

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT... SAUL BASS

If we were to ask you to name some of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest collaborators you’d be likely to mention people like James Stewart, Grace Kelly and Cary Grant. However, one person whose name may not slip off the tongue quite as freely as those luminaries is title designer Saul Bass.

Born in New York in 1920, Bass was a keen artist from an early age and found his first film work in Otto Preminger’s urban opera Carmen Jones. The Austrian director asked him to produce the titles for the 1956 film and, at a time when most title designs were mere processions for the cast’s names, Bass produced the iconic image of a single printed rose, wilting in the shadow of a roaring flame.

It proved a sensation, not only looking aesthetically-pleasing, but also clueing the audience into the film's theme of destructive passion. This is what Bass did best, and Preminger was immediately impressed, inviting him back to design the titles for more of his films.

For heroin addiction drama The Man With The Golden Arm, Bass created a staccato-style arm reaching obsessively into the centre of the frame; for romantic melodrama Bonjour Tristesse he produced a solemn, weeping eye and for the groundbreaking Anatomy of a Murder he made a cut-out of a dismantled body.

But Bass didn't just excel at dramas. Comedy capers Ocean’s 11 and It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World showcased his more playful side and so synonymous are the bold, colourful designs of these films with the 1960s that the titles of modern movies such as Paul Schrader's Auto Focus, Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can and Casino Royale have echoed them to evoke their retro milieu.

These complex mini-movie sequences also highlighted Bass’s desire to move into direction himself. But, despite winning an Oscar for his 1968 short Why Man Creates, his ambitions were quelled by the failure of little-seen 1974 killer ant movie Phase IV. Instead, his directorial legacy lives on in the shape of his work with Alfred Hitchcock.

For the auteur’s Vertigo, Bass was called upon to create a dream sequence as well as the titles. Homing in on the film’s themes of fear and obsession, Bass created a claustrophobic nightmare, using multi-coloured spirograph vortexes, black backgrounds and Bernard Hermann's haunting score to lure the audience into the central character's obsession and create an effect just as disorienting as Hitchcock's much-vaunted dolly zoom.

A thrilling sequence for North by Northwest followed, but it wasn’t until 1960 that Bass’s reputation was cemented with his work on Psycho, for which he received his first 'pictoral consultant' credit after storyboarding the infamous shower scene (rumours still abound that he directed it) and designing the minimalist cutting lines of the iconic title sequence.

With gritty realism taking hold of American cinema in the 1970s and the star reigning supreme in the 80s, Bass’s stylish sequences gradually fell out of fashion. He therefore spent his time designing logos for big corporations until he was invited to create the titles for Martin Scorsese‘s Goodfellas, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence and Casino, the latter using computer technology to capture the neon-lit dystopia of Las Vegas.

Bass died of non-Hodgkins related lymphoma in 1996. His final design was for documentary A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. It was fitting end for a man who had contributed so much to the subject at hand.

Say What?!: Ridley's Right

Talking up his latest movie, American Gangster, at the Venice Film Festival last weekend, Sir Ridley Scott was surprisingly downbeat on the future of movies. The British director insisted that science-fiction, the genre in which he made his name with the likes of Alien and Blade Runner, has run its course and that modern Hollywood is "three per cent good, ninety-seven per cent stupid".

"I'm not criticising Hollywood because I work there, I partly live there," he explained. "But I'm saying this is the way it is, commerce is taking over art. Commerce has become the most important thing in the film industry. Hollywood is an industry, it's not an art form, therefore they have to address the bottom line.”

But Tinsel Town money-grubbing wasn‘t the only thing on Scott‘s mind. “People sit there watching a movie on a tiny screen," he grumbled of the increasing use of small-screen gadgetry to watch films on. "We try to do films which are in support of cinema, in a large room with good sound and a big picture. I'm sure we're on a losing wicket but we're fighting technology. Whilst it is wonderful in many aspects, it also has some big negative downsides."

Indeed, those downsides will be keenly felt for a director of Scott’s pedigree. From Blade Runner and Alien to The Duellists and Gladiator, Scott’s films are the work of a visual genius. He uses the full screen to tell the story, utilising its grandeur to highlight the freedom Thelma and Louise felt in the deserts of America or the isolating boredom the crew of the Nostromo suffered against Alien’s deathly silent starscapes.

But Scott isn’t the only one to see the fruits of his labour squashed by the onslaught of technology. Could you imagine how Stanley Kubrick would feel seeing The Shining‘s Overlook Hotel turned from an agoraphobic nightmare into a cozy motel. For that matter, what would Martin Scorsese think seeing the bruising boxing sequences of Raging Bull reduced to a bar room bust up, or Steven Spielberg witnessing the menacing underwater sequences in Jaws rendered no more threatening than a casual dip at the local leisure centre?

Of course, I can see the convenience of such gadgets and I‘m certainly not saying that a film can only be correctly viewed on a giant screen. But there’s a limit. Directors shoot their films with aspect ratios and resolutions in mind. Every frame, every angle, every cut is mulled over and thought through, crafted lovingly to give the viewer as good an experience as possible.

To take that craftsmanship and squeeze it onto a mobile phone screen is tantamount to reproducing the Mona Lisa on the back of a postage stamp or watching the RSC perform the abridged version of Macbeth. Sure it’s convenient, sure it’s shiny and new and exciting, but by watching films on these things you’re denying yourself the chance to see a great piece of art in the form it was meant to be seen in.

Of course, the people who want to do that should be allowed to, after all, they‘re not doing anything but ruining it for themselves. But there’s a wider risk here. If UMDs, PSPs and mobile phones continue to sell as quickly as they are now (and they‘re selling pretty fast), then we’ll have a generation of kids - of future filmmakers - who have grown up watching films without appreciating the unique visual sensation that only cinema can supply, and that can only be a damaging thing for the British - perhaps world - film industry.

In the end, Ridley’s right: Films should be enjoyed in a quiet, darkened room on as big a screen as possible, not on the back of a postage stamp on your way into work on a Monday morning.